Ripple hit by dispute over founders' initial stake in the currency - <AUTHOR> http://www.followthecoin.com/ripple-attack-dogs-descend-resigned-board-member

<comment><AUTHOR> The person who posted the linked legal demand is Jesse Powell, an ex board member of Ripple Labs, who resigned yesterday.

Complicated story. Here's some background.

Ripple is known as a digital currency and currency exchange network, although that's a simplification. Some of its functions are comparable to Bitcoin. [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ripple_%28payment_protocol%29](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ripple_%28payment_protocol%29)

Three founders of Ripple Labs, Jed McCaleb, Chris Larsen and Arthur Britto, gave themselves 20% (20 billion units), of the currency (known as XRP or Ripples) which is used by the Ripple protocol [1]. McCaleb's share was 9 billion XRP. A few days ago, McCaleb unexpectedly announced he will soon start to sell what remains of his share. As 9 billion is more than the total amount of XRP currently in circulation, the price of XRP fell 40%-50% after his announcement, cutting about US$30 million from the total value.

At the price today, the money supply of all XRP in circulation is worth US$28 million. The value would be $370 million if calculated for the total of 100 billion units of XRP that exist.

About Ripple Labs: [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ripple_Labs](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ripple_Labs)

[1] Jed McCaleb's announcement that he is selling: [https://xrptalk.org/topic/2629-selling-my- xrp/](https://xrptalk.org/topic/2629-selling-my-xrp/)

Jed McCaleb on Reddit: [http://reddit.com/user/Swamp12](http://reddit.com/user/Swamp12)

Jesse Powell on Reddit: [http://reddit.com/user/jespow](http://reddit.com/user/jespow)

</comment><comment><USER2> The folly of premined cryptocurrencies is a well explored and established fact in the realm of altcoins. Somehow ripple thought they where immune.

<comment><AUTHOR> >The folly of premined cryptocurrencies is a well explored and established fact in the realm of altcoins.

I don't know if the folly of premining was established before, but it is now. Ripple will be an example to anyone who says this can't happen because nobody would depress the value of their own stake like McCaleb has done.

In the long run, it's good for Ripple that these large amounts of money will no longer be in one set of hands, if it survives, but it's not good for anyone who hoped to make a quick profit from owning XRP.

Bitcoin also has an issue with a large quantity of coins held by the developer.</comment></comment>


Ask HN: Way to delete fb and minimize leftover info - <AUTHOR> Hey guys,
I haven't logged in to facebook in about a year now, and it's been over 4 years since I used it in any meaningful capacity. I'm sure that facebook will maintain some kind of shadow profile of me, since it's aware of my existence, and will do so even after I quit the platform, but I figure that there are technical barriers to maintaining these shadow accounts (I imagine that they don't store the entire edited comment history of all posts etc)
So I was wondering what types of steps should I take before I delete facebook. Is there a convenient way to overwrite all my posts and remove all my likes etc? Any way to overwrite the photos I've uploaded (only about 6 or 7), and delink myself from all the photos I've been tagged in etc (assume it's automatic after account deletion)
Sorry I don't have a clearer query, I haven't used it in so long that I don't even know everything I want to have removed about me, but I'm trying to delete myself as best as possible.
Thanks in advance! <comment><USER2> There's a script to delete all wall posts one-by-one [https://github.com/weskerfoot/DeleteFB](https://github.com/weskerfoot/DeleteFB) (discussed in [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=19963599](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=19963599))

<comment><AUTHOR> Thank you, I'll be sure to use it before deleting.

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> A bit of a piggy back here but maybe OP can use, can't you change all the information first then wait a period of time and then delete it. That way any caches aren't accurate , up to a certain point?

</comment><comment><USER4> Are you in the EU? Not saying Shitbook respects the GDPR but it's still better than nothing.

<comment><AUTHOR> I'm in the US :'(</comment></comment>


Moral Cruelty and the Left - <AUTHOR> https://www.tabletmag.com/sections/arts-letters/articles/judith-shklar-politics-of-fear <comment><USER2> I wasn't familiar with Judith Shklar before reading this article, but her insights seem both timely and worthy of further consideration.</comment>


Venture capital investing in email newsletters - <AUTHOR> https://www.theatlantic.com/technology/archive/2019/10/substack-revue-email-newsletter-startups-tinyletter/599557/ <comment><USER2> Seems to revive the 'receiving a physical thing' feel like magazines. why not?</comment>


The Night Watch [pdf] - <AUTHOR> https://www.usenix.org/system/files/1311_05-08_mickens.pdf <comment><USER2> James Mickens is very funny :)

He had some really cool posts at Microsoft Research, which have sadly been deleted (originally for Usenix magazine too).

[https://web.archive.org/web/20150208050249/http://research.m...](https://web.archive.org/web/20150208050249/http://research.microsoft.com/en- us/people/mickens)

(see the bottom for the link to the good stuff)

Funny stuff:

[https://web.archive.org/web/20150714155945/http://research.m...](https://web.archive.org/web/20150714155945/http://research.microsoft.com/en- us/people/mickens/nestofhornets.pdf)

[https://web.archive.org/web/20150706121547/http://research.m...](https://web.archive.org/web/20150706121547/http://research.microsoft.com/en- us/people/mickens/theslowwinter.pdf)

</comment><comment><USER3> Makes ya think, don't it?</comment>


Analyzing ACTA: The Copyright Tail Wagging the Internet Dog - <AUTHOR> http://volokh.com/2010/03/26/outrageous-treaty-nonsense-or-the-copyright-tail-wagging-the-internet-dog/

<comment><USER2> I am so glad we have a black president, because now everyone suddenly remembered there is a constitution which actually limits the presidents' power.</comment>


Redfoo from LMFAO helping with our launch. He's streaming Tinder live - <AUTHOR> https://www.kamcord.com/live/redfoo <comment> cat-dev-null Tinder + "Periscope" \+ live chat + booze = ROTFLMFAO</comment>


'Rhythmical Essays on the Beard Question': Beard Haters in the 1860s - <AUTHOR> https://dralun.wordpress.com/2015/01/08/rhythmical-essays-on-the-beard-question-beard-haters-in-the-1860s/

<comment><USER2> Original writing, for those who aren't interested in a book report version:

[https://archive.org/details/rhythmicalessay00cartgoog](https://archive.org/details/rhythmicalessay00cartgoog)

</comment><comment><USER3> Notes about the poll midway through the article:

\- If you are single and beardless you cannot answer that you like beards. It sounds like the poll was designed only with male respondents in mind.

\- If you are male in a gay relationship, more than one option may apply to you (eg. "Yes, I've got a beard myself" and "My partner has one and I like it"). The poll considers all the answers are mutually exclusive.</comment>


What do you think of Indian Government's decision to demonetize 500, 1000 notes? - <AUTHOR> https://www.quora.com/What-do-you-think-of-the-decision-by-the-Indian-Government-to-demonetize-%E2%82%B9500-and-%E2%82%B91000-notes/answer/Pallav-Kaushish?srid=hKgI&share=c09f8eb0 <comment><USER3> I think it's brilliant.

Re-register your money _NOW_ (or within 50 days) or it's worthless.

It's probably one of the most ballsy brilliant plans in any modern economy pulled off.

The short turnover term makes sure that you can't really transform that money into gold or bitcoin or whatever, because who the hell is going to take the fall

<comment><USER4> There will be an exchange rate. People who can safely deposit old money into their bank account have a new way to make a profit.

So the question is, what will the exchange rate be?

<comment><USER5> depends how close you get to the cut off, I imagine it would be something like bitcoinbuilder where people traded their mtgoxBTC for real BTC at an ever reducing rate until it was obvious that there was no BTC left in MtGox.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> Good things happening to India.

They just pushed a reset switch on the parallel economy. But its not something that won't grow up again. This step was necessary. After this, they will have to bring down taxes for effectively preventing a parallel economy. And sometime in the future, something like a max-100Rs note will push users to use digital payments everywhere.

I think this is a safe experiment towards removing high-value currency notes. Won't be surprised if 2000 notes are recalled after some time and those might have been introduced just for convenience.

Its also a veiled attack on political parties, including his own (and they can't even complain)

<comment><USER7> > Won't be surprised if 2000 notes are recalled after some time and those > might have been introduced just for convenience.

Maybe even bait (no note between 500 and 2000) for new black money, that you can cut again some time later.

</comment></comment><comment><USER8> Even government establishments in India like bus/train transport love cash. They do NOT accept any other form of payment (including credit card) when you're booking a ticket over the counter. So many people who were traveling were caught by surprise when they were told that the money that they have cannot be accepted.

This move is going to hurt the labor class the most. A significant percentage of those don't have bank accounts, and I'm not sure how convenient would it be for them to exchange the _illegal_ currency.

A majority of the those having tons of black money already stash it in safe havens abroad. A lot _invest_ it in real estate.

The suggested reason for the move is not at all convincing and the method isn't well-thought out either.

<comment><USER9> I have many Chartered Accountant friends and the sheer number of their clients (with black money) who have their asses on fire right now suggests a very different picture then the one you have.

As for the labor class, I just bought vegetables from poor vendors/farmers and they were all praising this step, even the illiterate understand how this is good for them in the long run.

</comment></comment><comment><USER10> I do business in India and travel there every month. The people I deal with are uniformly panning this as an anti-people move, specially for the hundreds of millions (yes, there are that many) unbanked citizens. Most people use cash for daily transactions. Banks and ATMs are closed today, and possibly tomorrow. This move was managed disastrously according to every single Indian I spoke with today.

<comment><USER11> I live in India. Talked to lot of friends and every single one lauded the move. Of course it is a bit inconvenient, but everyone are ready to sacrifice it in long term. But I live in a city. It would be a bit more inconvenient in villages. But I am sure they will adjust as everyone are used to giving and taking credits in smaller villages.

But the mood might not be very bright in business communities(And there is chance you talked to them).

Remember in India only 3% of the population pay taxes (Yea 3%, really shocking. Many small and medium businesses don't file tax. This move will ultimately make them move cash into the bank and could later bring them into tax bracket.

Edit: reference for % population paying taxes [http://bit.ly/2fDR7by](http://bit.ly/2fDR7by)

</comment></comment><comment><USER12> Can someone explain the terms "black money" and "white money" in this context?

<comment><USER13> Black money is money that has been obtained illegally but not yet laundered. If you're caught with a lot of money and don't have a good reason why you have it, well the authorities are presumably going to start looking for a bad reason why you have it.

<comment><USER14> This statement is far too strong. Obtained illegally - sure. But keep in mind that 99.99% of such money would be money paid for goods or services fair and square - just not taxed.

It is quite customary in Europe, and frankly everywhere on the planet, for tradesmen, shopkeepers, ... to not register 100% of their receipts as income. That way they can increase their income by not paying tax on a decent part of it. Keep in mind that these people would have highly variable incomes, would have unpaid invoices, ... all sorts of things that can't really be checked.

It's not like we're talking bribery and drugs money here. Of course that's exactly what the government would like you to think. In practice the purpose of this is to give the government greater and more direct control over the economy.

Europe has done the same [1], for ostensibly the same reason, but fact of the matter is that it's being done to prevent people from avoiding the extra tax the ECB wants to create : negative interest rates [2]. Right now Europeans can keep money outside of the banking system in large quantities if they so desire. Killing the large notes takes this right away, not by law, but in practice.

The problems are twofold. Firstly are practical problems. Eliminating cash, either totally or simply for larger transactions introduces costs (for small time merchants, 3-5% would be typical in Europe), clearing risks (just because a bank transfer happens or is confirmed does not mean the bank can't take the money back, most merchants would treat this as an extra 2-20% cost depending on the business they're in), extraneous risks (bank accounts can be blocked by various means, the banks themselves, the IRS, or simple stupidity ... without regard to how it affects their owners. You can lose access to any bank account and you have little immediate recourse). And of course, governments don't want to help anyone out with these problems, they're merely interested in imposing themselves as having total control over all money, not just their own.

Secondly the moral issue, or the slippery slope if you wish. Do we want to give governments this power ? Do you want governments to be able to prove, for instance, that you gamble online (can it be used in divorce cases to prove you can't be trusted with money, for instance ?), or that you watch porn, or have weird hotel bookings, or ... Do we want the IRS to simply have the power to do a big data search for anyone having transactions of 3x their monthly income or more and block them ? Because that's the power that's being handed to them by these sorts of measures. They will use this power, even if probably not right now.

There's related issues. Does the central bank have the power to do this ? In practice it does, but why isn't this being discussed in parliament and publicly debated ?

[1] [http://www.nytimes.com/2016/05/05/business/international/ecb...](http://www.nytimes.com/2016/05/05/business/international/ecb- to-remove-500-bill-the-bin-laden-bank-note-criminals.html) [2] [https://www.sovereignman.com/trends/it-finally- happened-500-...](https://www.sovereignman.com/trends/it-finally- happened-500-euro-notes-will-no-longer-be-produced-19199/)

<comment><USER15> >It is quite customary in Europe

Except northern Europe (although not Belgium). But yeah, it's pretty common.

>fact of the matter is that it's being done to prevent people from avoiding the extra tax the ECB wants to create : negative interest rates [2].

You can avoid that tax by keeping your money in anything but money - which is what the ECB wants. Just buy an index fund. That's what you should do anyway.

<comment><USER14> > You can avoid that tax by keeping your money in anything but money - <USER2> > is what the ECB wants. Just buy an index fund. That's what you should do > anyway.

Whichever way you do that, it involves extra risk. Central banks/governments forcing people to take more risk ... well let's put it this way ... we all know what comes next.

2 reasons. Firstly there's a reason they're doing this, so there's already a problem. By definition that would be a problem that puts asset prices at risk. So it means that risks on most assets are higher than generally believed (because the government is pushing the measure of that risk - interest rates - forcibly down, you are bound to underestimate risk as a result). What if the reason behind some of those risks surfaces ?

One of the things the government is doing here is forcing the banks/funds/... to take comparatively massive risks with your pension. The results are already surfacing, but they're getting worse - fast. And the government will have to bail these out, as not doing that will kill the livelihood of tens of millions of people, which will not come without huge consequences.

Second reason is, that even if there's not already a disastrous problem, this takes the capital preservation + profit motive away from markets and (partially) replaces it with pleasing the government/central banks. Central control has always failed, and this next attempt will be no different. The nail factory in Soviet Russia story seems apt here, and is obviously a massive oversimplification, but the basic problem is there.

<comment><USER16> Not all risk is equal, and there can be no implied right to risk-free preservation of capital.

What the banks would like people to do is invest in productive capacity and consumer goods; this feeds the "virtuous circle" of employment and economic growth. Investing in businesses would have a normal, uncorrelated risk profile.

What I think people are struggling with is the prospect of big, correlated, exogenous risks like global warming and the collapse of global trade into protectionism. If that kind of thing happens the total amount of value in the economy goes down - so who bears that risk? Do we try to distribute it equally, or put it all on governments which may not be able to bear that kind of systemic collapse? Or do we let the capital-holding class protect themselves while real wages collapse and the risk falls on those least able to bear it?

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER17> I'm a bit worried about the small-time merchants and dealers. They don't have enough money to pay the worker force or buy new stock of goods. I have a lot of friends who do manual labor in construction field, they usually receive a 500 rupee note at the end of the day, most of their bosses have ran out of 'cash in hand', they have bank balance, but they cannot withdraw it. Lets hope that won't deeply effect the economy...... "You Should (Almost) Never Rewrite Your Software"

<comment><AUTHOR> This would not affect the small merchants and dealers because they usually don't have excess money lying around. These are people who are making a small profit from their small business.

Under the rule, anyone who is paying their taxes and have done things legally, have nothing to worry about. They can submit all the 500, 1000 rupee bills directly in their account (no limit), if they've paid taxes on it. If they haven't paid taxes on it, they will be taxed in the current financial year but then government will also have the liberty to ask the source of your income which can land you in trouble if you're unable to show a legit source.

<comment><USER17> This would not affect the small merchants and dealers => I slightly disagree with you, I believe this is going to affect retail market, small time merchants, food and construction industry, at least for the next few weeks.

<comment><AUTHOR> It will affect only because there wouldn't be enough new bills in the hands of people to spend. Once the sufficient amount of new bills are circulated in the market, it will all be back to normal. But there won't be any long term affect.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER18> The Euro zone is also thinking about abolishing the 500 Euro bills to make dealing with "black money" a bit harder.

I just don't really see that it would have such big impact. Sure, 500 E in 100 euro bills takes up 5 times more space (thickness is the same), which makes it harder to transport and easier to find. But still.

Just for the sake of curiosity, the height of 1 Million Euros:

100 Euro notes = 1 meter

500 Euro notes = 20 cm

(Dimensions are 147 * 82 * 1 vs 160 * 82 * 1 mm, so not that much difference)

I'm just not sure if that would actually have a meaningful impact.

</comment><comment><USER19> Can definitely imagine some other governments watching very closely.

<comment><USER20> Aren't most of Colombian druglords' money stored as $100 bills?

</comment></comment><comment><USER21> It has been fairly problematic. Cash withdrawals are extremely limited (and will continue to be for a few weeks), making paying people who don't have bank accounts difficult.

There have been quite a few exceptions that have come in a little late, such as making all tolls free (toll gates started refusing to give change) and allowing the usage of the old bills on public transportation, at hospitals, at fuel stations, etc.

</comment><comment><USER22> All it did is fuck up the ordinary people's life. Don't you think those that has serious amount of money, keeps dollars, euro and gold ?? Hello Also this was very much like a dictatorship like move!!

</comment><comment><USER23> Black money aside, there's going to be a lot of legitimately-held larger bills that will need to be swapped for the smaller ones. Do those 100 Rs bills even physically exist?

<comment><USER24> Banks will only exchange a max of 4000 rupees in physical bills. Anything more will be credited to your bank account. ATM's also have withdrawl limits for the next few months. Any large sized transactions have to be done electronically.

</comment></comment><comment><USER25> It is a smart move to shake up the hoarding of cash and pump it into the economy.

The big issue is the implementation. Are they going to be able to fully carry out the plan?

<comment><USER3> Remember. This is india. They can produce 200.000 hot lunches and daily deliver them to the doorsteps of the workers by train and bicycle in rush hour.

<comment><USER26> And in government projects we are able to embezzle more than 50% of the funds. Never underestimate the ingenuity of the corrupt.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER27> Good thoughtful move. Indian Govt should follow it up by legalising betting next. It is the right time to do it.

</comment><comment><USER28> I am not opinionized.

</comment><comment> wav-part Too much chaos for nothing. New Rs 500 and Rs 2000 will be introduced. Off the book transcations will resume as usual.

I find Modi giving terrorism as one of excuses, very disingenuous.

<comment><USER29> The new notes have tracking chips in them, do they not?

<comment><USER26> Na, that's a dumb whatsapp hoax. Makes no sense to have an entire computing device with battery in a bank note.

<comment><USER30> RFID tags don't need a battery.

<comment><USER31> If you want to do any serious "tracking" with them (the rumours I've read talked about them having GPS and being widely traceable), then yes they do. Passive RFID that fits in a bank note might be readable for a tens of meters at the very most, and is trivially shielded by putting it in a metal box.

They might put RFID in them, but it won't be the "tracking chip" people imagine.</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment>


Root DNS Zone Now DNSSEC Signed - <AUTHOR> http://www.isc.org/press-release/isc-praises-momentous-step-forward-securing-domain-name-system <comment><USER2> Did you know that DNSSEC isn't designed to protect the DNS queries your laptop generates? Your laptop uses a "stub resolver" to talk to a real DNS cache, and there is _another_ protocol that nobody will ever use that's intended to protect that traffic.

Did you know that they designed DNSSEC in a way that makes it difficult to not dump all your hostnames to the public, 'host -l' style? In order to provide a non-repudiable "no such host" message, they made DNS zones walkable. When people freaked out about that (justifiably so!), they modified the protocol so that names are hashed, password-file-style --- and are password-file-style crackable.

Did you know that because almost every piece of software that does name lookups uses "gethostbyname()", which provides no error channel, DNSSEC can't even give you a scary popup when a key expires or something is misconfigured? That unlike SSL --- which causes millions of such popups every day --- DNSSEC basically implies that either everything's configured 100% perfect or... that host doesn't exist?

Did you know that SSL/HTTPS in no way relies on a secure DNS today? That all that certificate signature stuff that people complain about boils down to a system designed to work even if the DNS is totally hostile and owned by attackers? And that the system has been attacked and refined and basically solid for something like 15 years?

Did you check out Dan Bernstein's presentation about using DNSSEC as a denial- of-service amplifier? I leave it as an exercise for you to find out how many megabytes of traffic you can get DNS servers to hurl at Twitter in response to just a few packets of your own.

DNSSEC is a debacle. It's been scrapped and redesigned (I believe) three times now, from the days in the 90s when it was a government project to the "whitelies" and "NSEC3" scramble that happened just a few years ago when they tried to deploy the "everyone gets a list of everyone else's hosts" design.

What's worse, we don't need it. DNS has been insecure for over 15 years, and DNS is not a primary attack vector on the Internet. When DNS is part of a malware attack, more often than not it's because the malware has reconfigured the victim host, which DNSSEC can't do anything about.

What's worse than that is that the bit we really could stand to address --- the insecure connections between end user computers and DNS servers --- could have been secured at far less cost and drama than the cache-to-authority problem the DNSSEC group bit off. But wasn't.

There seems to be some momentum behind finally getting DNSSEC deployed. I think it's actually bad for the Internet; that it will cause reliability problems, create a huge amount of work for server admins, not solve any real- world security problem, and create a false sense of security. But be that as it may, it appears to be coming.

Just make sure nobody gets your credit card for any kind of DNSSEC-y service. That's, I guess, my advice.

<comment><USER3> I agree with you at most points, just two things:

a) SSL is worth jack shit. It only tells me that some person paid some obscenely large sum of money to some company so that my address bar glows in green. CAs do a very bad job at verifying their customers. There have been valid certificates at pishing sites and valid certificates with fake data.

DNSSEC wont't fix that. But it will guarantee that when I type bankofamerica.com in my browser, I will land at bankofamerica.com, even if someone tries to hijack me.

b) We do need DNSSEC. Please go and watch Dan Kaminsky's talk about the ramifications of the DNS bug he publicized. Everything in the end falls back to DNS. Want a SSL cert? You will receive it per mail. Guess how the CAs mail server will find your company's mail server...

c) Please don't start with "secure the connection" instead of "secure the data". Even if I know that the line between my computer and my DNS server is secure, I can't trust my DNS server.

<comment><USER4> _a) SSL is worth jack shit. It only tells me that some person paid some obscenely large sum of money to some company so that my address bar glows in green. CAs do a very bad job at verifying their customers. There have been valid certificates at pishing sites and valid certificates with fake data._

I agree here, except I think you meant to say that SSL _certs_ are worth jack. And that's entirely true, as far as I know. SSL the protocol is probably more or less ok.

I disagree with you in that I don't trust the competence of the designers of DNSSEC. We may need something similar, but I doubt that DNSSEC as it exists today is it.

<comment><USER2> Anybody who tells you that "SSL the protocol is fine, just ignore the signatures" isn't qualified to have an opinion about the relative security of crypto protocols. Without certificates, SSL offers no security.

<comment><USER4> Sigh. Go reread, but here's a hint: the main problem with SSL certs is not their technical implementation.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><AUTHOR> See also:

<http://data.iana.org/root-anchors/>

[http://arstechnica.com/security/news/2010/07/dns-root- zone-f...](http://arstechnica.com/security/news/2010/07/dns-root-zone-finally- signed-but-security-battle-not-over.ars)

<http://www.root-dnssec.org/>

</comment><comment><USER5> I'm going to continue ignoring DNSSEC until I see it affect clients in a meaningful way. Until then I think there is other things my users would prefer I spent my time on.

<comment><USER6> The entire point of this story is that until this week your clients couldn't have used it even if they wanted to and _that_ _changed_.

I'm not saying you have to go running off and caring about DNSSEC now, but the kneejerk "omg it's not deployed" argument really isn't helpful or insightful attached to a story about how it just finished getting deployed for real on the roots finally after years of waiting.

<comment><USER5> Your reading of my post as "omg it's not deployed" is an unwarranted exaggeration. I merely stated that for me, someone who maintains a from the wire-up DNS implementation, this baby-step doesn't change anything practical — which is something you've agreed with.

EDIT:

It goes without saying but I'll state it anyway, this cascade of down-votes is not the reaction I'd expect for making what I consider to be a pretty innocuous comment about something that potentially affects the priorities of my startup.

<comment><USER6>
      It goes without saying but I'll state it anyway, this
      cascade of down-votes is not the reaction I'd expect for
      making what I consider to be a pretty innocuous comment
      about something that potentially affects the priorities of
      my startup

It's probably a reaction to your advocacy for ignorance at the expense of a story marking an important milestone in DNS's capabilities.

If you insist on not caring, do so quietly. Some people around here are trying to fix things, or break them, which hopefully will result in better systems. In any case, you appear to be doing neither.

(As a side note, your assertion that I agree that this doesn't change anything practical is false, as of yesterday people can resolve domains over DNSSEC, that wasn't true last week. I consider this a practical change. I'm not a big fan of DNSSEC as a protocol, but this is a big deal(tm).)

<comment><USER5> _as of yesterday people can resolve domains over DNSSEC_

People can resolve the root over DNSSEC. This is a milestone, but it's one to be followed by many, many more before it affects clients.

<comment><USER6> No, some TLDs have already signed their zones. Some people are able to use DNSSEC _today_.

isc.org appears to be using it already, for instance.

Edit:

      $ whois isc.org | grep DNSSEC
      DNSSEC:Signed

<comment><USER5> Regarding TLDs, you're again intimating that I have said something that I have not said.

I do not dispute that some people are able to use DNSSEC and this does not belie my original comment.

<comment><USER6> Last week: No one could use DNSSEC. No one did. No one was affected.

Today: Many people _can_ use DNSSEC. Some actually are. Some clients are affected. (Just obviously not yours, since you remain completely uncaring about the subject.)

I don't see how it could be any clearer.

<comment><USER5> Your assessment of what constitutes "many people" and mine clearly differs.

You are quite right that my clients are unaffected. I like most of the world run a mix of Windows and OS X which like the software that runs on top of them, are not DNSSEC aware (with few exceptions).

Clearly I do care about the subject and I'm not sure why you keep stating that I do not. There is a difference between ignoring a technology until it's useful and ignoring it full-stop.

EDIT: Edited for brevity.</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment>


Baby Boomers Ruined Everything - <AUTHOR> https://www.theatlantic.com/ideas/archive/2019/06/boomers-are-blame-aging-america/592336/ <comment><USER2> This is just as bad as all of the "millennial's ruined everything" headlines we see frequently - and playing the blame game with our societal issues is simply counter-productive.

The author even squeezes the following line in at the end, contradicting the headline:

> _Not all of these problems were first caused by the Boomers, but they each > worsened on their watch._

I would love to see less finger pointing and more solution brainstorming. It seems like the "us vs. them" attitude which dominates politics is leaking into every other aspect of life. It's rather disheartening.</comment>


Facebook's New Plan: Help Banks Figure Out How Poor You Are to Deny You Loans - <AUTHOR> http://mic.com/articles/123452/facebook-to-let-banks-discriminate-based-on-friends-credit-score <comment><USER2> "The use of social network contacts as a basis for establishing credit worthiness is questionable; just because some of my friends have bad credit scores doesn't mean I do."

I'd wager that if you're friends have bad credit scores it is more likely that you will have a bad credit score. Does the author seriously think that Facebook / banks will assume that someone has a low credit score because they went to school with somebody who has a low credit score?

If you are statistically more likely to default on a loan you can't reasonably expect not to pay a higher interest rate.

</comment><comment><AUTHOR> OK so it's not new, it seems. Here's Venturebeat. [http://venturebeat.com/2015/08/04/facebook-patents- technolog...](http://venturebeat.com/2015/08/04/facebook-patents-technology- to-help-lenders-discriminate-against-borrowers-based-on-social-connections/)

</comment><comment><USER3> In some ways this looks more and more like sesame credit in China.

We could say that this is another reason to get off Facebook, but realistically we'll just get used to it and continue using the service.</comment>


Good riddance to the Java plugin - <AUTHOR> http://www.theage.com.au/it-pro/security-it/good-riddance-to-the-java-plugin-20160202-gmk4p4.html <comment><USER2> As a system administrator, my job becomes drastically easier when Java browser plugins are no longer a thing.</comment>


Ask HN: Where can I find HTML5/CSS website templates - <AUTHOR> Where can I find decent looking website templates (either paid or free)?<p>A good example of what I'm looking for would be HTML5 UP (https://html5up.net/) which has a number of templates that are responsive and very well designed. <comment><USER2> themeforest.com</comment>


Add a hackers.txt to your projects - <AUTHOR> http://davejustice.com/2014/08/17/hackers-dot-txt/

<comment><USER2> Neat. Looks like it outputs something similar to what I had started with this[0] project. I had the idea while sitting in a meeting one day, and played with it for an evening, and the morning after... Never really followed up and finished it yet, though.

[0] [https://github.com/shortstuffsushi/WhatDidIDo](https://github.com/shortstuffsushi/WhatDidIDo)

<comment><AUTHOR> This is pretty cool, It would be nice if github provided all of that data in their graphs tab

<comment><USER2> Yeah, it would be cool to see. As I mentioned in the readme, it's not necessarily indicative of anything -- if someone started a new iOS project, 95% of their code ownership would be of template/project setup code, so it'd be hard for anyone else to see how much they've actually contributed. That's why I added filters, though.</comment></comment></comment>


Kindle Scout - <AUTHOR> https://kindlescout.amazon.com/submit <comment><USER2> "we will have the exclusive, worldwide rights to publish your book in digital and audio formats in all languages for a 5-year renewable term"

Note the word "exclusive". You basically can't sell your book anywhere else unless Amazon ends the contract. Maybe in 5 years.

I would run far, far away from this.</comment>


TypeScript 4.0 - <AUTHOR> https://devblogs.microsoft.com/typescript/announcing-typescript-4-0/ <comment><USER2> TypeScript versioning is a joke on Semver that Daniel and team love to play. They go from 3.9 to 4.0 because as you all know 3.10 would be impossible!

Every version of TypeScript is potentially a breaking change so if they wanted to be pure Semvers we would've been at TypeScript version 100 or more which could make people feel overwhelmed about being behind with their current version.

As always a great release! Congratulations to the team! We love TypeScript at my team.

I've never seen someone who wants to go back from TypeScript to plain JavaScript. Design decisions made about structural comparison and not much focus on correctness made TypeScript an easy forgiving type system that hold developer's hand without being a pain in the bottom. The way TypeScript interacted with the community and received feedback also helped its success.

<comment><USER3> You know, software projects are under no obligation to follow semver. I abhor this newfound conformism in tech.

Plus, after nearly a decade of programming I can safely say the benefits of semantic versioning rarely materialize. 99% of the time you just upgrade to whatever latest is, major or not, and deal with it. For all I care they could be releasing Typescript v736.8B

<comment><USER4> The difference is that I can update all dependencies without having to verify whether they contain breaking changes, because I can just look at the number.

Conformism helps us think less. Imagine if every website had their own way of scrolling or logging in. Press T to login. Triple click here.

Semver helps me update 10 dependencies in 5 seconds without opening any release notes.

Developers are under no obligations, but one should not go out of their way to make others' lives harder. Just use semver.

<comment><USER5> If you're updating 10 dependencies in 5 seconds without really following along closely what exactly you're updating and why, maybe don't do that.

<comment><USER6> Not exactly 10 dependencies, but I do that many times by using version ranges like ^1.0.0. So to answer your question: What you are updating and why... mostly patch and minor versions that include vulnerability and performance fixes. And I read release notes... but the number gives me a good idea what to read in more detail.

Now the problem of TS not following the convention is that many projects have ranges like ^3.7.1 in their package.json without knowing that a simple install removing package-lock may break your build because 3.8 and 3.9 have breaking changes in it.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> I'm disappointed that it still doesn't incorporate a tool for one common case, runtime type checking. Node.js REST servers receive a lot of JSON objects and it would be nice to automatically check that they actually follow type.

There are several aftermarket add-ons (io-ts, runtypes, class-validator) but they all seem to impose extra steps or rewriting code -- and different projects will use different ones. It seems like it should be something they can build into the language. I'd rather have one good standard than a dozen alternatives. (Can you guess I come from a Java background?)

<comment><USER8> That is outside of the scope of TypeScript, which is to be a statically typed superset of JavaScript with no runtime cost.

It's easy enough to write a runtime type checking library; I wrote a tiny one that I use in basically all my projects: [https://npmjs.com/package/narrows](https://npmjs.com/package/narrows)

<comment><USER4> With your library one has to write types twice.

I understand that it's not TypeScript's job at the moment, but it'd be great to enable runtime checks with the flick of a switch without typing extra code.

        function upper(s: string) {
          return s.toUpperCase();
        }

This function could have a nice implicit TypeError instead of "undefined is not a function"

<comment><USER8> I'm not sure what you mean. My library has a `TypeOf` type that lets you extract static type information from validation functions. And calling `toUpperCase` on undefined _already_ results in a TypeError.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> As a new developer, typescript is awesome for me. When developing for web, there seems to be all sorts of "types" that I don't get know or fully understand. By forcing types, I can be sure the data I am passing is what I want.

<comment><USER10> As a developer of many years, TypeScript is awesome for me ;)

It helps all of us so much! Thank you TypeScript team :D

</comment></comment><comment><USER11> I've been using reasonml lately and absolutely love it, I've been coding a non trivial application, and there is essentially no type annotations (which makes refactoring very easy). So I find it super weird when I read typescript code because there are complexe type annotations with nested generics all over the place.

Is it just that typescript needs these annotations whereas ocaml does not ? Or it's just best practices that recommend still using them explicitly ?

</comment><comment><USER12> Typescript's versions are just weird. I still don't get why they don't always increase major versions if it's a breaking change. Who cares if it's typescript 40 or typescript 4.0. You don't need to be a special flake. It's an interface that lets you know when TS upgrades are safe and when they'll break your code. Sure most TS versions tighten the type system but there's no harm in having version 9000.

In the world of rust, cargo does a smart thing unlike npm I.e "Avoiding Combinatorial explosion of dependencies. Cargo pulls back on npm's model a bit: it will unify dependencies up to semver compatibility"

If typescript were a rust package, it would break that assumption really bad.

Please follow semver like the rest of the npm ecosystem.

</comment><comment><USER13> TypeScript 4.0

React 17

TypeGraphQL 1.0.0

GraphQL-Modules 1.0.0

StoryBook 6

Webpack 5

Next 9.5

It's been an awesome month for TS/GraphQL (stable) releases

<comment><USER14> I missed Webpack 5 — going to look at it over the weekend! What are the headline updates?

<comment><USER13> Well technically still on beta.

My main favourite is topLevelAwait experiment</comment></comment></comment>


Linus Torvalds' Advice on Working from Home During Coronavirus Lockdown - <AUTHOR> https://itsfoss.com/torvalds-remote-work-advice/ <comment><USER2>
      > Developers: Thanks Linus, very helpful and great advice!

      > Everyone else: Who?

Remote working has always been ingrained in the development of the Linux kernel which is brilliant. The 'advice' here however seems like it favours an audience that is unsurprisingly for developers who ideally contribute to open- source projects or whatnot rather than those who are new to remote working. So the title should append: '...for developers'.

> Or, as Linus recommends, it's best to have email lists to keep things on > point and that's how Linux kernel runs.

Email-lists maybe perfect for the Linux Kernel, but for everyone else who isn't a developer in other large companies, startups and mostly general users, they choose Slack or Microsoft Teams first for back and forth instant communication and email comes last or second last for serious company-wide announcements. Email is still used, but its not a first-choice for instant communication with teams of both non-developers, so that advice falls short here.

I agree with flexibility which is great for jobs that can do remote working and is a failsafe alternative when times like this happen. When it comes to communication, I'd pretty much choose the optimal first-party tools that get the job done quickly and 'just work', like Zoom, Slack, Github and macOS rather than have to spend hours googling around a special konami code to fix unnecessary issues that happen only on my machine due to installing an open- source unofficial client I preferred to use on my Linux laptop.</comment>


Ask HN: Did you replace your supermicro motherboards? - <AUTHOR> Ordered a supermicro server a week before the Bloomberg piece.
I don't reallllly want to replace it because the risk seems so small... but will probably end up doing so.
Did you guys replace your supermicro motherboards?
Who else makes good server mobos? <comment><USER2> None of the claims in Bloomberg's recent series on Super Micro have been confirmed and many doubts have been raised about the quality of the reporting[3], including by Bloomberg's own sources[2][3]. The affected parties have all issued strong denials, including to Congress[4], and figures from US intelligence agencies, where Bloomberg's anonymous sources allegedly worked, have cast doubt on the story as well[5].

That said, supply chain attacks have always been an issue and it's entirely possible that Super Micro has been a victim at some point. However, this will also be true of virtually any other supplier.

[1] [https://twitter.com/marcan42/status/1049687546945392640](https://twitter.com/marcan42/status/1049687546945392640)

[2] [https://twitter.com/riskybusiness/status/1049429881031819264](https://twitter.com/riskybusiness/status/1049429881031819264)

[3] [https://www.servethehome.com/yossi-appleboum-disagrees- bloom...](https://www.servethehome.com/yossi-appleboum-disagrees-bloomberg-is- positioning-his-research-against-supermicro/)

[4] [https://techcrunch.com/2018/10/08/apple-rebuff-bloomberg- let...](https://techcrunch.com/2018/10/08/apple-rebuff-bloomberg-letter- congress/)

[5] [https://www.businessinsider.com/security-community- voicing-i...](https://www.businessinsider.com/security-community-voicing- increasing-doubts-about-bombshell-bloomberg-chinese-chip-hacking-2018-10)

</comment><comment><USER3> I believe there is some source of truth to the Bloomberg article but it seems like its maybe not that factual.

I wouldn't worry, I think the hardware attack described was pretty specific to that hardware. I am assuming that different super micro hardware would require a different hardware attack.

If china can get into the super micro supply chain they can probably just nip down the road and do the same thing for hynx or asus or whoever. So even if its true you are going to have a hard time finding decent hardware that isn't made in china.

</comment><comment><USER4> No, I didn't. I still have four Supermicro motherboards running and haven't changed them out at all.</comment>


Ask HN: Are there any nice free tools to build a family tree? - <AUTHOR> <comment><USER2> Free Free or open source Free?

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

The main one that is open source is

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

Improves with every release, but has a learning curve.

</comment><comment><USER3> Even if you don't mention free software. I absolutely recommend using free software for this.

</comment><comment><USER4> I used ancestry DNA and I don't understand why there isn't a single company the compiles of master family tree for everyone with the data available?

</comment><comment><USER5> [https://www.familytreenow.com/](https://www.familytreenow.com/)</comment>


AP Investigation: Local fish isn't always local - <AUTHOR> https://apnews.com/73646ad2aaac4666a7124806b2e6a5bc <comment><USER2> Quick and nice response from Seat2Table:

[https://www.sea2table.com/blog/tales-from-the-dock/letter- fr...](https://www.sea2table.com/blog/tales-from-the-dock/letter-from-our- founder/)</comment>


Show HN: Send scribbles and pictures to an Emacs buffer from your Android phone - <AUTHOR> https://github.com/yati-sagade/orch <comment><USER2> I...can't think of a reason to use this ever.

But it's awesome.</comment>


The OS that is aiming for a 10 year life-cycle in smartphones - <AUTHOR> https://www.postmarketos.org <comment><USER2> Give a low cost phone I can put it on and I use it. At least make a Raspberry Pi distro to develop on.</comment>


Germans accuse U.S. of Stasi tactics before Obama visit - <AUTHOR> http://www.reuters.com/article/2013/06/11/cnews-us-usa-security-germany-idCABRE95A0T820130611 <comment><USER2> Not surprising. With the Gestapo, and then the Stasi, the Germans have an extensive cultural memory of the effects of comprehensive government surveillance of their lives. They are still surprisingly tolerant of the long term military occupation of their country by the US. It would have been interesting if Snowden had holed up in Germany instead of HK. I wonder if the inevitable US military extradition would have tested the tolerance of the Germans.

<comment><USER3> There's nothing surprising about the German tolerance of the US military bases, considering that they do nothing whatsoever to interfere with our lives or inconvenience us in any way, but do provide quite a lot of jobs. These are mostly medical or training facilities, many of them operated jointly by American and German forces, not some occupying force that's intent on overrunning our government or controlling the citizenry.

As far as public opinion goes, this is a complete non-issue, and I strongly suspect that if public opinion turned so far as to make it an issue, the US would withdraw their troops before entering into a war with a powerful western nation that would almost inevitably turn into another world war. This is really not what I'd call an occupation.

<comment><USER4> Isn't the US already (slowly) withdrawing/reducing the stationed troops?

Besides, germany wouldn't really have a chance. The few nuclear rockets we control would probably not be ready in time. The USA could just bomb germany down, like it was planned in case of a war with the UDSSR.

<comment><USER5> Except for the tiny fact that you attack Germany, you attack EU. And that's pretty much a world war right there. Nobody wants another world war, don't be silly.

M.A.D. still exists by the way. It's still why all major nations are at peace and why the EU gave so much flak to the US a few years ago when Bush wanted to install a nuclear shield. He later had to back down or serious stuff would've happened. (afaik)

Also, according to wikipedia, Europe has 150 to 240 nuclear warheads. Plenty enough to destroy all US major cities.

<comment><USER6> Oh no! The EU! A political body which requires unanimity to make _any decision_! We tremble in fear...

In all seriousness though, the EU does not currently extend to defense; it is currently only a political and economic union. France and Germany have proposed extending the EU to include common defense, but as of today it had not yet been ratified by either the European Council or the member states. See, e.g., the Treaty of Lisbon. (Note that the Treaty of Lisbon technically removes the unanimity requirement in place of a "double majority" threshold (meaning >55% of vote from >65% of countries) beginning in 2014.)

<comment><USER7> And of course, war has no impact on politics and tightly interwoven economies...

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> We are in the Stasi 2.0 era now in US.

Everything you do, buy, places you visit, people you socialize, your interests, opinions, everything you say, etc. is under surveillance. Funny how East Germans would risk their lives just to escape their Stasi-controlled world.

</comment><comment><USER9> The headline sounds like an official government statement but then this guy is no one I ever heard of and the only quote I could find does not even mention the word Stasi.

      American surveillance (literally: compulsive checking) goes definitely to far if
      it interferes that much with the privacy of internet users. Something like this is
      unthinkable here. I thought we had overcome this era with the downfall of the DDR.

It is just ridiculous what they made out of this (unless I just failed to find the complete statement).

<comment><USER10> Well, he is a member of the European Parliament, so there's that. Most MEPs aren't very widely know, though, even compared to members of the national assemblies. They also have the luxury of being in a sort of permanent opposition against national governments and the more powerful parts of the EU government.

I agree that the story is overblown, although the concern about the whole thing in Germany and all of Europe is obviously very real and hopefully will turn into a greater concern over what our own governments are doing. I hope a lot of conservatives are caught finger pointing in the next few days, if nothing else just to see them squirm when they're supposed to wave through the next set of laws curtailing internet freedom.

</comment></comment><comment><USER11> this is a great movie about surveilance in the east germany. I don't know how accurate though.

[http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0405094/](http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0405094/)

<comment><USER12> [trying to say without spoilers]

the inaccurate/ridiculous part is that he couldn't do what he did because every one of them had another agent(s) on them precisely to prevent such occurences. they spied on and controlled each other just like they did on citizens. other than that - great movie, and depiction of the strong influence such agencies had on personal lives (to make someone or destroy someone) is accurate.

you can also check out [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Barbara_%282012_film%29](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Barbara_%282012_film%29) with a bit similar theme.

<comment><USER13> My understanding was the only reason what he did worked was because the whole thing was winding down. 2 years prior and things wouldn't have worked out so well at all.

<comment><USER12> There were thaw periods around the countries of the block and agencies sometimes tended to chill out a bit with their activites, but on the other hand on Berlin's memorials you can find people whose deaths are dated even just a few months before the falling of the wall, so I don't know, to be honest.

[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Lives_of_Others#Reception](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Lives_of_Others#Reception)

 _Slavoj Žižek, reviewing the film for In These Times, criticized the film 's perceived softpedaling of the oppressiveness of the German Democratic Republic, as well as structure of the playwright's character, which he thought was not very likely under a hard communist regime.[23] Anna Funder, the author of the book Stasiland, in a review for The Guardian called The Lives of Others a "superb film" despite not being true to reality. She claims that it was not possible for a Stasi operative to have hidden information from superiors because Stasi employees themselves were watched and almost always operated in teams_

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> > _" The more a society monitors, controls and observes its citizens, the less > free it is," she said._

Okay, it's not Merkel herself who said that. But she sits still while people do, right?

I remember seeing some random youtube video of Merkel giving a speech during an election campaign, talking (nay, bragging) about video surveillance of inner cities (something she basically gives the CDU credit for, which "fought" for that), saying roughly: _" some people say that's only useful to catch parking violations, but if you don't deal with parking violations, you don't have to be surprised if it gets worse."_

To have Merkel be indignated on my behalf is a DISGUSTING idea. She's opportunistic and spineless, she stands for exactly nothing (other than "Security and Prosperity" of course; just like Kohl she wouldn't recognize what makes life great for decent people even after she squashed it). She, Obama, and all the other people who had their chances, in some cases decades of them, should consider just kindly shutting the fuck up, and sticking to their own, hopefully doomed, bandwagons.

</comment><comment><USER15> The last time Obama held a public speech in Berlin he was cheered like he was Michael Jackson and the Pope in one person. This was before he was elected for his first term.

Back then there was no need to preselect his audience. Tens of thousands just came to celebrate him. It will be interesting to see how he is greeted by the German public this time. In Berlin. At the Branderburger Tor. Will he talk about freedom?

</comment><comment><USER16> "Mr. Obama, tear down this PRISM"

</comment><comment><USER17> Thumbs up for this coming from the conservative party as well. As others have said, this really is a bi-partisan issue and we should build as broad a coalition of the unwilling as possible.

<comment><USER18> I do not expect to much. Our governments are extremly careful not to interfere with US interests. Stasi documents about the CIA? Unlawfully given to the CIA and not published. The man responsible is now the president. Merkel, started her career in the pro-dictatorship eastern CDU. Worked for the FDJ ( _somewhat_ GDR equivalent to the Hilter youth) as PR manager.

Not doing anything against the abduction of Kurznatz by the CIA. "Opposing" the Iraq war, but allow the US air fields to operate. It goes on and on and on. This is just a little rethorics. See also: Isle "facebook" Eigner.

</comment></comment><comment><USER19> Stasi.? Germans are simply shying away from comparing it to the Nazis' unimaginable wet dream because of a very self-conscious sensitivity about the matter. But don't fool yourselves, ignoring other unrelated, horrible outcomes that were a consequence of the times, this level of surveillance is by far worse than anything that has ever existed in all of human history. It is tantamount to mind reading, and without a doubt on the exact trail to that outcome.

<comment><USER9> When it comes to surveillance the Stasi did a way better job than any NS organisation.

<comment><USER20> While I principally agree with you, I must add that _the_ data protection related historical event that impressed me most is how the Nazis used the excellent Dutch census data that fell into their hands to round up the Jews of the Netherlands. I don't know how widespread knowledge of this is (I was taught it in school), but I've heard it brought up a few times in discussions about personal data.

<comment><USER21> The Stasi weren't involved with that, as they did not exist until 1950.

<comment><USER9> _[...] how the Nazis used the excellent Dutch census data [...]_

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER22> Honestly, I'm starting to feel like the lack of comments from European leaders about the infringement of non-American's data might be because they know they might be the next to get caught with their hands in the honey pot. I can't tell if I'm just starting to be part of the tin-foil hat crowd though.

<comment><USER23> If they could, they would implement something like PRISM as fast as possible. The German parliament tries for years now to establish data collection.

</comment></comment><comment><USER24> We Germans shouldn't forget that in 2009 our government tried to implement a similar kind of surveillance. This lead to Tauss leaving the social democrats and join the Pirate Party.

[http://www.wedesoft.de/tauss-against- censorship.html](http://www.wedesoft.de/tauss-against-censorship.html)

</comment><comment><USER25> Speaking of Stasi, I would like to recommend a great movie called _The Lives of Others_

[http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0405094/](http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0405094/)

</comment><comment><USER26> So they are mad why? They didn't think of it first or that all this exposure of the US version might mean someone will expose theirs?

To be honest I am not sure if any of these governments is trust worthy in this regard.

</comment><comment><USER27> While we are pointing fingers... why are the Germans so set on laying the economic foundation for WWIII? We get it, you feel like you shouldn't have to rescue "lazy bums", but get over it already and suck it up. The US massively spent too reconstruct Germany after WWII, partially because of the realization that post-WWI financial destitution was part of the groundwork for WWII.

It's not like your entirely blameless here either Germany, your banks made the questionable decision to lend money to those lazy bums so they could buy back German goods.</comment>


Progress Report for the 4D Game "Miegakure" (Hide and Reveal) - <AUTHOR> http://marctenbosch.com/news/2017/03/progress-report-and-miegakure-videos-viewed-over-1-5-million-times/ <comment><AUTHOR> Plenty of explanation videos about this 4-spacial-dimensions puzzle game!

[https://www.youtube.com/results?search_query=marc%20ten%20bo...](https://www.youtube.com/results?search_query=marc%20ten%20bosch)</comment>


Show HN: ViewNew, watch YouTube with random view counts - <AUTHOR> https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/viewnew/nhgeahfkdaljoaebbjleeadajbjpencj <comment><USER2> Why not simply hide the view and like count rather than randomising them.

<comment><AUTHOR> Good question. I definitely thought about just hiding all the views. I was interested in creating the illusion that all the videos are super popular – I feel like seeing a random really high view count creates false excitement.

I think a view-count-less YouTube would be really interesting, but more uncomfortable in a way. How do we know what's "the best" if the numerical values are totally gone? I wonder if it's more comfortable to know you're being lied to than to have no view count at all.</comment></comment>


Ask YC: What to do when co-founder won't take plunge - <AUTHOR>

long story short, my co-founder and I are finally nearing a public beta of our web app, he founded idea with me, but then had "personal stuff" for 3 months so I've done 90% development of current iteration.
I'd love to walk away from our day jobs, I'll put in ~$10k and we'd work till its done -- I've built a great network of contacts (in the biz world mostly) so I'm semi-confident I can get some form of angel investment if needed.
But he won't join full time -- blaming the job market, the risks are too high, etc etc.
You might wonder why I don't do it solo -- I'm not a coder by trade -- I coded to learn rails, but my main skills are business & UI stuff (studied UI degree and love business in spare time)
What do you think? Should I walk away from co-founder and find someone else [any advice on this stuff?], continue trying to tempt him or go solo? <comment><USER2> Buy him out or walk away from it. You won't be able to persuade him, and even if you succeed, he'll blame you for every problem. Talk about the problem, and ask if you can buy his share. Potentially offer something like 10% of future profits, capped to, say, $20k. Decide what constitutes profits, and how much right he has to look at the books.

Personally, I would ask how much cash he wants to give up all claims, and make it clear that if you can't reach agreement quickly you will simply walk away and abandon it. His choice is something realistic and definite now, versus nothing.

</comment><comment><USER3> get rid of co-founder, create a new project and try again.

You should iron this kind of issue out long before you start approaching people for capital, it is a recipe for disaster.

Also, most VC's are pretty savvy in picking up a significant difference in motivation between co-founders and it is a very big red flag for them to invest in you.

Get out while you can.

<comment><AUTHOR> sure, wouldn't dream of going to anyone as is (unless it was solo, which I imagine would be futile)

was just curious if people had encountered this kind of issue, it's a big deal, but it isn't like all the work/money I've put in has gone to waste ... the product, the contacts and what I've learnt is still rocking. I'll have to ensure the current co-founder is willing to walk away and won't be a pest in future (I doubt that'll be an issue)

<comment><USER4> I can't link to the article from my iPhone, but do a search for "startup forgotten founders" for some very useful advice on handling this situation.

<comment><USER3> this one ?

[http://allensblog.typepad.com/allens_blog/2005/08/the_proble...](http://allensblog.typepad.com/allens_blog/2005/08/the_problem_of_.html#)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> If your co-founder is showing such resistance, it's probably futile. It's an issue of mindset rather than actual risks. Even if you're able to get him to join you now, the issue will probably come up again when things get even harder (because they will).

<comment><AUTHOR> thanks, I'll have to start looking for a good developer guy who wants this kind of life! I think having a product, an exec summary and an open mind to developers will make it appealing ... maybe</comment></comment>


Mmap(2) - <AUTHOR> http://jmoiron.net/blog/mmap2/ <comment><USER2> As a fun heuristic I have come to believe that mmap advocacy and use for storage is somewhat correlated with medium experience level.

At first junior developers don't know about it, then, they read a blog, hear something at a meeting about it and all of the sudden they fall in love with mmap. Then they want to re-write every storage related thing using it claiming it will be lightning fast and efficient. "You just write to memory and kernel writes to file, that so awesome, here I refactored your storage backend to use it over the weekend!"

Some might even venture to write whole database products based on it.

But then one day they "grow up" and realize what a great pain mmap can be, their storage backend is being hammered constantly by input data and dirty pages are not flushed fast enough, and then they are they start blocking other processes for seconds at a time. THey start tweaking madvise setting trying to control behavior, adjusting number of pdflush threads, etc. Or, and also sigbus errors are fun...

<comment><USER3> And yet it exists, and works gloriously: [http://symas.com/mdb/doc/](http://symas.com/mdb/doc/)

The kernel is smarter than your app. Trying to force it to do something it doesn't want to do is a very bad idea.

<comment><USER4> Kernels generally aren't all that smart. They're usually dumb and simple programs that do things based on some average defaults that look okay and might work for most people. The kernel needs to be told what to do especially if data integrity is important. Like if some dude thought it was a great idea to store up writes and do them in large transactions and you're writing a filesystem that needs verifiable writes, you turn that off or force it off if you can't disable it otherwise. Relying on the utter sausage factory that is your average kernel is a recipe for disaster. That is especially true for Linux in my experience.

<comment><USER3> I said the kernel is smarter than your app, not psychic. Of course you need to tell Linux what to do with specialized applications.

However, any option worth disabling can be disabled. Nothing needs to be forced off like the writer of the article did. mmap'd writes should be flushed as soon as possible, not dragged out, especially in the SSD age we have today. What the writer did was actually counterintuitive and makes no sense. None.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> So what's the alternative? Doesn't data dirtied by a write() experience the same or similar messy flushing behavior?

<comment><USER6> It depends. Are you using aio? O_DIRECT? write(2) gives you plenty more options and these days, it's no less efficient than mmap.

The whole idea of system calls being expensive is obsolete now that we're not using heavyweight software interrupts to implement them.

What the fuck do you think happens when you write to a mmap(2)ed page anyway? The kernel has to know the page is dirty somehow so that it can remember to flush it later. It learns about page dirtying by initially mapping the page read-only, letting the CPU fault when you try to write, marking the page dirty, and letting the write proceed.

You're entering the kernel either way.

<comment><USER7> "system calls being expensive is obsolete now" \- utter nonsense. System calls are still expensive. Argument checking, copying data between user space and kernel space - none of that cost goes away.

<comment><USER4> It's far from nonsense. Everything that happens when you call a syscall nowadays is minimal compared to firing off interrupts to do the job. Memory operations are pretty cheap and the argument checking is probably only 20 or so instructions at most. A lot of the cost has gone away. If you still believe this, run dtrace on some random programs and be _horrified_ over how many syscalls are being fired off.

<comment><USER8> Syscalls are hugely expensive. Not for those reasons, but because of the way they trash the cache, causing reduced performance for a long time after returning control to userspace. This is why to really achieve the performance the hardware is capable of, both for nvram ssds and for high speed network interfaces, you need to bypass the kernel completely. You can do a little better using calls that amortize the costs of the syscalls over multiple units of work, but even with the best optimizations it's still an order of magnitude less than what the hardware is capable of.

<comment><USER6> Sure. The problem is that intermediate-skill developers read comments like yours and just glean "lol, syscalls are slow" from them. They then go on to use mmap and kill MM performance. It's important to keep your audience in mind. Most developers do not write high-performance IO layers that talk directly to hardware. Most developers will blindly follow any sufficiently authoritative voice that tells them X is better than Y, which leads them to misuse powerful tools.

In the vast majority of cases, you want plain read and write. In the vast majority of cases, the overhead of jumping into the kernel is not your bottleneck. Simplicity counts for a lot.

<comment><USER7> Yes, simplicity counts for a lot. Staying in user space _is_ simpler.

The reason LMDB can pack so much functionality into only 7KLOCs is because using mmap is much simpler than using read() and maintaining a user-level buffer cache.

In the vast majority of cases, developers need to profile their code if they actually care about performance - and fail to do so.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> These ideas have been around for a long time. I remember using the ideas a quarter of a century ago! See DEC SRC Report 24, "A simple and efficient implementation for small databases", by Birrell, et al. 1988. [http://web.archive.org/web/20051215194340/http://gatekeeper....](http://web.archive.org/web/20051215194340/http://gatekeeper.research.compaq.com/pub/DEC/SRC/research- reports/abstracts/src-rr-024.html)

I used to read these reports as they came out, very interesting.</comment>


Post-coronavirus, 'normal' travel may not resume until 2023 - <AUTHOR> https://www.executivetraveller.com/news/post-coronavirus-normal-travel-may-not-resume-until-2023 <comment><USER2> Our neighbor is a private pilot, and he is totally shut down. People that could fly in their own planes are not flying, let alone people that need to use common airlines.</comment>


How JPG Works - <AUTHOR> https://medium.com/@duhroach/how-jpg-works-a4dbd2316f35 <comment><USER2> I think the article could have used a little more on chroma subsampling ("downsampling," per the article). A couple examples: It is basically an optional step (in the case of 4:4:4). And the visual impact on heavily saturated colors (looking at you, bright red).

</comment><comment><USER3> Really good introduction, well written.

</comment><comment><USER4> Talks about a technology. Misspells its name.

Ctrl-F gives me 17 results for JPG, 3 results for JPEG.

<comment><USER5> As far as I'm concerned, they're interchangeable. I can't be the only one who thinks so.

<comment><USER6> JPEG is an acronym for "Joint Photographics Experts Group". So I guess "JPEG" refers to a collection of humans. They specified an image format also called JPEG, which has been implemented as the JPEG file format, whose filename suffix is ".jpg"

<comment><USER5> What I'm saying is that at no point was I confused about what they were trying to communicate, so as far as I'm concerned it makes no difference outside of just being pedantic.</comment></comment></comment></comment>


Ask HN: When do you consider potential business model options?  - <AUTHOR>

With my business background, I naturally start my creativity process on a concept with the business model in mind. I understand that it may (and probably will) evolve, however, it is important to brainstorm. At what point in your product life cycle do you consider your business model options? <comment><USER2> If you care about actually making money from the very beginning (as opposed to just being bought -- which isn't likely to happen -- or just getting a tonne of users and worrying about it later), then consider your business model at the very beginning. Changes or problems with either your product or business model can significantly affect the other, so if you can focus on both from the very beginning, I can't think of many reasons why you wouldn't.

<comment><AUTHOR> I think there is a common trend where start ups focus on product and gaining users while then thinking business model second. What are your thoughts on 'Freemium' as a business model? <http://bit.ly/eMxey0>

</comment></comment><comment><AUTHOR> This book <http://www.businessmodelgeneration.com/> is an invaluable resource for entrepreneurs. I am constantly working on my business model canvas because it provides great insight and a clear overview of your start up.</comment>


The Exxon Valdez of Cyberspace - <AUTHOR> https://www.economist.com/business/2019/08/08/the-exxon-valdez-of-cyberspace <comment><USER2> TLDR: hacking and data leaks are the new Valdez.</comment>


Python for Business Repository – Machine Learning and Data Science - <AUTHOR> https://github.com/firmai/business-machine-learning <comment><USER2> I saw this on r/python a while ago. Some great applications, not sure why there are so few places to go to look at ML applications in business. Interesting.

</comment><comment><USER3> I noticed this is all in python - are you aware of an equivalent library for R?

</comment><comment><USER4> This is excellent!! Will go through it more thoroughly tonight.

</comment><comment><USER4> Do you have data for the FirmAI examples?</comment>