Death Threats and Hate Crimes, Attacks On Women Bloggers Escalating - mkr-hn http://ittybiz.com/death-threats-online/

<comment><AUTHOR> This was a strange read. The entire thing comes across as fictional or fictionalized. She makes no reference to police involvement even though she is "in hiding." She doesn't name names. I googled her site as she claimed you'd find who hacked it. I came up empty. Anyone have better luck?

"Attacks On Women Bloggers Escalating" She cited one incident from 4 years ago [https://secure.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/wiki/Kathy_Sierra#...](https://secure.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/wiki/Kathy_Sierra#Controversy)

And her post is littered with self important "I'm a successful woman and woman woman woman so people hate me." I'm betting it's more her writing style. Glancing at a previous post I'm pretty disgusted with the author. Hint: It's not because you're a woman, it's because you're an insulting, annoying and condescending writer.

But without her citing reality it's hard to know what really brought the scorn down on her. And to top it off, I would never trust a marketing person.

EDIT: Just realized these comments here are likely the types of "Death Threat Hate" she's allegedly dealing with. She's a bad person who embraces hyperbole to the point of comedy and creates her own hate machine.

<comment><USER2> I'm sorry, but comments like this make you sound like one of the people this woman is hiding from. It's as if you're trying to discredit her story by attacking her personally. Such negativity isn't necessary.

<comment><AUTHOR> She says she's hated on because she's a woman yet I specifically gave reasons to dislike her writing that had nothing to do with her being a woman. Although the fact she uses her gender as a shield is pretty absurd.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER3> > I'm going to tell you a story and it's very, very important. Please read it, > all the way through. Women's lives are at stake.

So it's very, very, important to read this because a particular gender's lives are at stake, and this gender, lest you forget, is very, very important.

Have you ever seen a man write like this, ever ready to use their gender as a VIP card?

Then there's her "business" icon. Is that a semi-stripper?? Is that a post-it note? Is her skirt hanging down into the space between the Y?

Have you ever seen many men promote their businesses using their sexuality or gender as a card?

No, this is not a "vicious" hate crime or "attack" on Women Bloggers. This is an "attack" on A particular woman blogger who is clearly using her gender as both a food stamp and a responsibility-shield to get by in this world. For a counterexample, @see jeanhsu.com. No whoring there.

<comment><USER4> Even if she chooses to make her gender part of her branding in a prominent and very-confident way, "whoring" is a poor choice of words - it's a loaded term with connotations of specifically insulting a particular gender for behaving in overly-confident ways. If you'd like to have a web where gender isn't an important distinguishing characteristic by default, it's helpful to avoid sexualized insults.

<comment><USER3> You are right that I went overboard.

I could potentially point out politely that she is playing the gender card.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> While I sympathise deeply with the author, I find this post really annoying.

Firstly, it doesn't tell me anything. I suspect long-term readers will know exactly what 'Mean Website 1' and 'Mean Website 2' are. Without that information it seems very rambling.

The main suggestion is to share this rambling, information-lite post.

Does anyone have the full story of what actually happened? In particular, while I agree there are some horrible trolls out there (I've been targeted by a few over the years), I find it hard to believe someone would get trolled so hard just for "being nice". I'd believe some evidence, or independent confirmation.

<comment><USER6> People don't usually make this sort of stuff up. I agree with her decision not to post details. She does not need your permission or consent to be upset. Her experience is not subject acceptance of every random passerby on the internet to be valid.

<comment><AUTHOR> >People don't usually make this sort of stuff up.

Yes they do. People love attention. It can range from something as simple as exaggerating the size of a fish to a friend in high school running 6 live journals to have public multi-party fights with her primary identity.

<comment><USER6> I'll tell you what. She's not making it up and she's not a drama queen. Will you agree with both of these statements regarding this specific situation?

<comment><AUTHOR> Why would I agree with either of those statements? Because you declared them factual? You're coming off as weird. Like a creepy guy telling a girl she wants to go on a date with him and thinking by staring at her all intently she'll bend to his will.

Weird.

<comment><USER6> She's posted the names and details of what is going on, so yeah, it's a fact. Are you Anthony, or just one of his friends?

<comment><AUTHOR> No relation with anyone involved (although I suspect you know these people in real life) other than being subjected to their internet-drama. Anyway, much of what she posts doesn't mesh up. She wasn't attacked for being a woman, a successful woman or by some random hate sites that latched onto her for being a woman.

She was attacked, online, because she had recently partnered with a man who allegedly walked out on his family. A family that happened to include religious fundamentalists who hate divorce. Now that little detail changes a lot of the story.

She also happens to be in the business of... what exactly?

<http://ittybiz.com/ittybiz-1000/> You're welcome to quote me anything from that page (or any other page on her site, couldn't really find a business-like statement anywhere).

Closest I got was:

 _We want to help 1000 people quit their jobs this year.

We're still in the early phases of creating a small army of motivated, successful, fulfilled people who are ready and able to take charge of their life, their work day, their career and their mission._

Now that explains why the scam-buster site was after her. Pretty much the only kernel of truth in her original post was that some people were mean to her on the internet.

Big whoop.

Edit: And just for an example in case you're confused:

 _As a reasonably prominent female face on the internet, I always knew the day would come when it would get very, very ugly._

None of this hate came from being internet-famous, but by becoming involved (professionally? Personally? who knows) with someone getting a divorce.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> Anybody that puts themselves in the public eye will sooner or later have to deal with the downsides of that.

Being a woman or a blogger has very little to do with it, attacks as a result of internet interaction are increasing, period. And as more and more of our communications and expressions are moving to the internet this trend will accelerate rather than slow down.

A friend of mine is an author that sometimes goes on TV, after every appearance there are at least several weirdos that feel the need to describe how and where she's going to die.

That's nothing to do with TV, it has everything to do with your visibility. The more idiots that figure out who you are and where you live the more you'll get this sort of thing aimed at you.

It is interesting how the author is actually asking for even more visibility which may very well result in more of such nonsense. That either means that she doesn't think it is all that serious after all or that she hasn't thought over the consequences of this action.

Trolls _love_ attention, if you want them to go away ignore them. And that's just what these people are, real life trolls and griefers. My guess is that as a result of this posting there will be a lot more attention from the jerks & idiots.

Also, if you really are ever concerned about your health to the point that you would write something like this the first place to stop is your local police station to file a complaint, without that it is very easy to be told that you 'made it all up'.

The short version: If you plan on being visible, grow a very thick skin regardless of your gender or occupation.

<comment><USER8> Is it really that hard to track down trolls and get them prosecuted? Zed Shaw, for example, seems to do this in his spare time and never seems to have much difficulty pin-pointing the pin-heads.

<comment><USER7> Does he actually get them prosecuted?

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> It's not about gender it's about being a minority compared to the majority in some group.

I am not white and when it comes down to it, there are those that try to use that to discredit me.

On the internet no one knows you are a dog, so using an alias I can hide my race, which, no, I will not disclose to the curious. It is only relevant in that I know what she is talking about and have experienced the same, but it's not only women and gays that get to see these things brought up when someone wants to discredit them to achieve greater power.

What is the solution? Is it to abandon my identity? Sure, maybe I am doing that when I post here anonymously. When I post with my real, obviously ethnic, name, I sure as hell get a lot more abuse rather than an honest consideration of ideas.

When responding to people on the internet, I prefer them to be anonymous as well. I like to respond only to ideas, though I will wonder about agendas when posts just don't make sense.

The corporations that are trying to seize control of the internet from the people don't like this. I say boycott Google and Facebook because of this. No one is listening. They would rather trade freedom for shiny baubles and just be part of the abusive system.

</comment><comment><USER9> The great thing about the internet is that it has really democratized public speech. The terrible thing about the internet is that it turns out people suck, and nobody wants democratic public speech.

On a related note, one of the iron laws of Eternal September is that it's impossible to socialize everyone. Raising awareness will likely make you feel better, but it will in no way staunch the flow of unprovoked vileness on the internet.

</comment><comment><USER10> She sounds like an attention-starved loony. The only thing I was reminded of while reading this post is that feminism is dead, and people that try to use the "women's rights" card sound weird.

</comment><comment><USER2> I remember the situation with Kathy Sierra. It was a shame that she was forced to stop blogging. I really enjoyed her posts. Her blog is still accessible from here: <http://headrush.typepad.com/>

</comment><comment><USER11> _This is a well-worn path when attacking women online. We are not attacked based on our success, but on our suitability for sexual intercourse._

Does this woman use the Internet at all? This is how EVERYONE is attacked...

 _Successful men are generally accused of being gay._

Oh. Ok. I guess she realizes she isn't so special after all...

In short, this isn't a tragedy against women's rights, it's a tragedy against the self-important author.

</comment><comment><USER12> This sounds extremely hyperbolic, I have to wonder why there are no citations as to the actual attacks in question?

 _As the comments started to escalate on Mean Website 2, one reader expressed pleasure that the website owner was attacking a woman, inferring he hoped there would be more. The owner's response:_

Come on, really? You think that's credible? That there's a cheer squad out there just looking for people that are victimising based on gender and seeking to congratulate them for such sterling behaviour? This stretches the bounds of credulity.

After a little googling I came up with this;

<http://saltydroid.info/the-ittybiz-spider/>

So is this basically some kind or marketer slanging match going down between two parties and each is trying to paint the other as the bigger evil?

Why is this here?

<comment><USER13> So, tl;dr for your link seems to be that people are attacking this woman, not specifically because she is a woman but because they believe her to be con- artist.

I only spent a brief moment reading the comments but I didn't see a lot of people attack her for being a woman or issuing death threats, but I did see a lot of folks accusing her of some nasty trickery. I don't trust this site anymore than the woman's own, but it seems to me that this whole thing is irrelevant to folks who don't read her blog.

<comment><USER14> Really? I can't say I read the comments comprehensively, but the main poster called her a 'bitch' a couple of lines in, and there was a lot of discussion about her breasts.

I suspect this woman's trying to deal with her detractors in entirely the wrong way - death threats are illegal, and instead of feeding the trolls, she should immediately take what she's got to law enforcement.

That said, this thread is a lot less sympathetic than I would've expected. No one deserves that sort of abuse. Let's say she _was_ a con artist. There's also legal ways of dealing with that, and none involve discussing any part of her anatomy.

<comment><USER13> "Really? I can't say I read the comments comprehensively, but the main poster called her a 'bitch' a couple of lines in, and there was a lot of discussion about her breasts."

Is not the same thing as targeting her specifically because she is a woman. Had the target been a man, they would likely have accused him of having a small penis. It's not right, it's excessively personal, but it's hardly what she described in her post. I didn't personally detect credible death threats and unless you can, I think it's a non-issue.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> Ok this might be reaching but if she is an SEO consultant and her username clearly is just a sales pitch, I am not sure if I buy this story...</comment>


Etrian Odyssey Director's Diary (2016) - <AUTHOR> https://www.dampfkraft.com/games/etrian-odyssey-directors-diary.html <comment><USER2> I really love the Etrian Odyssey games, and I think it's interesting to read the director's thought process in terms of design. Never before had I played a 3D Dungeon Crawler (Wizardry type) game. It was a strange experience at first, and an especially frustrating one. This game is extremely unforgiving, trying to push that last bit of your party's health to explore as much as possible. And then you make a fatal mistake, get too greedy, or maybe a bit unlucky, and lose all your progress since you last entered the dungeon. Later iterations of the game seem to be less difficult, though still challenging. Since playing Etrian Odyssey, I've started playing other games like the old Wizardry games and Legend of Grimrock.

Reading this is very inspiring. I'm also into game development and want to create an (online) RPG for "tired veteran MMO players". I belong to the generation of highschoolers that spent their free time playing MMORPGs like Final Fantasy XI, World of Warcraft, and Guild Wars, when they just came out. I had so much free time back then, and the energy to stay up until 3AM on a school night just to get that special item. Fast forward 15 years, I still love the feeling of "progress" in games, but I just don't have to time to spend. The extra time that I do have I try to spend on other things that are important to me. I'd love a game which would give me the feeling of progress (especially the feeling of Final Fantasy XI), but doesn't require me to go back to my highschool past.

Everything was thought out, from the core mechanics of the game to how the player should feel and use their imagination. I honestly think Kazuya Niinou did a great job. Reading this diary really inspired me to continue my game development journey. I can spend time doing what I love, work to achieve my goal, and also improve my programming skill / knowledge.

 _When I talked to our marketing team, I told them I wanted to emphasize that Etrian is "the renewal of the 3D dungeon RPG." What I mean by that is that I hope the genre will thrive again, not just attract the same Wizardry fans._

I think you achieved your goal, thanks you!

</comment><comment><USER3> Etrian Odyssey has some of the most satisfying "progress" feelings in RPGs I've ever experienced - getting to a new floor, building your parties skills, finally beating a tough boss.

Very interesting diaries, you can tell the director was very ambitious and the final product shows the amount of work put into the game

</comment><comment><USER4> This is a good read for all software developers - it really transcends the particular game.

This man has put a _tremendous_ amount of effort into user empathy, thinking deeply about how the user will interact with his game.

Imagine if we could put this amount of care into all the software we write. What a nice world it would be.

(It's also nice to read about the developer's hopes for Etrian Odyssey and similar games in the future. This game was released on 2007, and has since spawned a series of sequels and remakes. So.... we know that his efforts met with success!)

</comment><comment><USER5> Etrian Odyssey is one of the only turned-based RPGs I ever really got into. The map-making and exploration really helped change things up and the battles were actually challenging - every floor advanced felt like a triumph. I'm really hoping they manage the transition to the Switch properly.

<comment><USER6> Check out Legend of Grimrock 1 & 2, if you already haven't. A worthy homage to the original Dungeon Master.

<comment><USER7> If you're arachnophobic, be forewarned about the giant spiders; some of the most disconcerting I've encountered in a game.

<comment><USER6> It's a good way to face your fears, exposure therapy and all that.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> The first three entries easily are the best RPGs ever conceived, that do not rely on the story to be good. They rely on the gameplay. Fighting random enemies is fun, instead of a bother.</comment>


Show HN: Instant Spotify - Search Spotify songs using Google keyword suggestions - <AUTHOR> http://spotifyinstant.meteor.com/ <comment><USER2> Stopify is stopped in my country, otherwise I would be happy to see.

</comment><comment><USER3> This is really nice. I had to be logged in to the web player for the play button to work, but once I did it's a great experience.

Nice work!

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks! It works with your desktop app too when it's open. I was hoping Spotify API is more like Youtube API, when you can autoplay the video and move on the next video after it's finished, but unfortunately it's not.</comment></comment>


Where is Thunderbolt Headed? - <AUTHOR> http://www.anandtech.com/show/8529/idf-2014-where-is-thunderbolt-headed <comment><USER2> To illustrate how bad a job Intel has done on the marketing of this technology, I for a long time thought that display port was a closed mac-only thing, and until today I thought the same of thunder port.

If they want to increase adaptation, maybe they should consider marketing it more, and outside of sanfran's macbook-based hipster blogger circles.

<comment><USER3> > and outside of sanfran's macbook-based hipster blogger circles.

Man, this is a really tired trope. At the last conference I attended, ~9/10 engineers were running macbooks (and pretty much 10/10 engineers under 40).

<comment><USER4> It all depends to which conferences one goes to.

If you attended a Games Developer Conference than it would be Windows everywhere, even on the MacBooks. Except maybe for the engineers that only do iOS games.

On the other hand, it saddened me to attend FOSDEM and see people bashing Microsoft about OSS practices, while walking around with a MacBook running Mac OS X. Talk about dysfunctional behavior.

<comment><USER5> Don't make them think too hard about it or their head might explode.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> As the article comments note, Thunderbolt is also not taking taking off because Intel demands all Thunderbolt peripherals have OS X drivers.

Companies like Asus/Silverstone (and more who don't spring to mind right now) have created Thunderbolt GPU enclosures to allow laptops to do 3D work. However Intel won't let them go to market because they don't have OS X drivers, and Apple has no interest in supporting Thunderbolt GPUs when they cold be selling people additional Macs instead.

<comment><USER7> You are vastly underestimating the amount of work that would be required to support Thunderbolt GPUs on OS X. Its lack of support has nothing to do with any nefarious plot to make people buy more computers. Hot-pluggable GPUs are a Hard Problem and the alternative (requiring anything with a GPU to remain connected while the OS is up, and requiring a reboot if somebody wants to connect such a device) isn't worth doing, at least not for them it's not.

<comment><USER6> I understand support eGPUs on OS X a lot of work, but you misunderstand my position: I don't care if that work happens or not: I'm quite happy using Windows / SteamOS for games.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> Damn, a Thunderbolt 2 PCIe card with two ports costs ~55€. That would make for one hell of a replacement for 10G Ethernet. Double the speed _and_ cheaper. Does anyone know how the linux support for this is?

<comment><USER9> 10GbE cost is dominated by expensive switches, not by the cost of ethernet cards.

This aside, Thunderbolt is not switched, so comparison is meaningless. There are _very few_ opportunities where you use either Thunderbolt or Ethernet for the same application. The topology is very different.

<comment><USER10> If you're willing to leave the cisco/Arista/etc cocoon, NIC costs are actually the big ticket items.

[http://whiteboxswitch.com/collections/10-gigabit-ethernet- sw...](http://whiteboxswitch.com/collections/10-gigabit-ethernet- switches/products/edge-core-as5600-52x)

$5595 for the switch, $699 for the software. You can split the 4 40G ports into 16 10G ports using splitter cables, giving a total of 64 10G ports: (5595+699)/64 = $98.34 per 10G port.

A 1M cable is $30 from here: [http://www.fiberyes.com/sfp-cable- cab-10gsfp-p1m-30](http://www.fiberyes.com/sfp-cable-cab-10gsfp-p1m-30)

So $122.34 for switch and cable.

I've never seen a 10G NIC that cheap per port.

(disclosure: I co-founded Cumulus, who is behind the software in this price comparison)

<comment><USER11> The problem for hobbyists is that they usually want to buy more like 8 ports, not 64.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> Windows users are not going to like Thunderbolt until Microsoft fixes the Windows drivers. (Hint: Thunderbolt is 5 years old, the drivers still don't work. Don't hold your breath.) If you can't plug in a device reliably on an external connection it is pretty much useless. Maybe sometime after that motherboard vendors will stop hobbling the interface chips.

Thunderbolt pretty well rocks on OS X.

I wonder what the state of Linux is. And I mean _really_ is. I still have corrupted MP3s in my library from Linux's firewire support. It almost always put the blocks in the right spot on the disk. (This was in the 90s or early 00s, must be better now, probably.)

</comment><comment><USER13> Until thunderbolt stop being a proprietary technology, I hope it will stay where it is right now: ready to disappear into irrelevance when OCuLink (finally) comes out.

<comment><USER14> I can't see that happening.

For one Thunderbolt sharing the DisplayPort connector is critical for many laptop makers who simply don't have the space to fit any other ports. And secondly Apple has a strong presence in the content creation markets which will be hard to overcome.

But the biggest issue of all is that there really isn't any benefit for the mass consumer in any of these technologies. USB is more than capable for storage and many other needs.

<comment><USER15> Apple's strong presence in content creation didn't help Firewire. It's tough to see if their newer, stronger position might help, but I think we'll see history repeat itself and find that USB3.x will eventually support high- performance graphics. Alternatively you'll just see PC makers shipping 4k+-capable HDMI ports.

<comment><USER13> I doubt it's even possible for USB3 to support high-end graphics. The bandwith for intensive applications is just not there, and not having direct access to memory (like with PCI-E) could be another obstacle. Everything is possible, sure, but...

I don't see thunderbolt-like technologies to be an USB replacement, though. More like a definitive standardization of docks for laptops with interesting side effects.

<comment><USER16> I'm not sure if you're talking about connecting a monitor or connecting a graphics card. Graphics card is easy, USB is only a small multiple slower than thunderbolt, and as long as you have room for the textures 4Gbit/s is fine.

Uncompressed 4k is trickier. It looks like thunderbolt 2 has barely enough bandwidth, and USB 3.1 has barely not enough. No reason to expect they won't have a 3.x that supports it.

<comment><USER17> Is it still the case that USB causes heavy CPU usage? Even if there was enough bandwidth for 4k video, it'd be a drag if it meant pegging a CPU or two to 100%...

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER18> The only thing I would use Thunderbolt for is to add an eGPU to something like a Macbook Air or something else with an integrated graphics chipset

<comment><USER19> There are some who claim Intel is trying to kill eGPUs (external GPUs) and dGPUs (discrete GPUs) [1].

You're actually spot-on with the one killer use case of a thunderbolt connector. It's the same question dock connectors have also answered -- what's the need for a dock connector? A better GPU.

Thunderbolt is simply Intel's way of killing a good idea before it gains enough traction to threaten their hegemony with USB.

[1] [http://semiaccurate.com/2012/12/17/intel-slams-the-door- on-d...](http://semiaccurate.com/2012/12/17/intel-slams-the-door-on-discrete- gpus/)

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> Nowhere, very fast.</comment>


The Problem with Racial Diversity in Tech - <AUTHOR> http://www.theverge.com/2015/1/20/7856467/airbnb-diversity-report-gender-race-interactive-chart

<comment><USER2> It strikes me that gender issues may be easier to address then racial issues in part because of the racial wealth gap.

According to the pew research center, Median net worth for American Households was as follows in 2013: Whites: $141,900 Blacks: $11,000 Hispanics: $13,700

So even if you are one of those who believes that racism is gone (which I am definitely not btw) the wealth gap is clear evidence that the effects of racism aren't gone.

That means a white person, regardless of gender, is much more likely to be from a wealthier household.

We know that there is a dramatic difference in rates of both college acceptance and college graduation based on wealth. So white women are more likely to graduate from college.

To the extent that technical workers are judged based on credentials like a college degree, a personal portfolio of unpaid work, or unpaid or low paid internships, a black or hispanic person is much more likely to be at a disadvantage in a job application.

I definitely don't think it's all the wealth gap, but it's something to consider.</comment>


Coming Soon to Facebook: A 'Dislike' Button - <AUTHOR> http://bits.blogs.nytimes.com/2015/09/15/coming-soon-to-facebook-a-dislike-button/ <comment><USER2> The "empathy" point is the real driver here. Everyone on Facebook has seen a dead pet/sick parent/horrible international tragedy/etc. post. Up until now, you either comment (effort) or "like," which feels wrong. I don't want to "like" your dog's death, so I do nothing.

If I do nothing, that's less interaction on Facebook. If there's a third option — "dislike" — then I (and many others) will use it and provide more interaction on Facebook. I think +1 or "hug" is a better fit but regardless, it means a net-increase in interactions.

More interaction by users is better for them. Surprised this didn't happen ages ago.

</comment><comment><USER3> Already posted here

[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10223054](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10223054)

</comment><comment><USER4> "Hate us on assbook"</comment>


New ion engine could reach Mars in 39 days - onreact-com http://www.gizmag.com/ad-astra-ion-engine-mars-39-days/12342/

<comment><AUTHOR> Last week's discussion of the same thing:

<http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=721189></comment>


Ask HN: What is the best alternative to Google Reader today?? - <AUTHOR>

Ask HN: Just checking... I'm still looking for Google Reader replacement. <comment> T-R We've got a topic on it over on Slant -

[http://slant.co/topics/446/~what-is-the-best-alternative- to-...](http://slant.co/topics/446/~what-is-the-best-alternative-to-google- reader)

</comment><comment><USER2> Google Plus

</comment><comment><USER3> Feedly.com, I guess. You can set it up to look like Reader, with headlines only.</comment>


Web search 30M rows sub-second, cheaply - <AUTHOR> https://quantblog.wordpress.com/2015/02/10/web-search-30-million-rows-sub-second-cheaply/ <comment><USER2> Did you try looking at Solr or Elasticsearch? Inverted index (Lucene) is what they are based on. You even said "search" in your own article....

<comment><USER3> Would recommend looking into ElasticSearch too. Recently had my first hands-on experiences and I am pretty amazed.

<comment><USER4> He didn't really define what he was going to "search" for, so yeah, when meaning full text search, Elastic is probably the way to go. When going for exact lookups, Aerospike will actually make use of his SSDs, when going for slice & dice on wide rows, BigQuery or Redshift will fit his bill - unfortunately he didn't say much about his exact use case. But inventing your own data store is probably one of the worst ideas ever except for gaining knowledge / as a rite of passage.

<comment><USER5> ElasticSearch (and Solr and Lucene) can be used to do index (and lookup) exact expressions, e.g. string keys/enums, or numbers. It can work with the combination of text search and exact search terms. I've had great results of using these for general purpose search and database lookups.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> Sadly the post is very light on important details. For example, which version of PostgreSQL and which kind of indexes? Because GIN indexes do pretty much exactly what he describes as 'tag->id' (but in form that is compressed and very efficient for processing).

<comment><AUTHOR> You and others make a good case - my post was to summarize what I ended up doing, as an interesting hack / datapoint - not to slam postgres [ or Redis, or Lucene/solr, for that matter ]

The main takeaway is really how fast SSDs are and how much bang for your buck you can get on a single commodity host instance [ thru some creative wrangling of data structures ]

I will endeavor to followup with a fair comparison using postgres...

Can you suggest the best approach / config to keep the top-index working set in ram ?

<comment><USER6> I think the form of the blog post (pretty much just short bullet points) makes it rather difficult to get an idea of what's the intended takeaway.

I do share your conclusion that SSDs are very good value for workloads that need to do a lot of random I/O.

Regarding the best config for PostgreSQL, it really depends on the hardware. If you really want to use boxes with just 2GB of RAM, use smaller shared buffers and let the page cache do the rest.

If you need more help with tuning PostgreSQL for the benchmark later, either ping me at tomas(at)pgaddict.com or join email@example.com (I do occasionally lurk there, but others will surely help too).

<comment><AUTHOR> yeah.. I started with bullets as a draft, intending to expand into prose, but it seemed borderline readable, so I thought Id leave it as an exercise in blogging.

awesome, thanks Thomas - Ill check out your blog too.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> This is one of those "computer science matters" things.

Learn your data structures. Learn what the storage engines use. Use the right structure for the right problem.

<comment><AUTHOR> ..your right.

The spirit of my hack was really just that - to apply the well known data structures and algos to solve a problem.

Its unusual to want fast, large and cheap all together - if you really want to squeeze things you might look at how modern SSD performance can be exploited - my hack is just one instance of that.

</comment></comment><comment><USER8> Most comments here are about using an existing search solution, but sometimes inventing your own solution has a lot of benefits.

I needed something similar when I was building [https://acoustid.org/](https://acoustid.org/) and for the first iteration I used PostgreSQL's GIN indexes, which are nice and easy to work with, but once the index grew beyond some point, it was getting very slow. I spent some time designing a minimalistic inverted index that does just what I need, nothing else, while compacting the data as much as possible, to keep it in RAM, and the results were just excellent. It was super fast compared to the GIN indxes. Now I have 10x more data and it's still as fast as it was before. If you are interested, here is the code - [https://bitbucket.org/acoustid/acoustid- index](https://bitbucket.org/acoustid/acoustid-index)

<comment><AUTHOR> Really interesting to see you had a similar use-case...

[ you explain the approach much better than OP :]

</comment></comment><comment><USER9> So, it seems like someone doesn't realize that postgres supports a non- cobbled-together full text search?

[http://www.postgresql.org/docs/8.3/static/textsearch- indexes...](http://www.postgresql.org/docs/8.3/static/textsearch-indexes.html)

<comment><AUTHOR> I was aware, but definitely worth reiterating.

My post should have a disclaimer - "unless you have several years using many sql and nosql datastores and some background in algorithms and data-structures - DONT DO THIS"

My reason for _not_ using postgres and its GIST style indexes and full search primitives ( which I like and use often, btw ) was that I could find no way to configure postgres to hold the full top level index in RAM. I could run thru a query over all data to load it into the working set, but ideally I would like to mark it 'preload' \- do you know a way to do this ? I did consider putting the inverted index in its own postgres DB on a RAM disk, but it seemed non- recommended.

The spirit of the post was : in most cases yes you can find something good off the open source shelf.. [ particularly redis which was very close to being what I needed ] but sometimes rolling a custom data structure that fits the problem can be a surprising win.

Particularly now that SSDs give a really different performance profile to what we are used to. I think DB implementations will adapt to fit SSD characteristics better over the next couple years.. just as they have made the desktop much more snappy.

New DB engines such as rethink and aerospike are very likely tuned more towards SSDs out of the box .. I haven't spent much time with those yet.

Theres a class of problems can be solved by scaling vertically, if you approach it by creatively applying the basics of algorithms and data structures. This is why many people use redis, its a superb bag of useful data-structures you can co-opt to your needs.

<comment><USER10> With a quick google search I found this stackexchange answer to preload data into cache with the pg_prewarm extension (from Postgres 9.4)

[http://dba.stackexchange.com/a/116536](http://dba.stackexchange.com/a/116536)

But this doesn't guarantees that the data will stay in the cache because: "Prewarmed data also enjoys no special protection from cache evictions, so it is possible for other system activity may evict the newly prewarmed blocks..."

In MySQL you can create tables with the MEMORY storage engine: [https://dev.mysql.com/doc/refman/5.5/en/memory-storage- engin...](https://dev.mysql.com/doc/refman/5.5/en/memory-storage-engine.html)

<comment><AUTHOR> prewarm extension sounds interesting, Ill take a look.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> I prefer, and suggest, Sphinx over Elasticsearch. It has better performance, easier ETL and handles large datasets better.

<comment><USER12> Agreed. Elastic search is fantastic, but for simple search that needs to be fast Sphinx is hard to beat. I have been using it for years on searchcode.com and have never hit an issue with it that was not due to my own mistakes.

A fantastic piece of software.

<comment><USER13> Wow. What a great plug. Loving searchcode.com. Thank you for running such a great service! I have endless frustration trying to search Google or DDG for these things.

<comment><USER12> Thank you!

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> I recommend elasticsearch as well. Just make sure to firewall it off and be careful opening it up. Elasticsearch a few versions back had a remote exploit.

<comment><USER15> In particular, ElasticSearch offers the possibility to include snippets of scripts from a number of languages (e.g. Groovy) in your search. If you do so, the file-access capability of those languages remains available.

I'd be surprised if it's an issue these days, because:

1\. It's disabled by default, and has been for a while.

2\. If you do turn it on, the config options let you be more specific about where those scripts are allowed to come from.

</comment></comment><comment><USER16> Snatching defeat from the jaws of victory, Postgres right choice, missed tsearch2

Also 1TB of data fits easily in RAM

<comment><USER17> 1TB of ram still costs more than 2GB of ram + SSD</comment></comment>


Ask HN: Need to hire for developer for one small task - <AUTHOR>

I just need someone to get an old, obscure open source project to compile on OS X 10.8.2 Mountain Lion. Is there something like TaskRabbit for software development? <comment><USER2> odesk.com and elance.com</comment>


130M at Risk of Fraud After Massive Leak of Indian Biometric System Data - <AUTHOR> http://gizmodo.com/130-million-at-risk-of-fraud-after-massive-leak-of-indi-1794856154 <comment><USER2> A system with so much biometric data would make "murder by remote" much more efficient wouldn't you say?</comment>


Ask HN: Resources on developing tenacity/grit/determination? - <AUTHOR>

I'm interested in learning more about how I can train myself to be "tougher". My desire for this has arisen primarily through my kickboxing training, as I'm now pushing myself to new limits (running 5km where I couldn't before, hitting harder and doing more rounds than before). All great athletes seem to have this kind of toughness, and it reminded me of PG's determination essay. I could easily see how possessing this kind of attitude or work ethic could help in the startup world.<p>Does anyone have any books or resources on developing determination? <comment><USER2> I'm afraid you're not going to learn toughness in a book but rather through tough experiences.

If you want to train it (I think it's something you can acquire more easily at childhood) it's up to you to "design" these experiences as tough enough to harden you but not so tough that you will break.

Some silly examples that comes to me :

\- try fasting (if your medical condition allows it)

\- get the shitiest job you can find and last at least one month then give every $ you gained to the political party you dislike the most

\- go parachute or bungee jumping, ultra marathons / Iron Man

\- take only cold showers for a year

\- quit smoking / drinking / drugs

\- go take care of terminally hill patients

Then when you think you've done it all, have a child and learn what determination is through (at least) the next 30 years ;-)

A 5 min inspirational read on people that didn't learn tenacity/grit/determination in a book : [http://cluborlov.blogspot.com/2013/04/meet- chechens.html](http://cluborlov.blogspot.com/2013/04/meet-chechens.html)

</comment><comment><USER3> I would recommend this book. [http://www.amazon.com/dp/B00BAH8N7Y/ref=wl_it_dp_o_pC_nS_ttl...](http://www.amazon.com/dp/B00BAH8N7Y/ref=wl_it_dp_o_pC_nS_ttl?_encoding=UTF8&colid=FTSH49I9E3HZ&coliid=I90TXF0GDG376)

</comment><comment><USER4> > books or resources on developing determination?

Compared to the ancients-- we live comparatively soft lives today. I was reminded of this line by Mark Divine "hard work built character then as it does now, while a soft life weakens it. Comfort imprisons us in a low-grade fear of suffering".

Can you challenge yourself to find your 20X factor?

This book will give you several ideas > [http://www.goodreads.com/book/show/17465530-the-way-of- seal?...](http://www.goodreads.com/book/show/17465530-the-way-of- seal?from_search=true&search_version=service_impr)</comment>


Ask HN: Remote Workers/Frequent Movers: What Bag Do You Use? - <AUTHOR> I move around a lot because I'm remote and go to coworking spaces, the office, coffee shops, etc. I carry my laptop, headphones, iPad, various chargers/dongles. I have been using a cheap backpack and need to upgrade.
I'm thinking something pretty secure from things falling out, maybe several sleeves or pockets for various things, and weatherproof or at least resistant.
What do you use for this kind of situation? <comment><USER2> I use a Timbuk2 Spire bag ([http://www.timbuk2.com/spire-macbook-laptop- backpack/306-3-1...](http://www.timbuk2.com/spire-macbook-laptop- backpack/306-3-1010.html?category=laptop-backpacks)). It's water resistant has two outside zipper pockets and a large inside pocket with a laptop sleeve, plus a small zipper pocket inside too. I usually throw a small zipper bag inside that holds all my cables and dongles, but the outside front pocket would work just fine. It has lots of webbing on the front and side which are great to attach things via a carabinier- I usually have a baseball hat and fold-up reusable grocery bag on mine. I also love that the material and back padding give it structure so it won't flop on the ground like a Jansport from high school.

I cowork and often bike around with my stuff and it has a padded, breathable back and a sternum strap which helps it stay in place for short commutes. It also has an easy access mess side pocket that I store a water bottle in.

I usually take it out of the house with me 4-6 days a week and it's held up like a champ for over a year carrying two laptops most days. It is a bit on the large side, but when not full it's pretty slim.

If it's not to your style, check out their other bags, I've never met someone who didn't love their purchase there.</comment>


'Fast Carbs' May Undermine Your Health - <AUTHOR> https://www.nytimes.com/2020/04/14/well/eat/how-fast-carbs-may-undermine-your-health.html <comment><USER2> Da, of course it does, what is it the 1800's??

If you are into nutrition and want some serious scientific up to date advise check these sources/podcasts: Found my fitness (Rhonda Patrick), Peter Attia and Chris Masterjohn.</comment>


Ask HN: What do you use for email? - <AUTHOR>

What do you use for email?
In light of current events (Snowden/NSA/Lavabit/SilentCircle/etc.), a few "secure" email solutions are getting increased exposure:

  * https://countermail.com/
  * https://www.neomailbox.com/
  * http://flowingmail.com/
  * https://protonmail.ch/
  * https://mailbox.org/en/
  * https://www.virtru.com/how-it-works
  * https://www.lavaboom.com/en/
  * https://www.parley.co (DEAD?)
  * https://www.darkmail.info/
 From my perspective, it seems widely assumed that email is inherently insecure and there will never be an ideal solution.
So, what do you use for email then?  What are the security/usability tradeoffs?  Do any other options look potentially promising now or in the future? <comment><USER2> Virtru engineer here. Very excited to see Virtru included in the list!

As you say, there is always a balance between security and convenience. Virtru tries to make it as easy as possible to send encrypted email. We do this by integrating with your existing email client (eg, Gmail) so that you can send encrypted email from your existing email address with the tools that you are already familiar with. All you have to do is click a switch to turn the security on and then compose your email as you normally would.

One reason that some consider email inherently insecure is that the metadata (to/cc/bcc, subject line, etc) is not protected even when the message content (email body, attachments) is protected. It is critically important to define the term "secure". One must understand both what they are trying to protect and why, and what the tools they are using actually do protect.

There are many use-cases in which the goal is to secure only the message content. For example, someone emailing their lawyer about a case, doctor about an appointment, or accountant about their tax filing. Also, consider a business sending sensitive intellectual property to its partners or even its own employees. In these examples, the sender may not care about protecting the fact that they communicated with the other party, but they certainly want the message content (personal, financial, sensitive, etc) secured so that it is shielded from prying eyes.

Obviously, there are many other use-cases where protecting the metadata may matter a great deal. In that case, one must consider their goals and make sure that the tool being used meets their criteria. If completely anonymous communication is the goal (protecting both who is talking to whom and what is being said), then email may not satisfy the requirements (certainly not in its current implementation).

I think that many would agree that email is here to stay for the foreseeable future. It is pervasive and the de-facto communication platform, especially in business settings. I think there is great value in individuals using tools which implement end-to-end encryption to increase the security of the emails they send so that the message content can only be read by the intended recipients. This protects the email both in transit (eg, routing from SMTP server to SMTP server) and at rest (eg, sitting in a user's inbox on Yahoo's server).

Do you think the general tech community appreciates the distinction between the degrees of "security"? Often, I hear the "all or nothing" mantra, which I think can impede the adoption of reasonable email security tools depending on the goals trying to be met. Thoughts?

</comment><comment><USER3> I have access to some private servers, together with friends we try new stuff or just get services working for fun (we are students). That results in some mailaccounts for me. Access over imap. I use geary and claws-mail

Mail should be considered insecure because the cert infrastructure is kind of broken. I dont know why, but for some reason mailserver's server-to-server certs are quite short. You barely get over 256/512 bit key length.

</comment><comment><USER4> Fastmail. If I needed a secure path for email, I'd encrypt it myself with GPG and exchange keys out of band.

</comment><comment><USER5> [https://runbox.com](https://runbox.com) \+ gpg in (thunderbird (icedove)+ enigmail add-on) + VPN

</comment><comment><USER6> Gmail and Fastmail, both in Mail.app on my mac and iPhone

</comment><comment><USER7> own hetzner dedicated server + thunderbird</comment>


Smashing the Stack for Fun and Profit (1996-11-08), Phrack 7 (49): 14 - <AUTHOR> http://www.phrack.org/issues/49/14.html#article

<comment><USER2> A classic. This wasn't the first article about exploiting buffer overruns, but the clear description made it easily understandable. Of course since the introduction of mitigations like non-executable stacks, ASLR, etc. the techniques here no longer work in most situations; but it's still a good read.</comment>


DevOps tools in a nutshell - <AUTHOR> https://devup.co/a-look-at-devops-tools-landscape-7220099c6b81#.wqbzixgow <comment><USER15> I'm quite disappointed by the "Continuous Delivery" section.

I expected tools that let you model a Continuous Delivery pipeline, like [http://concourse.ci/](http://concourse.ci/), [https://go.cd/](https://go.cd/), or Jenkins with the Pipelines plugin (directly included in Jenkins 2.0+, iirc).

Tools like Maven and Ant would be only a step in such a pipeline.

I guess this reinforces the OPs point that the whole devops nomenclature is very fractured, and folks use terms from this field as they please.

<comment><USER16> I completely agree. That section was a gross misunderstanding of what Continuous Delivery actually is. It should have actually been called "Packaging". The "Continuous Delivery" section was more about versioned packaging (and vendoring dependencies into packages), while the automation section was about configuration management of servers (which included deploying versioned packages).

If someone wants to understand what Continuous Delivery actually is (which is pretty well understood), there's a great book on the topic called... oddly enough... "Continuous Delivery" by Jez Humble. It covers CD pipelines like you mentioned, while also covering a bunch of the other listed topics at a high level in a much better way. Granted it's an actual book, but it's worth it's place on an DevOps/Release/Software Engineer's desk when implemented appropriately.

<comment><USER17> It's an excellent book that I highly recommend. A lot to get through but it never gets difficult to read, and they (David Farley co-authored) include many anecdotes of when things have gone both right and wrong to demonstrate the points they make.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER18> The main missing category I noticed was monitoring. Host and service monitoring are critical to maintaining stable systems, so it's a glaring oversight to exclude it. Some common solutions for monitoring are Nagios, Icinga, and Sensu.

Oddly enough, the author mentions Nagios under the Logging heading. Nagios does offer a log server product, but it's not commonly used and when someone says Nagios, they almost always mean the monitoring solution.

<comment><USER19> They also neglected to mention metrics, which I think is the twin sibling to logging. Metrics tell you what is happening, logs tell you what happened. Monitoring can be built off metrics as well, or by an external source pinging in (or both, realistically).

</comment></comment><comment><USER20> This might be better titled as a random list of tools that you may know about or be curious about.

Sure there is some overlap with the already loosely defined 'devops' but this doesn't really make any headway on defining it.

Where is bash, awk and sed in this list?

</comment><comment><USER21> > There is no single definition, rather people use the term 'DevOps' as it > suits them. And I don't see harm in doing that as long as the basic concept > is clear.

That's the thing, though - the basic concept very obviously isn't clear.

I've seen it go from "developers automating what operators do" to "developers and operators working together" to "operators using automation" to "operators doing things manually" to, in this article, "developers or operators doing things however".

There isn't really much point in using a term with such loose and varying meaning.

<comment><USER22> How about "developers taking responsibility of their own code in live environment"?

<comment><USER23> This highly depends on the nature of your organization and how many developers you're dealing with. I've seen it quickly break down once you reach more than 3 products and more than 15 devs.

Otherwise, at some point, you need a group of people (devs or otherwise) to sit down, define how these things are done for everyone, get group buy-in, then build the thing that puts their things in live environment.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER24> Wow, this author is clueless. This is a mishmash list of tools with several misunderstandings about what they do.

</comment><comment><USER25> Quoting from [http://devup.io/about/](http://devup.io/about/)

      DevUp is a platform where you can connect different tools from your
      workspace and get all the information on a single dashboard.

Things that immediately cross the mind upon reading this are Prometheus [0] and Grafana [1]. No mention anywhere!

Talking about DevOps, I would have expected a mention of Phabricator [2].

[0] [https://prometheus.io/](https://prometheus.io/)

[1] [http://grafana.org/](http://grafana.org/)

[2] [https://github.com/phacility/phabricator](https://github.com/phacility/phabricator)

<comment><USER26> [https://github.com/phacility/phabricator](https://github.com/phacility/phabricator)

wow. Why is this not more famous?

<comment><USER25> Quoting from [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Phabricator](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Phabricator)

      Phabricator was originally developed as an internal tool at
      Facebook. [0][1][2]

Companies using Phabricator [3]:

      - <USER2>
      - <USER3>
      - Khan Academy
      - <USER4>
      - Wikimedia Foundation
      - <USER5>
      - <USER6>
      - <USER7>
      - <USER8>
      - Deviant Art
      - Haskell.org
      - Babel JS
      - <USER9>
      - <USER10>
      - <USER11>
      - <USER12>
      - <USER13>
      - <USER14>

[0] [https://secure.phabricator.com/book/phabflavor/article/proje...](https://secure.phabricator.com/book/phabflavor/article/project_history)

[1] [http://techcrunch.com/2011/08/07/oh-what-noble-scribe- hath-p...](http://techcrunch.com/2011/08/07/oh-what-noble-scribe-hath-penned- these-words/)

[2] [http://readwrite.com/2011/09/28/a-look-at-phabricator- facebo...](http://readwrite.com/2011/09/28/a-look-at-phabricator- facebook#awesm=~olc3GsPA9t1BIk)

[3] [https://www.phacility.com/](https://www.phacility.com/)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER27> So Nagios is a log management tool but Graylog is missing.

</comment><comment><USER21> Apparently Nagios is a logging tool, and metrics don't exist.

<comment><USER18> Nagios _has_ a logging tool, but when people say "Nagios", they're almost always talking about the monitoring tool.

</comment></comment><comment><USER28> [http://www.devopsbookmarks.com/](http://www.devopsbookmarks.com/)

irc channel on freenode has this information compiled

</comment><comment><USER29> I've never read soo many "DevOps" buzzwords on one place.</comment>


Corn and Software - <AUTHOR> http://adam.blog.heroku.com/past/2008/8/23/corn_and_software/ <comment><USER2> A good comprehensive test suite helps here too. Cut the fat out, run the tests, if it passes you know that functionality wasn't needed and you can check it in. If it fails, take a look at the failing test and either cut the test out or revert your changes.

<comment><USER3> Yes, and a version control system is implied.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> _In my experience, 95% of the time something appears unused or irrelevant, it is._

It's the other 5% that bites you in the ass.

I'm finding more and more that a total rewrite makes the most sense. This used to be taboo, but now, it often takes _less_ resources than untying the Gordian knot of horribly evolved software.

And besides, _someone_ should actually know what it does every 20 years or so.

<comment><USER5> I would be willing to bet that 80% of most deployed software should be rewritten instead of patched/upgraded.

Brooks was right with his "build one to throw away". The problem is that it never works out where people can/will throw the first one out.

<comment><USER6> I have seen production systems where the programmer will copy an existing method, rename it and modify it to "extend" the system. I have also seen programmers use their code browser as a revision control system that way. I have literally seen "lava flow code" where many, many programmers have been afraid to modify code, and it has been patched and program flow rerouted in a convoluted way that resembles hardening erupting lava.

The current system I am working on has a history of developers throwing away and rewriting subsystems. Not surprisingly, it has very understandable code.

<comment><USER4> _The current system I am working on has a history of developers..._

How do you know that?

Imagine working on a system with no standards, documentation, version control system, or audit trail.

Oh wait, some of us don't have to _imagine_.

<comment><USER6> I know the history of the system in my current job, because there are people from its inception over 12 years ago. They've told me about how subsystems have been rewritten. I've also witnessed it in my 3 years there. It's not always pretty. I've seen one subsystem rewritten 3 times by 3 different people who each thought they were smarter than the last guy, but then went on to make the same (very subtle, very difficult to understand) mistakes. The 4th time has stuck, however. The resulting code is much cleaner and is finally (relatively) trouble free. Its approach is significantly different from the last 3 attempts. Figure that!

I've also seen subsystems evolved in 2 or 3 iterations by the same developer, each iteration involving a rewrite.

So, I'd have to say my current shop is pretty good. They really should be doing more refactoring. They could be doing more incremental improvement and avoid the pain of complete rewrites. But at least they are wise enough to avoid pounding their heads against the wall of bad design indefinitely. (Or, to be fair, naive 1st drafts.)</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment>


Early Adopters Needed as Beta Testers for Android Trading Back Testing App - <AUTHOR> http://forextestdrive.com <comment><AUTHOR> The application is now in open beta testing - get direct access by following the link.</comment>


Ask HN: (ReAsk) Are they trying to fire Mark Zuckerberg? - sahin-boydas I asked this question 5 months ago, I want to ask again.<p>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=15462092 <comment> sahin-boydas one public one...

[https://www.independent.co.uk/life-style/gadgets-and- tech/ne...](https://www.independent.co.uk/life-style/gadgets-and- tech/news/facebook-mark-zuckerberg-quit-investor-scott-stringer-a8286451.html)

<comment> sahin-boydas new one

[https://www.theverge.com/platform/amp/2018/4/9/17216474/mark...](https://www.theverge.com/platform/amp/2018/4/9/17216474/mark- zuckerberg-resign-investor-groups-facebook-scandal)

</comment></comment><comment><AUTHOR> Re-replying with the same counter-question ([https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=15462992](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=15462992))

Who is 'they'?

<comment><USER2> The board of directors? The other C-levels. What does it matter. Does anyone know if company culture wants him gone?</comment></comment>


Secret Backdoor in Some U.S. Phones Sent Data to China, Analysts Say - <AUTHOR> http://www.nytimes.com/2016/11/16/us/politics/china-phones-software-security.html <comment><USER2> Sorry to say I'm not surprised. Having multiple companies that suppply hardware, os versions and applications doesn't help.</comment>


Comcast Blocks VPN Traffic - <AUTHOR> https://blog.wjd.io/comcast-blocks-vpn-traffic <comment><USER2> PPTP was probably blocked because it needs the GRE port. And I think xfinitywifi only allows UDP/TCP.

I use OpenVPN over TCP and UDP on xfinitywifi all the time. In fact, I have a wallwart router configured for it. Plug it in, ssh in, set the wifi, and I have a relatively secure SSID I can use.

One day the UDP VPN stopped working. I found out it was because the MTU on xfinitywifi changed to ~1300. Sending a packet with a larger size would result in dropped packets which would cause some stuff to work, but not all. Setting the mssfix parameter to something lower in OpenVPN fixed it.

You can test this by varying the payload size in ping.

TCP worked fine the whole time.

<comment><USER2> Also why are people still using PPTP?! I thought it was considered compromised.

<comment><USER3> When you don't need strong encryption, but need low-latency, high-throughput on a low end device.

One such use case is IP address masquerading.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> More technical information would be helpful. Simply stating "I simply couldn't browse any site" ... could be any number of issues from DNS to MTU..

</comment><comment><USER5> The ad injection thing is a recent change for even residential customers and it's pervasive. Forget Forbes.com: many sites recommended by Google Now have suddenly sprouted full screen buzzing ads with no close button.

Previously I avoided the worst of Comcast's shenanigans by running my own squid proxy plus a DNS resolver that pointed to Google as I already have an Android phone so it's not like my DNS searches are novel to Google.

The good news is (for now) you can just close the popup tab but since these popups could easily be malware adverts I've switched to firefox with ad blocking to regain control of my phone.

Next up will probably be tacking up a 24/7 VPN so I don't have to configure one on each device.

This is one of the strongest arguments I can think of for net neutrality.

</comment><comment><USER6> Bad title, even the article states that "Just to clarify then, Comcast blocks anonymized VPN traffic when you are connected to one of their public hotspots."

Seems anecdotal. I've never had trouble with VPNs on my Comcast connection (no idea about their public hotspots).

</comment><comment><USER7> Anecdotal: there are times when I have been unable to access rt.com [1] through Comcast, though I could access it through my 4G connection just fine.

[1] yes, I know it's propaganda, but I was accessing it for research purposes

</comment><comment><USER8> So far it seems this is anecdotal and not universal, since others have not had the same issues on the same types of connections using the same providers.

The claim in the headline is a big claim to make whenever only anecdotal evidence is present.

I wouldn't put something like this past Comcast, though.</comment>


My best employee quit because I wouldn't let her go to college graduation - <AUTHOR> http://www.askamanager.org/2016/07/my-best-employee-quit-on-the-spot-because-i-wouldnt-let-her-go-to-her-college-graduation.html <comment><USER2> My partner, a developer, got fired (well, the job offer was retracted after a very well performed internship) for kindly questioning two points of the contract: one about unlimited unpaid overtime, and second one about losing all intellectual rights to ANYTHING done/written/created ANYTIME and ANYWHERE (including things not related to company's business and/or technology in own spare time, holidays and so on).

I told her it is actually better this way, to have an early eject from bad company, than to sink in, get involved and invested just to realise its a bad place to be, but despite that, she took a bad hit. Such things sucks a lot.

(London)

<comment><USER3> IANAL, but, for the _California_ readers, I'm fairly certain a contract with a clause like 'losing all intellectual rights to ANYTHING done/written/created ANYTIME and ANYWHERE' will NEVER hold up in California court, assuming said projects are done with the employee's own time + materials.

...Which is also a strong reason why you should always avoid using/making/doing anything personal on your employer's laptop/equipment.

<comment><USER4> Neither would it hold up anywhere in continental Europe but I've heard some inconclusive things about UK in this regard. Well that's common law for you. As much as lawmaker is incompetent he is no competition to a brain dead judge.

Still the behaviour of the company after she raised concern clearly shows she is better off not working there.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> It's an obvious joke, isn't it, why is everybody falling for it?

Plus it says she's the employee with the lowest seniority, but worked 6 years there, that's hardly believable, the whole thing is hardly believable.

<comment><USER6> Maybe the people who think this is just some troll should read a bit of /r/raisedbynarcissists

<comment><USER7> What makes you think that there aren't a metric ton of trolls there as well?

<comment><USER8> Just go to /r/raisedby/r/raisedbynarcissists

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> Regardless if this is a made-up story or not I think there are a few lessons here:

1\. Exceptions are hard. While I don't believe in rules that can never be broken/circumvented in these types of situations you, as a manager, need to be aware that one exception will lead to having to make more exceptions. That is, to me, one of the skills of a good manager, being able to make exceptions when needed and give a good argument for not giving exceptions when not possible.

2\. Empathy is critical. A manager without empathy (in the sense of being able to understand something from the other person's point-of-view) is generally not a good manager of people. The manager that is asking the question did obviously not understand how important the graduation was to the employee.

3\. Don't rationalise punishment (meaning, calling the person afterwards just to make sure they understand how wrong they are and how right you are) with concern in your own mind. A good manager needs to examine and understand their own motivations for doing something.

4\. Don't be afraid to admit your own mistakes as a manager. I'm pretty sure you can salvage this situation by meeting with the person, apologizing and probably giving them a well-deserved raise (since it was your best employee). You do not lose by doing that, it is not a competition.

5\. Don't foster a culture where people will not help each other out. I find it very strange that a person that is a very good employee and that has helped other people numerous times (according to the question) has such a hard time finding someone to help them out. It could be because of the employee of course, but she should have been recognized in front of the team for her willingness to help out long before this.

</comment><comment><USER10> Nothing in that letter is believable. It's too perfect a troll. Viral marketing.

<comment><USER11> Surprised how effective it is and the responses it's getting here. This place used to have a lot of smart people and entrepreneurial people - now it's turning in to another 9-5 tech forum

<comment><USER12> If it's posted on HN and getting upvoted to the front page, I think people tend to assume a certain level of credibility based on that alone.

If you assume that about this story, it's pretty shocking and worthy of some discussion, so you might upvote it. I thought it was real for the first few paragraphs and my jaw was on the floor. It's a pretty obvious fake though.

<comment><USER11> >If it's posted on HN and getting upvoted to the front page, I think people tend to assume a certain level of credibility based on that alone.

Yea that's my problem - this used to be true - but not recently - now it's like reddit without the memes.

<comment><USER13> Then do something about it. Submit some quality stories.

That said, I do struggle to understand how some stuff whooshes to the front page, and other equally interesting stuff just gets ignored...

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> Is this for real - a manager writing a letter to a third party just so that the employee knows she made a "mistake" when clearly almost everyone would see who's at fault? I can imagine that there would be such managers but I find it hard to imagine that someone would write a letter saying he/she did such a thing.

</comment><comment><USER15> Heh. Concert tickets yes, graduation no. Because there was "cost involved".

Hey, I got fired for taking off to get married on a Saturday one time.

</comment><comment><USER16> I feel like every year people let their guard down more and more to obvious internet trolling and made up stories, when it should be the other way around.

cf: reddit.com

</comment><comment><USER17> I don't understand how a manager wrote that letter and thought, "this is okay".

<comment><USER18> Me neither. I can't even believe it is true. It is too obvious that the manager is wrong, no one in his right mind could think to be in the right after such behaviour, especially not after the introspective necessary to writing it up. Add in the caveat of the switch for concert tickets, that's just ridiculous.

I don't know the site this is on. Is it a reliable one? If not, I bet this is a marketing stunt.

<comment><USER19> I absolutely believe it. I've seen managers do similar things, even crossing the lines into illegal areas. Managers that grew up with the company, starting when it was small, maybe even owning parts of it sometimes think that the company is family and that everybody needs to be as emotionally attached to the company as they are. Unlimited unpaid overtime, working for month without a single day of are just normal and obvious to them, it's all family. Leaving the company is a personal insult - since we're all family. You don't leave the family, do you?

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER20> And to assume that her being raised in foster care has anything to do with this shows such prejudice. Good on her for quitting! I'm sure she won't have any trouble finding a new job.

</comment><comment><USER21> Shame on the manager:

1\. For treating the employee like that

2\. For building a team in a way that prevented such a request from being accommodated

3\. For still thinking that the "problem" here is with the employee who quit

</comment><comment><USER22> That's nothing, when my dad died my boss complained vigorously when I wanted to take 3 days off as my dad lived a thousand miles from my workplace. I told him that I was going even if he fired me, he did'nt but I quit a couple of months later and never looked back. (Norway)

</comment><comment><USER23> Sorry this has a smell to it. Best employee by far that works for you for six years and is the most junior in the office? She should have quit long ago.

<comment><USER24> I think it means this:

"Best employee": the one that will cater to every demand of the boss

"Six years": she was the one that put up with most of the BS because she was studying

Once she graduated, putting up with this situation wasn't necessary anymore

</comment></comment><comment><USER25> TL;DR: I treated my best employee like shit, after being a good worker for years she quit and now I'm considering to tell her how to behave.

I hope this is fiction.

</comment><comment><USER26> When capitalism is functioning correctly, both sides of a trade benefit.

When a negotiation fails, it's not unusual for the purchaser (or employer in this case) to be more upset than the seller.

If she's a quality employee that just graduated college, it stands to reason she'll be able to find more gainful employment...

But one has to wonder if this is just an elaborate troll.

</comment><comment><USER27> This is a "Dear Abby" column - it's fiction.

</comment><comment><USER28> I find it difficult to believe this is actually true. Perhaps it is something to get the site traffic.

<comment><USER29> People don't just lie on the internet neximo64...

</comment></comment><comment><USER30> I'm clearly not the only one who thinks this is satire / fiction.

</comment><comment><USER31> The best managers learn what is important to their employees and figure out how to deliver it. Those employees will pay you back many times over. Invest in others, and they will invest in you.

</comment><comment><USER32> That manager should be demoted for losing the best employee and obvious horrible management. If I were the manager, I would come in on that day and do the customer service.

</comment><comment><USER33> The difference between management and control is often lost.

</comment><comment><USER34> If true, this boss is a staggering douchebag who deserves the toxic work environment he/she has been supporting.

</comment><comment><USER35> I would also consider it a joke if I wouldn't have experienced and been a manager like that before. Even if it's a fake story, the way to use logic to get to an illogical conclusion is very common (and human). And it's really really tough to let go of this kind of conclusion.

</comment><comment><USER36> That was one of the worst example of human relationship I've read from a supposed civilised environment. It's probably a bait article, but dear god how can someone have their head up their ass so hard that the anus became their mouth?

</comment><comment><USER37> This really puts into perspective how out of touch some people are. I am shocked by the lack of empathy and how conceited this guy is.

</comment><comment><USER38> It sounds like they took the wrong message away from a 'Pets or Cattle?' talk.

</comment><comment><USER39> I've had people do worse shit than this to me.

</comment><comment><USER40> Yeah.. 0% chance of this being real.</comment>