Ask HN: What enterprise problems do you face? - <AUTHOR>

If you run a small/medium business, I want to know the things that really annoy you on a daily basis?
Dealing with employee schedules? Processing payments? I think with the great crowd of people that read HN we should be able to come up with a pretty comprehensive list.
I'd really appreciate your opinions. Thanks! <comment><USER2> If you're trying to find a valuable niche, anything that helps businesses to get paid quicker or cutting costs (with measurable results) would be an easy sell.

Unfortunately small businesses are usually too wrapped up working IN their business to have the time to spend ON their business setting up any new products that are a 'nice to have'

Simple core features and implementation is key. If it has got a direct link to making them more money or saving them a LOT of hours then that cuts through a lot of friction when pitching the product.

Good questions to ask business owners are :-

* What are your main costs

* What tasks make up your day

* What tasks do you do monthly/annually

Why not pick a specific type of business then you can really hone in on the same pain point that is repeated in that industry.

Random examples

* Ebay power sellers - A tool to find the best shipping provider (lowest cost)

* Etsy Sellers - A tool to add up material costs + time taken to work out a sale price

* Courier Business - A bare bones utility to configure multi drop routes & find low cost fuel enroute

If you don't pick a specific industry it's really tough to reach mass market, have a solid target audience and learn it inside out before you build anything.

<comment><AUTHOR> Hey Helen,

Thanks for the detailed response - a lot of valuable information in your comment.

You're entirely correct about the owners usually being too wrapped up in their business to spend time on their business setting up any new products.

Thus whatever the product is - it will have to have obvious savings (time or money) and simple integration. Thanks for the input - I'm hoping some small/medium business owners pitch in :)

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> Some feedback:

Scour Linkedin - it's where people mention industry issues.

If you're doing CustDev, I would suggest these questions are at too high of a level. "What problems do you have" will get you very broad top of mind issues that aren't actionable. There is a Mixergy interview with Dane Maxwell & or Sam Ovens that goes more into this as well.

<comment><AUTHOR> Hey czbond - thanks, yeah I intentionally left it quite high level, just to get a better understanding for myself. Once I get this background I shall get more granular. Going to check out the interview you mention. Thanks again.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> I can tell you from experience that small businesses, and to some extent medium businesses, have nowhere near the same problems as what I would traditionally consider enterprises. Being in an office of 200 people versus 1500 people leads to different problems. I'd probably take a second look at what your target really is.

<comment><AUTHOR> Sorry; for clarification, you are correct - I am using the term 'enterprise' loosely.. target is the small/medium companies that (as Helen pointed out in another comment) are too busy running their companies to focus on the 'nice to haves'.

</comment></comment><comment><AUTHOR> Just to perhaps provide some more reference to anyone visiting this thread, I've found quite a helpful question on Quora:

[http://www.quora.com/What-are-the-biggest-problems- plaguing-...](http://www.quora.com/What-are-the-biggest-problems-plaguing- small-business-owners-today)

</comment><comment><USER5> The warp drive keeps going offline.

<comment><AUTHOR> Good news is I think NASA are trying to fix that problem: [http://www.theatlantic.com/technology/archive/2012/11/what-i...](http://www.theatlantic.com/technology/archive/2012/11/what- if-nasa-could-figure-out-the-math-of-a-workable-warp-drive/265655/)

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> Recruiting.</comment>


Looking for constructive criticism on our Pingdom Killing Start-up - <AUTHOR> http://verelo.com

<comment><USER2> Some initial thoughts:

\- Not a huge fan of the "Pingdom killing" tagline in the title here. It sends a negative message that's unneeded, IMHO.

\- I like the main page, but the multiple black boxes that popped up are distracting from the main content. Specifically, the "we're not here now" Contact button in the bottom-right, in addition to the Support button and the Sign Up button.

\- You can't drag the scrollbar on the "Edit Check" page - it selects part of the page instead.

Other than those points, some small stuff: it doesn't say how I get notifications, the "contact us" black button obscures the "Follow Us" when you scroll to the bottom of the page, and, like bhauer mentions, the color depth seems a bit much - it's almost TO flashy.

All criticism aside: I'm still using it for my personal website :-) It looks like a good product, so keep up the good work!

<comment><USER3> Thanks for that comments! We actually meant to remove the support tag on the home page, we'll fix that!

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> Just created an account and it looks interesting. Some random thoughts, take them for what you will:

1\. The differentiating factor is the 5-second check interval, yes? Clearly, I am not the target audience for that, but I suppose it could be of interest for some people. The argument seems to be that there is a measurable difference in the ability to react to an outage if you are notified within 5 seconds versus 60 seconds. That is true, but I suspect that even at my best, it would take me at least another 5 minutes to do anything about an outage.

2\. It's not clear on the demo account tier how I would receive notifications. On the Probe editor, it shows that I will be notified, but not how. I presume by e-mail at the e-mail address I used to sign up (since you don't have anything else yet). But it should probably be more clearly indicated. Aha, elsewhere on the site it's clear the notification is via e-mail.

3\. Overall the graphic design looks a little too "templatey," if you know what I mean. Don't get me wrong, I'm not a designer so I don't have any grounds to criticize design. Nevertheless, a few things could probably improve the look & feel:

a. Slightly tone down the color depth. Right now, many different sections of the page are all popping as if they are accent or highlight colors. b. Commission some custom icons. I don't have any drawing skill, so I too use stock icons. But considering how heavily you utilize your icons, the icons are important for you. The icons have no site-specific character. c. At the "Detect Portal," the content of most interest to me--the list of monitors-- seems among the most diminutive and unimportant visually speaking. d. Padding, margin, and spacing. The icons shouldn't touch the borders of their containers. The label on the "Create Check" button looks off-center vertically. e. Terminology. The page names are a little weird; the page title doesn't seem to change? Also, while I understand what you're trying to do with the main navigation along the left, it's a little odd to click "Detect" to get to a list of "Checks" which are then called a "probe" in the URL.

Best of luck!

<comment><USER3> Thanks! Great feedback, we'll chase those items down. We have the differential locked in, but its not released yet...you'll have to stay tuned, but trust me its good ;-)

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> I've been a Pingdom customer for several years, with no plan to leave. Here's my perspective:

1\. Our primary use of Pingdom is to show prospective clients our app uptime, as validated by a 3rd party. So Pingdom's main value for us is in marketing.

2\. Because Pingdom has years of our data, we are really locked in.

3\. Sub-minute monitoring is not appealing, I don't want that much load on my servers from monitoring.

4\. The name Verelo does not convey what your service does.

5\. I think Pingdom's $10/month price point is about right for our use-case. We'd probably drop it if they raised prices very much.

Hope this helps, good luck with your venture!

<comment><USER3> Thanks for the feedback. I think helping migrating being painless is something we do need to look into.

I would encourage you to check back when we add our next feature set, there are some big game changers coming.

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> Really annoying to try to read your marketing copy because it keeps scrolling away.

And why do you delay the page load just so you can do a fade in animation?

It seems like half the things you have on the page are there to prevent me from finding out what you guys do.

</comment><comment><USER7> I think if you're positioning yourself as a "Pingdom killing start-up" (I didn't know Pingdom needed killing? Are they that evil/bad?), I'd put the feature comparison, or a subset of that, front and center on your website.

<comment><USER8> Well, we went to wormly because of missing pingdom features.

<comment><USER3> Nice to hear, we'd love to know more about that those features are so we can be sure we're offering a competitive solution.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> I really like what you guys are trying to do here. But, I think your sign up flow needs some clarity and maybe some a/b testing with an app like Myna (mynaweb.com).

For instance, I currently require 3-7 clicks to understand the entire offering and how they compare cost wise. This needs to be done to 2 clicks max.

Also, your primary call-to-action needs to stand out on the landing page, above the fold.

There are bunch of other optimizations I see, but for the first cut this is really good.

Best wishes :)

</comment><comment><USER10> Things like "reports so easy even your boss can understand them" don't go over real well with my boss.

</comment><comment><USER11> 1\. On iPad, when I clicked the link to the how it works section, the animated arrows showing the flow of checks and responses were in a layer behind the cloud images that I think are supposes to stay in the back layer. I only saw this glitch once.

2\. Pricing confused me. 6 checks for $14/month. My first thought was this means you only would check my server 6 times a month, so on average it would take 2.5 days for you to notice a problem and tell me. That can't be right, so I must conclude I have no idea what a "check" is. Does it mean 6 pages or things at my site are monitored? Anyway, sine the pricing is based on checks, you should make sure no one gets confused as to what a check is.

<comment><USER3> Thanks for the feedback, we'll look into those ipad issues. "Checks" are an individual end point (Http or TCP) you want us to monitor, we will continually monitor that check as often as you like (from as often as 5 seconds to as irregular as hourly).

<comment><USER12> Wow, that's really confusing terminology. I would never have guessed that a "check" corresponded to a url or port.

Why do you hide the link to pricing info in the "Features" section? My first question about any product is "How much will it cost me?".

The back button doesn't work in either browser I tried (Chrome and Safari). Click Features, then click Our Customers, then hit back. The page scrolls up about 2 pixels.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> Looks interesting.

On the feature comparison chart, the "Early Response System" seems to be something Pingdom has, but you've marked them as lacking it. Per their docs:

> If we can't reach the target with a test, a second location in our > monitoring network will be asked to perform another test right away. If both > these locations agree that the site is down, the check is considered as down > by Pingdom.

<comment><USER3> Its a fair comment, but this is one of the main reasons why we state this is because pingdom does the check "soon" after the error. The issue with this is, if your problem is intermittent, or changing over time...the actual issue may not be the issue you observed in the check on the "follow up".

</comment></comment><comment><USER14> The initial page load and scrolling back up to the top is extremely laggy, not sure what your doing behind the scenes buts its bad in Chrome on dual i7's

</comment><comment><USER15> Need to draw someone to the Sign Up with a more distinct colour.</comment>


If everything in Unix development is POSIX, what the hell does C library do? - <AUTHOR> http://www.thejaywalker.net/2010/12/difference-between-posix-and-standard-c.html

<comment><USER2> There's something a bit strange about the approach of this post that suggests a confusion of concepts (though I'm not saying there's anything factually incorrect about it).

The standard C library and the POSIX API are two quite different things.

The standard C library is a library of functions defined by the various C language standards. These functions should be available on any C language implementation regardless of the platform (Unix/POSIX, Windows, embedded RTOS, micro-controller with no OS, etc.).

The POSIX API is a platform specification for Unix like platforms (though the API is sometimes available non-natively on non-Unix like platforms). It is comparable to the win32 API on windows. It has no particular connection to the C language other than that C is the language in which the API is provided.

Perhaps one reason for this confusion is that today many people are familiar with higher level programming environments like Java or Python which provide much richer standard libraries than do C and C++. They include things like multithreading and network communications. C programmers need to use platform specific API's like POSIX or win32 to access these services. Also note that pretty much any higher level language running on a modern OS is ultimately using the platform system API's to provide such services because the OS kernel doesn't allow user space programs access to them other than through a system call mechanism (which the platform API's typically wrap).

One other possible source of confusion that the post doesn't mention is that on Unix the library one links to for both the C standard library functions and the Unix/POSIX system API's is called libc (it's usually called glibc on Linux). Despite the name this is not the same thing as the C standard library.

<comment><USER3> So, here's a question I have as a Win32 developer, which may tie in with the whole what-is-POSIX topic. What does the API documentation mean when it refers to C calls like "fputs(3)" or "lseek(2)" (as in the example here: <http://linux.die.net/man/3/fseek> )? How are these different from 'normal' fputs() and lseek()?

I've never seen the One True Explanation of this anywhere, probably because it's something that Linux/BSD/POSIX/whatever people learn on day 1. The question seems to be strangely un-Googleable.

<comment><USER2> Section 2 is for system calls. In other words libc functions which are just thin wrappers around the system call interface provided by the kernel.

Section 3 is for library API's. It typically includes the C standard library functions in addition to pages for other libraries which are installed on the system.

If you look at your examples you will find that fputs and fseek are declared in stdio.h, which is a C standard library header whereas lseek is declared in unistd.h which is a Unix/POSIX header.

lseek is a low level call to the kernel's filesystem interface. You can't access a file more directly unless you write a kernel module or modify the kernel. fseek and fputs wrap the low-level filesystem interface in a stream abstraction.

Also fseek and fputs should be available on any platform with a C compiler (including Windows) whereas lseek is only normally available on Unix/POSIX platforms.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> Not sure where you got the idea that fork() isn't a system call. It certainly is on my computer.

I think the overall sentiment is right on, but I'm not sure I get the last question. posix is a superset, yes, but it doesn't provide replacements for the C library. Perhaps better phrased as "Why limit yourself to only standard C?"?

<comment><USER5> Ah, fork(). One of my favorite C calls. Not.

That looks to be some questionable phrasing from the article.

Yes, fork() is a system call on many platforms, but not on all.

And fork() is not ubiquitous. If anything, it's one of the common and can be one of the more intractable sources of porting problems within C code.

fork() does rather more than many C programmers might realize. About 5 or 10% of the calls I've encountered in the many C applications I've ported will use fork() for most or all of what it can do. The remaining calls throw that context away, and can often be equally or better served with vfork()/exec() or some other C call.

Those applications that use fork() for what it can do can be and usually are more difficult to port to the various platforms that lack copy-on-read virtual memory.

<comment><USER4> vfork is probably worse because you have to be very careful if exec fails. Calling a function to log the error is likely to mess up the parent's memory.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> One example of good restriction to the "C" library is the lua reference implementation - because of that it can compile for lots of platforms (well 32-bit and above) without a problem.

Another one is zlib, and lots of more.

<comment><USER7> As a result there are features missing that you might find in other implementations, e.g. standard Lua has IO but cannot create directories. But getting halfway there on all platforms is better than all the way on one platform and making you work out how to fix it to run on yours.

<comment><USER6> Yes, I agree, but back in the Apple ][ DOS era (before Pro-DOS) there were even not directories.

As an example that went in the other direction: The Common Lisp language specification! It even has host, path, version number for describing file names - but I think this now hampers the language's image if one stars coding in it for the first time.

<comment><USER7> Certainly, but you don't have to go as far back as that for an example: just compare the drive letters in Windows to the lack of them in Unix.

It works very well in Lua's favour to stick to just the C library given the desire to use it in embedded computers. However, it's valid to wonder why a basic feature supported by 99% of computers is not available out of the box; you judge things based on what's available now, not the past. I should think the C library would be quite different had it been designed 20 years later.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> I do not wish to be a troll but most of the information in that post is plain wrong. For one fork() is indeed a system call. If you want a good understanding of the true essence of POSIX (UNIX API) I recommend reading: Advanced Programming in the UNIX Environment.

<comment><USER9> The definition of exactly what is a system call and what is not varies by platform. For example, some OSes may implement sleep() as a system call; others may implement it using nanosleep() or even alarm() and sigwait(). Even fork() has been implemented as a library function, eg in cygwin. What method is used to implement low-level library functions like this should be considered an implementation detail.</comment></comment>


Rally Against Surveillance today in San Francisco - <AUTHOR> http://1984day.com/san-francisco/ <comment><USER2> I think it would be more effective to begin organizing a primary challenge to Nancy Pelosi. Residents of San Francisco have the unique ability to send a message to the minority leader, and therefore, the entire democratic party.

The leverage, or political return on effort, for challenging a house party leader is far greater than for any other elected official. (Senate leaders have far more constituents)

<comment><USER3> Dianne Feinstein chairs the Intelligence Committee and is complicit with all of these shenanigans. She's worse.

It's not clear how to beat the Dem machine in California (I'm a disgruntled liberal).

<comment><USER4> Unfortunately, it's a much more systemic problem than can be solved by ousting a politician here or there.

I encourage everyone who cares about this to get politically involved at a level beyond merely voting for congress critters now and then.

There's a lot that you can do, from joining and supporting organizations like the EFF and the ACLU to getting involved in local politics, which is usually the level that can be most affected by relatively small numbers of individuals.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> I 100% agree with with the sentiment behind this rally, but I often feel that rallies like this in San Francisco are preaching to the choir. They make the participants and observers feel better, but do little to effect real change.

<comment><USER6> You're right, maybe they shouldn't do anything at all and just accept the status quo.

Comments like this just boil my blood. Get off your tail, stop being apathetic, be a part of the solution.

<comment><USER7> Rayiner: your comment is marked as dead, I think because you used the word circle.... Perhaps try re-posting without it.

Edit: actually here, I did it for you:

 _False dichotomy._

 _Rallies in San Francisco are just excuses for like minded people to have a merry old time. It 's a politically irrelevant city, because it has no votes in play. Want to have some actual impact, some actual chance to change hearts and minds, go protest in Utah, where you can connect the cause to the site, or DC, or heck Iowa, where you can take advantage of their natural libertarian streak and there are votes to be swayed._

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> Hope it attracts more than the shamefully pathetic 400 that turned up to the last one.

<comment><USER9> It's possible some apathy towards this issue and a feeling that this is no immediate threat to them, because US hasn't really been under dangerous regimes before, are at play here, but I also think people like to be _led_ and organized. I think organizations like ACLU and EFF should do a lot more grassroots organizing of the protests, and get people to say "Yes, I'm coming to the protest tomorrow".

Reading about the protest on a website won't guarantee many will go (and most will not). People need to be contacted by these civil liberties organizations and asked to come.

<comment><USER8> Yes, people do need to be led. Civil libertarians have proven completely unable to lead in the last decade. Certainly, a bunch of people who think you can do it all on the internet won't be able to lead.

If you want to impact political change, you need to do it the way other groups do. I have teenagers coming to my door asking if I know about Jesus. Where are the young people going door to door to spread knowledge about NSA spying?

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> We are also going to live stream. Link around 11. Speakers at 12:45

<comment><AUTHOR> Link?

<comment><USER11> It's not 11 yet.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> Live Stream: [http://youtu.be/vbMf9sc1NL0](http://youtu.be/vbMf9sc1NL0)

</comment><comment><USER12> I wish I had found out about this before today (I would have returned to Boston for it). I'm sure many people are in the same boat.

<comment><USER13> The organizers of this local group don't inspire any confidence.

<comment><USER14> Please let us know when you've scheduled a date for your well-planned, confidence-inspiring protest.</comment></comment></comment>


Memristors built with 2-nanometer-thick parts - <AUTHOR> https://arstechnica.com/science/2018/11/memristors-built-with-2-nanometer-thick-parts/ <comment><USER2> To address the memristor existence questions: if you define a memristor as a device which "remembers" its resistance via a pinched hysteresis I-V curve, then we have had ReRAM/ memristor devices for some time now. On the other hand, if you define memristor as a device with coupling between charge and flux, then no.

Practically speaking, it's unlikely that memristors will replace transistors because they're about 500X too slow and have about a billion times less endurance. Same issue with memory replacement. They could in theory make excellent flash memory replacement, but currently sneak paths, thermal crosstalk and ion crosstalk remain challenges

</comment><comment><USER3> Are memristors real? This paper[0] in addition to a handful that have appeared on HN in the last few months asserts that "the 2008 memristor is not the 1971 postulate and neither of them is fundamental" and moreover that "[t]he ideal memristor is an unphysical active device and any physically realizable memristor is a nonlinear composition of resistors with active hysteresis."

I'm confused by something like this being an open question, and even more confused about why this debate isn't lighting up the electrical/computer engineering community as far as I can tell.

[0] [https://www.nature.com/articles/s41598-018-29394-7](https://www.nature.com/articles/s41598-018-29394-7)

<comment><USER4> It's also worth pointing out that all ideal circuit devices are non physical.

But yes I think the name "memristor" is mostly PR.

<comment><USER5> > It's also worth pointing out that all ideal circuit devices are non physical

This is not a useful statement - in this framing, all of circuit theory is unphysical.

Other ideal circuit elements _could_ exist in the sense that their existence would not violate known physical laws. The criticisms of the memristor is that its existence would violate fundamental thermodynamic principles (esp. Landauer's principle).

<comment><USER4> I mean, an ideal voltage source also cannot exist, and I'm sure their existence would violate several laws of physics. For example what happens when you put two ideal voltage sources in parallel? or when you connect one to a short circuit?

Despite that though we can use a combination of ideal elements to represent real, non ideal, physical devices. So in that sense I disagree with your statement that "in this framing, all of circuit theory is unphysical."

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> Can't wait to have some of these memristors in my phone, powered by graphene batteries, running on clean electricity from the regional fusion plant.

<comment><USER7> And the year after that will be the year of the Linux desktop.

<comment><USER8> I understand the joke, but I've been running Linux on my desktop for something like 15 years. ;-)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> So, 11 atoms thick layer of platinum is major cost consideration? No, just bad journalism.

</comment><comment><USER10> I can just picture William Devane telling everyone to buy Platinum now...<g></comment>


Here's who probably did that $150 million Bitcoin transaction - <AUTHOR> http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/the-switch/wp/2013/11/23/heres-who-probably-did-that-massive-150000000-bitcoin-transaction/ <comment><USER2> I wonder if it ever becomes viable to try to brute-force the private key of such a valuable address, rather than devoting the brute force power to mining.

Edit: got curious and found an answer: [http://bitcoin.stackexchange.com/questions/2847/how-long- wou...](http://bitcoin.stackexchange.com/questions/2847/how-long-would-it- take-a-large-computer-to-crack-a-private-key)

If I understand correctly, it's still not viable even if you tried your brute- forced keys on all addresses in the network.

<comment><USER3> It's completely infeasible (without quantum computers anyway).

However, in cases where the private key is generated from a hash of a passphrase, like brainwallets, then it is far more feasible. There are people running bruteforcers constantly looking for private keys corresponding to brainwallet passphrases; that's their form of "mining".

To test it, if you make a brainwallet with a password of "password" and then send 0.01 BTC into your account, you'll see it vanish in a few minutes (or a few seconds).

<comment><USER4> I don't think so. Brainwallets are generated as a hash. So if the input is secure, the output is secure. It's not possible to generate the input from the output. And frankly the connection between password -> private key and private key -> public key is very similar in brainwallets. To crack a brainwallet, given only the public key and sufficient bits in the password, is actually harder than directly attacking the private key.

Plus you have to balance "my own fuckup" risk against "someone attacked me" risk, right. Wallets depend on your backup habits, and you backup provider's security. Going through the fora, I'd say "oops. I lot my wallet.dat" is a much more serious threat to your bitcoins, on average, than someone got a hold of your password. Both of those, for most people (including me) are ... lacking. Brainwallets depend on my memory for passwords. A hardware brainwallet would guarantee you're 100% not exposed.

As for ECSDA attacks. It's true that the algorithm itself is near-unhackable. However, make one single transaction on a computer which chooses a non-random k value, and you're exposed. So the risks don't end just because

<comment><USER5> _To crack a brainwallet, given only the public key and sufficient bits in the password, is actually harder than directly attacking the private key._

It's incredible to see such misinformation on HN. I suggest you read this: [https://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/u/315/articles/A%20Large-S...](https://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/u/315/articles/A%20Large- Scale%20Study%20of%20Web%20Password%20Habits%20%5B2007%5D.pdf)

This is a 2007 study on web password habits. In it, they reveal the fact that fewer than 1% of passwords have bitstrength >= 90 bits: [http://i.imgur.com/8vSrx2E.png](http://i.imgur.com/8vSrx2E.png)

Achieving 128 bits of protection with a _user selectable and memorable password_ is statistically unlikely (to put it mildly).

The fact that a brainwallet password is memorable means a computer can bruteforce it in far fewer operations, too. I.e. the bitstrength is mostly meaningless. Just ask the guy who runs [http://www.cloudcracker.com](http://www.cloudcracker.com)

A memorable user-selectable password is incredibly unlikely to be as strong as 128 random bits.

<comment><USER6> Brainwallets shouldn't be casually recommended without appropriate warnings, but they certainly _can_ be secure.

Passphrases aren't limited by length, and your brainwallet can be derived from your memory and publicly available information, so you can construct very strong memorable passphrases, e.x. the 3rd sentence of the 8th chapter of your favorite book concatenated with a moderately strong but memorable password.

Key stretching with PBKDF or scrypt helps a lot as well. Do you care if it takes 1 minute to compute your keys from the passphrase? Probably not, and it will make cracking much more difficult.

<comment><USER3> Even extending to a 1-second computation would make it completely infeasible to crack. 1 minute would be way overkill.

<comment><USER6> Well, whether it's overkill depends on how weak your passphrase is.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> Here's the cited paper from UCSD on bitcoin address analysis:

[http://cseweb.ucsd.edu/~smeiklejohn/files/imc13.pdf](http://cseweb.ucsd.edu/~smeiklejohn/files/imc13.pdf)

</comment><comment><USER8> This is why I can't take Bitcoin seriously. The privacy implications are insane.

<comment><USER9> Please stop with the privacy scaremongering. A lot of work is currently going into trustless mixing/anonymising services that will largely stop this type of tracking. (coinjoin/zerocoin)

A lot of us are investing with the expectation true anonymous transactions eventually happen, because when they do Bitcoin will become even more valuable.

<comment><USER10> > A lot of work is currently going into trustless mixing/anonymising

Call it what it is, money laundering.

<comment><USER11> The term "money laundering" originally referred to the practice of concealing the movement of funds involved in a crime. Now they've redefined it so that concealing the movement of funds is _itself_ a crime, even if the funds are entirely legitimate and no other crime is involved.

<comment><USER12> Yes, because the motivations behind money laundering are driven almost exclusively by crime. For purchases you wish to remain private, such as personally embarrassing products, there are 'anonymizing' but traceable services for you to save face with.

There are very few legitimate reasons to be concealing where you money came from or is going from the IRS, and they well aware of the intent behind the actions.

<comment><USER13> >There are very few legitimate reasons to be concealing where you money came from or is going from the IRS, and they well aware of the intent behind the actions

Nice circular reasoning. Because everything that the IRS would disapprove of is illegitimate? When did the IRS get ultimate moral authority?

<comment><USER14> IRS doesn't care what the money is from or for, only that Uncle Sam gets what he's owed. Income from criminal enterprises is not special: you have to pay taxes on it like everything else. The _source_ of the income is kind of don't-ask-don't-tell.

Spending on sex toys is not special, unless the national security apparatus (or more likely your competitor in the private sector) already has a reason to try to discredit you. Which is a valid concern for activists, but not most people.

Investigations and enforcement actions by the IRS have nothing to do with the morality of your checking account statement and everything to do with tax evasion.

The largest threat to your financial privacy is private enterprise. Underwriters, prospective employers, and others with a financial stake in your "good behavior" are the most interested in judging the moral acceptability/health/prudence of your financial choices.

<comment><USER15> > Spending on sex toys is not special, unless the national security apparatus > (or more likely your competitor in the private sector) already has a reason > to try to discredit you. Which is a valid concern for activists, but not > most people.

Amazing.

Translation: "Rights are essential for small group of people, because everyone else is not exercising them anyway. So lets just take the rights away".

<comment><USER14> From where do you derive a right to hide your finances from a government whose power to levy an income tax is explicitly codified in the Constitution?

<comment><USER15> 1) Bitcoin is incredibly more transparent than banking system or tax system. If anything, it is not convenient for tax evaders. HSBC, however, managed to launder 200bln of drug money.

2) I'm a person. I have to pay taxes. Top500 corps - not so much, in practice. What do you say about that?

3) Where the fuck did you get that I'm a tax evader? I was addressing your point about people's rights and your evaluation of their need of having those rights.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> This reminds me of when actual users were identified from the "anonymous" AOL search logs.

[http://www.nytimes.com/2006/08/09/technology/09aol.html?page...](http://www.nytimes.com/2006/08/09/technology/09aol.html?pagewanted=all&_r=0)

Anonymity is not privacy.

</comment><comment><USER17> I haven't been following closely, but could it have been the FBI transferring Silk Road funds to their own address? Given the timing that seems to make sense.

<comment><USER18> They've always tagged the seized coins either with 'Silkroad seized coins' or 'DPR seized coins' in the past. e.g. [https://blockchain.info/address/1F1tAaz5x1HUXrCNLbtMDqcw6o5G...](https://blockchain.info/address/1F1tAaz5x1HUXrCNLbtMDqcw6o5GNn4xqX)

<comment><USER19> Who did the tagging?

<comment><USER20> Users of blockchain.info. It's a little obvious, the amounts they transferred are "FBI" when typed on a phone keyboard.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER21> Once wallets become available that can mask this type of public exposure, bitcoin popularity and usage will grow even more.

</comment><comment><USER22> Today's goals:

* Spend 100 million for supercomputers to compute this address's wallet in one day.

* Acquire said wallet.

* Reimburse my 100 million debt.

* Enjoy my 50 millions.

Anybody got supercomputers?

<comment><USER23> The numbers for this, sadly (or gladly, for holders of bitcoin), don't work out. Even if you had the most powerful supercomputer in the world and could try trillions upon trillions of keys per second, you'd need, on average, more than the current age of the universe to brute-force the key.

From: [http://bitcoin.stackexchange.com/questions/22/is-it- possible...](http://bitcoin.stackexchange.com/questions/22/is-it-possible-to- brute-force-bitcoin-address-creation-in-order-to-steal-money/3205#3205)

 _In order to spend money sent to a Bitcoin address, you just need to find a ECDSA public key that hashes to the same 160 bit value. That will take, on average, 2 ^ 160 key generations._

 _Supposing you could generate a billion (2 ^ 30) per second, you need 2 ^ 130 seconds._

 _Doing this in parallel using a billion machines requires only 2 ^ 100 seconds._

 _Getting a billion of your richest friends to join you gets it down to only 2 ^ 70 seconds._

 _There are about 2 ^ 25 seconds per year, so you need 2 ^ 45 years._

 _The age of the Universe is about 2 ^ 34 years so far—better get cracking!_

</comment></comment><comment><USER24> This type of "sophisticated analysis" will be useless whenever zerocoin is proven as a viable addition to the protocol. True anonymity is scary from a regulatory standpoint but extremely desirable to many others.

<comment><USER25> I would be unsurprised if use of zerocoin winds up being treated as money laundering.

</comment></comment><comment><USER26> Very curious how Meiklejohn came to associate the 12sENw address with Bitstamp...

</comment><comment><USER27> Anyone know where I can get one of those bitcoin keychains in the picture? :)

Edit: Found it, [http://bkeychain.com/buy.html](http://bkeychain.com/buy.html) ($12??)

<comment><USER28> How many bit coins to get one of those?</comment></comment>


Google co-created video of an entire ride of the Trans-Siberian Railway - <AUTHOR> http://www.google.ru/intl/ru/landing/transsib/ <comment><USER2> Ah, shame. It's in the wrong direction for me. I did the Trans-Siberian a few years ago, but heading from east to west.

This really captures the feel of the thing. It's just like sitting on a train, except for an entire week.

Of course, for the full experience, you'll need some Russian businessmen who don't speak any English (but understand a little German+) filling you with inexhaustible quantities of really good vodka and crushing you at chess, and you'll need to step outside for ten minutes each day to buy potato cakes and liter bottles of beer (to dillute the vodka).

Highly recommended!

(+ Evidently when a group of people keeps repeatedly showing up in your country uninvited every few dozen years, you eventually get to know their language. Hence you can get by pretty much anywhere in Russia if you speak German.)

<comment><USER3> Their knowledge of German would be more likely to be a result of the relationship between the Soviet Union and the German Democratic Republic. Likewise people that went to school in the former GDR all speak a basic or even advanced level of Russian.

<comment><USER4> Foreign language was a mandatory class in all Soviet schools. Vast majority of schools taught English, few schools had German and even smaller fraction had French.

<comment><USER5> Can't speak for Soviet era, but in Tsarist Russia, French was the status language of the upper classes.

The allusions to French influence are everywhere in "Fathers and Sons". The novel itself is a meditation on Russian society at the time, specially the two leading intellectual camps, the established landed gentry and the young nihilists who rejected the status quo. Turgenev subtly highlights their shared francophile elements, both types usually educated in France or French schools, or taught themselves French to absorb Western culture for subversive reasons.

<comment><USER6> I think that remained true at least until the early twentieth century. My high-school Russian teacher said this was because wealthy Russian families often employed French nannies, who taught some French to the children.

You can see this in the film _Burnt by the Sun_ , which is fictional, but perhaps historically accurate in this respect. It's set in 1930's Russia. A respected Soviet military officer is eating by himself while his wife's upper- class family converses in the other room. The maid asks why, and he responds, "I can't speak French." The purpose of this scene is clear: the inability of high-status Russians to speak French is a sign of broader social change.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> Reminds me of this, a 7.5hr video of a train journey across Norway: <http://nrkbeta.no/2009/12/18/bergensbanen-eng/>

<comment><USER8> I watched it entirely. It had a great advantage of being taken from the cab, which is quite different experience from anything you can see from a window of a passenger car (of course, you can get something similar at the other side, but in a modern train, most likely a driving car with another driver's cab (unaccessible) occupies that space, and if not, then there are just quite small and narrow windows in the rear door), especially live. It's worth watching even if you already knew the route as a passenger.

On the other hand, it had a disadvantage of Bergensbanen being mostly just a long long row of endless tunnels. Seeing a name of the tunnel, it's length in kilometers and then watching 15 minutes of darkness… isn't quite interesting.

</comment></comment><comment><USER9> <http://www.google.ru/intl/ru/landing/transsib/en.html> \-- in English

</comment><comment><USER10> I'll bite: why exactly is the Trans-Siberian Railway so significant and awe- inspiring?

<comment><USER2> Because it links up an incredibly long and incredibly hostile bit of territory, and essentially hooks the rail networks of Asia with the ones in Europe.

As a result, I can walk to my local train station here in the North of England, and ride a continuous set of trains all the way to Ho Chi Minh City (Saigon) without ever stepping off the platform. If it weren't for a few destroyed tracks in Cambodia, you could make it to Singapore. That's pretty cool.

It's also the cheapest per-mile transport on earth. Where else can you get a full third of the way around the globe for under $200?

<comment><USER11> Under $200? That's pretty incredible. You have to pay three quarters of that to get from Munich to Berlin. That's with a high speed train, but still — under $200, wow.

<comment><USER2> Private compartments are more like $400, but yeah, you can get a 3rd class berth for like $180 Moscow to Beijing.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> So good to see something on the web about the beauty, vastness, and mystery of what is out there, rather than about the cleverness of the project's creators.

</comment><comment><USER13> Moscow looks and feels difficult. No doubt my impression is just a small fraction of the real story. I was surprised to see so much graffiti.

Made me think about what the Russian people have endured the past 250 years and how strong their resolve to persevere must be.

Be interesting to see the same video 10, 25, and 50 years from now.

</comment><comment><USER14> The 'explore the surroundings' is pretty cool also. Not to nitpick, but it'd be pretty awesome if that was all in the same page. And picasa linked up with youtube, real-time (galleries became available in the same page as you progressed).... It's pretty amazing as it is though.

</comment><comment><USER15> I think this is fantastic, and I might have to have a minimized version running for the next month.

</comment><comment><USER16> A week of live Half-Life 2 reference art can't be wrong.

</comment><comment><USER17> This is _awesome_ , I always wanted to make this journey but never had a chance.</comment>


Benefitting from beauty school dropouts (and graduates) - <AUTHOR> http://internationalbs.wordpress.com/2010/05/13/benefitting-from-beauty-school-dropouts-and-graduates/

<comment><USER2> Pics or it didn't happen.</comment>


Coffee vs. beer: which drink makes you more creative? - <AUTHOR> https://medium.com/what-i-learned-today/f7fcb3b786b1

<comment><USER2> Obligatory: "Why not both?"

Many of my most productive hours that stand out in my memory were during binges of "four loko" back when it still had the caffeine (really the only upside of that beverage. Really horrifying stuff otherwise.) Somehow vodka/redbulls never really get me to the same place.

<comment><USER3> Four Loko also is loaded with sugar. If as an experiment, you really want to suffer, try this:

[http://www.currentground.com/daily/blackout/blast- blueberry-...](http://www.currentground.com/daily/blackout/blast-blueberry- pomegranate)

...it's got to be that flavor. There's an amazing surprise at the end. Like as in, 24 hours later.

<comment><USER2> Hmm, sugar could be it. Now that I think about it I always use diet redbull with vodka/redbulls...

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> My friend and I have 'Tuesdays'. School used to suck, so we went to the bar every Tuesday to get away from it. We've been doing this for about two years now. It's an open time to talk about whatever comes up. We've built some nice mental structures over the years.

Ideas are so fragile, interruptions often shatter them. The idea 'zen' is off when there's distractions. You can't really get in the zone. So we go to the bar alone (where no one can say "I don't know what you guys are talking about"), get tanked, and talk.

Alcohol absolutely helps with creativity. It makes bad ideas sound better. It lets you see the world differently (if you're still capable of thinking while drinking). It lets you gain perspective, although a muddy one. I think it helps significantly with seeing better pictures in your head. I can sometimes place where a thought came from (I thought of this, saw this picture, thought of this, played with this picture), but when I'm drinking, I get the final picture "HERE, TAKE THIS!". I don't see any of the intermediate steps (they've gone subconscious or something). It's a pretty fun way to think of ideas.

<comment><USER5> Even if all it did was make bad ideas sound better, it wouldn't be worthless, at least if you believe what pops up on HN:

<https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5635461>

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> The title might as well be "COBOL vs. FORTRAN: which programming language makes you more productive?", if you catch my drift. Why limit yourself to 2nd circuit depressants or 3rd circuit stimulants?

<comment><USER7> ...circuit?

<comment><USER8> Referring to the "eight circuits of consciousness" I believe. I'd google it up, but I'm on the company network right now.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> I have heard of the Ballmer Peak, but for me even a single pint of beer totally kills my ability to write code. My creative peak seems to be the first few hours after a really good night's sleep.

<comment><USER10> _even a single pint of beer totally kills my ability to write code_

That's probably true, but you might realize what code you should actually be writing ("I know! A social network for pet owners!"), or some other higher- level idea. I can't speak much for code, but I can say that I get ideas for fiction or essays after a drink or two but wouldn't want write new material in the same state.

</comment></comment><comment><USER11> I used to think that coffee made me more productive, then I realized that coffee just makes me too hyper to concentrate. Now, when I want to focus, I either drink ice water or decaf chai tea.

And alcohol? Forget, I can't focus on anything code related after even one drink. I have no Ballmer's peak.

</comment><comment><USER12>
       Always in moderation
       If you decide to drink coffee or beer while you're working,
       stick to no more than 2 drinks per sitting and try not to
       do this more than once or twice per week to prevent
       dependency.

Everything in moderation, including moderation.

</comment><comment><USER13> There is a great theory that the enlightenment started because Europeans started drinking coffee for breakfast, instead of beer.

</comment><comment><USER14> > So while you may feel that coffee is giving you more energy, it's simply > telling your body that your energy reserves are good to go even after > they're long gone.

I'm not an expert by any means, but this isn't quite what I learned in my undergraduate course on metabolic biochemistry. Caffeine simply encourages you to burn more energy by the mechanisms outlined by the author. However, you cannot burn energy reserves after they are gone. Where would the energy come from? You have carbohydrate reserves and you have fat reserves. Carbohydrates will go first, and once depleted caffeine will cause you to burn more fat than you normally would. The effect is somewhere around 10% for average consumption levels. When you have burned all of the usable carbohydrates and fat in your body, you start burning protein. That is called ketogenesis. It results in muscle breakdown, and the ketones produced are one of the reasons crack addicts smell kind of funny. Caffeine will not induce ketogenesis unless you are drinking way too much and not eating nearly enough. Note that there aren't super sharp transitions from carbs to fat and from fat to protein.

<comment><USER15> Ketosis is an alternative method of using fats for energy in the absence of normal process using glucose. The presence of ketones on your breath makes a "fruity" smell that can range from minor to fairly unpleasant. It may make your mouth taste "metallic".

When your body is breaking down protein for energy, you will smell like ammonia, which is significantly different smelling than ketones like acetone.

<comment><USER14> Okay, so ketosis (ketogenesis?) is one step before breaking down proteins, i.e. first you smell like ketones, then you smell like ammonia?

<comment><USER15> Basically, you don't have to enter ketosis on the way to burning proteins for energy.

If you stop eating entirely, you will enter ketosis and also be breaking down some protein for energy as soon as your blood glucose and your liver glycogen is depleted (your brain still needs about 20 grams of glucose a day even in ketosis, so gluconeogenesis will occur turning protein into glucose). You probably won't even smell the ammonia at this rate, since it's pretty low.

After being in ketosis for a while (a few weeks) your body gets better at producing ketones on demand instead of just supplying them all the time and the acetone smell decreases substantially, but you still shouldn't be breaking down protein unless you are low body fat and not eating enough fat for the calories you need.

I never smell like ammonia unless I'm working out really hard and in ketosis.

If you aren't lazy, you can work hard enough to smell like ammonia no matter what you eat if you are pushing yourself really hard in an anaerobic exercise set.

<comment><USER14> Wow, that was an awesome explanation. Thanks.

<comment><USER15> Not a problem at all.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> Probably beer.

Because when i write code, i always want to extend code to cover all case scenario's... in the best architecture (DDD-design). I want it to be perfect and bla bla bla, ...

I think i can extend to infinity trying to cover all possible situations...

When i'm coding on beer, i just don't care and code and ship it...

So beer makes me more productive...

</comment><comment><USER17> There's the quote "Write drunk, edit sober" that writers are fond of using. I wrote about this myself not two weeks ago, believing them to be related: <https://medium.com/editors-picks/f79b411687b9>. Sometimes we have to relax ourselves to let creativity flow, whether that be writing or coding.

</comment><comment><USER18> I've had some creative sessions w/ moderate Yerba mate consumption and haven't experienced the health issues some say it has.

<comment><USER19> At least for me if I drink too much my heartbeat accelerates, so I have no reason to drink a lot.

I love Erva Mate (I'm Brazilian, it's how we say "Yerba Mate" in Portuguese) and try to drink some every morning. I love a beer as well.

Out of curiosity, are you from South America?

<comment><USER20> The one time I've gotten my heart rate to 192, I had about two liters of Mate in the in the morning, then ran up our local training hill (approx. 1200ft elevation gain) in about 30 minutes. No problems with arrhythmia, though.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER21> Coffee definitely! esp the first few minutes after consuming it when the altered state (caffeine high) kicks in. My belief is that your mind needs a state change to create a moment of insight/s. Like Einstein said, "We can not solve our problems with the same level of thinking that created them".

Not sure if I would classify a "eureka moment" as creativity. Eureka moments are bursts of solving/finding answers to something. I agree that they happen during relaxed states (non beta waves). Creativity is something that feels like it is more associated to a state of flow achieved when one is in the moment.

The best "eureka moments" I've had were always in an isolation tank when floating like a cork all relaxed in 1/3 epsom salt. Such a powerful yet under used tool!

</comment><comment><USER22> Question. How cat focus help in creativity? If you want to make new connections in brain -> creativity -> isn't that opposite of focusing? Hmmm,

Sorry on bad english, 4 beers + not primary language :-)

</comment><comment><USER23> Looks like the Ballmer peak was about 2x too high. <https://xkcd.com/323/> Unless... the Microsoft programmers already had a tolerance to alcohol? :)

</comment><comment><USER24> What about us water-only folk? Do we miss out on the super powers?

<comment><USER25> Go water! I find it helps me stay focused and energized over the long haul. My drinking routine is based on the assumption[0] that thinking burns as much energy as physical work, and thus I need to stay hydrated.

[0] Related comic: <http://wondermark.com/930/>

</comment></comment><comment><USER26> As an espresso drinker, I found the "little 14-ounce mug" funny. That said, I don't really feel their effects, even if I take an extra shot. Sleeping definitively works, though.

<comment><USER27> Espresso

<comment><USER26> Thanks, fixed.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER28> LSD for creativity mixed amphetamine salts for productivity

<comment><USER29> With what programming language does that even work?

<comment><USER30> All of them. Which can you read at the end? Maybe your Python. Definitely not my Common Lisp or C.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER31> TFA has coffee as being bad for creative thought and good for doing stupid things fast. I would bet that the various effects are bi- or n-modal. For me, it's GREAT for creative thought and pretty bad when it comes time to get things done, since I don't focus as well. It took me at least a decade to realize I was being less productive because I was enjoying the amped-up feeling from the caffeine.

</comment><comment><USER32> For sprints, either. For marathons, neither.

Knowing which is which is half the battle.

</comment><comment><USER33> Sipping away on rum + energy drink as we speak. Alcahol + caffeine + sugar all in one small glass for sipping. For me it's a kind of magic combination that really helps me focus although that's not necessarily the same thing as creativity I suppose.

</comment><comment><USER34> Surely a coffee-infused stout can provide the best of both worlds?

That said, unless it's a side project that isn't in real use I don't tend to work after drinking alcohol, but it's a rare day that I don't work "under the influence" of espresso.

</comment><comment><USER35> The author should credit The Oatmeal for that awesome caffeine picture.

<comment><USER23> The word "illustration" in the sentence above it does link to the The Oatmeal, but you're right it should probably be clearer.

<comment><USER35> Yep, just noticed. I clicked on that link originally, but it didn't load for some reason.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER36> I would like to see an article of this nature written about Kava Kava

</comment><comment><USER37> Green gunpowder FTW!

</comment><comment><USER38> It wants me to log in with Twitter. Why?

</comment><comment><USER39> wait

this bacterial issue in the water can't be fixed by boiling your water before you make coffee???

<comment><USER40> Coffee is usually brewed a little below boiling, and in any case blasting water to 212°F and then serving it doesn't always kill all the bacteria- you need to boil it for a couple minutes. I forget how long though.

<comment><USER41> If bacteria are a problem where you libe you can simply boil your water for a few minutes, take it off the heat for it to cool down to the temp you want, and then use it to brew coffee.

<comment><USER40> Right, but if the office has a coffeemaker and no stove, you can't do that.

<comment><USER42> You can get an LED bacteria pen. Those will kill most of the bacteria in the water before using it to make coffee.

Something like this: [http://www.amazon.com/SteriPEN-Adventurer-Opti-Handheld- Puri...](http://www.amazon.com/SteriPEN-Adventurer-Opti-Handheld- Purifier/dp/B003A1MURC)

<comment><USER40> Those aren't LED. It's an unshielded UV lamp.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER43> coffee.</comment>


Amazon walks back vendor purge - <AUTHOR> https://digiday.com/retail/amazon-vendor-purge-sellers-reduce-dependence-platform/ <comment><USER2> I honestly think it's high time Amazon did this. I've been a big fan of purchasing products from them in the past but over the past couple of years, the entire experience has left me feeling very unsatisfied as it is blatantly obvious how their market is being gamed by unscrupulous sellers, low quality products and an epidemic of fake/paid reviews.

Trying to buy quality items in certain popular categories (eg: screw driver set, chargers, flashlights, etc.) is all but impossible as you have to wade through pages and pages of low quality Chinese made knockoffs with weird brand names and of course, 1000+ 5-star reviews.

It's gotten to the point that my wife and I have been purchasing more and more items through Walmart, Target and Home Depot. They've all upped their game to compete against Amazon, and I'm happy to wait an extra day or two to receive an item in lieu of having a product that is likely better quality and the option for a frictionless return at a local store if needed.

As an ML engineer, it's clear to me that Amazon really hasn't cared about their reviews being gamed, or that their marketplace is now just a flea market being drowned in a sea of crap. Hopefully that changes going forward.

<comment><USER3> Sounds a bit like what's happened to ebay.

But hey, when you get paid the per-item fees no matter what happens, why would you optimise for quality?

<comment><USER4> > why would you optimise for quality?

Because people will start buying their goods elsewhere.

<comment><USER5> Where? If Amazon almost monopoly.

<comment><USER6> No? Most vendors have gotten their online experience in reasonable order at this point. (In some ways, better than Amazon, because many aren't on the "marketplace" model and I don't have to sift a sea of crap).

That is: Free or very low cost shipping and a reasonable UI.

And for those with a brick + mortar presence, free in-store pickup with a pretty quick turnaround time on it.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> Posting anonymously as an insider from their advertising org: this is probably a play to fill an enormous data gap they have. Due to historical reasons, there's actually no mapping between brands and who sells those brands--that database literally doesn't exist, and without that data, their advertising offerings suffer. This move will allow them to rectify a data gap, and expand their digital advertising program by allowing them to more accurately understand and measure the relationship between advertisers, products, and brands.

<comment><USER8> Can you explain more on how having this Data would help with Amazon's advertising business.

</comment></comment><comment><USER9> As a consumer, I only buy from the operator of the site (Amazon, Walmart, Newegg, etc). The only exception is certain specific vendors on the market place that are the company of the product itself (Anker). I've found it hard to get support/help otherwise.

<comment><USER10> Problem is that on Amazon this approach does not guarantee no fake goods because Amazon mixes the real product they bought with fake product for 3rd party sellers in the same bin.

</comment></comment><comment><USER11> A system to avoid fakes and etc seems like something Amazon should be doing. Not sure if this actually protects everyone or just a few...

<comment><USER12> Brand Registry enrollment will be good for consumers if it works.

I looked into Herman Miller chairs on Amazon.ca last year. The Amazon seller "Madison Seating" was some group selling refurbished HM chairs out of a warehouse, offering no warranty but selling at new prices.

Companies like that will find it harder to fool shoppers when they don't have an "authorized reseller" badge by their names.

</comment></comment><comment><USER13> _More importantly, it pushed the vendor to sign up for Amazon's Brand Registry enrollment, a program that lets brand owners and licensees submit proof that they are authorized sellers of a brand's products, which then grants them protection from unauthorized sellers on Amazon. The vendor who received the email is not a brand owner._

This seems to support my earlier conjecture[1] that Amazon's efforts are due to their attempt to mitigate fraud and counterfeits on their site.

[1] [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=19392734](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=19392734)

</comment><comment><USER14> "To enroll, brands need to provide a government-registered trademark number."

I had heard some US sellers get a trademark from a foreign country since the process is often faster and they can then enroll in Brand Registry sooner. But does anyone know if you register with a non-US trademark, can you then still sell that brand in Amazon's US market ? Or is it only the region/country that issued the trademark ?

<comment><USER15> You can sell without brand registry, you just don't get all the features like special brand content, reporting, etc.

</comment></comment><comment><USER16> They have definitely purged vendors. Even very legit ones. but most have remained for now.

</comment><comment><USER17> Walked back? They need 20 more purges. Even Ebay and Alibaba are less sketchy at this point.</comment>


How to raise 100K in 1 week - <AUTHOR> https://medium.com/on-startups/b235b5908c30

<comment><USER2> One week is great turnaround time! And for one or two developers, this would buy a nice chunk of time to continue developing the product. If only there were more things like that in America...</comment>


Mad Enterprise - <AUTHOR> https://blog.needprogrammer.com/index.php/2015/11/21/mad-enterprise/ <comment><USER2> Well done Sir. I've worked as a back office software developer for a large corp for the past 4 years. My role specifically involves working directly with 2 external consulting companies. We have numerous BAs, PMs, Specialists and Directors.... the companies doing the work seem to have minimal technical staff and limited managerial guidance. In short, the developers often appear overworked, stressed and kinda in "don't give a fuck" territory. I have no idea why this is the case...I can't say that you're right - but you raise a valid point.

</comment><comment><USER3> My first job out of university I worked for a major telco. If I was tasked with changing a piece of code: I had to write an impact analysis document to be reviewed, followed up by a technical design, unit test documentation and then finally I meticulously made code changes. Easily - 3-4 levels of management "signalling" my work. Not sure it really matters in the long run - corporate structure is key...to a successful corporation.

<comment><USER4> This. Multi-billion/million dollar corporations don't "move fast and break things". They have an extremely solid managerial and organizational structure which keeps things afloat. OP is either disgruntled or unaware of how large companies work.

<comment><AUTHOR> That's the entire point - large organizations are inherently broke. Read the article.

<comment><USER4> "large organizations are inherently broke" \- you don't grow to be a 30BN/YR company by being inherently broke.</comment></comment></comment></comment>


Why The NSA's Surveillance Program Is Illegal And Unconstitutional - <AUTHOR> http://www.techdirt.com/articles/20130628/01171923655/why-nsas-surveillance-program-is-unconstitutional.shtml

<comment><USER2> > many in Congress insist that they never meant for the law to cover this > level of surveillance

Too bad they never considered _reading the patriot act before signing it_...

Also, I think I'll need an XKCD graph to understand just when WP and NYT stopped being Obama puppets...

<comment><USER3> Yes but in considerations of legality, courts have often held that what is put into law is the intention of the law makers and not simply a set of words.

Now whether the courts would accept that in this situation or not is an open question. But one could still at least make the argument that the activity is illegal.

<comment><USER4> >Yes but in considerations of legality, courts have often held that what is put into law is the intention of the law makers and not simply a set of words.

I would love to see that applied to the Patriot Act: It's well known that the large majority of Congress didn't read it before passing it, so their intent was clearly to pass generic anti-terrorism legislation rather than any of the unknown-to-them specific text of USA PATRIOT. And, of course, without any specific text you would expect the law to be found unconstitutionally vague.

That should also have the gleeful side effect of setting the precedent that members of Congress have to read and understand legislation before passing it or the law in question is unconstitutional.

<comment><USER3> On the other, ironic, hand, then, the court might then somewhat rightful hold that congress' intention was _" do whatever the heck you want and then lie and mislead us about it"_. And low and behold...

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> Is there any constitutional court in the US that can revoke unconstitutional laws? In my country (which has a totally different legal system, since court sentences cannot be directly used in future cases) any sentenced person can appeal to the constitutional court, and if the court finds that the sentence was based on an unconstitutional law, the invalid law gets revoked, and the sentenced person becomes a defendant again.

I'm just thinking whether Snowden's lawyers could use this kind of argument. Of course this is not that simple, since he disclosed a national secret, and I guess that national secrets regulations are perfectly constitutional.

<comment><USER3> I'm sure a lawyer could say more.

My understanding is that US law does not have any specific constitutional courts. Indeed, I think one could argue that US law is not necessarily "based on the constitution" but based on English Common Law since even the constitution is interpreted in light of this.

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

<comment><USER6> The SCOTUS _is_ the Constitutional Court. The problem is, they only hear cases where the Appellant can demonstrate standing. It's really hard to demonstrate standing when the matter at hand is so deeply classified that no proof of standing can be brought to bear.

<comment><USER7> Laws which may be illegal being so secret they cannot be challenged is incompatible with any form of democracy. They are quite compatible with other forms of government like dictatorships. Maybe that will be the end result.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> This is absurd. It has been public knowledge for years that Facebook and Google -- just to take two cases -- use user information to learn about them in order to make money. Install Ghostery and see how many trackers one encounters on nytimes.com or cnn.com. There is no expectation of privacy in these activities at all.

Moreover, anyone who knows about how the internet works knows that packets travel over public and private lines and are routed through public and private computers. By design these machines read the headers of packets to know where to direct them. Computation is done on the contents of packets to ensure checksum validity.

One may strongly dislike the NSA's activities, but this is a specious argument.

<comment><USER9> _There is no expectation of privacy in these activities at all._

Tell that to anyone who doesn't know what a "tracking cookie" is. A normal, non-technical, rational person will have an expectation of privacy with regard to their Internet browsing habits.

<comment><USER8> And a normal, non-technical, rational 5-year-old has an expectation of Santa Claus.

<comment><USER10> I know that anyone in the know wouldn't know, but how can you know what you don't know when normally what you know is that you do have an expectation of privacy when you are by yourself.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> Asking for a lawyer to comment:

Rejecting standing was how the SCOTUS disposed of Proposition 8; how does it compare to find a way to have standing for this issue? Yeah, I know it's something of an over-broad question, but I don't know enough to pare it down better.

<comment><USER12> IANAL, but typically if you were the one harmed you would have standing. I'm not sure if there's anything particular to this area that would change that. In principle, violation of your privacy should be considered "harm." In practice, you need a lawyer to comment.

<comment><USER13> Also NAL, but the problem for these types of scenarios (and yes, I agree it's a problem) is that you have to prove specific harm. It's not enough that some jerk in the government might be able to violate your privacy with such-and- such a program as then the Supreme Court would have to overturn essentially the entire government.

You'd have to demonstrate you were _actually harmed_ by a program, which is going to be difficult for someone on the outside of these programs to ever prove.

<comment><USER14> Journalists could go for "chilling effect." The AP has already complained of it in practical terms.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> I wonder how many people reading this helped build the systems that integrate with NSA

<comment><USER16> Many Palantir employees, including high level ones, have made little secret of their participation on Hacker News, mentioning their company in posts here.

You may recall they were involved in plotting to destroy journalist Glen Greenwald and his family.

[http://www.salon.com/2011/02/15/palantir/](http://www.salon.com/2011/02/15/palantir/)

Plotting to destroy journalists who out government corruption and illegal behavior. Can't think of anything more undemocratic, actually the correct description is that an organization that plots to destroy journalists can not be described as anything other than a terrorist organization which is at war with the american people. But these terrorists at Palantir are proud of their affiliation with this terrorist crime syndicate.

[http://wiki.echelon2.org/wiki/Palantir](http://wiki.echelon2.org/wiki/Palantir)

From posts on HN we see either that fascism and a hatred of freedom and democracy are extremely common in the tech industry OR there are a lot of organized sock puppet and persona accounts here. I personally think the latter is more likely - look at the "top voted" comment from a 1 day old account. Legit votes pushing it to the top? No way.

<comment><USER17> I know we often try to keep it civil around here, but shame on them.

Actually, let me rephrase, Fuck Palantir. There is a point at which I disregard the technical hurdles that they overcome, due to the fact that they're at odds with our constitution. They are far, far past that point.

<comment><USER16> Yeah, the things they are up to are bad. There's another thread on HN right now about Palantir's involvement with mobile license plate readers and the extent to which these are photographing and tracking the movements of tens of millions of people without warrant or cause and feeding the results into intelligence fusion centers. The article below notes the case of a security consultant who filed a request for his own info and found he had been photographed 112 times by just one of these programs, including one photo that was a photo of his daughters in the driveway of his own house, apparently taken by cameras installed on randomly passing police cars which just scan in everything they see and feed it to computers for analysis.

[http://www.cryptogon.com/?p=35851](http://www.cryptogon.com/?p=35851)

[http://cironline.org/reports/license-plate-readers-let- polic...](http://cironline.org/reports/license-plate-readers-let-police- collect-millions-records-drivers-4883)

Anonymous got a lucky break and found out about what was really going on at a few of these firms. There are a lot more firms and it isn't going to be so easy for grey hats to break in and release documents in the future. This doesn't mean that these firms aren't still engaging in widespread programs that make the Stasi look like a child's birthday game.</comment></comment></comment></comment>


India satellite: Student-made Kalamsat V2 put into orbit - happy-go-lucky https://www.bbc.com/news/world-asia-india-46956595 <comment><AUTHOR> I am really amazed how much people in India are able to achieve without spending tons of money.

India Mars mission costed less then production of a fiction movie "Gravity".

My sister in law needed a cancer cure Herceptine, which is produced by Roche and is rather expensive. It turned out that there is an India company that produces equivalent that is 4 times cheaper. In addition, this company was not some kind of "we will not talk to you little, unimportant moron", but were very helpful even though it was purchase only for one person.

People talk a lot of about China economy growing, etc. doing business over there, but if I was putting my bets, I would choose India in the long run.

</comment><comment><USER2> Congratulations to all involved. The satellite appears to have been made by Space Kidz India, a Chennai-based space education firm, it only weighs 1.26kg and took 6 days to make for a cost of ~ $17K.

We need as many of these experiments by as many countries as possible. Level the playing field and innovation will come.

</comment><comment><USER3> Kalamsat seems go be named after A P J Abdul Kalam, former President of India and one of the foremost missile technology scientists in the world.

</comment><comment><USER4> How is the biotech/drug discovery scene in India? There is so much talent there but I wonder if they have enough funding. They could potentially be coming up with lots of cures.</comment>


Show HN: Treenee, a simple "decision tree" engine - <AUTHOR> https://github.com/claudioc/treenee <comment><USER2> Did I miss the target use case and user?

I'm a big fan of decision frameworks but without those two clarifications it's hard to give feedback. To make this practically valuable it would be great to have logging and an escape path for criteria that doesn't apply or when information isn't available. If I get to question 5/6 and I don't know the answer, can I get a valuable outcome? It would be ideal to capture those cases with logging so the tree can be improved.

This is a great idea and start though. I love how minimal it is. Once I use it, I immediately want it just built into Jira or wherever I'm making important/repeated decisions.

<comment><AUTHOR> (author here) Very good point(s) and thank you for the input! Treenee is indeed very minimal and it's supposed to be working basically "out-of-the- box". This also means that some features are obviously missing at the moment.

I use Treenee internally (even though I wanted to keep it on m y own name, not the company's) and I decided to put it out there as soon as it was "complete". I will add more examples and use cases in the near future (also screenshots, but I am a bit ashamed of the scarce "design").

Do you mind expanding a bit on what you would like "logging" to be?

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> treenee.com is coming back with NET::ERR_CERT_DATE_INVALID

<comment><AUTHOR> Yeah sorry, the usual problem of not restarting nginx after a certificate update. Thanks!</comment></comment>