What did 37signals, Evernote and Wufoo blog when they just get started? - <AUTHOR> http://startup.alexdong.com/what-did-37signals-evernote-and-wufoo-blog-when-they-just-get-started/

<comment><USER2> 37signals blog (Signal vs Noise) precedes Basecamp by a couple of years, their first post is from December 2002, <http://37signals.com/svn/archives/000001.php>. It was a pretty popular blog by the time they launched Basecamp.

Joel on Software precedes FogBugz, if memory serves me well. StackOverflow precedes Coding Horror, of course. The lesson here is that building a reputation comes very handy when creating web apps.

<comment><USER3> _StackOverflow precedes Coding Horror, of course._

I assume you meant Coding Horror precedes StackOverflow.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> I don't have much to contribute to this discussion myself, but from what I've heard/read, at the beginning, you should target other entrepreneurs/early adopters and when you get some coverage/traction, move to your target audience for your product.

PS: I'm really interested with what you guys have to say about that.

</comment><comment><USER5> It depends what you are trying to achieve with a blog a bit to, are you trying to address customers, prospective customers primarily or are you trying to become an authority in your niche by writing about it more broadly and picking up a lot of search traffic. I think a great example for authority is SEOMoz, provides value well beyond the actual product.</comment>


Raise the capital gains tax and treat investment earnings like ordinary income - <AUTHOR> https://www.nytimes.com/2019/01/28/opinion/aoc-wealth-tax.html <comment><USER4> This wouldn't bring in too much money and it would just discourage long term investment. The last thing we need is more short term thinking.

</comment><comment><USER5> This article declares that a 70% marginal tax rate on income above $10M/year is bad policy, but the only justification it offers for it being bad policy is that adding in NY state/local taxes would raise that number to 82.7%.

So what?

I've seen repeated countless times recently that the marginal tax rate on the rich used to be as high as 91%. Why is a combined tax rate of 82.7% bad policy? And if that's really your only justification, then the fix here is to just make the state/local taxes deductible again.

<comment> munk-a SALT exemptions should definitely not be restored - I grew up in the north east where those SALT exemptions are fully utilized but they introduce an illogical perverse motivation for state and local governments to spend freely since any taxes they introduce are essentially just that level of government getting a free non-revokable payment from the federal government.

I do acknowledge that areas with SALT exemptions tend to be areas that pay a disproportionate amount of taxes for the benefits they receive but I think this solution to that issue is ludicrous. Investment by the government should ideally try and maximize the benefits given by that investment means that denser population areas should be targeted unequally to receive benefits but SALT exemptions are crazy.

Also, just a note, this portion of their argument seems silly, what is one number compared to another number without context, if 82.7% is just too much for the market to bear than let's talk about 58.3% as a base marginal tax rate on $10M and above - in actuality the utility of assets decreases so steeply that I don't know if 82.7% really is "silly" but all this talk about specific numbers should be decided by people way more specialized than the general public.

<comment><USER6> > they introduce an illogical perverse motivation for state and local > governments to spend freely since any taxes they introduce are essentially > just that level of government getting a free non-revokable payment from the > federal government.

This is just not true. The SALT exemption lets you deduct the SALT taxes from your income, not your tax bill, so this is not just a transfer from the federal government.

I.e. If you had a flat federal rate of 10%, a flat state rate of 10% and an income of 100k, the SALT deduction would reduce your taxes from 20k to 19k. There is some subsidy here since the state gets 10k, whereas you are only paying 9k for those services, but its clearly not free money.

> what is one number compared to another number without context

Economists have studied the topic of most efficient tax rates, in terms of bringing in government revenue, and 82.7% is above the point where you maximize revenue, i.e. you would raise more money with a lower rate.

<comment><USER5> > _Economists have studied the topic of most efficient tax rates, in terms of > bringing in government revenue, and 82.7% is above the point where you > maximize revenue, i.e. you would raise more money with a lower rate._

I don't think "raise the most money" is the goal we're shooting for though. I mean, it's important, but it's not the only goal.

<comment><USER7> When you start talking about rates in the 90% range what you're really asking for is for rich people to hire a tax attorney or account to lie to you about how much money the rich person makes. It's the definition of dead weight loss.

<comment><USER5> Rich people find tax loopholes to exploit. Outright lying can get them thrown in jail.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> More importantly, remove all of the many loopholes that are used by the very wealthy to prevent themselves from paying tax at all. I would greatly be in favor of a flat tax for everyone earning $30K and above.

<comment><USER9> That massively massively penalizes people who are more poor or middle class vs someone that has millions or billions. 30% of a million is 333k, but 30% of 31k is 10.3k. I imagine losing that 10.3k hurts the 30k person far more than losing the 333k does to the person who is now making 667k.

Why would you want a flat tax for everyone above 30k?

<comment><USER8> The $30K I noted is arbitrary and only chosen because that is the approximate poverty line currently.

<comment><USER9> Just so you know the poverty line is $12k-$15k for single people and $25k-$31k for a family of 4.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> Taxing investments more than standard labor should be the baseline. Us workers should not be subsidizing the significantly discounted rate that investment earning are taxed at.

<comment><USER11> "If you want more of something, subsidize it; if you want less of something, tax it."

If you raise taxes on capital gains you'll get less investment. Maybe that's a good thing.

Either way, I'm in favor of tax simplification in all of its forms; Tax law is like that spaghetti legacy codebase that is just dying for a refactor/rewrite.

<comment><USER12> Genuine question, as I am not well versed in finance:

What else would those with capital do other than invest? That is, it seems like investment is clearly better than holding cash, regardless of the tax rate (with some caveats, e.g. not being in a deflationary economic state).

<comment><USER13> They invest in lower risk securities which leads to a bull market in bonds and guilts which has its own problems.

It also stifles innovation and messes up pensioners as their income is based on gilt yields.

<comment> munk-a I don't understand why investors would do this, it seems like an unnatural response. If all capital gains are being taxes as income these investors would just voluntarily be choosing to make less money if they picked this strategy.

Their strategy selection would equalize to being about what it is now but each cycle would yield them less money to reinvest and yield the government more money to invest. It can be your opinion that private investors are more efficient than the government but funding our "necessary services" (i.e. having an army, what not) is so deprived of income that it is being extracted through a regressive income tax.

FYI, I'm all for cutting pork, but the income stream and what we end up spending that money on are two different issues.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> Just prior to reading this article I left the kitchen table where my wife and I were going over tax forms.

I work for a tech company that has done well, we're getting acquired. I've accumulated a little bonus stock, I'll be forced to sell when the acquisition happens.

I wouldn't like an increase in capital gains. As it is, it's already taking a sizeable bite out of what was a nice bonus. If the government was well-run and spent money efficiently, I might feel differently. A quick Google search for 'porkbarrel spending' reveals that there's room for budget trimming that could leave my bonus (and yours) intact. I'd like that economic plan better.

A wise man once noted that if we paid taxes weekly by writing a check for a man who came to the door, we'd kill that man in anger. I can understand the sentiment.

</comment><comment><USER15> > But the 2017 tax cut legislation reduced the tax rate on corporate profits > to 21 percent, from 35 percent. So if taxes on capital gains and dividends > were raised by those 14 percentage points, we capitalists would be no worse > off — and American companies would still be more competitive globally, the > theory behind reducing the corporate tax rate.

Right. So when someone gives a handout to big corporations then we should squeeze the last drop of blood from pension funds and small investors? Brilliant idea for reducing income inequality!

I don't expect wealthy investors to rely on dividend stocks too much. Those are the scraps left from common people after the vultures have already picked the carcass clean.

Also, dividend stocks might be "safe"-er than some other stocks but it's still a relatively risky investment (the markets are crazy). If dividend taxes were 40% percent I would simply not bother. Too risky!

Here's an idea for making life easier for a lot of people: MAKE RENT DEDUCIBLE FROM SALARY BEFORE TAX

<comment><USER16> In supply-constrained markets, wouldn't any benefit from this eventually accrue to landlords rather than renters? Put another way, if landlords are charging what the market can bear, and the market can suddenly bear 25% more, won't they just raise prices over a few years to eat up that new wealth?

<comment> munk-a You are correct, all of this benefit would end up being taken by landlords due to their ability to dictate prices - btw government subsidized housing can be a different situation and the government can be an intentionally inefficient market actor to benefit the renters. I think there are still more accurate way to subsidize the lower class though, a reduced income tax is more likely to directly translate into a higher savings rate and more consumer power - <USER2> that last bit benefits us all by increasing the velocity of money.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER17> Here's a simplified and better plan.

1\. There's no normal 'filing', instead you just submit a statement of previous year earnings from all sources.

2\. Institute a tiered GBI as follows:

 _0-25k = 100%

_ 25-50k = 66%

 _50-100k = 33%

3\. Then get rid of income tax and institute flat sales tax that can be easily modified by congressional approval, but no more than 1-2% per year up or down.

_This tax should be applied across the board. If money changes hands, tax is taken out, kind of like crypto transaction fees, in fact if we moved to all electronic currency it'd be easier to just do that from the get go. So if you're getting money back from capital gains -- that money loses the transaction tax before you get it in your account.

 _Stop worrying about border control, and illegals stealing jobs, instead make the transaction tax higher if you aren 't a citizen. If we have only electronic currency, it can also cut down on paying people under the table with cash, since cash doesn't exist. Furthermore, if cash doesn't exist - <USER3> can save a mint, by getting rid of the whole minting process. By making tax more for immigrants, we can stop saying they don't 'contribute', and only citizens would receive GBI, and healthcare.

_Worried about whether it's even stevens or not? Everyone is a taxpayer, no refunds, loopholes, etc. You buy real estate, property, pay rent, pay a commercial lease, pay an employee the money is automatically taxed in transit. It's all programmatically controlled and simple, easy for everyone to understand, and doesn't require an entire industry of professionals just to figure it out. (Sorry CPA's).

Benefits: Get rid of most of IRS, CPA's, Fed, Welfare, Housing Assistance, etc... Save a ton GDP-wise, and get more money in the hands of the people to keep the wheels of industry spinning.

</comment><comment><USER18> Treating capital gains differently from general income is a policy move designed to increase investment by making the profits larger.

Eventually, a large portion of employment compensation got pushed through to look like capital gains -- for example, by issuing stock options or actual shares as part of overall compensation.

It's perfectly fair to kill that loophole by modifying the capital gains tax. One option would be to make it progressive and marginal like the income tax: E.g. if you make under $20,000 in capital gains in a year, you pay no tax on that; then 10% on the next 10K, then 20% on the next 10K, 30% on the next 10K, and so on.

The structure of startup corporations might change as a result. An LLC might be much more attractive, and profitability a more attractive goal.

<comment><USER19> > Treating capital gains differently from general income is a policy move > designed to increase investment by making the profits larger.

Surplus wealth is largely going to be invested unless you actively prevent it, you don't need to tax favor capital income to get that result. Tax favoring capital income (i.e., tax penalizing other, most notably labor, income) just means that those that already have significant capital accumulate more faster while other people have a drag force applied preventing them from accumulating signficant capital.

</comment></comment><comment><USER20> I'm not an economist.

I understand the theory that capital gains being taxed at a lower rate is that we want to encourage investment - putting capital where it will grow more jobs/more needs being met by companies.

I also understand the theory that this is nice in theory but isn't describing the actual results.

And while I _believe_ that's a problem, what I don't have is an understanding of the data. Like with HFT, I can react with my gut, but I'd be happier if I could understand a bit more about whether the system is working or not, and if not, where does it bend? What's the equivalent of the Laffer Curve for capital gains?

Are there any explanations that aren't overly preachy of one way or another that can explain to someone without the econ background?

<comment><USER21> As a general rule, taxation of returns on savings is _always_ double taxation. Money today is _not_ worth the same as an equal amount of money five years from now, or an equal amount of money after it has been invested in a risky venture with a substantial chance of losses. Returns from capital are, in expectation, a compensating differential for such differences in value.

Now, this is not to say that _some_ taxation on savings isn't sometimes appropriate; for instance, some forms of investment are non-transparent and might be used to shield earned income from taxes that _should_ bear on it; also, higher-income folks tend to save more and to choose riskier investments that yield higher expected returns; so returns correlate with ability to pay in a way that's worthy of note because it doesn't impact incentives too much. Taxes that bear on some peculiar assets, such as the land-value of urban real estate, EM spectrum rights, or investment into highly-polluting industries, also don't adversely affect incentives. However, existing taxation on capital appears broadly appropriate to take advantage of these things; the bulk of taxes should still fall on tax bases other than savings and investment, such as the portion of income that's not saved but spent on non-baseline consumption of goods and services.

<comment><USER19> > As a general rule, taxation of returns on savings is always double taxation.

Not any more than any other taxation.

> Money today is not worth the same as an equal amount of money five years > from now

That's a good reason for inflation adjusting basis values when computing gains, but it's not a good argument for not taxing them, or for taxing them at a preferential rate.

> an equal amount of money after it has been invested in a risky venture with > a substantial chance of losses.

The loss either happens or it doesn't, once it has or hasn't, what is left is the same as the same amount of money acquired by other means.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER22> Taxes raise revenue to pay for things, but we've been debt financing on the strength and stability of the country forever, and unlike the oft-cited comparisons to individual households, it doesn't seem like there will be any serious collections from our debt holders both foreign and domestic any time soon. The US deficit in 2019 is going to come pretty close to $1 trillion, but the general outlook seems fine, bond yields are low, etc.

Is there even an incentive at that point to find ways to earn more revenue?

<comment><USER23> Yeah, we live on cheap debt for now, but interest rates will rise eventually, there will eventually be another downturn, and the interest payments are stacking up. If we end up in a position where all discretionary spend is displaced by servicing the debt, we'll be in real trouble.

We've never been able to pull in more than 18% of GDP in tax receipts for more than a short time period. We're currently collecting ~17%, so we have a tiny bit of head room based on historical precedents. Beyond that, I don't know what we can do other than cut some spending. Auditing the DoD and means testing Medicare might pick up some low hanging fruit. Hard to say what's most likely to work, IMO.

</comment></comment><comment><AUTHOR> Raising the capital gains tax level to match the level imposed on ordinary income might be too extreme but the tax code should definitely be modified so that the various schemes and loopholes created to disguise income as capital gains can be ended.

</comment><comment><USER24> Or at a minimum, increase the "long-term capital gains" holding period from 1 year to somewhere around 3 to 5 years. This maintains the lower rate for people genuinely investing for retirement.

<comment><USER19> > This maintains the lower rate for people genuinely investing for retirement.

Insofar as we need tax favored retirement vehicles, we have plenty—general taxation of capital income need not be concerned with that. There are two legitimate interests I see addressed by special consideration of long term capital gains (but the current "jist give it a lower rate" approach is suboptimal for addressing them.)

(1) Gains over >1 year taxed as current income in the year realized, when this is not repeatable (that is, when the owner doesn't have a large pool of long term investments to liquidate some of each year) is unfair in a progressive tax system because you will get high taxes in the realization year because of a high bracket, but you need to use the income across multiple years.

This can be simply addressed by allowing taxpayers to recognize income for tax purposes before realizing it (and/or allowing deferring some of the income received in a spike year.) I prefer combining both.

(2) Because of inflation, the real net gain from capital may be much lower than the nominal gains for assets held for a long time. (If appreciation is less than inflation, you may have a real loss with a nominal gains.) This is best dealt with by inflation-adjusting basis values when computing capital gains.

</comment></comment><comment><USER25> I'd be very happy if my investment income was taxed at the same rate as my salary income.

I'd be even happier if it was taxed higher. My time (labor) should be worth more than my money (capital).

</comment><comment><USER26> This is a great way to cause another combined housing and fixed income bubble.</comment>


10:10 Do robots trade on tweet data? - <AUTHOR> https://twitter.com/dave_lampton/status/436201101637865472 Retweet me NOW to find out @dave_lampton ! <comment><USER2> While that tweet may be market manipulation, it's worth noting that Tweets about Anne Hathaway have been shown to move Berkshire Hathaway stock. [1] This is in part due to Berkshire's relative illiquidity.

[1] [http://www.theatlantic.com/technology/archive/2011/03/does-a...](http://www.theatlantic.com/technology/archive/2011/03/does- anne-hathaway-news-drive-berkshire-hathaways-stock/72661/)</comment>


Freedom to Tinker: Infinite Storage for Music - <AUTHOR> http://www.freedom-to-tinker.com/?p=1210

<comment><USER2> I like the flood idea. While we still have limits, a simple filter that roughly gauges potential interest in the file would help make this possible to implement today.

Add an app to your iphone that discovers other iphones. It'll probably be bluetooth. Then add a mechanism to transfer files automatically between the iPhones, probably wifi. In addition, to get past the 4 or 8 GB limit, backup unplayed or unlikely-to-be-played songs to a private music repository whenever a wifi internet connection is available.

This system can be built with today's hardware, and is essentially under the radar of music companies -- more so than bittorrent.

But this really emphasizes the need for recommendation systems -- the only thing the labels are actually good at. Have you ever tried to find something you might like on bittorrent? Almost impossible. P2P apps of yore were better. You could see someones playlists. You could discover new things when grouped near things you know you like.

But that has nothing to do with quality. Especially in niche genres (and everything is going the way of the niche), quality matters. There are many failures for each success in a style.

Any ideas on a quality detection system? :-P

</comment><comment><USER3> I predict it wont be about how much media you can store locally on your device at once instant, as much as how immediately accessible new media will be.

I could have an iPod with 10 petabytes of media, but if I wanted to view a picture my friend just took or listen to a song released after my last sync, the device is worthless unless I have a _good_ means to access this new data.

</comment><comment><USER4> This article make me think about the kind of devices that will be used to store huge amounts of music.

Specifically the kind of search that this devices will allow, for me is a real trouble to deal with 200+ songs. It would be awesome to tell the device to play 8 random Jack Johnson songs, then 6 random songs from Rolling Stones Voodoo Lounge album and finally to play "U Can't Touch This", or to make it play those 15 songs in a random order.

But what happens when you don't remember the artist, album or song name?

When you can have unlimited music, it's time to think in the next ipod :P

<comment><USER5> this is a good point. i have a hard time dealing with one of songs I download or purchase. Since they are not in an album (and are often by an artist that I barely have a couple of songs from) I tend to forget about them after a while and never listen to it for a long time, until I accidentally stumble upon it. I can imagine finding songs you like out of all the songs ever recorded would be pretty tough.

<comment><USER6> tagging and user ratings will play an important role as users are given more choices.

rather than how itunes sorts your music, the model used by netflix is a bit more useful. realistically, in a few years everyone will have easy access to library's the size of netflix, available for instantaneous streaming. there is no reason to assume that music will not adopt a similar model.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> In many ways, we're already here, because there's virtually unlimited choice in what you can obtain [not just store].

It can be paralyzing.

For the hackers out there focused on recommendation engines and algorithms, PG's essay "How Art Can Be Good" is required!

<http://www.paulgraham.com/goodart.html>

A good question may be: How do the ideas outlined in that essay square with your music recommendation service?

[[[fwiw]]]

</comment><comment><USER8> I think, only fans will pay for music and go to concerts. The others will listen to music for free. I don't know anybody in Russia who pays for a music regularly. But I know a few fans who buy legal albums.

<comment><USER9> When people pay for music, they're paying for the convenience of the delivery, not for the music itself. For the average user, it's worth a dollar to avoid the relatively clunky wilderness of Limewire and BitTorrent.

<comment><USER8> Hmm...I'm afraid I don't understand why do you considering using P2P unconvenient. Cos here in Russia it is the most comfortable way to get music. Internet music market is only a few $millions for now. But even if it will grow, I doubt that people will drop P2P. Cos it easy as open StrongDC++ in your metropolian network, type an artist name and download all songs at the price $0,0004 per mb. Maybe I'm wrong and you have different situation in US. Just my 2 cents.

<comment><USER10> using p2p depends on what other people are sharing. I want to download some older, lesser-known artists: Damien Jurardo, Stavesacre, and the list is pretty slim. If you want something popular and recent like Linkin Park, no problem. But if your off the beaten path, it's kinda hard to find what you want

<comment><USER8> Agree. But it is too tight market, don't you think? Labels generally generate profit from popular and recent artists.

<comment><USER10> But they also have old stuff stored away in a warehouse somewhere. P2P's don't. At least not currently.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> Moore's Law seems like it has a limit. Could we fit 10 terrabytes of data into a device the size of a phone? 100 terrabytes? I wonder what the maximum is.

<comment><USER12> All the data won't be stored in the phone, it'll surely be streamed from somewhere. As we saw our documents moving to online Office, we'll see in few years all these big files moving away from our hard drive.

Who has the hard drive space keeping an up-to-date divx library today? I personnally prefer to download a movie when needed, p2p has become fast enough to be convenient :)

<comment><USER11> You're right. And that has interesting implications for future mobile devices. Right now, phones connect to the internet using a connection provided by your phone company. EVDO or EDGE, for example.

But how hard would it be to create a peer-to-peer internet connection? One of your devices would be connected to WiFi, but also connected to every other device in the area. And those would be connected to more devices, and so on. It would form a big chain, possibly extending several miles.

When someone requests a song, that request is passed from one device to another until it gets back to the device that's connected to WiFi. Then the song data is streamed from the internet and passed back to the original requester.

This system seems like it would be extremely slow. But, does it really matter if it takes an hour to download 10 songs? You could have a list of songs that you'd eventually like to listen to, then check back every few hours to see which ones are ready.

<comment><USER5> Mesh networking is indeed slow, but it works great for some things. I'm not sure if music is one of the however. The nice thing about iTunes music store or a fast connection to a P2P network is instant gratification. I remember dialup days when it took 15 minutes to download a song and that was painful enough. Now if I want a song I can get it in under a minute and once you get used to this it's hard to wait several hours for the songs to potentially finish downloading.

On the plus side, chances are that one of the other devices in your mesh already has a copy of the song you want (especially if it's a popular song) and if storage isn't an issue you can have a lot of locally cached data that should speed things up.</comment></comment></comment></comment>


Using Twitter to Build a Password Cracking List - 1978 passwords out of 4400 - <AUTHOR> http://7habitsofhighlyeffectivehackers.blogspot.com.au/2012/05/using-twitter-to-build-password.html

<comment><USER2> If any one else was confused by the poorly written article, he does the following.

* Download list of password hashes.

* Create list of seed words based on the subject matter for the site the passwords originate from (like "Afghanistan").

* Use Twitter search to build a dictionary of words related to the seed list.

* Feed dictionary through a script, john, that performs common letter substitutions and checks the md5 for each candidate against the original list of hashes.

I'm skeptical as to whether this is more effective than using the 4,400 most common English words.

<comment><USER3> I would be interested in hearing the results based on derivations of just a single word, 'password' - I bet he could have nailed more than 2000 passwords on the common mashing of that word (123password, passwordabc, etc...)

<comment><USER4> Repeating his procedure using a word list consisting of just the word "password" (according to him the --rules option trys a bunch of variations) yields 18 passwords.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> So I was curious and replicated the experiment. Here is a summary of the results.

      * Twitter word list: ~2,000 passwords guessed
      * Just the word "password": 18 passwords guessed
      * Ubuntu words file: ~10,000 passwords guessed

I couldn't find an easily-downloaded list of the most common English words, maybe that would work even better.

Note that the words file has over 200,000 words in it, whereas the twitter list had only ~4,500. So there _could_ be merit to this method. Of course a ton of those words are trivial ("A" and "a" are both there, for example), so who knows.

Edit: formatting

<comment><USER4> Update: I found a list of common words that was easy to get into the proper format. It purports to be the 978 most common words, though it seems to have been compiled in the '60s. Whatever, close enough for me. It resulted in 893 hits. So, here's the breakdown:

      * Twitter (4,674 words): 2,198 successes
      * Just "password" (1 word): 18 successes
      * Ubuntu words file (234,937 words): 11,969 successes
      * Common words (978 words): 893 successes
      * Default wordlist (?): 102,297 and still going...

This is based on 163,636 from the same database the author used.

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> Or, you know, if you try to brute force 180k accounts, you're bound to get 2000 of them by chance alone. I'd like to see him change the words to food- related items and see how many he gets.

<comment><USER6> This is a great point. If the hypothesis is "unique words gathered from Twitter search based on queries to find terms related to the military", then that's easily falsifiable, like you said.

I wish that more people running these kinds of "experiments" went to the extra step of trying to falsify their hypothesis like proper experimentation requires.

</comment></comment><comment><USER7> I see no explanation for why this should be better than just using an English dictionary or some other corpus. A comparison with a couple of easily found corpuses like the standard Linux words file would have been interesting.

<comment><USER8> You should get some words that are not in the list, such as slang and "new" words.

Might want to concatenate the two ..

</comment></comment><comment><USER9> Cool idea. Reminds me of using Wikipedia as a word list for brute forcing:

[http://blog.sebastien.raveau.name/2009/03/cracking- passwords...](http://blog.sebastien.raveau.name/2009/03/cracking-passwords- with-wikipedia.html)

(Although, obviously, using the Twitter search method is more targeted and will likely give you results this century when you're looking for something specific.)

</comment><comment><USER10> Why did he run any of those commands as root?

</comment><comment><USER10> I would love to know why he spelled Afghanistan as Afganastan initially.

<comment><USER11> Probably looking for common typos in harder to spell words.

<comment><USER10> The site is militarysingles.com. How many active duty personnel do you think have trouble spelling Afghanistan?

<comment><USER12> At least 4: [https://www.google.com/search?q=afghanastan%20site%3Amilitar...](https://www.google.com/search?q=afghanastan%20site%3Amilitarysingles.com)

<comment><USER10> Google is only returning three for me right now. One of the profiles spells adult "aduld." But more importantly 3 out of how many profiles? Thanks for the empirical data showing that the mispelling is a poor choice for a base word list.</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment>


Airline baggage tags: Brilliant design gets bags from Point A to Point B - <AUTHOR> http://www.slate.com/articles/life/design/2012/10/airline_baggage_tags_how_their_brilliant_design_gets_bags_from_point_a_to_point_b_.single.html

<comment><USER2> This glorifies the bag tag a little too much. The bag tag is part of a solution that is only as good as the information supporting it. Airlines are still running archaic backend systems (e.g. systems from the 70's in some cases) & error-prone human processes that simply do not reliably collect and deliver proper baggage information to baggage systems. You would be shocked by the percentage of bags that cannot be processed because the baggage messages are simply not recieved (nevermind format errors, missing fields, etc.).

RFID solutions only improve read rate and tracking while the bag is on mechanical equipment, but do not address issues with manual handling at various other steps (e.g. moving bags from delivery piers to carts, and then to planes). And RFID does not address the information quality problem. That's partly why RFID has only been implemented in a handful of airports (e.g. HK & one of Milan's terminals) despite being feasible for a decade.

To truly reduce baggage losses, airlines & airports need to work together and implement multiple solutions that track and improve performance end to end - for all automated and manual processes.

Disclosure: I worked on designing & enhancing baggage systems for a common-use airport that is consistently ranked in the top 10 by awards (e.g. <http://www.worldairportawards.com/>).

<comment><USER3> Why can't you tell us the name of the airport? Is who works on baggage tracking systems a big secret?

<comment><USER2> Not at all - YVR is the airport.

<comment><USER3> Cool, very interesting :)</comment></comment></comment></comment>


Ad campaign runs cryptocurrency miners while unwitting users watch videos - <AUTHOR> https://arstechnica.com/information-technology/2018/01/now-even-youtube-serves-ads-with-cpu-draining-cryptocurrency-miners <comment><USER2> I don't understand enough about the ad business to answer this myself. If there's a legitimate reason to allow 3p scripts to run code - it would seem like creating a domain specific language that Google safely translates into JS would be so much better. Allowing 3Ps to run arbitrary JS just seems so shockingly wrong.

No amount of manual auditing can catch malicious code. It's way too complex for a human to parse.

Is there a legitimate business need that anyone's aware of to have code run in Ads? If so, why not use a DSL?

<comment><USER3> I don't know anything about JS-based cryptomining, but I wonder if you can't stop such ads without breaking 90% of legit ads.

I mean, it's all probably boils down to number-crunching? So DSL you are envisioning should block really basic language parts, like cycles and math operations.

If I'm wrong and mining actually could be easily blocked on language level using some DSL, I'm all ears.

<comment><USER4> It would be nice if things could be blocked by CPU usage... even if you're not mining cryptocurrency, if your ad uses more then 5% of my CPU it should be killed.

<comment><USER5> ...and total CPU Time.

Interesting, just noticed that watching a Udemy course uses %98 CPU (in Activity Monitor on a MBP). This even if playback if paused. Wonder if they're doing something similar or it's just a lame implementation?

<comment><USER6> I've seen some software video decoders do that at times, though if it's happening even while paused it's a little unusual (maybe decoding buffered frames?).

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> The ads are in iframes with sandbox="allow-scripts". (Seen in [https://i2.wp.com/diegobetto.com/site/wp- content/uploads/201...](https://i2.wp.com/diegobetto.com/site/wp- content/uploads/2018/01/2018-01-25-16_14_23-First-Look_-RC522-RFID- Reader_Writer-4-on-eBay-YouTube.png?w=1618&ssl=1))

I hereby request more sandbox options so we can limit untrusted code properly:

<iframe ... sandbox="allow-scripts limit-cpu=10 limit-gpu=1 limit-bandwidth=5 limit-animation=10">

[https://developer.mozilla.org/en- US/docs/Web/HTML/Element/if...](https://developer.mozilla.org/en- US/docs/Web/HTML/Element/iframe#attr-sandbox)

<comment><USER8> How about get rid of allow-scripts. Kinda like what they did with window.onbeforeunload

</comment></comment><comment><USER9> I had no idea that Google Adwords allowed advertisers to run arbitrary Javascript in user's browsers because that just seems so monumentally stupid.

Is that their general policy or was this some kind of script injection input cleansing fuckup on their part?

<comment><USER10> This is very common, and isn't just Google Adwords. Advertisers, or rather the ad-tech companies they user, want to do this to verify that ad views are 'legitimate' and gather extra data to help them bid. Without this advertisers have to trust ad exchanges to play fair, which of course they don't have any incentive to do.

This is just yet another reason "Ads pay for content on the internet" hurts everyone.

<comment><USER11> And they said the internet will be safer without Flash

<comment><USER12> Flash wasn't open, they should had made their own browser when they still had the chance. One can still do some aggressive fingerprinting using new browser technologies.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> Why the hell are YouTube ads allowed to run 3rd party javascript, and _since when??_

That's the biggest question not answered by Google. Why wasn't there a big outcry when this became possible? They can do all sorts of shit, not just mine crypto.

This used to be the single biggest thing _not_ to do. The possibility of running 3rd party Javascript in Google's ad networks used to be one of the biggest nightmare scenarios if it got exploited, but the article (or the Google rep) doesn't mention anything about an exploit, it's as if 3rd party javascript running on their ad network is expected behaviour, just the fact that it's running a crypto miner isn't?!

There's no way in hell I am ever going to not block Google's ads after this. "Youtubers" and "Content Creators" can cry all they want over whitelisting their channel or site in particular because of all the hard work etc, but not if they want me to run a hostile ad network's code.

<comment><USER14> Google has served malicious ads at least as far back as last spring:

[https://www.reddit.com/r/sysadmin/comments/6rm5ig/alert_full...](https://www.reddit.com/r/sysadmin/comments/6rm5ig/alert_fullscreen_scam_sites_have_started/)

[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14140756](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14140756)

<comment><USER13> Cool, thanks :) But I'm actually even more interested since when Google started _allowing_ 3rd party javascript, because the moment when it first got exploited maliciously was just a matter of time. I mean I seriously want to read Google's announcement of this "feature", because I'm honestly scratching my head "wtf were they thinking??".

Just so I got this right: You can buy a particular type of ads on Google's ad- platform, that will appear on sites and things depending on your target criteria. AFAIK you used to be able control these aspects of the ad: The text shown if it's a text ad, a picture if it's a banner ad, where the ad should link to, and probably a few cosmetic details. Any tracking cookies and analysis would be done either by generic Google Ads javascript (the results of which you can query in your Ads dashboard/control panel) and by whatever additional tracking javascript you set up yourself on the destination site the ad links to.

But apparently, at some point, advertisers got the ability to _run their own (3rd party) javascript_ that will get executed on any site that displays your ad. I'm assuming they use a clever subdomain/iframe trick so that the security context of the JS is just that one domain and doesn't UXSS the world. And sure let's assume this is perfectly watertight. If it wasn't we would be talking about worse stuff than crypto-miners.

 _Then still_ this script is apparently not prohibited from doing whatever calculations (for mining or whatever), accessing whichever browser fingerprinting variables, mouse tracking and whatnot, you can load and execute remote scripts based on this fingerprinting and easily sidestep any of Google's scrutiny whether your script is up to no good. Not that they do this "because it doesn't scale", but it would be useless any way. And then, this script is able to _ex-filtrate_ all this tracking or mining data. I'm aware that disallowing these abilities strictly and securely is just not really possible in JS, there's too many strange ways to access objects and functions, weird tricks, etc.

Did I get this right so far? Because I'm really a bit with my jaw on the floor, how the hell did they approve this and not realize it's a landmine?

I'm nearly certain that it must be possible to do other nasty tricks besides consuming 80% CPU for inefficient crypto-mining. If it's that many people (by now let's call them zombie nodes or a botnet, which is what Google Ads apparently gives you) all running your code, you can also use them to DDoS a site. But if you're just a dick, you can also attack the people themselves. Most browsers have the cross-domain security down tight, but nearly all of them have multiple "vulnerabilities" that DoS the browser itself, make it unresponsive, make it crash (yeah multiple tabs, even if they have their own threads) or even make the whole system (yeah outside the browser) unstable, unresponsive or crashy. Maybe not your tweaked/bolted down Linux system, but the average user's mildly clogged up Win10, easy.

Can these scripts also track and log keypresses or is that somehow separated because of cross-domain / iframe protection? (it's been a while since I got real deep into JS security) Because that would be a vulnerability.

So. Many. Possibilities. For. Fuckery.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> What is the anti-ad-blocking crusaders' response to Google's inability to keep their content sites free of malicious advertisements?

If I can't trust that YouTube won't serve malicious ads to my PC, who the hell could I trust?

<comment><USER16> The problem with crusaders on either side is that they conveniently ignore or deny the trade-offs. Advertising based business models come with certain dangers and annoyances. Paying for content and services directly also comes with dangers and annoyances.

The reason why I don't use ad-blockers (yet) is that I fear complete loss of anonymity and even greater censorship powers for governments if everything becomes a pay service. Payments are the most tightly regulated and monitored thing on the planet. At the same time you're exposed to credit card fraud and identity theft.

</comment></comment><comment> cup-of-tea Remember when Google ads were considered not too bad? Just boxes of text when everything else was flashing and making noises. That was a big part of Google becoming popular and now it's gone.

<comment><USER17> Advertising is always a race to the bottom.

</comment></comment><comment><USER18> This is why I run an adblocker, even for so-called "trustworthy" sites. When even top-tier networks like Doubleclick aren't doing the necessary due diligence to prevent malicious ads, what can I do as a user but block _all_ ads, even while knowing this hurts the content creators who use those ads for revenue?

<comment><USER19> It's never been your responsibility to run that code. If it had never been allowed, ad-tech would have found another way. They built an industry on a horrible assumption and now it's their job to fix it. Everyone can still fall back to affiliate links if they want, but I doubt most will any time soon.

<comment><USER20> This! It their job to fix this mess, the burden of finding a better alternative doesn't lie with us.

I have no once of guilt related to blocking ads, if you can't pay the upkeep of your website and you haven't found any meaningful way for user contributions then that's on you and if you still serve ads because that's the only sane solution for your monetary problem then you should expect some users to block those ads and conclude that both parties did what they thought was best given this horrible situation.

Affiliate links are great and more people should really consider going back to this model.

<comment><USER21> let me play the devil's advocate and argue that ad supported content is responsible for somee of the biggest chunk of the internet, and if it hadn't been for such business model, the internet would not have been as amazing as it is today.

sites like 9gag, 4chan or Reddit, or other such sites is where net culture breed. these sites are not going to have the same feel if it had been subscription supported, as large swarves of users who have no money to contribute, but have content and creativity would've been locked out.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER22> >Both scripts are programmed to consume 80 percent of a visitor's CPU, leaving just barely enough resources for it to function.

How on Earth do ads not undergo the most basic "does it eat up 80 PERCENT OF A USER'S CPU" tests before they're allowed on one's network?

There is no amazing hacking going on here besides a lack of security control, but there is a substantially larger story hiding here somewhere.

<comment><USER23> At the very least I'm sure the script checks a few simple conditions before unleashing the miner, such as current date, ip, language prefs, possibly a "go/no-go" boolean hosted on some random webserver, to evade any pre-screening before being accepted into the ad rotation.

<comment><USER24> I've heard of something similar whee drivers (partiularly graphics) trying to get WHQL cert will check for a special registry entry, and only if its present will do the ridiculous unsafe things like directly patching the IDT to get the performance they want, but will play nice otherwise so they pass cert.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER25> I was never at risk for this kind of attack due to my ad blocker, but I can't help but wonder why the ad was allowed to run in the first place. Surely Google of all people have the resources to do analysis of javascript code that is submitted by an advertiser, and not push it out to the platform if this kind of stuff is detected. This isn't even that hard to automate: does the ad use excessive amounts of CPU while loaded? Reject it!

Of course if the advertiser is allowed to load their own unverified third- party javascript from anywhere, these kinds of things can and will continue to happen. That's why I don't run third party embeds in my browser, and I don't think anyone should. (An unpopular opinion, I know.)

<comment><USER26>
      if (running_in_youtube()) {
        mine_coin();
      } else {
        return;
      }

<comment><USER27> Surely Google operates a sandbox sufficiently similar to the ad environment to foil such a scheme, no?

<comment><USER28> Cloaking is a hard problem. People have a massive monetary incentive to improve cloaking tools, meaning that basically every technique you can think of to detect malicious behavior dynamically has a finite timeframe to where it is no longer useful.

Ad networks almost certainly have a system to detect cloaking. It is almost certainly not detecting all malicious scripts.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER29> I really hope this leads to the death of javascript in the browser, or at least in ads.

<comment><USER30> I seem to remember way back in the day that you could advertise with Slashdot (and others, I'm sure) by giving them an image (static or animated GIF) of specific dimensions, the URL that image should lead to, and obviously some cash. That was pretty great because they kept it reasonably unobtrusive and there wasn't any javascript.

I'd rather see Javascript dead, though :)

<comment><USER31> _I seem to remember way back in the day that you could advertise with Slashdot (and others, I 'm sure) by giving them an image (static or animated GIF) of specific dimensions, the URL that image should lead to, and obviously some cash_

Right, direct advertising. IIRC, anybody who seriously suggests it is routinely shouted down as impractical.

<comment><USER32> Well, the first problem is that only a relative few sites are big enough to do direct advertising. The harder question is how to keep web content decentralized by decentralizing means to revenue, a battle we are aggressively losing.

<comment><USER31> I don't know what your second sentence means, but why do you have to be large to do direct advertising?

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER33> Somewhere, someone said to their business partners "Why, what if we decided to chew through the useful economic life of someone else's assets without telling them?" and the people in the room said "Sure, lets go get it done".

<comment><USER34> Now I'm curious if it was a company decision or just a lone developer who realized he could toss that in and nobody would catch it.

</comment></comment><comment><USER35> There is no reason why ads aren't just plain text, video or animated vector graphics. There is literally no reason to allow them more (read; execute javascript).

If anyone comes up with a valid reason I will invest all my life savings into garlicoin.

<comment><USER36> Did you hover your mouse over the ad? Did you click? How many times have you viewed it?

That's all useful information to the advertiser.

<comment><USER37> Useful to the advertiser != a valid reason

A camera in my office watching me all day would be useful to the advertiser. That doesn't make it a valid reason to put one there

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER38> This, shortly after youtube went all JS. With JS disabled, it's just a blank page now. I'm glad I disable JS. Saves me a ton of data bandwidth and protects me from advertisers. There's just not a lot of upside to my using JS anymore these days. Some big sites might not work, but that turns out to my benefit.

These antics put the whole JS ecosystem at risk. Remember how normies figured out cookies were bad and turned them off? Even Tony Soprano was talking about turning off cookies. This can be much worse. Might actually kill the web and push everyone off to native apps for good.

<comment><USER39> JS dying would be a boon to the open internet imho.

</comment></comment><comment><USER40> Funny idea: a long form journalism site could intentionally and openly embed such a script, allowing readers to make "micropayments" of lent CPU time to the site while they read articles.

<comment><USER41> Three problems:

1\. It would not make sense to run on mobile.

2\. Mining this way is inefficient, so if the site gets one penny worth of work done, it costs me five pennies.

3\. Unless readers have decent GPUs, it's probably not enough money.

<comment><USER13> I'm pretty sure the factor five in your second point is in reality _way_ worse than that, probably (wild guess) at least over 25x.

Mining is not only inefficient when implemented in JS (even with the web asm stuff, many clients have no support), or when it runs on crappy or old hardware, it also depends on what your electricity costs. Pro-miners put their farms in locations where electricity is super cheap, often in the middle of nowhere, perhaps near a hydro dam. Most clients are on a laptop or mobile in a city, where electricity is much more expensive, and their electric efficiency is made worse because they run it off battery.

Distributed crypto-mining for micropayments via embedded JS is such a _huge_ waste, I'd probably have more problems if I _knew_ the site was doing that, for the guilt of wasting that electricity while reading, just so the author can inefficiently receive a few fractions of a cent. I might even ( _gasp_ ) rather watch a video ad instead.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER42> Javascript was the bigest mistake to add to the web standards.

However, the web standards themselves are unnecessarily complex. W3C and WHATWG are partly to blame. Remember HTML was supposed to be a document that the user could change the styling of similar to how some gopher clients would let user change the look of how you viewed all content.

However, that is kinda ancient history these days. However, the web standards need to make a new format that breaks backwards compatibility. An app based format, and a document only format. Sadly, I don't see this happening.

\--EDIT-- Also a lot of web designed don't care if their site does not work if JS disabled...

If I were to rework the standards. I would make any syntax for standard defined languages quite strict. Further, for document based content make sure content is always readable with out freaking stupid dynamic eye candy.

<comment><USER43> As per my usual, let's not blame the tool for the bad use of said tool.

</comment></comment><comment><USER44> Google can build software that can autonomously learn how to beat humans at the hardest games in existence (or buy a company that builds said software), but it cannot detect malicious code in ads before serving those ads...

I call bullshit

<comment><USER45> How would you go about deciding reliably whether a given Javascript program would perform a malicious computation on certain inputs? As the concept of malice seems somewhat hard to pin down, let's simplify the problem a bit: it's enough to decide whether that JS code stops at all or if it would just run forever. How to get that ad smasher written?

</comment></comment><comment><USER46> With WebAssembly, such things will be even harder to find!

</comment><comment><USER47> Oh, I wonder why oh why do people use ad blockers?

</comment><comment><USER48> Wait, what?? I can inject my own Javascript into Google ads? How is this done?

<comment><USER49> [https://www.iab.net/vpaid](https://www.iab.net/vpaid)

Similar things exist for older ad types, they're just less standardised.

<comment><USER49> Since I just grabbed the first link from DDG, and failed to check if it was working, here's a corrected link:

[https://www.iab.com/guidelines/digital-video-player-ad- inter...](https://www.iab.com/guidelines/digital-video-player-ad-interface- definition-vpaid-2-0/)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER31> I'd love it if there was a way to monkeypatch JS functions in the browser (like we do for styling in userChrome.css) so that ones that BTC relies on become no-ops.

<comment><USER50> There is, see Tampermonkey/Greasemonkey.

<comment><USER31> I use Tampermonkey, can you be more specific?

<comment><USER50> You can provide user specified JS to run in web page contexts and eg do monkey patching.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER51> What strikes me about this is actually tangential to the specific issue the article addresses.

New technologies push the bounds of opportunity and risk. Folks trying to take advantage of the upside will exploit anything to achieve their goals. In the process, natural systems will emerge to combat them and close the exploits. This amoral process actually leads to emergent, unanticipated outcomes. You actually NEED the chaos upfront for society to eventually discover a stable equilibrium.

All the negative externalities from BitCoin / blockchain are really just a naturally occurring shake out of kinks. Much like the wild experiments and exploits of the 90s eventually led to the equilibrium we have for the current Web.

</comment><comment><USER52> This is one big reason I love Brave as a web browser. You don't deal with this crap.

<comment><USER53> Well brave does intend on displaying ads at some point. Without knowing their exact implementation as to what ads will be displayed it might be possible eventually.

<comment><USER52> True, but they're off by default

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER54> Adsense has a new feature where publishers can turn off low-value ads, and it estimates how much ad revenue you'll keep.

(For web publishers, no idea about video pubs)

In my case, I can turn off 33% of all ads and still earn 99% of revenue.

Turning off 50% will earn me 95% of ad revenues.

Turning off 90% of ads will earn me 67% of ad revenues.

The pareto principle is strong.

</comment><comment><USER55> The hilarious thing about this is that so what why not? Can't I opt to let another co-opt my cpu while I watch videos so that I don't have to watch ads?

I'd much prefer people using my cpu to mine bitcoin than to render some shitty ad.

This is actually a fascinating development in this space.

<comment><USER56> The payoff isn't good enough for this to support add-free services, and the payoff gets worse as crypto becomes more popular. Then there's the fact that you might be browsing from a battery-powered device.

<comment><USER3> >The payoff isn't good enough for this to support add-free services

Hmm, wait. How it works, then?

Let's say I'm paying 1$ to display malicious ad which mines something. BTC.

If amount of mined BTC is lower than 1$, the whole operations becomes unprofitable. Why should I pay 1$ to mine 90 cents via ad?

If people are running this operation on scale, it should be profitable. But then payoff is by definition good enough to support ad-free service. Instead of taking 1$ from advertiser, google can theoretically mine 1$ on my PC and let me watch video without ads.

What do I miss?

<comment><USER57> you still get to display an advertisement. so it isn't "mined BTC > $1 --> success"; it is "mined BTC + expected value of running scam ad > $1 --> success"

<comment><USER55> I think his point was a hypothetical without the advertising component. Like if they just embedded bitcoin miners in every page that displayed a youtube video.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER58> Does Chrome's ad blocker block those? I wouldn't know because I don't trust Chrome.

</comment><comment><USER59> I'm sure someone is already developing it if it's a good idea, but it seems that instead of ad revenue, internet content could be paid for by cryptomining while consuming their content.

<comment><USER59> The advantage of a cryptomining internet economy instead of an adtracking internet is the privacy benefit.

</comment></comment><comment><USER60> This tittle is misleading, maybe something like "Attackers abuse ad platform to serve cryptocurreny mining ads on YouTube".

<comment><USER39> The title seems factual to me.

<comment><USER60> The original title was something to the effect of "YouTube now using CPU draining cryptocurrency miner in ads."

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER61> could this kind of thing also be on m.huffpost.com?

when reading articles there my android cpu goes all-in, phone getting hot..

avoiding the site now :)

</comment><comment><USER62> another reason to use youtube-dl

</comment><comment><USER63> what are the favorite alternatives to youtube?

<comment><USER64> YouTube Red?

<comment><USER31> Does YTR allow me to turn off annotations permanently?

<comment><USER65> I think you can actually do this without having a YouTube Red account - it's under youtube settings and then under playback (there's a checkbox for annotations).

I'm using the Red free trial (it's 3 months) and it's actually pretty nice to have more control over the experience and not have to deal with ads. I found the ublock origin wasn't perfectly effective on YouTube anyway.

If only FB offered a $10 a month no ad subscription it'd be a lot nicer to use too.

<comment><USER31> Yes, there's a UI control for it, but Google regularly resets it. It's basically as effective as setting your Facebook timeline to "Recent first."

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> In addition to simply being rather pissed off about all of this, I was just wondering (don't worry--I'd rather just block ads than actually be arsed to implement it):

If your browser becomes a node in a crypto-mining network, it'll start number crunching and occasionally send the results to some central server for collection.

What if your browser doesn't play nice? What if it sends bad or misleading data?

I'm not sure how Monero exactly does its thing, but I know that for Bitcoin it goes a little something like this[0]: You start out with a quasi-random "salt", I think it comes from the previous block. Then you append a bunch of random bytes to that salt, and hash it (SHA256? or some popular hash function, anyway). The goal is to find just the right random bytes so that the hashed value has the longest run of ones as its least-significant bits. If the length of that run is equal or longer than the current "difficulty level", then you're the lucky winner and you just mined a block of bitcoin! These correct random bytes are hard to find, you have to bruteforce them, but super easy to check: just one hash and see if it has a long enough run of ones.

Because even on decent hardware, odds of personally mining a block are in the order of once-a-year-maybe, people often join mining pools that share the profit. I'm not sure how they make sure everyone in the pool plays fair and divide up the profit based on the amount of work they put in (or amount of hashes they checked). The crypto-miner obviously joins a pool because with the shitty performance of stolen CPU-time over millions of people visiting an infected site for a few seconds, they kind of have to if they want a payout more often than once-a-decade-perhaps-not-even.

Can you mess this up for whoever owns the pool account that the distributed cryptominers send their data to? I suppose if that miner's account tries to scam the pool and report way more hashes checked than they actually did, or something like that, would it ban the account and lose all profit up till then?

What if your browser just reports any bunch of random bytes as "nope, that's not it", without even bothering to hash it? What if one of those just happens to be the winning bytes and it gets discarded and never tested again? Does it even work like that or do the JS miners just pick a random value to append to the salt, hash and test (with the risk of trying certain values more than once).

Even then, I'm certain that you can bugger up whatever protocol these hostile JS miners use, and cause all _sorts_ of "interesting" and costly misbehaviour in the pool. Though I should read up on how these things actually work, the above is just vague guesses based on what I know about bitcoin's crypto/protocol/algorithm (I actually did read the whitepaper once, but it was maybe a decade ago or so) and even vaguer guesses on how these mining pools work (that I haven't digged in to very much).

[0] I'm probably wrong about some details because it's been a while since I read that whitepaper, so correct me if they're interesting details :)

</comment><comment><USER66> And talking about filthy ads, the one served by Arstechnica [1] tells me "Warning - Your computer is infected.. blah blah blah.. Download Free Antivirus..blah blah..".

And it's not even a 3rd party one.

[1]: [https://cdn.arstechnica.net/wp- content/uploads/2018/01/ad.jp...](https://cdn.arstechnica.net/wp- content/uploads/2018/01/ad.jpg)

<comment><USER67> That's an image of the malicious ad from YouTube that the article is about...

<comment><USER66> You are both very correct. I browsed through the article really fast and skipped many lines. The light-grey in my comment is well deserved!</comment></comment></comment>


Lipid metabolic pathways converge in motor neuron degenerative diseases - <AUTHOR> https://academic.oup.com/brain/advance-article/doi/10.1093/brain/awz382/5679762 <comment><USER2> [http://raypeat.com/articles/nutrition/oils-in- context.shtml](http://raypeat.com/articles/nutrition/oils-in-context.shtml)

<comment><USER3> Correct me if I am wrong but most of the references on that page are very old

<comment><USER4> Is this problematic?

<comment><USER5> Obviously, for some people, science is a set of ever-charging truths...

<comment><USER6> Only for some people?

<comment><USER5> 1 + 1 = 2 is too boring and old, thus probably wrong.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> Can someone put this in layperson terms?

<comment><AUTHOR> From [https://www.bbc.com/news/health-50821327](https://www.bbc.com/news/health-50821327):

Scientists say they have discovered a possible underlying cause of the neurological disorder, motor neurone disease (MND).

The University of Exeter team says it has found evidence that MND is linked to an imbalance of cholesterol and other fats in cells.

It says the research could lead to more accurate diagnosis and new treatments.

MND affects around 5,000 people in the UK and causes more than 2,000 deaths a year.

Motor neurone disease is a group of diseases that affect the nerve cells in the brain and spinal cord that tell your muscles what to do.

Also known as ALS, it causes muscle weakness and stiffness.

Eventually people with the disease are unable to move, talk, swallow and finally, breathe.

There is no cure and the exact causes are unclear - it's been variously linked to genes, exposure to heavy metals and agricultural pollution.

Scientists at the University of Exeter say they had a "eureka moment" when they realised that 13 genes - which, if altered, can cause the condition - were directly involved in processing cholesterol.

They say their theory could help predict the course and severity of the disease in patients and monitor the effect of potential new drugs.

The theory is outlined in a paper, published in Brain: A Journal of Neurology.

Lead author Prof Andrew Crosby said: "For years, we have known that a large number of genes are involved in motor neurone disease, but so far it hasn't been clear if there's a common underlying pathway that connects them."

The finding particularly relates to what is known as the "spastic paraplegias", where the malfunction is in the upper part of the spinal cord.

Dr Emma Baple, also from the University of Exeter Medical School, said: "Currently, there are no treatments available that can reverse or prevent progression of this group of disorders. Patients who are at high risk of motor neurone disease really want to know how their disease may progress and the age at which symptoms may develop, but that's very difficult to predict."

Dr Brian Dickie, director of research at the MND Association, said the work raises some interesting ideas.

"At the moment, it is unclear whether the imbalance observed is a cause of MND or a consequence of the disease. We look forward to seeing the outcome of further research in this area."

<comment><USER8> "an imbalance of cholesterol and other fats in cells."

I've been telling people that cholesterol is a kind of alcohol, because -ol. Am I way off?

<comment><USER9> It's a fat (lipid). It has an alcohol functional group on it, but it's not technically an alcohol.

<comment><USER8> Understand, I'm just copying and pasting from Wikipedia here, but:

"Although the term "lipid" is sometimes used as a synonym for fats, fats are a subgroup of lipids called triglycerides"

It looks like sometimes people refer to triglycerides and cholesterol together as "fat", and other times say triglycerides in particular are "fat".

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> This is not very specific. Lipids like Oxysterols and phospholipids are altered in many diseases. Need a little more information to understand the specificity of the defect.</comment>


Is there any app which matches users based on personality/behaviour? - <AUTHOR> An app which matches its users based on their answers about some psychological questions. <comment><USER2> Isn't this exactly what every dating site out there promises to do?

<comment><AUTHOR> How? For ex. Tinder, We can only see some basic details about the person. How can we know about the behavior or his/her likes. For ex. If given a choice between Ice-cream and Chocolate, which one s/he would prefer. Does there exist an app where we can match based on our choices?</comment></comment>


A Plan in Case Robots Take the Jobs: Give Everyone a Paycheck - <AUTHOR> http://mobile.nytimes.com/2016/03/03/technology/plan-to-fight-robot-invasion-at-work-give-everyone-a-paycheck.html?smprod=nytcore-iphone&smid=nytcore-iphone-share&_r=0&referer=http://kompakt.welt.de/1OmLYOIsO0o26ouEUigMM2/grundeinkommen <comment><USER2> The biggest hurdle to Universal Basic Income, is Basic Human Nature.

It is quite nice to believe that the majority of humans are like Sam Altman of YCombinator, a big proponent of UBI, and would use their free time to be creative and perhaps entrepreneurial. However the reality is; creating and building is hard work, and the vast majority of Americans are not up to it. 34 hours, is the amount of time the Average American Spends watching TV a week, almost five hours a day. While the Average American's work week is only 34.4 hours. [http://www.fool.com/investing/general/2015/03/15/the- average...](http://www.fool.com/investing/general/2015/03/15/the-average- american-watches-this-much-tv-every-da.aspx)

UBI will not work with the present set of human beings, it will simply drive up inflation on the basic necessities like housing and food while providing a disincentive to find gainful or meaningful employment. If you want to know how people will react to having more free time look at how they waste it on mindless television as it is, why do we need more drones?</comment>


GitHub Isn't Fun Anymore - <AUTHOR> https://jaredpalmer.com/github-isnt-fun-anymore <comment><USER2> But unlike earlier, it has several alternatives now.

<comment><AUTHOR> Yeah, I do wonder if there is room for innovation in the space around social features.</comment></comment>


Happy New Year Hackers - <AUTHOR>

-Seattle, USA<p>Which city, country you are in celebrating new year? <comment><USER2> Boston, MA

</comment><comment><USER3> Mountain View, CA

</comment><comment><USER4> Montreal, Canada

</comment><comment><USER5> Shenzhen, China</comment>


How Often Should You Ship? - <AUTHOR> http://thecodist.com/article/how_often_should_you_ship <comment><USER2> Shipping often just means you have a lot of chances to work out and automate that pipeline so that it mostly works. Shipping infrequently means every time you ship, it's broken.

I think this is somewhat independent of team size -- companies with large teams have large teams because the product is very complex and they want to iterate quickly; not only (or really?) because they want to ship every week.

That being said, I don't do mobile, but in terms of deploying a webapp, I want it to be reliable, very fast (<1m), and easy (type a command into Slack). If you have such a system, it lets you work however is convenient -- single small team, many (siloed) small teams, one large team -- it doesn't really matter. It's amazingly freeing when the act of merging and shipping code is just second thought -- something that just always works. Even shipping changes to the deployment system itself becomes very fast -- so you can iterate and constantly make it better as well.

</comment><comment><AUTHOR> I thought this was an interesting essay, though I'm not sure I agree with all of it.

I do wonder if he's proposing somewhat of a false dilemma here. Maybe it's possible to ship often _and_ have high quality _and_ make big changes when needed?</comment>


Virtual Reality tour through the 21 years of NASDAQ - <AUTHOR> http://graphics.wsj.com/3d-nasdaq/ <comment><USER2> A fun and utterly useless gimmick. It would be nice to see some easing added to the bounce over the high points in the graph.

</comment><comment><USER3> In case you didn't want to watch the whole thing, here is the punchline:

 _Today tech accounts for only 43% of the idnex, compared with 65% in March 2000 [just before the tech bubble burst]. Its P /E ratio of 22.15 is nowhere near the stratospheric levels seen 15 years._

Of course the thing with bubbles, is that everyone is always saying that we are in a bubble all the time, because to say otherwise is to look like a fool.

</comment><comment><USER4> This is cool but I will say this is pretty close to the exact _opposite_ kind of experience you want to do in VR. Random acceleration, particularly without having a fixed frame of reference (like a vehicle) will result in barf-city for all but the steeliest of stomachs. So fair warning :)

</comment><comment><USER5> I wonder how they are rendering the text in WebGL like that, I couldn't figure out if they were using the write the text on canvas then extract and image and use that as a sprite / texture. It looks quite a bit smoother and scales better than my attempts using that approach.

<comment><USER6> Chronologically this is how rendering text has been typically tackled:

1\. Rendering billboards from a texture atlas containing all the characters you could possibly emit (similar to your approach). _Zooming results in blurriness_

2\. Turning the characters into a mesh on the CPU using a triangulation algorithm (such a Delaunay[1]) and pushing those straight to the GPU. _Zooming results in straight lines on what should be smooth curves_

3\. Shaders. There are competing techniques but the differences are subtle.[2] _High quality at all zoom levels_

[1]: [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Delaunay_triangulation](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Delaunay_triangulation) [2]: [http://http.developer.nvidia.com/GPUGems3/gpugems3_ch25.html](http://http.developer.nvidia.com/GPUGems3/gpugems3_ch25.html)

<comment><USER5> Wow thank you! This is very useful information, for now I have been going with something similar to approach 1 but have been hitting the blurriness problem you mention when zooming.

The big challenge for me is the amount of text I have to render. It's quite a bit more than just a few health points in a video game, it's heavy duty analytics information from large datasets. I get the impression from working with webgl that it's focus, historically, hasn't been directed at all towards applications like this.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> Cute. That would be fun to load into a roller coaster simulator.[1] Maybe with audio of pronouncements by Alan Greenspan.

[1] [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fWvXJnE0f3Q](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fWvXJnE0f3Q)

</comment><comment><USER8> Visualization nicely done even on mobile.</comment>


Anyone else unable to use fast.com on AT&T U-verse? - <AUTHOR> So fast.com on U-verse has stopped working for me. The site loads but the test fails with "Could not reach our servers to perform the test. You may not be connected to the internet." There are no DNS issues an setting my DNS to 22.214.171.124 does also not solve it. Just to be clear everything else works. Now interesting enough if I VPN into work the test works just fine. Hey AT&T ?????? <comment><USER2> Maybe they don't want you to know how slow their service is.

</comment><comment><USER3> Worked for me as well in MKE area: 21 Mbps

</comment><comment><AUTHOR> Thanks. Still does not work from home. Strangeness.

</comment><comment><USER4> It worked for me just now, 20 Mbps.</comment>


Ask HN: Who were Steve Jobs' mentors? - <AUTHOR>

Most of the stories seem to suggest his brilliance or effectiveness came entirely from within, but I'm interested to know who guided Steve when he had questions. <comment><USER2> The closest he had to a business mentor was probably Mike Markkula who was Apple's angel investor (he also was CEO for a few years).

Not strictly mentors, but two of his biggest influences were Paul Rand (who designed the logos for IBM and NeXT) for graphic design and Dieter Rams (who started the Functionalist School of industrial design) for product design.

<comment><USER3> Donald Norman is presumably in there somewhere as well.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> Perhaps Bill Hewlett when Steve was a kid? He cold called him up when he was 12.

[http://www.hp.com/retiree/history/founders/hewlett/quotes.ht...](http://www.hp.com/retiree/history/founders/hewlett/quotes.html#generosity)

I wonder if Bill mentored Steve later when Steve was at Apple?

</comment><comment><USER5> During his trip to India, Jobs met with Neem Karoli Baba and eventually became Buddhist. He also experimented with LSD. I imagine these experiences, as he specifically states, had a large impact on his life.

</comment><comment><USER6> That is a good question. I hope we can find more information on his biography.</comment>


Silicon Valley's UFO Hunters - <AUTHOR> https://www.vice.com/en_us/article/597ebn/meet-silicon-valleys-ufo-hunters <comment><USER2> talk about a gold mine! what if UFOs could teach us a robust way to eliminate ad fraud?</comment>


Ask HN: Best online programming class for newbies? - <AUTHOR>

My wife has never programmed before but is trying to learn. She's started taking the online CS50X course (https://www.edx.org/course/harvardx/harvardx-cs50x-introduction-computer-1022#.U_10LGSwJuM). I'm not huge fan of it as it isn't how I learned to program, particularly I think C makes learning basic things more complicated than needed. I'm curious what everyones favorite online classes are for people completely new to programming? Needs to be free (or near free), online, and probably self-directed.<p>Also a huge thanks to the people who make online courses available for free. Despite its shortcomings the Harvard CS50X course is infinitely better than what was available when I went to school. <comment><USER2> 'Newbie' covers many experience levels - from afraid to turn the computer on to moving beyond Excel pivot table macros. People need different degrees of handholding.

Not necessarily my favorite, Coursera's _Programming for Everybody_ [1] moves forward very very slowly. Great for some people, drying paint for others. It is taught in Python.

A course I think is great is Coursera's _Introduction to Systematic Program Design_ [2] based on Felleisen's _How to Design Programs_ introductory text. It is possible to register for the last session, from a year ago, and complete the work on your own. It is taught in Racket.

Another course that takes a learn-by-making approach is Coursera's _Creative Programming for Digital Media & Mobile Apps_ [3]. It is beginner friendly and really encourages "getting into it". It is taught in Processing, and in some ways I think Processing is the ideal language for an introductory course in Software Engineering - it is pared down like Racket's student languages, provides just a pinch of Java pain, facilitates the production of really interesting output, and the environment provides a fast edit-compile-run loop.

For a person who is more oriented toward scientific or mathematical problems, Coursera's _R Programming_ [4] might by a good fit.

Among the various Python Courses, I would probably go with Udacity's _Design of Computer Programs: Programming Principles_ [5] because it is taught by Peter Norvig.

All that said, a book may be better than an open-enrollment class for many people, and there's a lot more variation.

[1] [https://www.coursera.org/course/pythonlearn](https://www.coursera.org/course/pythonlearn)

[2] [https://www.coursera.org/course/programdesign](https://www.coursera.org/course/programdesign)

[3] [https://www.coursera.org/course/digitalmedia](https://www.coursera.org/course/digitalmedia)

[4] [https://www.coursera.org/course/rprog](https://www.coursera.org/course/rprog)

[5] [https://www.udacity.com/course/cs212](https://www.udacity.com/course/cs212)

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks! Reminding myself of her feedback I think that pacing might be a significant issue which is something I hadn't considered too much (oddly).

She's someone that has lots of computer experience but the closest she's gotten to programming before is simple Excel functions (think SUM). I think she'll be much more excited by one where she's working on "real world" stuff so I'm leaving a bit towards _Creative Programming for Digital Media & Mobile Apps_ and hope that it spurs her to learn even more.

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> To me, Python is a great language to start with. Check out the following courses: Udacity CS101 "Intro to CS" (it teaches Python from scratch) [https://www.udacity.com/course/cs101](https://www.udacity.com/course/cs101) In parallel with Udacity CS101 , you can advise your spouse to take Python track on Codecademy (it also teaches Python from scratch and it's great when combined with Udacity CS101) [http://www.codecademy.com/en/tracks/python](http://www.codecademy.com/en/tracks/python) After those 2 courses I'd suggest to take a super-short "Programming foundations with Python" course (it teaches Object-Oriented Programming basics) [https://www.udacity.com/course/viewer#!/c-ud036](https://www.udacity.com/course/viewer#!/c-ud036) If these are overwhelming, I'd point to Codecademy's HTML/CSS, jQuery, Make a Website and Make an Interactive Website tracks. After completing these classes one can move on to JavaScript or Python or Ruby classes. To be short, try to stick with Codecademy and Udacity in the beginning. This is the way how I tought myself how to code and landed a job as a Python/Django developer.

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks, I haven't looked at Udacity much so I'll give that look. I like using Python as it's a bit practical.

To clarify her goal isn't to land a job, just to learn a new skill and be able to relate to her coworkers that are doing more coding better.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> I strongly believe starting with C is a good programming foundation. This website offers so many great courses [https://www.coursera.org/courses](https://www.coursera.org/courses) But nothing beats the books for me.

</comment><comment><USER5> I find [http://www.cprogramming.com/](http://www.cprogramming.com/) to be a really thoughtful tutorial.</comment>


Ask HN: What do you use as a log-book / technical diary? - <AUTHOR> I seem to be using a variety of methods for keeping notes on what I'm working on and upcoming tasks.<p>* Paper / pencil<p>* Email<p>* Text documents<p>None seem to be great at capturing ideas for disparate projects. Anyone have a better system? <comment><USER2> Org mode!</comment>


Philadelphia's early-1800s wooden water pipes - <AUTHOR> https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/retropolis/wp/2017/05/06/discovered-philadelphias-high-tech-totally-natural-plumbing-of-1812/ <comment><USER2> I lived in central Philly for a while. Being largely nocturnal, I'd often be out walking in the early morning.

So one morning, I saw someone walking toward me, wearing a stethoscope-like device, with a tube hanging down, almost touching the sidewalk. At first, I thought "crazy person, take care".

But then, I saw a "Philadelphia Water Department" logo. Basically, he was listening for leaks. His partner was one block away, and they talked via radio. So they could triangulate.

</comment><comment><USER3> > A Water Department crew working May 3 on the 900 block of Spruce Street

> sections of 10-foot pine logs

That was disappointing.

<comment><AUTHOR> That's funny. But it took me a full minute to get it.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> Similar to Chicago's clay gas lines from the mid-1800s. Crazy to think that some of that infrastructure is still in place.

<comment><USER5> Stories about wooden water lines come up pretty regularly. In every instance I've read about, they're not in use; they're just still buried, alongside the iron pipes that replaced them long, long ago. That makes sense to me; they would probably lay new iron pipes along the same route, burying them as they went, and only disconnect the wood pipes after the iron pipes were in place. No sense removing the wood as they went.

<comment><USER6> And then we have the leadpipes still in use. Better check if your house has new pipes or still using the lead pipes.

[https://apps.npr.org/find-lead-pipes-in-your- home/en/#pipe-e...](https://apps.npr.org/find-lead-pipes-in-your- home/en/#pipe-explainer)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> Is this why Philadelphians call water "wooder"?

<comment><USER8> I believe the proper spelling is wourder

<comment><USER7> Spoken like a local!

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> Wood pipes apparently have some surprising advantages. For one thing, the wood doesn't rot when it's immersed constantly in fresh water. The pipes don't corrode as easily, and the water doesn't freeze as easily either:

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Piping#History](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Piping#History)

</comment><comment><USER10> The Water Works is still standing, right behind the Philadelphia Art Museum. I wouldn't want to drink from the Schuylkill nowadays though.

<comment><USER11> Agreed. At least you don't want to drink _unfiltered_ Schuylkill water. The Water Works is definitely worth a visit:

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

The bike path along the river goes right past it, and you can ride all the way to Valley Forge almost completely on a bike path free of motorized vehicles. (I am not paid by the city; I just like riding along rivers.)

</comment></comment><comment><USER12> Newport Rhode island has there too, I think some are occasionally found to still be in use.

</comment><comment><USER13> This reminds me when I was roaming around Annapolis, MD, I spotted one of the many markers around the historic downtown, about how utility workers stumbled upon clay pipes when they were servicing underground water pipes.

</comment><comment><USER14> The wooden pipes in Edinburgh were recently removed from George's Square and are on display on the Middle Meadows Walk (though I don't think they were included into Forza Horizen 4)

</comment><comment><USER15> [https://outline.com/G2Kkbz](https://outline.com/G2Kkbz)

</comment><comment><USER16> I appreciate the article and the fact that it is certainly an example of "today's 10,000"[0]. I don't appreciate the title making it sound like this is a new discovery that we used to have wooden water infrastructure. There's a nice little museum in the historical Philadelphia Waterworks building behind the art museum, and there is a lot of material about the original piping of the city.

[0] [https://www.xkcd.com/1053/](https://www.xkcd.com/1053/)

</comment><comment><USER17> In the "meantime", Chinese had bamboo piping systems centuries earlier, and Babylonian ceramic ones as well...

Nice find though.

</comment><comment><USER18> Dear WaPo: 1) No, I will not be subscribing to your podcasts in order to find out if they're worth listening to. 2) The odds are still low because ... in case you didn't notice ... there are many excellent non-subscription podcasts (to mention just one: 'BackStory with the American History Guys' ; [https://audioboom.com/channels/4987698.rss](https://audioboom.com/channels/4987698.rss) ) ... and most of them appreciate you sending them what you think they're worth.

Oh ... and welcome to the 21st century.</comment>


Box of Rocks subscription service - <AUTHOR> http://boxofrocks.com/ <comment><USER2> are they at least polished all the time?</comment>


Spotify Music Streaming Service Comes to US - <AUTHOR> http://www.nytimes.com/2011/07/14/technology/spotify-music-streaming-service-comes-to-us.html

<comment><USER2> I've been seeing so many Euro HN'ers gush about Spotify for so long. So I can't wait to give these guys my money, at least for a month to try it.

</comment><comment><USER3> About damn time. It's annoying trying to login to my account and it gives me a US splash despite having a paid account in sweden :/</comment>


AltCensored Helps Catalog the Videos YouTube Doesn't Want You to See - <AUTHOR> https://reclaimthenet.org/altcensored/ <comment><USER2> nice!

'coronavirus' in search returns 150+ Censored YouTube videos: [https://www.altcensored.com/search/popular?q=coronavirus](https://www.altcensored.com/search/popular?q=coronavirus)

altCensored.com is an Unbiased Community Catalog of 40K+ Limited State YouTube videos, including deleted content: "we show what they hide"</comment>


Mean Street: Crash - The Machines Are in Control Now - <AUTHOR> http://blogs.wsj.com/deals/2010/05/06/mean-street-crash-the-machines-are-in-control-now/

<comment><USER2> I for one welcome our new robot overlords.</comment>


Can anyone recommend a good SEO / SEM company or individual in the bay area? - <AUTHOR>

Hi,
Not sure if this is the right place to ask this but here goes...
I have a client who wants an SEO audit done on their website and on their main competitors sites, their competitors are far ahead in terms of organic search rankings and they want to find out why this is & what they can do in order to reverse the situation or at least catch up.
I'm looking for someone in the bay area that I can meet with for this and hoping someone can recommend or suggest a good contact for this project?
Thanks! <comment><USER2> Happy to chat with you to see if we can help - feel free to reach out directly: email@example.com</comment>


Buddy system - good idea? - <AUTHOR>

So i'm trying to learn how to code and it's fun because I have a live social networking website to play with...but there's so much to learn and I'm overwhelmed and if I mess up, site goes down and I'm always lost on how to fix it. Then I figured, wouldn't it be great if there were some cool tech volunteers who would willing to teach like myself in real-time?  Sort of like, one-on-one tutor...we can share screens...this way when I code, the person can correct my mistakes or I can watch that person code, fix things and see how things get done.<p>Anyhow, do you think something like this could work?  I know there's a push out there to get more people to learn how to code. <comment><USER2> what tech are you programming in?

<comment><AUTHOR> basic lamp stuff.</comment></comment>