Tesla's big battery in South Australia may prove the viability of renewables - <AUTHOR> https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2017/jul/07/elon-musks-big-battery-brings-reality-crashing-into-a-post-truth-world <comment><USER2> This article, like Turnbull, is incorrectly equating cost with price. Emissions are a cost. Price + emissions = cost. Renewables have been beating coal on cost for quite a while, only now they can start to win on price.

<comment><USER3> that's true.

but to dig a bit deeper, who pays each cost and who benefits from the value?

      who directly benefits from the value of energy:
      - australian energy consumers
      - australian energy producers

      who pays the costs for energy prices:
      - australian energy consumers

      who pays the costs for australian emissions *:
      - people living in australia -- 0.3% of emissions
      - people living in world excluding australia -- 99.7% of emissions

* assuming each person currently alive in world has equal interest in global climate. this is pretty crude as people who arent born yet get to carry the cost too.

Clearly we cant account for these shared global costs sensibly unless enough countries reach some kind of global agreement. The current australian federal government is taking a regrettable approach of self-interest and is waiting for the larger/more powerful countries to lead the way. Australia has plenty of coal to sell in the mean time.

<comment><USER4> Failure to act on climate change has a game-theoretic cost. Taking unilateral action massively improves your negotiating position and reduces the cost for other countries to reduce their emissions via economies of scale. One country taking decisive action could trigger a chain reaction of political pressure.

Australia has a horrendous wildfire problem. The frequency and severity of wildfires has drastically increased over recent years. A small increase in global temperatures could render vast areas of the country effectively uninhabitable due to the risk of fire.

I think that most Australians are willing to act; that will is being subverted by a powerful coal lobby. They see the hellish scenes every summer. They see the immense financial, environmental and human cost. They see the weight of scientific evidence.

<comment><USER5> Paradoxically, more frequent fires can often mean less severe fires. That's the rationale behind controlled burns and traditional aboriginal land management practices.

And because this is Hacker News, have a play with the simulation hosted at Fourmilab: [http://www.fourmilab.ch/cellab/manual/rules.html#Forest](http://www.fourmilab.ch/cellab/manual/rules.html#Forest)

<comment><USER6> Having written (as in, programmed, based on process knowledge from fire departments) a model for forest fires in Australia myself over the last few months, I feel that I can say that while a fine demo application of CA based modeling, this model is not an accurate description of forest fir behaviour (well unless it's just to illustrate how planned burns interact with their crude approximation of fuel load). E.g. it doesn't even consider slope and wind direction, or vegetation type.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> Can anyone comment more generally on using lithium ion batteries for grid scale storage? It seems nonsensical to me.

Lithium makes sense for cars where power density is essential. But with grid scale storage, there are so many drawbacks, including

1.) High fixed cost vs. other batteries

2.) Degradation from dendrite growth

3.) Need for constant cooling

4.) Possibility of catastrophic failure in case of short circuiting

In contrast something like Zinc-Bromine flow batteries have unlimited cycling with zero loss of energy storage, and are inherently composed of fire retardant materials, making them impossible to catch fire or explode [0]. The trade off is in energy density, but that shouldn't be an issue for fixed grid- scale deployments.

This story feels like forcing a solution with the power of good marketing, not solid engineering.

[0] [http://redflow.com/wp-content/uploads/2012/10/Garth-Corey- as...](http://redflow.com/wp-content/uploads/2012/10/Garth-Corey- assessment__zinc_bromine_battery.pdf)

<comment><USER8> 129MWh is a laughable amount of storage when you need at minimum 10000MWh per day for 1mln people. So you would need at least $12.5bln to build enough plants for just one day per 1mln people. And that's not counting maintenance. For that price 2-3 nuclear plants can be built which can last 30-50 years unlike the 10-20 years of lithium storage.

Instead of hideously expensive (and potentially explosive) lithium storage, solution should be synthesizing and storing some form of gas. This gas can then be produced and stored in underground locations during summer, and then spent during winter.

<comment><USER9> I, for one, can't wait for SI Units and their prefixes (Kilo / Mega / Giga / etc) to be adopted globally.

129MWh / 10GWh / 1M people / 12.5G people

<comment><USER10> I'd be satisfied with joules instead of watt hours.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> The article, of course, is guilty of exactly what it accuses its opponents of -- truthiness. They say that this is affordable, and then don't even say how much it costs! He who refuses to do arithmetic is doomed to talk nonsense [1]

[1] [http://www-formal.stanford.edu/jmc/progress/](http://www- formal.stanford.edu/jmc/progress/)

<comment><USER12> This is true, but I'd note this quite from the article:

 _Nyhan showed a clear tendency for people with high numeracy skills to misread graphs about gun control or climate change, even when they'd just correctly read the same graph about soap._

To address you specific point though - the price is less than A$150M/$US115M[1].

By comparison, the SA government is also building a new 250MW gas fired power station which costs A$360M[2].

It's difficult to compare the two because they are such different things of course. But I'd note that at periods of high wind generation the power price in SA does drop to zero, but the peak price is very high. It seems likely the price of energy from the wind farm plus battery will be extremely competitive with gas, and the investment price seems roughly proportional for the amount of energy made available.

[1] [http://www.adelaidenow.com.au/news/south-australia/south- aus...](http://www.adelaidenow.com.au/news/south-australia/south-australian- government-refuses-to-say-how-much-worlds-biggest-lithium-ion-battery-will- cost/news-story/)

[2] [http://www.abc.net.au/news/2017-04-13/sa-gas-fire-power- stat...](http://www.abc.net.au/news/2017-04-13/sa-gas-fire-power-station- gains-international-interest/8442578)

<comment><USER13> How much is the price for kwh stored/dispatched , over the long term ? that's the missing data here.

And btw: i don't know the economics of this project, but in general, if this was cost effective, Musk would have tons of customers(including power companies), to supply power during peak hours and save them a lot of money.

<comment><USER14> > _Musk would have tons of customers(including power companies), to supply > power during peak hours and save them a lot of money._

Assuming such customers don't already have existing contractual obligations with existing providers nor assets whose valuation depends on no significant changes to current operations.

<comment><USER13> It isn't the case. There are many businesses(both utilities and others) who could use a peak shaving solution, especially one as scaleable as batteries.

EDIT: what's unique about the australian installation(in 100 days), is that it is politically driven, or risk management driven(to reduce the risk of outages). see[2].

And so, using a healthy dose of skepticism, All i'm saying: If there's a real economical solution for the big problem of energy storage, real deployments are the test, not politically/risk driven deployments, or psychological/marketing[1] driven deployments(like we see with the power wall).

And this is a repeating pattern with musk(a marketing genius, definetly, and very smart overall), succeeding quite well on the higher end of the market, but when it comes to the more commodity end, his companies are less stellar: see First Solar, or the fact the Renault-Nissan sells more electric cars than Tesla.

[1][https://www.greentechmedia.com/articles/read/how-to-sell- ene...](https://www.greentechmedia.com/articles/read/how-to-sell-energy- storage-when-the-economics-dont-work)

[2][https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14715679](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14715679)

<comment><USER14> How do you know? Do you have access to the contracts that, for example, a large provider like PG & E signs with it's partners for their current "peak shaving solution"? Do you have detailed access to their balance sheets and appraiser information?

From their latest 10k[0], Gas related equipment represents 26% of the value of their assets. They would, have to write some non trivial amount off because they would no longer have any use of it by switching to use batteries like these. What would their majority shareholders think in response to that? What if they are also invested in the supply chain of such? I assume those would be non-zero losses.

[0] [https://www.sec.gov/Archives/edgar/data/75488/00010049801700...](https://www.sec.gov/Archives/edgar/data/75488/000100498017000012/form10q.htm)

Edit:

If you are implying that economics of a thing can be decoupled from politics, then I think that is a faulty belief. You won't get "real deployments" unless current providers are out competed on whatever front (economics/politics) or routed around and made obsolete in some fashion, because they stand to lose economically based on their current investment. Whether you agree with how Elon (or others) is going about it, is irrelevant in so much as you aren't in direct opposition or exposed to the risk of such changes.

I'm not long TSLA nor have no future plans to be so.

<comment><USER13> >> economics of a thing can be decoupled from politics,

Did i imply that ? i just said that the australian project has little relevance to companies who do seek energy storage, because their reasons, motivations, are different, and this greatly affects cost sensitivity.

But you know what? i don't understand politics.

Maybe Australian Politicians didn't expose the low, low cost of stored kwh using this system, because they are humble.

<comment><USER14> > _i just said that the australian project has little relevance to companies > who do seek energy storage, because their reasons, motivations, are > different, and this greatly affects cost sensitivity._

>> _All i 'm saying: If there's a real economical solution for the big problem of energy storage, real deployments are the test, not politically/risk driven deployments, or psychological/marketing[1] driven deployments(like we see with the power wall)_

Because other energy companies aren't worried about political risks? If that was the case, why would companies lobby government officials/politicians at all anywhere in the world? I'd think all energy companies have similar considerations, but how they choose to weight them may be different.

A theoretical company might save $300 million dollars in yearly operational costs with a upfront cost of $1 billion to $INSERT_WHATEVR_BATTERY_SOLUTION_PROVIDER, but if they are exposed to $26 billion to "investments" of a $100 billion total that are expected to perform for the next 30 years and have to revalue that suddenly (to the downside, to be clear), then I know they are going to think twice about how to move forward.

<comment><USER13> >> the australian project has little relevance to companies who do seek energy storage, because their reasons, motivations, are different,

If you'll read about the industry, you'll find this claim generally true.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> Hawaii and HECO are worth watching closely in the real world of energy and modern grids. [http://www.utilitydive.com/news/hawaiian-electric- proposes-n...](http://www.utilitydive.com/news/hawaiian-electric-proposes-new- cheaper-grid-modernization-plan/446420/)

There is a great deal going on in the energy world right now around storage of electricity, I think it's a shame opEd websites such as the Guardian feature and focus on Musk, a single entrepreneur and his companies, over the broader advances that are unfolding...

<comment><USER16> Hawaii gets 85% of its electricity burning imported oil.

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

If solar is cost effective then Hawaii should be an easy place to build it?

<comment><USER15> You would think so, but I've been following this for 4 years and there are huge issues to resolve. There is a pre existing grid designed to distribute electricity generated from imported oil which is now woefully out of date. There is huge home solar usage in Hawaii but the grid is incapable of redistributing surplus power created by owner panels. Storage for redistribution at a reasonable cost is the big challenge there, and is being watched closely by other regions and places before they emulate...

From the Energy Dive article I linked to:

'At the end of 2016, about 26% of Hawaiian Electric's customers' electricity was sourced from renewables, Greentech Media notes. Customer owned solar power was the largest contributor at 34% of the renewables total, followed by wind, 29%, and biomass at 19%.

On the Big Island of Hawaii renewables accounted for 54% of customers' needs and on Maui and Molokai it was 37%.'

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER17> Why is Snowy Hydro 2.0 "ridiculous" and "silly"? What exactly is advantage of battery over pumped storage? Big problem with pumped storage is that it needs specific location, but it seems they already have it.

As I understand, pumped storage is cheaper, more energy efficient, more mature technology. I understand battery swithes faster. What else?

<comment><USER18> You mentioned location, but that advantage can't really be understated. How can you have pump storage near every major city? It's not feasible in most places. Then there is the enormous transmission cost to get the energy to (and from) that remote location.

Batteries can also meet fluctuations in demand instantly. Hydro cannot.

<comment><USER17> What enormous transmission cost? Total transmission loss of Australia is 5% (2014).

I already said battery switches faster. You are simply repeating what I said.

<comment><USER12> The Snowy Mountain scheme is around 1500km from Adelaide. It might help in the Eastern States, but transmission losses are significant over that distance, and in the Eastern States they haven't had the power problems yet.

<comment><USER19> Pumped hydro storage is also inefficient - about 20% losses.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER20> So basically we are transitioning from a fossil energy based world to lithium based one. Why does media never talk about the sustainability of build lithium ion batteries at large scale? Have the recycling problem been sorted out (I have a couple of lithium ion batteries and I don't know what to do about them) I also heard that lithium is very very scarce on Earth.

<comment><USER21> It's not talked about in "the media" (at least not front page stuff) because it is not a huge problem. While "scarce" is relative, global demand until the year 2100 is estimated to be between 12 and 20 million tons, while currently known reserves are about 39 million tons. So we should be good for at least 80 years. Recycling is also a solved problem, though we'll have to build a few more factories to keep up with the increased amount.

Note that eventually, graphene based energy storage may take over anyway. Or possibly someone will invent proper hydrogen storage.

Finally, you could easily have found multiple studies by respected universities about the estimated amount of lithium on Earth, about the feasability of large scale recycling of Li-ion batteries and about transitioning into a lithium-based economy. If you are willing to take advice, reading up first before become alarmed and posting concerned comments will help a lot for your peace of mind.

<comment><USER22> What crystal ball are they using to predict the future out for 80 years? Are they making the assumption that there will be no technological paradigm shifts and demand growth will continue along current levels? Do they factor in the effects of climate change and global instability?

If you use an estimate of demand to justify increasing demand, you immediately, tautologically invalidate the estimate: the estimate did not account for your policy decisions based on itself.

<comment><USER21> If you want to know which assumptions they made, why not just read the studies and see for yourself? To be sure, predicting the future is super difficult. If we have a global thermonuclear war in 2020, we will probably not need any tons of lithium at all, what with everyone being dead. Same thing if we get hit by a really large asteroid, etc. Also if someone ever develops man-portable fusion reactors we might not need batteries at all. :)

Your point about the self fulfilling aspect of basing policy on research is well taken, though in this case the researchers used multiple scenarios for policy development, including one where lithium demand is heavily stimulated by eg subsidies on EVs and the like. That is the upper part of the range of 12-20 million tons of demand, which is still well below the lower bound of estimated reserves.

<comment><USER22> No studies were cited. I would love to see them.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER23> Isn't that an overstatement? Australia's installed generating capacity is 67GW and about 50% load factor. It needs at least 100 systems like that to make a significant impact on grid stability. Even in South Australia alone, at least 10x that much is needed.

<comment><USER17> Yup, it is. And you know what? Pumped storage the article calls "ridiculous" and "silly", is what is needed. It is 10x much, exactly as you said.

<comment><USER23> Price of battery systems seems to be same now per unit of storage and lower per unit of peak power. So that's fine: all things being equal, battery is definitely better than a pumped storage plant.

They just need whole lot more than this 1 battery to solve the problem.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER24> FYI: 129 MWh would be about 1300 42U-style racks for batteries alone.

Source: there's a guy in socal (Jehu Garcia) building a reclaimed peaker 1 MWh pack in about 10 racks from used batteries and equipment (50 kW 480VAC inverter) on the cheap in order to store energy off-peak (plus possibly charge using solar) and use it at peak supplemented by grid power. This is how manufacturing and other heavy industry / large electrical consumers can save money right now in US day-of-use billed grid systems.

<comment><USER25> I had this idea 10 years go to use flywheels to buy cheap power and re-sell it during peak demand. Day vs night pricing will quickly normalize.

<comment><USER26> Wouldn't some kind of gravity-based storage be cheaper/safer? Just lift some huge weights with excess energy, lock it in place, and then let gravity pull it down to reclaim it.

<comment><USER27> Both are back in sight these days.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER28> Would someone explain what this battery is for or the surrounding context? The article spends most of its word count on abstract politics.

<comment><USER29> Briefly and maybe not 100% truthy: the state of South Australia produces a lot of its electricity from a wind farm. It brings in extra power from another state over a giant cable (the interconnect). A while ago a storm damaged the interconnect and this triggered cascading failsafes that shut down a lot of the state.

The wind farm has been a thumb in the eye of the federal government, who is huge on coal. The feds lost no time blaming the blackouts on renewables and sticking it to SA. Elon Musk offered to install a giant battery in what seemed to be a wild-arse publicity stunt. SA said ok do it, and they're getting a giant battery and their energy independence back.

<comment><USER30> I had been lightly skeptical until you framed it as a move in spite of the federal government. There were some missing pieces to the puzzle in my mind where I wasn't sure why if we had a technical solution (the interconnector) then why won't we just solve the policy and pricing problem that stops us utilizing it.

Partly because I have never seen Australian states as particularly at odds with eachother or the federal government, but the idea of taking the choice of coal or renewables into our own hands is actually really compelling.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER31> I try to do some numbers the best I can.

Assuming cost of $1.25 per MWh (same as in California) this costs roughly $150 million. You would need 260 of these to cover all Australian households for $39 billion.

This is dayscale storage and emergency supply to stabilize electricity grid. It provides emergency supply for 30,000 homes and grid stabilization. Lithium energy competes in this category with Flywheel energy storage systems. 129 MWh's battery used alone could supply the daily electricity for something like 7000 household daily electricity usage. If it supplies only 1/4 of the electricity then 30,000 homes is realistic.

If Tesla learns how to __reuse __lithium with reasonable cost, this can scale. Currently Tesla recycles lithium into bricks used in construction.

The price would be $4900 per per household.

sources:

1\. [http://shrinkthatfootprint.com/average-household- electricity...](http://shrinkthatfootprint.com/average-household-electricity- consumption)

2\. [https://www.gizmodo.com.au/2017/07/all-the-details-on- teslas...](https://www.gizmodo.com.au/2017/07/all-the-details-on-teslas-giant- australian-batteryt/)

EDIT: I used average household energy usage and number of homes but used Australian population. The cost and number of units required was 3X too high. 1̶2̶0̶

<comment><USER32> So, totally worth it ($120 billion) for a 0.01% reduction in global ghg emissions.

<comment><USER31> Roughly $4800 per household. The price of huge flat screen. If it scales, it's acceptable solution for rich countries with cheap wind or solar.

(if it truly scales, the price will drop dramatically when volumes grow).

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER33> For an article that pretends to spread the truth, its surprisingly short of any proof, figure or any kind of data to support the political opinion. Isnt that what they ought to be doing?

</comment><comment><USER34> When was the truth era?

I get the feeling that revelations similar to the "post truth" idea here, ie. commentators being shocked by the barefaced lying of the powerful, have been happening continuously for thousands of years.

Apocryphal or nor this is apt..

An Assyrian clay tablet dating to around 2800 B.C. bears the inscription: "Our Earth is degenerate in these later days; there are signs that the world is speedily coming to an end; bribery and corruption are common; children no longer obey their parents; every man wants to write a book and the end of the world is evidently approaching."

</comment><comment><USER35> Can Tesla deliver the batteries in the next 100 days? Tesla had a battery shortage last quarter when production couldn't keep up, and had to delay some car deliveries.[1] With Model 3 deliveries starting, is Tesla's battery production sufficient?

[1] [http://money.cnn.com/2017/07/03/technology/tesla-battery- car...](http://money.cnn.com/2017/07/03/technology/tesla-battery-car- deliveries/index.html)

<comment><USER36> When this first hit the news a few months back, Musk said they'd do it on 90 days or it'd be free.

That's a pretty big incentive to get it done quickly.

<comment><USER37> Now it's 100 days or free.

<comment><USER38> No, it was always 100 days or free.

 _" Tesla will get the system installed and working 100 days from contract signature or it is free. That serious enough for you?"_

[https://twitter.com/elonmusk/status/840032197637685249](https://twitter.com/elonmusk/status/840032197637685249)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER39> The Small bordering on Medium size company I work for has a 30KW solar array on the roof of it's factory.

With batteries they'd basically be able to run the factory close to off grid, while the equipment requires high peak power it's average load is vastly lower.

</comment><comment><USER40> I wonder if after another 10 years cycle Elon Musk will deliver or he will just "aim higher" and we'll still see "projection articles" instead of talk about results.

</comment><comment><USER41> I'm happy this is happening but if it requires $50M in tax payers dollars it's not exactly viable now is it?

<comment><USER12> As a South Australian, I'm (very!!) happy to trade a few tax dollars for much lower power prices. The extra tax is more than made up for in savings.

On this particular topic, the South Australian government's interests and mine are precisely aligned: We are both getting screwed over by power generators exploiting the intermittent nature of renewables to make bigger profits. Did you know they deliberately keep gas peaking generators _off_ when it would be profitable to run them, because they can force the price to spike even higher and exploit the minimum billing periods?

I'm all for market driven solutions, but technology driven price disruption is a well known reason for market failure, and that seems to be what is going on here.

<comment><USER42> _happy to trade a few tax dollars for much lower power prices_

That's _optimistic_.

I _guarantee_ you will be paying more for electricity generation because of this battery. There's _no way_ the incumbents would allow this thing to be connected to the grid if there wasn't a dollar (quite a few dollars) in it for them.

Giving money and power to politicians is like giving car keys and whiskey to teenage boys.

Regards, former SA resident.

<comment><USER12> _There 's no way the incumbents would allow this thing to be connected to the grid if there wasn't a dollar (quite a few dollars) in it for them._

There are no major non-renewable incumbents left in SA. The renewables love this because it lets them load shift. That's good for them but good for me too.

AGL has a small gas fired station but screwed up during the outage by not firing up one generator. That lost them any friends they have, especially since they blamed high gas prices, which the Federal Government saw as a criticism of them.

The interstate incumbents hated it enough to get the Federal Government to look at stopping it[1]. But then the Victorian Hazelwood coal fired plant closure was announced, and the coal industry lost a lot of credibility with the federal government. Basically the incumbents are suffering and are _rapidly_ losing political power.

[1] [http://www.skynews.com.au/news/top- stories/2017/03/14/south-...](http://www.skynews.com.au/news/top- stories/2017/03/14/south-australia-to-unveil-new-energy-strategy.html)

<comment><USER42> > _There are no major non-renewable incumbents left in SA._

AGL operates 8.562 gigawatts of fossil fuel (coal / gas) power plants, and 2.33 gigawatt renewables (hydro / wind / solar).[1]

The 1.28 gigawatt gas fired Torrens Island Power Station in Adelaide _is the largest power station in South Australia_.[2]

South Australia has 16 operating wind farms with a total installed capacity of about 1.473 gigawatt.[3]

It definitely looking like we'll see, in our lifetimes, a future where wind + storage provides a significant majority of electricity in South Australia. My argument is there's no way this future will also provider _cheaper_ electricity.

Why charge less when you can make people pay _more_?

1\. [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/AGL_Energy#Operations_and_sign...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/AGL_Energy#Operations_and_significant_assets)

2\. [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Torrens_Island_Power_Station](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Torrens_Island_Power_Station)

3\. [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_wind_farms_in_South_Au...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_wind_farms_in_South_Australia)</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment>


A farm in Missouri got $2.8M in Trump trade war money - <AUTHOR> https://newfoodeconomy.org/trump-farm-bailout-trade-war-money-millions/ <comment><USER2> I suppose trump actually signed the checks. Seems it is impossible to get away from political opinion even when "hacking".</comment>


Connectivity When Chinese hackers declared war on the rest of us - <AUTHOR> https://www.technologyreview.com/s/612638/when-chinese-hackers-declared-war-on-the-rest-of-us/ <comment><USER2> This article points out a real problem. The free world needs to be able to withstand hacking from despotic, authoritarian controlled regimes. But it also needs to help commercial companies not fall under their sway because of economic pressures (like punishing companies that dare to list Taiwan as a separate country).

I thought this article would be about when China at some point really attacks the cyber infrastructure of the us, not just github. That would make for a good science fiction story.</comment>


Ask HN: Review my latest project, DialShield - <AUTHOR> http://www.dialshield.com/

<comment><AUTHOR> This is one of many side projects I started years ago and just this week decided to get off my todo list by finishing it properly and releasing.

DialShield is an embeddable widget and API for adding phone verification to a website or app. It calls/texts the person right from your website with a code they repeat back to prove they own that phone. Now you can tie a unique/traceable piece of identity to the anonymous web user.

It can be used to stop:

\- Spam/duplicate registrations. Craigslist requires phone verification before posting in a high-spam category.

\- Payment fraud. I registered this domain and built the API in 2008 (intending to eventually have people other than myself use it). I had a website with so much fraud from eastern-european countries using stolen credit cards that I lost a merchant account and was at risk of not being able to accept credit cards for the rest of my life. Adding phone verification to checkout cut the chargebacks from 15 a month to 5 all year.

\- Two-factor authentication for login or password resets.

I'd appreciate any feedback. I don't have a friend outside the US so haven't been able to do much testing of international calling. I'd love to find out there's an easy way to get a phone number in another country that forwards to me for testing at little/no cost.

Built with Symfony, Twilio and Twitter Bootstrap.

<comment><USER2> Nice work customizing the look of your webapp on top of the styles provided by Bootstrap.

I'm in Argentina. Drop me a line at the email in my profile if you need help testing international calls.

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> I just tested it calling to my cellphone from Colombia. It worked like a charm. I'll definitely use this in a future project whenever I need it!

<comment><AUTHOR> Great, thanks for trying it out!</comment></comment>


Show HN: Simple Deep Learning Tutorials using Microsoft Cognitive Toolkit - <AUTHOR> https://github.com/astorfi/CNTK-World/blob/master/README.rst <comment><USER2> From a sister group at msft: you can load & run the notebooks using [https://notebooks.azure.com](https://notebooks.azure.com).

When you create a Library, select +New from GitHub and enter the above path. It's free, but no gpu support :(.

<comment><USER3> Very cool! Though you might want to encourage whomever manages that page to open it on their phone. There is something wrong with the column width calculation which makes the tiles unreadable.

<comment><USER2> I believe we have a bug open on this. I'll check, if not, I'll file. Thanks!

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> That installation tutorial is a far, far cry from installing Anaconda then running "conda install tensorflow-gpu". Microsoft has a simpler python-only installation process [1], but when I tried a Linux installation I encountered the same errors that other people are seeing [2]. I expected a Microsoft product at version 2.2 would have more polish than this. Hopefully they will improve the installation process soon.

[1] [https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/cognitive-toolkit/Setup- CNT...](https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/cognitive-toolkit/Setup-CNTK-on-your- machine)

[2] [https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/cognitive-toolkit/setup- lin...](https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/cognitive-toolkit/setup-linux- python?tabs=cntkpy22)

</comment><comment><USER5> For the Microsoft shops out there, our Deep Learning platform SignalBox ([https://SignalBox.ai](https://SignalBox.ai)) supports CNTK and we support deploying to Azure, if you're interested please reach out!

/shameless plug

</comment><comment><USER6> I've been doing a lot of work with CNTK lately (and for the most part I quite like it compared to TensorFlow), but there are two things in particular that need to be addressed before I think it can gain wider traction: support for batch normalization on CPUs (right now bn is GPU-only, which means a lot of Microsoft's examples only run on Windows/Linux machines with GPUs, not something everyone has immediate access to always), and macOS support (even CPU-only support). I think those things are table stakes for any deep learning framework.

That said, it's great to see the author's work here - CNTK documentation can be a bit hard to come by.

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks for the kind words and directions.

</comment></comment><comment><USER7> If you have this information, one thing that would be really helpful with this type of tutorial is to know how long it took to train the models when you tested them last (and what it cost).

</comment><comment><USER8> On the install page [https://github.com/astorfi/CNTK- World/tree/master/docs/tutor...](https://github.com/astorfi/CNTK- World/tree/master/docs/tutorials/installation) it would be nice if it says which version(s) of Ubuntu are supported.

<comment><AUTHOR> Thank you so much for your attention.

</comment></comment><comment><USER9> After looking at brainscript I'm more and more drawn to the idea of building the network outside the data wrangling environment.

Do you have any experience with brainscript and can you comment on developing with it compared to python api?

<comment><AUTHOR> It looks really simple but I do not have any experience on that.

</comment></comment><comment><USER10> What the world really needs right now is another deep learning tutorial

<comment><USER11> Not warranted. From the article: "CNTK is new and it's hard to find easy-to- use code examples and tutorials for learning by doing!"</comment></comment>


Researchers discover first sensor of Earth's magnetic field in an animal - <AUTHOR> http://phys.org/news/2015-06-sensor-earth-magnetic-field-animal.html

<comment><AUTHOR> Original paper: [http://elifesciences.org/content/early/2015/06/17/eLife.0749...](http://elifesciences.org/content/early/2015/06/17/eLife.07493)</comment>


String that immediately crashes OS X and iOS apps, including WebKit - <AUTHOR> https://zhovner.com/tmp/killwebkit.html

<comment><USER2> According to Google translate it is Arabic appears to be gibberish: Smoouhkh ̷̴̐ x ̷̴̐ x x ̷̴̐ Amartykh ̷̴̐ x

I was kind of hoping it translated to something more nefarious and appropriate for bricking an computer lol!</comment>


Nutanix IPO Story in Pictures - <AUTHOR> https://ipocandy.com/2016/09/nutanix-ipo-story-pictures/ <comment><USER2> with HTTP configuration, Java Applet and your own Prism software supervision.</comment>


Ask HN: How do I find a marketing person for equity? - <AUTHOR>

Over the past couple years, I have built an online educational tool that combines a dictionary with flashcards and uses games to help users learn.  The site is called WordStash and is at http://wordstash.com.  The feedback has been great and the site is growing steadily.  I do not have the time to work on the marketing and promotion of the site and would like to divvy it out for equity.  How should I go about finding a person for this? <comment><USER2> Shoot me an email; I'd love to learn more about the site. I majored in marketing and am working on my own startup but depending on the time commitment you're looking for I may be able to help. I see you're up in Seattle; I'm actually in Portland, OR myself. Cheers!

claydani [at] gmail.com

</comment><comment><AUTHOR> Here is a clickable link for the site: <http://wordstash.com/>

<comment><USER3> The site could do with a little UI improvement. Background-vs.-body contrast is rather harsh on the eyes.

<comment><AUTHOR> Yea, I can see how that could be a problem. Do you think I should just have a solid color background? Do you think the clouds are too busy?

<comment><USER3> Yeah, I think a solid color or a soft-going gradient layout that contrasts well with the colors of the site's body would work well.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> I have someone, other than flying kisses, how to reach you?

<comment><AUTHOR> Hey, my email is david-at-wordstash.com</comment></comment>


Why I left Mac for Windows: Apple has given up - <AUTHOR> https://char.gd/blog/2017/why-i-left-mac-for-windows-apple-has-given-up <comment><USER2> The only reason I'm staying with macOS is because it is the only UNIX distribution that doesn't look downright ugly. (Sorry Linux, none of your distros match up to Apple's offering)

I've had lots of teething issues with High Sierra (especially with APFS) and I certainly don't like the new butterfly keyboard in the new MacBook Pros. But on the other hand, they've got the best gesture controls. With Windows 10 you can go far with precision touchpads, but I have yet to use it enough to say whether I like it or not. Screenshot shortcuts (Cmd+Shift+4) is another thing I use on a daily basis that's still not in Windows 10.

When my 2014 MacBook Pro is due for replacement, Windows might be a contender. But that's probably a few more years down the road (hopefully).

<comment><USER3> Since Apple has given up on keeping what really matters for a Unix, its tools, up to date the amount of time you have to spend installing the latest version of things like Bash is actually higher for OSX than Windows these days.

I am aware that at least one of the reasons for Apple to ship stone-age versions of everything from Emacs to GCC is that they hate GPL3. But the reasons don't matter when the latest version of their operating system is unable to run modern software without installing a set of packages that more or less replaces all of the Unix tools. When you have to do that, it doesn't really matter if you install those tools on top of Windows or OSX.

As for myself I find Windows to be absolutely unusable and I was using Linux up until around 2002 when I switched h to the Mac. Lately however, Apple's utter disregard for technical users that prefer the Unix experience has made me switch back to Linux, and while Linux has issues of its own, at least everything works out of the box without having to deal with an entire separate ecosystem of packages on top of what is provided by the operating system itself.

<comment><USER2> Homebrew works for me. It's unfortunate how behind Apple's toolchain is, but I interact with its GUI more than the terminal.

<comment><USER3> It worked for me as well, but it was a constant hassle.

Once I realised that I barely used any Mac-specific software anymore, the choice to move back to Linux was easy.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> I've recently switched from an old Mac Pro to a Lenovo x1 carbon (QHD, 16gb RAM, 512 SSD, i7). It was half the price of the equivalent current Mac Pro, with more ports and better battery life, no gimmicky touch bar BS and a _much_ better keyboard imho (although the trackpad is worse).

Software wise, I use Windows 10 with the linux subsystem + a Linux VM (Elementary OS). I must confess both Windows and Linux are still a bit behind in hidpi support and the linux subsystem is not as well integrated as a MacOS console but I'm in general quite happy and while Apple designs these overpriced underpowered laptops with horrible features I can't really go back, even though the software stack might still be a little bit better for developers.

<comment><USER5> _although the trackpad is worse_

I haven't found a single Windows laptop whose trackpad can be pushed in (thus registering a mouse click) at the top of the trackpad. All I can think is that Apple is aggressively asserting some patent(s).

Is there an alternate explanation? Have I just not come across Windows laptops with good trackpads?

<comment><USER4> The 2 finger scrolling is pretty bad too, frequently doesn't respond or makes the font bigger or other nonsense. Apple has the best trackpads no doubt.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> Why is this flagged? It seems like an opinion from an informed user, an opinion like many others I've read in HN. Also, it was an interesting read for me.

<comment><USER7> I think it was flagged because the original article was posted back in March[0] and this is viewed as a reposting. However, the article has been updated and I think it's perfectly fine to re-post something from over 6 months ago. I certainly don't remember seeing it the first time around and appreciate it being posted now.

[0][https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13797042](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13797042)

</comment></comment><comment><USER8> The Mac platform is comatose and we all know it. The author is dead right with his points. I switched to Mac about 10 years ago and was blown away by how amazing it was. A year ago I got a Windows machine at work. At first I was horrified by the idea but Windows has come so far in the last few years. It's a perfectly fine platform now and has largely caught up.

<comment><USER9> The issue with Windows is the telemetry. You simply cannot disable it. Yes, you can waste time ticking everything off, but with the next update, it's back again. No, thank you.

I want to use an operating system that respects my privacy. For me, this is OpenBSD, FreeBSD, or Fedora/Debian Linux.

I use Windows at work, too, and am horrified daily by how utterly difficult it is to use compared to Linux or FreeBSD.

<comment><USER10> I personally haven't had an issue with disabling telemetry. Also, stumbled upon this a while back (maybe worth checking out): [https://github.com/W4RH4WK/Debloat- Windows-10](https://github.com/W4RH4WK/Debloat-Windows-10)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13797042](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13797042)

</comment><comment><USER12> Nothing more than bitching, moaning, complaining and fanboying about ecosystems. Sure, there are issues in the mac ecosystem that frustrate me but the mac ecosystem, on the whole, is an excellent system that works great for most people. Plus, there are a large number of 3rd party solutions to tailor the experience to your needs.

Since we're allowing fanboying, Windows is still by far the biggest pile of shit to work on and lags way behind Linux or Mac in developer experience. To me the linux subsystem is just another attempt to save a sinking ship. The author would be way better off getting comfortable in hisfavourite flavour of linux and build the environment exactly as he'd like.

<comment><USER13> I thought the Windows Subsystem for Linux was kinda funny, but actually it's so well integrated and useful for all the reasons people like using Linux (more correctly, their shell of choice). Where Apple is so neurotically anti- GPLv3 that they've allowed the GPLv2 stuff in macOS to get extremely old. And I see no evidence those ancient tools like rsync 2.1.9 are even getting security updates. That is the platform I see sinking, at least that part of it.

It also sucks to VM, it's not even legal to VM it if not on Apple hardware. It sucks when running other OS's in a VM. Seriously, XNU just does not like being host or guest, it becomes a CPU and memory pig like no other OS.

<comment><USER14> The WSL is absolutely not integrated at all. It's pretty horrible.

What terminal do you use with it? Powershell? How do you cut and paste between terminals? Tabs? I found the only way to have a decent Unix terminal experience was to run an Xserver and connect to it from powershell.

Install git in WSL, clone down some projects and then access those files you just cloned down from Windows Explorer. Show the integration there...

The MacOS/Unix integration is light-years ahead of WSL- because the MacOS actually runs Unix, it's not just bolted on.

The people that claim that WSL is integrated with W10 can't have used it for more than 30 min. Otherwise they wouldn't comment about it.

<comment><USER13> It's a fair point that it is not as well integrated as the native approach that you get with either macOS or Linux or BSD. But you absolutely should be able to right click copy paste between terminals. And yes I can update Apple's crusty shit with Homebrew, but the staleness of Apple's CLI tools is a blight.

<comment><USER14> Well I have to use chocolately with W10.. which is the same thing as HB for OSX. The LSW is a totally sep system in there- an install of python on LSW cannot work with the python installed in windows.

This is completley not true of Home Brew on OSX.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> Apple's best innovations have been in the form of exploiting tax shelters.

</comment><comment><USER16> Yuck... Why not try arch linux? Much better... imho. Antergos is a good user friendly distro that I highly recommend.

Why is it always windows vs apple..when linux -- esp for tech savvy folks/developers is so much better?

<comment><USER2> Because none of the Linux distros look as good as what Apple (or even Microsoft) has to offer.

ElementaryOS is heading in the right direction, but I cannot shake off the feeling that it's still using design languages relevant to 2010, not 2017.

<comment><USER16> Why is all about gui/looks?

Learn to live in the terminal, and all will be well... I say that and I still haven't completely grokked VIM, but I CAN exit!

<comment><USER2> I care about not having a burning urge to stab my eyes every 5 seconds :)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER17> Microsoft has also given up, it seems. They recently removed MS Paint, and suggested that Paint3D would be its replacement. Paint3D can not be removed (it will reinstall itself), and inserts a firewall rule(!) presumably to help call home.

Even the "Enterprise" editions of Windows 10 don't respect settings correctly, and happily engage in high-risk always-on data collection at the expense of whoever owns the internet connection. They've even backported this misfeature to Windows 7 as an automatic update, as far as I'm told.

 _And I might be saying that this was all okay in the long run, if the quality of Windows had actually improved as a result of this wholesale mandatory data collection, but to my eyes, it has gotten worse if anything._

All that being said, I'd agree that Microsoft is (if you can stomach all of this) at least trying to maintain a desktop operating system. "macOS" has completely lost its way. When a new release comes out, you don't get _fewer bugs_ , you just get _different bugs_ because they apparently keep rewriting everything.

Frankly, after having used every version of both macOS and Windows in the last 15 years, some extensively in a professional setting, I'm glad I get to use Linux at home (and 95% of the time at work). If things are broken, it's at least usually because they never worked to begin with, which is a much more hopeful position, especially being the sort of developer who doesn't mind digging in a bit to fix something or at least write an excellent bug report.

<comment><USER18> Seriously. Win7 had a lot of the 'simple stuff just works' without the home- phoning, but how long d'you think a Windows 7 machine will be able to stay connected to the internet?

<comment><USER19> It'll receive security patches until January 14, 2020.

[https://support.microsoft.com/en-ca/help/13853/windows- lifec...](https://support.microsoft.com/en-ca/help/13853/windows-lifecycle- fact-sheet)

<comment><USER18> So, ~2 years. Case in point :(

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER20> What is there left to do on the desktop? Where recent Apple machines shine is fitting into a really good ecosystem. I can receive a text on my Mac, iPhone, iPad, or Watch. I can pull out my Mac and it instantly connects to the LTE on my iPad. It's seamless and it works with no configuration. Windows is still not there yet.

<comment><USER21> This works perfectly fine on Windows for both windows phone and Android. I can reply Android texts, whatsapps and even third party apps from a windows desktop.

<comment><USER22> Mind sharing how to actually do this with Android?

<comment><USER21> You have to install the cortana app and maybe get the insider preview version of windows 10,hoever I'm not sure about that

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER23> Linux! I began as a Windows only user, then switched to Linux and never looked back. Now I have been using a Mac for the last couple of months. At first it felt pretty slick (the touchpad is awesome), but after a while, I just want my precious Linux back.

<comment><USER5> _after a while, I just want my precious Linux back._

How long had you used Linux? How long did you use a Mac?

I'm curious how much of that longing for Linux was a desire for familiarity, and how much was a reflection of a superiority of Linux / flaw in Macs.

</comment></comment><comment><USER24> At my startup we just bought 4 new 2017 13" MBPs. We bought some expensive USB c to HDMI adapters so we could connect two monitors to them.

3 out of the 4 MBPs have a fault which causes the second screen to flicker and bug out. We tried every combination of the adapters but the 3 MBPs were consistently faulty.

After searching the web, it turns out this is a very common defect in them since at least 2016.

The repairs will be covered by Apple care, but it doesn't excuse the fact that our brand new laptops have to be sent for repairs before they're even used.

Plus we've lost time whilst we wait for them to be fixed.

Learned the hard way to make sure we buy stock in advance so we can test and repair it before it's needed.

<comment><USER25> Oh yes, I have this issue. It also makes doing a presentation from the laptop impossible as the projector would keep disconnecting.

</comment></comment><comment><USER26> (opinionated)

why i stay with apple (so far), all my macbooks lasted 4-6+ years so far - with pretty much 0% performance loss, UNIX(!!), and stuff just works. also i don't want to deal with anti-virus software, an ugly command line interface, and terrible UI design in general.

got my macbook screen + motherboard replaced for free, i didn't bring a receipt, 2.5yrs after i got it. done in 4 days. that's pretty awesome customer service IMO.

not that enthusiastic about the latest MBP's though, let us have some ports and physical escape key pls

<comment><USER27> Apple is still pretty awesome, let's see if they respond to the criticism.

</comment></comment><comment><USER28> Web app dev here.

Used Ubuntu on my old thinkpad. Bought a newer thinkpad and the drivers wouldn't work for ubuntu. Reluctantly stuck with the pre-installed Win 10 with new Ubuntu Bash extension (I wanted to stick with linux command line) and haven't looked back.

Apart from some issues with Docker (which I don't use anyways but I'm sure some of you do) haven't noticed any real issues developing exactly as I did on Ubuntu :)

</comment><comment><USER29> Give KDE Plasma a shot! It's pretty good looking, works with a range of Linux's and there's even their own distro Neon now. I use it with Arch and it's a great combo!

<comment><USER16> I found plasma a bit buggy on Kubuntu, but everything runs better on Arch, so maybe I should give it another go... I generally run gnome+i3 on Antergos distro.

</comment></comment><comment><USER30> The main reason I'm still sticking to Mac is because I sometimes do iOS app development and I want first class support for it.

</comment><comment><USER31> "Why I cut off my nose to spite my face"

</comment><comment><USER32> dire warning: ubuntu for Windows isn't production ready yet

</comment><comment><USER33> Got a Macbook Pro in 2016. As of today, the E, R, and T keys have all stopped working. Apple wants $500 for a logic board replacement.

It was fine when it was just the R key. Sort of. I set up bash scripts to copy-paste "r" to my clipboard, and just pressed command-V instead of "r". But then the T key went out.

<comment><USER34> My Macbook's J,K,L was broken and I clone the English input and re-mapping them into Shift+ "M,<,>"

[http://scripts.sil.org/cms/scripts/page.php?site_id=nrsi&id=...](http://scripts.sil.org/cms/scripts/page.php?site_id=nrsi&id=ukelele)

<comment><USER35> That's hilarious.

And yesterday I read someone's comment on HN that Apple support is "the best in the world".

But seriously, something is _really_ wrong here.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> I don't understand what the author wants to actually do with his Mac other than screw around with VR.

What feature is lacking today in OSX that stops any developer from uh actually coding and working? What do you want Apple to add? Oh, wait for it....

Stickers in iMessage? You really want that? I did a spit take when I read this and then I realized this was nothing but some click-bait.

<comment><USER36> > lifelong Windows user

> gets a Mac and "finally pick[s] up web development" in 2013

> laments lack of iMessage stickers

> goes back to Windows because they have a 'Linux' terminal

Yup, click-bait.</comment></comment>


The Broomway - <AUTHOR> https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Broomway <comment><USER2> Low tide natural bridges are fascinating. The first time I realized they were a thing was when I saw the low tide bridge to Salt Island in Gloucester, MA [0]. The broomway seems much more treacherous though!

[0] [https://www.flickr.com/photos/7831824@N04/35684974504](https://www.flickr.com/photos/7831824@N04/35684974504)

</comment><comment><USER3> I can strongly recommend Robert Macfarlane's _The Old Ways: A Journey on Foot_ which has a chapter on the Broomway.

The book was recommended to me here on HN after I happened to mention that I live near an "Old North Road" (for possibly Agricola levels of "Old").

<comment><USER4> Seconded. His 'Mountains of the Mind' is also great reading for hiking/mountaineering-interested people like me.

In fact, I can recommend every book he's written.

<comment><USER5> Thirded (?). I just finished reading "Underland". Incredible read, highly recommend his work.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> Recent discussion on a Washington Post article about The Broomway: [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20547104](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20547104)

</comment><comment><USER7> Love the English place names "Foulness Island".

<comment><USER8> For what it's worth, this is foul (fowl) and ness meaning promontory/headland.

That is, a peninsula that birds live on.

<comment><USER9> So Loch Ness means "Lake Peninsula"? Nice :)

<comment><USER3> I suspect that might be a coincidence - the Gaelic name for Loch Ness is Loch Nis with the origins of the "Nis" being a bit unclear. Neither Loch Ness, River Ness or Inverness seem very peninsula like - although Caithness does use 'ness' in that sense but it was under Norse control for a long time but it is a broad peninsula...</comment></comment></comment></comment>


Annoyed by about:blank when a page doesn't load? Vote for the Chrome bug report. - <AUTHOR> http://code.google.com/p/chromium/issues/detail?id=58686

<comment><AUTHOR> It actually looks like this is the main bug report on the issue: <http://code.google.com/p/chromium/issues/detail?id=9682></comment>


Prisoners Endure a Nightmare 'Gulag' in Lower Manhattan (2018) - <AUTHOR> https://gothamist.com/2018/06/19/mcc_jail_human_rights_torture.php <comment><USER2> A place like this does not happen by accident.

It is this way because the people responsible to operate it deliberately choose to keep it this way. It is infested with rats because they want it infested with rats. Prisoners are denied medical treatment because they want prisoners to be denied medical treatment.

The individuals responsible for torturing 800 people at a time are clearly much worse than anybody held there. They have names, and homes, and could be arrested in them by New York police on New York warrants, if New York law enforcement could be persuaded to enforce New York law.

The Federal government also has laws covering the behavior of the individuals torturing inmates there. Federal prosecutors have a responsibility to prosecute them. Yet, they are not.

</comment><comment><USER3> In the US we really need to figure out what our prisons are for. Are they for punishment or rehabilitation? Do we just want to impose pain on people that have done bad things, or are we trying to change them into people that wont do those bad things anymore? Punishment might feel good to some people on a visceral level, but what good does it do?

<comment><USER4> This is a subject that demands pragmatism. At risk of stating the obvious, the primary utility of incarceration is to prevent the convict from victimizing more innocents. It's a crude solution, but it is undeniably effective. It's very difficult to commit crimes against innocents in general society from a prison cell.

So, given that the pragmatic benefit of incarceration is protecting the innocent from being victimized, which presumably we all support, we should look if there are other less crude ways to achieve the same goal. I understand that Drug Court and similar programs have had some measurable success. But we can't forget there are very bad people who will treat diversion programs as a joke and an opportunity to continue to prey on others. Those individuals should be incarcerated, not to punish, but to prevent them from offending again. Rehabilitation would be wonderful and the opportunity should be offered, but some persons just don't want to be rehabilitated.

<comment><USER5> "At risk of stating the obvious, the primary utility of incarceration is to prevent the convict from victimizing more innocents."

This is not the purpose of incarceration in Germany or the Scandinavian countries. The purpose there is simply loss of freedom for a short while as punishment, and assistance to better yourself for when you're released.

And their low recidivism rates bear this out.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> It's disrespectful to victims of Gulags.

</comment><comment><USER7> I'm guessing this is on HN because it's where Epstein was being held.

<comment><USER8> Who is that?

<comment><USER9> [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jeffrey_Epstein](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jeffrey_Epstein)

Well known, well connected guy, busted for sex trafficking children.

<comment><USER8> Ugh. Sorry i asked.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> Why was Epstein not under suicide protection, even though he attempted suicide already, and his testimony was so important to finally outing the orange cheeto? Was the camera outage really coincidental?

</comment><comment><USER11> Prison reform issues always make me feel so contrasted. On one hand, a lot of the people held there did awful things. The article mentions El Chapo, mobsters, drug dealers, etc. as some of the people held there. It's extremely hard to feel any sort of sympathy for those people. They've done extreme amounts of damage to communities and have done far worse to other people.

But on the other hand, no one should be sexually assaulted and beaten to death.

<comment><USER12> I would argue that you can 1. assume all prisoners are guilty and 2. not care about their welfare (both assumptions that I disagree with) and _still_ support prison reform on the grounds that it reduces criminality in society overall.

Look at the current state of American prisons. We crowd prisoners together and make them feel angry, scared, weak, and ignored by the law (except when it hammers them down) for years on end. That makes it much harder for them to integrate back into normal, law-abiding society.

We should be trying to make it as easy as possible for a convict to eventually leave criminal life behind. But our current system does the opposite.</comment></comment>


Is "meritocracy" coded speech? - <AUTHOR> http://readwrite.com/2014/01/24/github-meritocracy-rug#awesm=~ozpmqOUqhXnprv

<comment><USER2> The author suggests the tech industry is full of 'white men' because they are the best at their jobs, because they have had the most privileges. I don't think the response to this problem should be to hire people who are less competent due to them having less privileges.</comment>


Ask HN: How do you like your smartwatch? - <AUTHOR> Out of curiosity since I recently bought my first wearable. To all owners of Apple Watch, Pebble, Android Wear etc. how do you like your smartwatch, what do you use it for, what feature is most usefull to you, how long do you have it, what annoys you and which festure do you miss the most? <comment><USER3> I have a moto 360 (bought when they first came out), and I definitely feel strange when I don't have it on. The biggest feature for me is the ease of use while driving - the google maps integration keeps my eyes on the road, and the next turn is only a wrist flick away. I think the utility is less about specific features, though, and more about how connected to the internet you are when it becomes an extension of your body (not that phones weren't already).

</comment><comment><USER4> I'm curious as well. I've noticed that one of the things that seems like a big predictor of the success of gadgets that we use in public is whether or not they force users to break etiquette, or if they can be 'grandfathered' into existing social norms. I'm curious about smart watches during one on one interactions in particular because the 'checking your watch' gesture is considered to be pretty blatantly rude in a lot of places.

<comment><USER5> I have noticed that checking my watch for notifications seems to make people think I'm checking the time. Where as actually pulling out my phone would indicate that more obviously.

I do absolutely love that my phone's ringer is never ever on. It just doesn't ever make a noise.

<comment><USER6> I've had the same thing. I didn't tell my coworkers I had a Pebble, but when I got a notification in a meeting, I looked at my watch and the boss commented that I must be bored with the meeting and looking to get out. Once I said it was a smartwatch, they then always assumed I was playing Tetris.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> I currently have an Apple Watch and two 1st gen Pebble watches. I have had the Apple Watch since its release in 2015 and the Pebble watches since their kickstarter campaign. What I like most about my Apple Watch is that I don't need to wear a chest strap to use the heart rate sensor. Other features that are useful are turn-by-turn navigation and the ability to store music on it for use with bluetooth headphones while exercising. That being said, I had the Pebble watches for awhile before receiving my Apple Watch. While the AW has more functionality and features, the thing I loved most about the Pebble watches was the need to charge them only once every 1-2 weeks. The AW needs to be charged nightly. The AW was given to me as a gift. While I do like it and have found it quite useful, I wouldn't have bought one myself. I don't feel its worth the $400 price point. I have several friends that have fitbits and every other flavor of android-based smartwatches. I haven't heard one complaint about any of them. What it comes down to is finding the platform/form-factor that works best for you and understand that wearables are still in their infancy. Much will change and improve as time continues.

<comment><USER8> How accurate would you say the heart rate sensor is with the Apple Watch? I know there's a fitbit with an optical HR monitor as well but it is apparently very unreliable. That's one of the reasons I ended up going for the Garmin Vivoactive + heart rate strap - accuracy of results. Do you know of any comparisons between the Apple Watch sensor and a strap?

</comment></comment><comment><USER9> I've been wearing an Apple watch since nearly week 1. My company bought us the Sport edition which has become a luxury that I wear daily. Never missing a notification is nice, never missing a call because your phone is out of reach is nice, paired with Apple music, I can speak to my wrist like a 90's spy at a party and listen to the music change - all of these things are nice. It's luxury sure, but do I really miss it when it's gone? Yes. It's something that I've grown accustom to, and when I don't feel the taps on my wrist, or loose the ability to glance and see that I can't count my minutes of exercise, I really wish I was wearing it.

Annoyances: I wear the sports band, and it's gotten difficult to put on. The rubber(?) hole that the metal peg grasps onto has become loose and is now agape, and slightly torn resulting in a couple of extra tries when I put on the watch. The external speaker is also a let down, I can not hear who is on the other end unless I put the watch up to my face (about 4" from my ear).

Features that I could use: Improving Siri's abilities with Wolfram Alpha when dictating to the watch, Improve watch face modularity. Decrease the thickness of the watch.

</comment><comment><USER10> I have a G watch R, Initially I wore it constantly, but I stopped wearing it around the house, it seemed to get in the way. Admittedly I never really wore a watch before so it could be that.

I feel odd going outside without it though, I have bluetooth headphones, so on my walk to/from work, my phone can stay in my jacket pocket, and I still get notifications and can control my music.

I use the heart rate/step tracker a fair amount too as I'm trying to lose weight.

I don't use the other apps on there particularly regularly, although I found the 'remote camera view' app is great when working behind PCs/Monitors.

</comment><comment><USER11> I don't wear it anymore. It's useless. Thank god I don't have to charge it every night anymore. Such a pain in the ass.

</comment><comment><USER12> I won a free Apple Watch, and wore it for a while but decided to switch back to the Fitbit Charge HR after two months. The most valuable features to me are its consistent heart rate tracking and long battery life. I don't miss any of the features of the Apple Watch, other than maybe the ability to control Spotify from my wrist.

</comment><comment><AUTHOR> I have bought my Apple Watch two weeks ago after convincing myself since it came out that I would really not need it, would probably annoyed by constant distractions and charging yet another device at night. I really wanted to wait at least for version 2 as I thought of it as way to gimmicky and clumbersome for above reasons. I got one for my mother as a birthday gift and surrendered some days after that to get mine soon after as she was calling me specifically to tell me how much she loved it. Long story short to my great surprise I really like it. Like a lot. I find myself reaching for my phone much less than before and as a consequence I am much less inclined to follow Twitter/Facebook/Email OCD than before. When I check some notification / reminder on my watch there is nothing to do due to the severely limited software. Apart from a quick glance and maybe a very short reply there is little I can do with it. The "apps" are - apart from the watch face - <USER2> slow don't offer a lot of notifications. But surprisingly it covers the things I use my phone most for on a daily basis: Checking notifications, setting timers, adding reminders, navigation. It handles these things well for me yet. While being miles away from that it reminds me of the movie "her" where technology gets rid of visual interfaces and fades away from the "glowing squares" to are the ubiquitous screens of today. And for that reason alone it is much more and something completely different than a smartphone with a tiny screen. Sadly though there are nearly no apps that use the tactile interface etc in a innovative / surprising way for e.g. real life games or something like that just yet. But this will hopefully change over time. One last thing that I really find worthwhile sitting in front of a screen way to much is the activity tracking and reminders to "stand up and move for a minute". In combination with my whitings a lot of aspects of my life are now measured completely automatic and continuously (Hearth Rate, Weight, Distance Walked, Steps, Body Fat, Workouts) which I value quite a bit. Since I know only two people that also are using a smartwatch I was curious what the HN crowd things of them so far.

</comment><comment><USER13> I have the Pebble Time (Kickstarter Edition!) and I like it for the most part. My favorite feature is seeing text messages on my wrist so 1) I can enter 2FA codes without taking out my phone and 2) seeing if I actually need to reply back to someone.

What annoys me is the constant Bluetooth disconnection and sporadic battery life. Maybe I'm a heavy user or am remembering things incorrectly, but I feel like I used to get more battery life. I get a 20% battery warning every two days it seems.

I only wish the screen was retina like my co-worker's  Watch. It's nice.

</comment><comment><USER14> Had Apple Watch since summer.

Miss it when I forget to put it on.

Phone stays in my pocket most of the day.

Looking at it during meetings is rude and literally a deal breaker.

Only use it for:

\- notifications

\- remote controlled camera for group selfies

\- asking Siri how far away somewhere is, or simple questions

\- quickly responding to messages

</comment><comment><USER15> Love the pebble (3+ yrs). Had an apple watch for a short while but didn't enjoy it all that much. UI was really a disadvantage, but voice control was spectacular (for siri).

</comment><comment><USER16> Moto 360 Gen2

Mainly use it to get a glance at messages (Hangouts etc.), control music while on the go and to track my fitness goals.

I'm working on a Raspberry Pi powered doorbell/camera, so I'm looking forward to making the companion app and wear app.

</comment><comment><USER17> Pebble Steel: I like the look and I don't have to pull my six inch phone out of my pocket every time I receive a message.

</comment><comment><USER18> Moto 360 (gen1) here. I find that a lot of it depends on the cost. This watch launched at $250 and while I really liked the look and idea of it, it was still a bit more than I wanted to pay for a cool gadget that I didn't really need.

A few months after launch I snagged one on sale for $175 and I quite enjoy it (although not necessarily for the reasons I originally expected to).

My experience: it's nothing groundbreaking like your first (or latest) smartphone because it's largely just an extension of that smartphone. I don't really run too many watch-specific applications and mostly use it for quick notifications/replies and the occasional case where having a control on my wrist is nicer than messing with my phone.

One example of that would be navigation while riding my motorcycle. I don't have a phone charger/mount but I can fire up nav before leaving and glance down at my watch to see upcoming turns. It can also be nice as a remote for my phone's camera or to pause something I'm casting to the TV like a Netflix show.

Honestly my main, favorite thing about this watch is the ability to change the face to look like just about anything I want. I never would've guessed this at first but this is my stupidly obvious killer app (or at least the most enjoyable). There are several great watch faces for free or cheap on the Play Store and thousands of them available for download and application through apps like Watchmaker.

The fact that this is just a programmable screen means you can make it look like a subtle, classy "traditional" watch or you can do things not possible on traditional jewelry. If I felt like it I could swap between a long list of favorites to match whatever I'm doing or even what I'm wearing. Granted I'm not quite that obsessed with fashion or anything but it's a surprisingly cool thing to have.

And since I enjoy playing around in Photoshop and Illustrator, I can create my own interactive watch faces with no programming skill required. Watchmaker and other apps allow you to create each element from the background to the hands or dials or readouts or buttons and tie them to variables like time, date, battery, location, or even the orientation of the watch in space.

It's totally a geeky bit of tinkering that not everyone would enjoy but again, there are thousands of great ones out there made and shared by people who are into that sort of thing. Granted there are plenty of shitty "brand" watch knockoff faces and ugly amateurish stuff but that's the nature of user- generated designs.

So yeah, for $150-250, if you're a gadget fan and have the dough to spend on something that's mostly just pretty neat but not necessary, I think these sorts of watches are great. If the idea of putting it on a cradle on the nightstand every night turns you off or you would never spend that much on any watch, maybe it's not a great idea.

I doubt that I would spend the $400-500+ I've seen other smart watches going for because there's only so much I'd pay for a smartphone extender with custom display but in the $150-250 range it's pretty sweet.</comment>


Ask HN: Binge eating disorder? How do you deal with it? - <AUTHOR> Any books, recommendations or other things to help ? <comment><USER2> Personally I found it can help to write down or talk about any emotions which may be present yet currently outside of your scope of perception/awareness. E.g., "based on what happened today, any random person could be excused for feeling ____ or ____."

I also found it helpful to reorient my diet toward sweets while processing emotion, foods which my body seems to "request" or crave in order to deal with situations that may pierce the lower portions of Maslow's pyramid. Like you just lost your footing on an important work project and people will be angry, or your stocks took a dive and you panic-sold, etc.

By cutting out normal / healthy foods and focusing on indulgent crisis foods first, the overall caloric expenditure can be reduced insofar as crisis foods were what you really wanted to eat, and this direct approach helps to blunt the weight-gain effect of binge eating extra sweets combined with any normal foods outside of that scope. It felt weird at first, but it worked out well, in its strangely logical way.

These are just my experiences though, and I really recommend that you keep a log and an open mind and see what you can figure out as you look into this further. I found some helpful mental models related to [0]. Good luck and good on you for raising the question.

0\. [https://quantifiedself.com/](https://quantifiedself.com/)

</comment><comment><USER3> This problem needs professional help. Google turned up [https://www.nationaleatingdisorders.org/where-do-i- start-0](https://www.nationaleatingdisorders.org/where-do-i-start-0) \- hopefully that's a decent place to start.

</comment><comment><USER4> Try a carnivore diet for 1 month. Eat as much as you need, but meat, fish, eggs and dairy only. You'll probably find your cravings decreasing when you're full. Carbs are addictive, give you a sugar rush which is then followed by a crash. You end up craving more carbs to boost your energy each time you crash, but then you just set yourself up to repeat the process.

Have plenty of zero or low carb snacks prepared so that you aren't tempted to reach for potato chips, cakes, donuts and cookies, etc. I recommend making plenty of beef biltong/jerky, pickled eggs, deviled eggs, or scotch eggs (but replace the breadcrumbs with crushed pork scratchings).

</comment><comment><USER5> Prioritize protein. It will fill you up and keep you full on less amount of food. I've never done this but some say to eat boring food and they will keep you from binging. A perfect food to meet both of this criteria are chicken breast.

</comment><comment><USER6> Get a Britta or other water jug, and keep it in the fridge and full. Have a large drinking glass readily available near the fridge. Every time you want a snack or sugary drink force yourself to drink a pint of water before you eat or drink anything else.

Buy a great big jar of pickles and or sauerkraut(Avoid sweet pickles and olives though), especially if using the water trick. Go for these as a snack first as it will replenish the electrolytes lost through passing water and improve your gut flora or biome.

Buy some celery (even though it's expensive), eat as much of it as you want it takes more energy to digest it than the calories it holds.

Start a food diary, include date and time, plus calories and dollar value of everything you put into your body.

Quit drinking if that is when you binge.

Buy a scale and weigh yourself before eating a meal.

If you are alone, before eating or drinking anything, say out loud "I am making a conscious decision to eat or drink this" Make it a mantra of sorts.

If you are religious, pray before eating or drinking.

I you watch a lot of TV, MUTE the commercials. Food porn commercials are much less effective without sound.

Re-package large containers of snack food into snack sized portions. It's too easy to scarf down a giant bag of chips or any other bulk snak food.

Buy a mouth harp (AKA Jews Harp) I don't know why this works but playing one seems to help cravings pass quicker for me.

Sugar free gum might work if you have healthy teeth.

Caffeine and other stimulants do supress apatite but come with their own problems.

Don't eat anywhere but at the kitchen or dining room table.

Don't cook more than what you want to eat during your meal, left-overs in a fridge are like a devil on the shoulder to a binge eater.

If you're trying to lose weight, stop wearing fat clothes when at home, those comfy sweatpants make it easy to forget about weight problems and shovel food into your mouth.

Count the number of times you chew before swallowing and increase that number after each swallow when snacking.

Reward yourself with a new source of pleasure when you make it a certain amout of time without binging.

Finaly, don't give up when you relapse, binging is an addictive behavior and follows the pattern of addiction, just learn from your mistakes and try to avoid them in the future.</comment>


VC-backed company valuations continue to fall in Silicon Valley - <AUTHOR> http://www.fenwick.com/publications/6.12.1.asp?vid=10

<comment><USER2> I think this is slightly out of date. Valuations seem to have bottomed in the spring.

</comment><comment><USER3> This is a pretty helpful document to help folks understand what's really common. Unfortunately, while it's nice to see a 1x liquidation preference, when multiple rounds happen these often turn nasty as each investor starts to look out for themselves in the pile. Unfortunately, the entrepreneur is usually a loser in that scenario unless the exit is at a nice valuation. A great argument why an up-round isn't always a good thing.

</comment><comment><USER4> I find it hard to believe that anyone would accept a multiple liquidation preference. I'd seriously consider it better to shut down than to stay in the game for the benefit of investors I'd end up hating.

I can't even imagine MLP benefiting investors. It'd be a huge morale-buster. Also, a company that needs to accept those sorts of terms is in severe trouble and, as I'd see it, although I may be wrong, not likely to be a good investment at all.</comment>


The official Blog of John McAfee - <AUTHOR> http://www.whoismcafee.com/ <comment><USER2> ... _I darkened and browned my front teeth. I stuffed a shaved down tampon deep into my right nostril and died the tip dark brown – giving my nose an awkward, lopsided, disgusting appearance. I put on a pair of ragged brown pants with holes patched and darned. I wore an old, ragged long sleeve shirt. I donned an old Guatemalan style sarape and toted a bag containing a variety of Guatemalan woven goods. I adjusted my posture so that I appeared a good six inches shorter than my actual height and slowly walked up and down the beach with a pronounced limp, pushing an old single speed bicycle and peddling my wares to tourists and reporters using a broken English with a heavy Spanish accent. On my second day,_ while peddling small wooden carvings, _I nearly sold a dolphin carving to an Associated Press reporter standing at the edge of my dock_ ...

This HAS TO BE A JOKE. This is an elaborate prank.

<comment><USER3> Here's ABC News' article, where they talked to him on the phone, and then... confirmed ///via email/// it was his blog: John McAfee Starts Blog While in Hiding: [http://abcnews.go.com/blogs/headlines/2012/11/john-mcafee- st...](http://abcnews.go.com/blogs/headlines/2012/11/john-mcafee-starts-blog- while-in-hiding/)

<comment><USER2> Literally every post in this blog is dosed with high-test crazy. From the beginning:

* _Jeff however, I truly believe, thinks that I sent the photos to his wife. If I had done so, then I would deserve whatever wrath he chose to mete out. But seriously, it's not my style. And if his mistaken suspicion is not the reason for his bulldog approach to sniffing out my life then I can't even guess at what twisted motives move this man._

* Wired asked him to pose shirtless with a shotgun. This apart from all the other shirtless photos of him, and him with young coeds; did Wired stage those? Did Wired also stage McAfee playing Russian Roulette with a loaded trick revolver in front of Josh Davis?

* _I laid down the pistol that I keep for protection and, contrary to Josh Davis' assertion that I said "Motherfuckers", said nothing and went back inside. I woke Amy, the 17 year old with whom I was living, and calmly told her to get dressed – that the GSU was invading the property._

* The entire "Samantha" post, which reads just like the "secret diary of John McAfee" from Gizmodo, which in turn consists of profiles of the various young Belizeans McAfee has slept with, followed by a few sentences about the paramilitary groups seeking to kill him. (My favorite part of all these bits of writing, including the "Samantha" piece, are the photos, which make it seem like the most important thing McAfee has to convince us of is that these young women _are real_ \--- like that makes him seem saner)

* _First there was an attempt to charge me with running an antibiotics laboratory without a license. In Belize a special government permit is required to research antibiotics – a law which is common in Third World countries. To date, no such permits have ever been issued. I suspect the large drug conglomerates have much to do with these widespread laws, or perhaps it's a viewpoint motivated by my latent paranoia. In any case, I didn't have such a permit. Neither was I researching or producing antibiotics. Antibiotics are taken systemically. I was working on a topical antibacterial spray. It could in no way be classified as an antibiotic._ (Here it helps to note that McAfee's original research scientist partner in the antibiotic effort had to flee Belize in fear of McAfee)

* The "Punishment of the Innocent" post where careful mention is made of which people do not drink or do drugs.

* The entire "Watchfulness" post, which posits a shoe-polish-painted John McAfee watching the Belizean paramilitary GSU police digging up the corpses of his dogs, removing their heads, and leaving the bodies. _The dogs had been dead too long for an effective autopsy, considering it would be performed in a Third World country with limited access to laboratory resources. What was this all about?_ Well, John, isn't it clear? ZOMBIE DOGS.

<comment><USER4> I think it's plausible that he's not crazy and everything on that blog is true. The whole situation is crazy enough that people probably approach it with preconceptions and interpret everything they read in that light.

There does appear to be rampant corruption in the government there. The press does seem interested in hyping the story, especially by portraying McAfee as a wacko. When I read the Jeff Wise story "Secrets, Schemes, and Lots of Guns: Inside John McAfee's Heart of Darkness" recently, I was struck at how sensationalized it was, especially the part where he strains hard to make 8 shotguns, 2 pistols, and some ammo into "a small armory's worth of firearms", and "Vexingly for the police, all of this was actually legal." McAfee writing that Jeff Wise has some ax to grind, therefore, rings true to me.

I think the Russian Roulette trick involved palming the bullet, and was to make the point that things are not always as they first appear. Of course for anyone who's made up their mind that he's crazy, it's just simply more fodder to reinforce their beliefs.

The "Watchfulness" post does seem over the top, yet even that could be plausible. It's a shame -- the guy has been tried in the press already, so people assume he's crazy and a murderer.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> McAfee is going to end up getting shot, and the rest of us are going to be arguing for 20 years over whether he was sane or whether he actually just became more and more unstable and ended up bringing this on himself.

I complain about too much drama on HN, but this McAfee story is way over the top.

</comment><comment><USER6> I never would've guessed that the software industry would produce such engrossing real-time dramas. Take Kim Dotcom, John McAfee, throw in Elon Musk for good measure (maybe Branson too) and you're well into comic book territory.

<comment><USER7> Don't forget Hans Reiser! <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hans_Reiser>

<comment><USER8> That's one killer file system.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> Doesn't really sound like the meth-head that everyone is trying to make him out to be.

</comment><comment><USER10> This is probably the most comprehensive article about the background to this situation and reasoning as to why McAfee seems to be losing his mind: [http://gizmodo.com/5960138/the-crazy-secret-journal-of- john-...](http://gizmodo.com/5960138/the-crazy-secret-journal-of-john-mcafee- volume-1)

<comment><USER11> I came away from reading that link and the whoismcafee.com blog thinking that the man is an eccentric but certainly not insane. It is well within my imagination to believe that he may be being persecuted by senior government officials in Belize for not making "donations" or providing other favours when asked of them.

I think that North Americans sometimes don't realize that one of the reasons that the rest of the world is susceptible to urban legends and conspiracy theories is because in those countries, similar stories have been known to hold true. Nothing like a moon landing of course, but presidents and prime ministers have in fact been involved in murders, drug charges and fraud. In that context you're more amenable to think, "Yeah, this could have happened."

<comment><USER2> So you think the Belizean police are digging up the heads --- just the heads --- of McAfee's dogs while he watches them disguised with shoe polish on his face?

<comment><USER9> No, they dug up the entire bodies, but only kept the heads, which is normal concidering it's a standard way to test for poisons in dead animals (they test the brain matter, not the muscle tissue).

<comment><USER2> Here it's worth noting that McAfee contests this explanation. There is some other, more sinister reason they've taken the heads of his dogs. I think we all know what it is.

<comment><USER11> To bring his dogs back to life for a few minutes each in order to see what they saw in their lifetimes? Then they'll have all of his secrets!

<comment><USER2> What dog would have an easier time tracking and killing John McAfee than a dog bearing the reanimated head of one of McAfee's _own dogs_?

<comment><USER12> Sparky! You're back!

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> Why wouldn't he either bail over the border to Mexico, bail to the American embassy, or bail to some other embassy?

Even if he gets arrested in an American embassy, that's got to be preferable to the inevitable "slipped and fell on a bullet" that the policia are liable to issue.

He's living in a country where the sane, rational (relatively speaking) rules of urban America definitely do not apply, fighting a battle he absolutely cannot win.

</comment><comment><USER14> Hope I'm that crazy by 67.

</comment><comment><USER15> It's Timecube with nicer layout and a tragic, cautionary tale: mind your sanity. Anyone can lose it.

<comment><USER16> Which part comes across to you like the ravings of a madman? If it is such - and to be sure, I can't claim to know it isn't - then in my opinion he's doing a good job of appearing sane.

Whether or not it is a cautionary tale about minding your sanity, I think it's also a cautionary tale about not believing everything you read in the press. Until fifteen minutes ago I held the belief that McAfee had committed the crime of which he is accused; thinking about now I realize I held that belief based on essentially no actual evidence. I'm not saying I now believe his side of the story instead. I have no real evidence for that either (and I don't have time to follow up all the links he presented right now). My current conclusion is that at this time I don't know enough of the facts to judge either way.

<comment><USER17> I think part of it has to do with the conclusion many of us jump to when someone refuses to submit themselves to a trial in a court of law. In the US we like to believe our system is just, or at least mostly just, and therefore anyone who is accused of a crime and skips out must be admitting guilt through their actions. People then tend to project this bias to people who skip court in societies with less just courts like Belize.

To be honest, even in this country any unattractive minority that is accused of a crime may want to consider running from the law and skipping the country because for them our courts are less than just and more likely to convict them of that crime and give them a sentence worse than the average.

<comment><USER18> > therefore anyone who is accused of a crime

He was _not_ accused of a crime! The police wanted to question him as a "person of interest" - big difference!

Almost every news story I saw report on this when it broke last week reported it incorrectly in the headlines as him being "wanted" - it's a shame that journalism can get away with being so sloppy sometimes.

<comment> at-fates-hands > He was not accused of a crime! The police wanted to question him as a > "person of interest" - big difference!

Agreed. However, running from the law and how he's been acting is not in accordance with someone who's innocent - no?

<comment><USER19> > However, running from the law and how he's been acting is not in accordance > with someone who's innocent - no?

What law? You mean the corrupt "legal" system there? Wouldn't most innocent people who are afraid of corrupt police act in the same way? (i guess that implies his innocence then!)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER20> We have, in fact, no way to know if this was actually done by John McAfee. The domain was registered on 11/16/2012 and contains anonomized whois info (not that if it gave an address that would be any different).

It's more like "claiming to be the official blog of John McAfee".

<comment><USER17> What makes it more suspect is the blog post explaining many of the techniques he's using to disguise himself. Why would you share that information when you know people are looking for you?

<comment><USER21> I just read the entire thing and this is what stuck out most to me. The last line of the post you're talking about:

        P.S. No-one at the house, including the staff, know that
        I am nearby. If the police are reading this, do not
        randomly round up everyone for harboring a fugitive. Please.

This does not read like a serious comment, maybe he turns to humour in times of desperation but this just seems... either it's fabricated or he's taunting the authorities.

Also he mentions in one post he's short on time and internet access but then in the second latest post it states:

       If I am captured, this blog will continue. I have pre-
       written enough material to keep this blog alive for at
       least a year.

What's the material about? The attempted capture? The murder? His dealings with the government? Surely he hasn't been expecting this for a long and is only now publishing? If that's the case I might be as crazy as to suggest maybe the murder is his attempt at bringing attention to the corruption. If the corruption is proven true and then the murder may be swept aside as part of it, even if he did it to get the attention he thinks the issue needs.

<comment><USER22> What about that last part doesn't seem serious to you? To me it reads like he is trying to prevent other people from getting wrapped up in the mess. Seems reasonable and decent enough to me.

<comment><USER21> Assuming you mean my comment about the last line of the disguise post: He outlines how he's "tricked" the authorities by constantly being there dressed up in elaborate disguises and then says "oh btw, _pretty please_ don't think you can find me by rounding up everyone there"? I don't see how that is anything other than taunting the police, if he didn't want people to be rounded up he wouldn't make them a target by saying he's pretending to be one of them!

<comment><USER22> Hmm, yes I see what you mean. I suppose maybe I am giving him too much credit by doubting his sanity/reasoning skills.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER23> I am really interested in all of this, John McAfee gave me my first ultra- light ride at his "Sky Gypsy Ranch" near Rodeo, NM. a few years back. (no I dont know him) he had just opened the "Sky Gypsy Cafe", a good friend of mine lived in Portal,Az. I did get to tell him, how I hated that his anti-virus software, acted like a virus itself on my computer. My limited profile abilities, (seemed like a normal Joe, except very wealthy and Yoga master BTW) that he was some kind of genius. However, reading the papers about all of this, I am very glad I am ME. Thank you God!

</comment><comment><USER24> Is it just me, or are all ex patriots living in Belize completely insane?

Each one of them left a comment talking about how wonderful it is to live in Belize, with just the minor downside of a secret police force / gang of thugs running around murdering people, throwing people in prison, and demanding exorbitant bribes.

Judging by the comments that they themselves left on his blog, it appears that saying Belize is a wonderful place to live is akin to saying that living in Nazi Germany was paradise on earth, except for having to live with the Nazis.

<comment><USER25> My impression from speaking to an American friend working in China is that a very significant portion of the ex-pat populations from the USA and Canada are folks who couldn't hack it in their native lands... personality disorders and an unreasonable inability to deal with authority seem to prevail, but as foreigners they get just enough leeway to skate by.

</comment></comment><comment><USER26> He wrote that his girlfriend, Sam, was 17 in April and later wrote she is 20 years old now. Did anyone else catch that?

<comment> Aco- read it again:

"I woke _Amy_ , the 17 year old with whom I was living, and calmly told her to get dressed – that the GSU was invading the property. _Amy_ is a tough young woman. She said nothing, got up, got dressed and sat calmly on the edge of the bed."

Amy != Sam

<comment><USER26> Thank you for pointing that out. It seems he has multiple young women around him. I thought there was only one.

<comment><USER21> If you read a later posts he talks about doing _something_ with 6 other people. It would seem sex plays a significant role in his life, I guess that and drugs fit together well.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER27> With money and such great disguises, you think he'd be able to get out of the country.

</comment><comment><USER28> How can you NOT upvote this. This is incredible. Lol

</comment><comment><USER29> If he were in the states I'd say he's just trying to build up a case for an insanity plea, but I'm pretty sure he knows how well that will go over in Belize.

Hoax or batshit crazy, or a little of both.</comment>