'Jaunty Jackalope' Ubuntu 9.04 springs into beta - <AUTHOR> http://news.cnet.com/8301-1001_3-10205896-92.html?part=rss

<comment><USER2> Exciting Parts:

> Cloud computing (mimics AWS)

> Faster boot up (always yay)

> Easy mail servers (big hassle addressed)

<comment><USER3> things I liked: (been using an alpha for a couple of weeks now)

* the new notification 'bubbles' in the top right hand corner look good

* coming out of hibernate/suspend mode reconnects me to my wifi connection (never seemed to work in the past)

<comment><USER2> On Bubbles: It looks cool indeed. Here is a short demo: [http://www.markshuttleworth.com/wp- content/uploads/2008/12/j...](http://www.markshuttleworth.com/wp- content/uploads/2008/12/jaunty904_notifications_example1_web_092.swf)

It looks better than the infamous Windows bubble notification.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> I just installed the beta in a VM. Looks like they still haven't replaced the hideous default theme (Human). If Ubuntu is going to go head-to-head with Snow Leopard and Windows 7 it needs to be more appealing out of the box.

On a positive note, nice to see Ext4 available. I think the next release will enable it by default.

<comment><USER5> While I am certain that Snow Leopard is going to look pretty sleek, I personally find that Ubuntu looks a lot better than Windows Vista/7. I could be biased because I am sick of Windows as an operating system. However, I think font and color rendering and overall interface looks a lot better in Ubuntu.

<comment><USER6> Ditto, I use both and I much prefer Ubuntu's look to Vista's.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> Direct link for downloads:

<http://releases.ubuntu.com/releases/9.04/>

</comment><comment><USER8> Eucalyptus seems like the most interesting piece of this. I'm looking forward to playing with it.

</comment><comment><USER9> Do you have to wait 'til the release date to order the 9.04 CD/DVD?

</comment><comment><USER10> Has it really been that long? Seems like I was on Edgy Eft (6.10) yesterday.

And please look up and post the official link in the future: <http://www.ubuntu.com/testing/jaunty/beta></comment>


Scrutinizing WPA2 Password Generating Algorithms in Wireless Routers [pdf] - <AUTHOR> https://www.usenix.org/system/files/conference/woot15/woot15-paper-lorente.pdf

<comment><USER2> > We are surprised to notice little improvement in the default password > protection of Dutch routers. In 2008, the practically exploitable security > issue in SpeedTouch routers generated some serious media attention in The > Netherlands. We had expected that successor and improved routers would be > much more secure. However, our study reveals that various modern and > massively deployed routers still use weak methods to generate default > passwords. Users that did not explicitly changed their wireless password are > vulnerable to practical password recovery attacks which enables an adversary > to remotely intrude their network within minutes.

I guess as long as companies aren't held legally accountable for putting users at risk, they're not going to change anything.</comment>


Ask HN: Stripe alternatives with worldwide merchants for non-business - <AUTHOR> Hi. I'm just pissed off, because I can't find any payment gateway, which will support merchants in any country (Stripe is awesome, but it requires to be located in specified countries). PayPal is global, but it's painful to implement this (I've implemented it using ActiveMerchant, it redirects user to success page and it doesn't charge user). Are there any other payment processors which works in other countries than US (I live in Poland) and don't require to have company set up (company in Poland costs a lot, even without any revenue, so it's not an option right now). <comment><USER2> Check out Spreedly. [https://spreedly.com/](https://spreedly.com/)

Integrate once and your app/site now supports 71 different payment gateways. You can test and swap them just by changing one token in your code.

Here's the supported gateways, including 8 in Poland: [https://spreedly.com/gateways](https://spreedly.com/gateways)

<comment><USER3> It supports a few in India too.. Impressive. Though it is quite pricey.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> Braintree ([https://www.braintreepayments.com/landing/international](https://www.braintreepayments.com/landing/international) ) ?

<comment><USER5> Braintree is a good alternative and it was recently picked up by PayPal. They also offer first $50K in sales transaction fee-free.</comment></comment>


Facebook's Mark Zuckerberg eats only what he kills - <AUTHOR> http://eatocracy.cnn.com/2011/05/26/facebooks-mark-zuckerberg-eats-only-what-he-kills/

<comment><USER2> Funnily enough I've always wanted to go hunt something, skin it and cook it - just to prove that I can. (Hunting isn't common in the UK. I understand it's more common in the US).

I don't really thing this approach to fulfilling your dietary needs really scales well in today's society. You can view all of the civilisation of man (i.e. the establishment of cities, interconnected communities etc.) as a way to ensure specialisation of skills.

It not only doesn't make sense (economically) for a computer guy to go hunt down his beef but it's also incredibly difficult from the logistical point of view. I live in a big city and the nearest food I could go and shoot is probably miles away. If I went out to try and hunt some food over the weekend the odds are that I'd go hungry!

</comment><comment><USER3> Well, if this is true...

I can't help but to feel like this is not a good PR move.

<comment><USER4> I actually respect Zuck more because of this. He seems like less of a narcissistic adolescent and more like a man who cares about the quality of his food and the connection between himself and what he consumes.

And, remember that killing your food is a sign of aristocracy. Native Americans were not called "noble savages" because they seemed neat or something, but because they hunted and adorned themselves with pelts, which is something that only European aristocrats did.

Personally, I prefer butchering my meat myself because of the low-quality of butchering in many mass-production facilities.</comment></comment>


The Edit Distance Problem - <AUTHOR> http://rjlipton.wordpress.com/2009/03/22/bellman-dynamic-programming-and-edit-distance

<comment><USER2> I thought I would post a practical application, FWIW. I recently applied edit distance to a problem I was facing on my free dating site. Being free, we attract an inordinate number of scammers. I've been developing an arsenal of tools to help identify and track suspects in order to delete their accounts before they do too much damage. The most successful to date has used edit distance.

Scammers tend to post identical or slightly altered messages to a large number of users. As you might expect, this has the effect of quickly polluting the valid ecosystem. The solution I employed was to delay sending messages between users long enough to capture spammer patterns and compare the messages to one another.

I use the Levenshtein distance algorithm (which has O(n^2) performance). If I get a similarity over a certain threshold. I quarantine the message for further analysis. To work around the performance, I bound the problem by capping the number of messages used for analysis.

It has been incredibly effective.

</comment><comment><USER3> Dick Lipton's blog has a huge collection of really amazing kiddie pool tastes and pointers within awesome nuggets of theoretical computer science, one of his posts that I want to walk through carefully when i have the time is the one on the quantum method, for proving various nifty algorithmic complexity results etc.

[http://rjlipton.wordpress.com/2009/03/28/erds-and-the- quantu...](http://rjlipton.wordpress.com/2009/03/28/erds-and-the-quantum- method/)

sexy stuff

<comment><USER4> It is indeed amazing. But why put so much effort into a blog? Makes you wonder whether this blog is intended primarily to attract more PhD students to the field.

<comment><USER5> It makes a lot more sense to publish scientific results on the web than on paper. Hyperlinks, more graphs, more data, less costs, more feedback. Scientists still publish in journals because of inertia and an antiquated incentive structure (grant money is proportional to the number of published papers, esp. in high-profile journals). I hope we'll eventually make the transition, and possibly, so does the author of that blog.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> What a coincidence! I have been looking at the edit distance problem, because it can be applied to computer vision. One of the uses is if you have a stereo image pair you can figure out the depth of the objects in the scene, by matching corresponding features. The edit distance problem helps with figuring out which pixels in one stereo image correspond to pixels in the other stereo image.

I am hoping with a bit more effort I can understand the dynamic programming side of it better.

</comment><comment><USER4> For a bit-parallel approach to this problem, see: [http://citeseerx.ist.psu.edu/viewdoc/summary?doi=10.1.1.19.4...](http://citeseerx.ist.psu.edu/viewdoc/summary?doi=10.1.1.19.4342)

</comment><comment><USER7> I spent a year and a half as an undergraduate converting a custom C edit distance implementation into Java for a computer assisted language instruction system. This is a really nice article discussing the topic. I think the interesting facet of dynamic programming is how it shows the dynamic between space and time. In his creative book on algorithms, Udi Manber gives a nice description of a general approach to designing algorithms with dynamic programming.

<comment><USER8> A year and a half ? How many SLOCs was that ?

<comment><USER7> I haven't a clue this was like 99-01, it wasn't just edit distance algorithm but also all the UI code surrounding it and optimizing things for learning a foreign language. Basically it was a quiz program in (e.g.) German which compared the student's answer to the proper answer and then generated suggestions when appropriate. We did a lot of tweaking of that code, iterating through versions starting with an attempt to just port some C code and onward - I was pretty green at that time and it wasn't a full time job, so it's not like implementing edit distance took you know, 70 man weeks...

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> A completely different approach to the problem is to minimize the number of necessary distance computation in the first place. There are various indexing algorithms which make finding nearest neighbours feasible in large datasets. Incidentally, I implemented two of them. :)

<http://well-adjusted.de/mspace.py>

For real usage, you would probably want to reimplement them with performance in mind (and in a different language), though. My implementation is dog slow. But on the plus side, it is very readable and heavily documented.

</comment><comment><USER10> The edit distance and the algorithms to solve it have been of great use in my research work in neuroscience. The places where I can apply them are as surprising as 3D mesh reconstruction from a stack of outlines ( [http://www.blender.org/community/blender- conference/blender-...](http://www.blender.org/community/blender- conference/blender-conference-2006/proceedings/albert-cardona/) ), to neuronal recognition (I'm currently finishing a paper on that; see some images here: <http://albert.rierol.net/doodle_programming.html#11> ).

I know of other labs using edit distance to compare people's timelines (to estimate cost of shifting from one lifestyle to another). And the most widely use application of edit distances is in the comparison of any DNA/RNA/protein sequence for similarity, both for identification purposes and for the study of their evolution.</comment>


Ask HN: Fired from a company I loved- seeking advice - <AUTHOR> As the title describes, I was fired from a company I loved and am seeking advice on where to go in life and career.
Background:
I joined a late stage startup that I absolutely loved 3 months ago in a sales/business development role. I immediately fell in love with the team and the culture there and piled myself into the team and in my role.
I quickly performed well in my job so my problem didn't arise there... In my final month in August I managed to pull 60% of my small team's results as well as literally 100% of the final results in a higher priority campaign.
Unfortunately, it seems that my downfall came from being too eager/open/stupid in challenging some ideas from one of the founders. I had the idea that it's fine to challenge the status quo or to challenge ideas for the sake of coming out with a better idea in the end. Perhaps this isn't how people on the receiving end felt when I debated (read: argued) with them about the right decisions to make. I truly thought I was doing what was in the interest of growing the company but in the end I guess I failed in recognizing the damage I was causing.
It's like a bad break up- I was in love and now it's gone.
I'm now at a point where I need to figure out what to do with my life next. Should I figure something out for myself? Should I go travel and explore a bit (may be hard with student loan burden)? Should I jump immediately into my next job?
Any comments or suggestions? <comment><USER2> Buy a book called '48 laws of power', internalize the results, and the next time see that you stay and the founder who disliked you gets the boot. That won't be easy of course, which is why you need to develop strategy.

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks for the suggestion! I'm unsure how much I would have liked for somebody to be ousted though... I feel that rather than one party being wrong we did not align in our communication.

I'll definitely check out the book though, looks like it could be valuable.

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> Have you read Dale Carnegie's "How to Win Friends and Influence People"? The book is about to celebrate its 80th birthday, but the advice is truly timeless.

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

<comment><AUTHOR> I've read it before though I suppose I need to read it again to internalize what he talks about. This is clearly a case where I did not properly consider the impacts of my actions in a social context.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> A similar thing happen to me, so I feel your pain</comment>


Illusion of mind (2008) - <AUTHOR> http://ryuc.info/creativityphysics/mind/illusion_of_mind.htm

<comment><USER2> So I assume this is demonstrating someone's gibberish generator, like: [http://www.elsewhere.org/pomo/](http://www.elsewhere.org/pomo/)

Even if it isn't, I wish people would stop saying things like this:

"I have a theory of phenomenon X that shows it has a cause different from what was previously believed. Therefore X is JUST AN ILLUSION!!!!"

The word "illusion" is as tricky to deal with properly as the world "reality" because as Barbie might say: "Ontology is hard."

"Illusion" is used in two distinct senses:

1) when a phenomenon has a cause that is different from what is naively assumed, the naively assumed _cause_ is said to be "an illusion". Thus, the "bend in the stick that passes through the water's surface" is said to be an illusion because while the bend is perfectly real, it is in the light, not the stick

2) "illusion" is also used to mean simply "not real" or "non-existent" in an absolute sense, as in, "The illusion of safety the TSA gives us."

We muddy our language (and therefore our thinking) when we conflate causes and phenomena. The mind is both a cause (we refer to "the mind" to explain things) and a phenomenon (we all experience our own minds and most of us who aren't psychopaths have reasonably effective predictive models of other people's minds.)

So when someone says "the mind is an illusion" what can they possibly mean? Obviously it's nonsense to say the phenomenology of the mind is not real: that would be like saying we see the stick in the water as straight, when we manifestly don't. So presumably they mean there is a cause that gives rise to the bend in our perceptions that is different from what we naively think it is. In that case, saying "An alternative causal account of the mind" would be vastly clearer.

"X is an illusion" is a formulation that is good for one thing only: identifying charlatans and nutjobs. For that, it is very effective.

<comment><USER3> The basic problem is that a huge number of people claim the mind is noncausal _in the first place_. On that basis, we might well say that the epiphenomenal, dualistic Mind is an illusion, even though we all know that the actual, causal mind is very real.

Also, I started feeling nauseous when the author said the words "energy consciousness" and closed the tab. It's not just you.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> An unpublished work of Deepak Chopra??</comment>


Medium, Please - <AUTHOR> http://www.smashrobot.com/marketing/medium/

<comment><USER2> This seems very dishonest to me, and if I was a random walk-in customer of that coffee shop, I'd feel cheated. I have absolutely no idea how many ounces are in a "medium" at any coffee shop, and I don't want to know. When I ask for a medium, what I'm really saying is, "please give me a reasonably sized cup of coffee, not too big, not too small."

If I'd have asked for a medium and gotten a super-jumbo-medium handed to me, I'd have felt manipulated in some vague way--as if the big coffee shop knows damn well what a "medium" is, and they know damn well that that's what I want, but they're going to give me their own special interpretation of a "medium," which is more coffee than I want, and also just so happens to cost $1 more. Fuck that, and too bad you didn't mention the name of your chain so that I can try not to visit.

<comment><USER3> I remember reading about the application of this mindset in retail establishments before. It's also why I never specify a size before seeing the actual cup sizes.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> Aren't you afraid that you are abusing the trust of your customers? They say "medium" and trust you to provide a reasonably-sized coffee, but you sell them a large one instead.

Have you tracked how many customers leave their coffee half-finished now that you changed the labels?

</comment><comment><USER5> One reason I always say "16 ounce" or "12 ounce". I have no idea if they speak Starbuckian or any other coffeeshop lingo, but 16 ounces is always 16 ounces.

<comment><USER6> That will not work outside America though.

<comment><USER7> But Starbuck's made up words will?

I wonder if the metric system has an analogous unit of measure to the ounce....

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> well, duh. asking for medium is like saying "stop asking me questions, and just give me the damn coffee". I doubt relabelling does you any more good than just raising the markup on your (genuinely) medium coffee. Repeat customers will figure out what size they like, and one-off visitors will, if anything, just feel jerked around.

</comment><comment><USER9> This is the well known Goldilocks effect: <http://www.venchar.com/2004/01/extremeness_ave.html>

</comment><comment><USER10> If people didn't really want the extra coffee (and it seems unlikely they did), how exactly is this different from "We wanted to make more money, so we raised our prices" ?

<comment><USER11> They were still offering the smaller options. They didn't raise their prices, they just made them more misleading. This is just one of those dark patterns that works and can even be essential for some kinds of businesses: [http://swombat.com/2010/12/19/dark-patterns-good-for- busines...](http://swombat.com/2010/12/19/dark-patterns-good-for-business)

</comment></comment><comment><USER12> I went into Subway today just to get a drink. I asked for a medium (I admit I am in the habit of doing that everywhere, and it's usually a pretty safe option). She pointed to a giant 40oz Big Gulp-looking plastic cup. Apparently "medium" has been growing not just at coffeeshops.

The best part is that, as I slurp down my 600-calorie soda, I can read on the side of the cup about how many Subway sandwiches are so healthy and just 200-300 calories.

</comment><comment><USER13> I know how and why it works, but some part of me feels that it's improper.

I can't be sure because TFA didn't show it, but I'll bet that the store have a display with sizes and prices readily visible.

Thus, taking this approach is basically saying "We're going to try to trick you into ordering more than you want, charge you more than you expected, and hope that in aggregate our customers are too lazy or don't care enough about 50 cents to push back. At least for a few years, and by then we'll be much richer."

I can just never bring myself to resorting to such tricks. Am I the only one?

<comment><USER14> I think you're overstating the case, things like: Large vs Small beer - <http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1xSDI9Gg63I> \- are flatly unethical. If someone asked for a 16oz Coffee and you gave them 12oz in a skinny cup so it looked taller that would be unethical as well.

But, if you have a series of smaller to larger cups lined up on a counter and you ask people which one they want and then give them what they asked for, I can't see that being unethical.

To me, this is just another form of advertising.

</comment></comment><comment><USER15> I wouldn't be surprised if Starbucks' actual coffee size naming scheme seeks to benefit from this effect while dodging the flak.

Changing the normal offered beverages from "Short", "Tall", and "Grande" to "Tall", "Grande", and "Venti" obtains the same effect as described in this post without being as overt about it. (On the face of it, "Grande" is an odd thing to call a medium beverage in the first place.)

</comment><comment><USER16> This also means that the price of all sizes went up, which must have messed with demand. Was there consideration of possible lost sales?

</comment><comment><USER17> This is a well known concept in pricing theory. If you have multiple, directly comparable offers, always have an out of reach option. Doing so will automatically lead more people to buy the next, more affordable option.

</comment><comment><USER18> I wonder when they'll make the shift again when people figure out that the "small" is really what they want. Then there can be a "small" 16oz coffee :D

</comment><comment><USER19> ok i feel like a dummy but this doesn't make sense to me.

they just relabeled the old large -> new medium but kept the price points the same? so if a medium 12 oz. was $2, and a large 16 oz. was $4, the "medium" $2 cup is now 16 oz. doesn't that mean they are now giving out more coffee for the same price? how does that help their bottom line...

<comment><USER20> The price of 12 or 16 ounces of coffee didn't change, just the label on the cup changed. Making up all numbers here, it is like this:

      Ounces   Size Before    Size After    Cost
      12oz     Small          Extra Small   $2
      16oz     Medium         Small         $3
      24oz     Large          Medium        $4
      128oz    N/A            Large         $15

Notice cost/ounce for a particular number of ounces never changes.

</comment></comment><comment><USER21> what are the margins on a cup of coffee?

<comment><USER22> When I worked at Subway a 32oz soda cost the store around 10 cents total for the soda and the cup. We sold them for $1.45 each. (Approximate, this was 4 years ago)

I would imagine plain coffee has similar margins but there is a fair amount of overhead to run a store which is why the markup is so high.

<comment><USER23> Drinks is the biggest revenue source for fast food chains.

<comment><USER24> For any food establishment. Or you're doing something wrong.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER25> you should probably read predictably irrational if you have not already..

<comment><USER26> Dan Ariely's Predictably Irrational is really good and the very first chapter discusses this exact phenomenon and some of the subtleties surrounding it.

He also mentions it in one of his excellent TED talks:

<http://www.ted.com/speakers/dan_ariely.html>

</comment></comment><comment><USER27> "...astonishing..."</comment>


What If Jeff Bezos Tries to Acquire the Struggling U.S. Postal Service? - <AUTHOR> https://www.ccn.com/what-if-jeff-bezos-tries-to-acquire-the-struggling-u-s-postal-service/ <comment><USER2> Just a reminder that the bill that destroyed the USPS finances was backed by both Democrats and Republicans in 2005. It required the post office to fund pensions and health care 75 years in advance as an intentional way to screw up their finances and make it insolvent.

It passed unanimously in the Senate and every Democrat in the House voted for it. It's truly been a bipartisan effort.

[http://clerk.house.gov/evs/2005/roll430.xml](http://clerk.house.gov/evs/2005/roll430.xml)

The USPS is a vital service, note "service". It is not a corporation designed to make money. It has mandates to deliver and pick up mail from every home in the US no matter where they are 6 days a week. It is a part of our infrastructure as much as the military or coast guard or national parks service or so on.

<comment><USER3> People that keep repeating this conspiracy theory have no idea what they're talking about. While it's true that the PAEA (The bill in question) was passed unanimously, the PAEA does not require funding retiree health and pension funds "75 years into the future".

You can read the bill itself [1] and see that this appears nowhere in it. What it actually requires is that the USPS fund the discounted present value of current employee retirement health and pensions liability.

What this conspiracy theory also critically misses is that the Post Office hasn't contributed to the fund in a decade but still pays current retirees out of the fund. With more money leaving the fund than entering it, it is expected to be depleted by 2030 [2].

1\. [https://www.congress.gov/bill/109th-congress/house- bill/6407](https://www.congress.gov/bill/109th-congress/house-bill/6407)

2\. [https://www.gao.gov/products/GAO-18-602](https://www.gao.gov/products/GAO-18-602)

<comment><USER4> > Post Office hasn't contributed to the fund in a decade

To be clear, there are two funds: pension and health benefits. AFAIU the USPS has been making progress on fully funding the pension plan.

The health benefits fund is a lost cause because health costs are rising far too fast. Also, unlike with pensions most organizations (public and private) are permitted to decrease health benefits for existing retirees as they're not considered vested benefits, but under Federal law the USPS _specifically_ is not permitted to lower health benefits for retirees. The USPS is really over a barrel in that regard, and that's why they don't bother--that and the hope that healthcare reform will have shifted the costs enough that some day the USPS-specific restriction will be lifted. Given their situation what they're doing does make sense--retirees have Obamacare, but nothing exists to replace lost pension income--it's just quasi-illegal. I say quasi because satisfying the health fund mandate is clearly impossible.

It's worth repeating that the USPS doesn't control their rates, which are set by the Postal Regulatory Commission. The politics of the PRC are complicated[1] and they can't be expected to mitigate the funding dilemma created by Congress. Only Congress can fix things. But that won't happen anytime soon as the fundamental issue implicates national healthcare policy.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> I am normally for privatization. There are so many ways USPS could bolster their infrastructure to grow. Reduce the bureaucracy and improve efficiency.

Being said. USPS offers a secure and power agnostic means of communication. I don't trust large corporations to respect privacy or provide the caliber of federal security USPS offers it's clientele.

Although, when legislation becomes a component of business operations... failure becomes imminent.

<comment><USER6> In my part of Europe the postal service was privatized a long time ago. It works fine, the guarantees on service and rights to privacy etc were put into law and apply to other shipping/postal companies as well. It's a net win for consumers because rates dropped, "order before 16:00 for next day delivery" has become 23:59 and the privacy guarantees now apply also to FedEx/UPS/DHL/other carriers.

The group that has all the downsides of this are the postal workers. What used to be a government job with almost no way to get fired and amazing benefits is now a commercial job with higher performance requirements and less benefits.

<comment><USER7> Is this a highly industrialized, population dense part of Europe? The United States is huge and for the most part has low population density making anything related to movement inherently difficult and expensive.

<comment><USER6> Indeed quite densely populated, but I don't think it matters much for the privatization concept? UPS / DHL / FedEx still also cover all of the US, just at a higher price per parcel than over here?

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> The UPSP seems like a good thing to keep going.

I don't find arguments that Amazon paying a lower mean wage than other tech companies means Bezos is the "meanest" CEO.

Amazon employs many people in jobs that are not tech jobs.

Whether there is something wrong with their wages, I don't know. But that argument makes no sense.

</comment><comment><USER9> it's amazing how the media takes the bait on silly things like this every time. I would like to understand how the profession as a whole hasn't had a moment of realization about trolling and how they're being used. They're our societies overaggressive immune response.

It's not happening, it's not going to happen. It's a distraction and nothing more.

</comment><comment><USER10> Just repeal the PAEA.

</comment><comment><USER11> If Bezos tries to acquire USPS, Donald Trump will save USPS. Simple.

<comment><USER12> I don't follow.

I don't know if I am unable to follow because this is so simple it's obvious only after it is explained or if I am too simple to understand first think out of the gate.

To gamble that it is the former, may I hear an explanation?

<comment><USER13> I believe the parent is referring to the well-known animus Trump holds for Bezos, and suggesting Trump will do The Right Thing™ as a matter of spite if he learns Bezos wants to take over USPS.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> What if Jeff Bezos buys X game!

</comment><comment><USER15> I wish I could opt out of USPS delivery. I'll pay a subscription to do it. Seriously. I'll pay $10/month for the USPS to shred everything that doesn't require a direct signature from me. I agree that it should remain solvent and free for everyone, but I want to improve my experience and also contribute to the solvency.</comment>


Two-Person MRI - <AUTHOR> https://science.sciencemag.org/content/367/6474/133 <comment><USER2> reminds me of the one where they took an MRI image of a man and woman having sex -- something that answered real scientific questions AND won an Ig Nobel prize.</comment>


The Definitive Guide To Forms based Website Authentication - <AUTHOR> http://stackoverflow.com/questions/549/the-definitive-guide-to-forms-based-website-authentication

<comment><USER2> Dupe <http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2859234></comment>


Show HN: I created a JavaScript debugger for iPhone and Android - <AUTHOR> http://www.lexandera.com/aardwolf/

<comment><USER2> Site is currently down for me. Here's the screencast I managed to pull from Google cache.

<http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eYn2SAJHeJw>

This looks very promising overall. Debugging on tablets/mobile is currently tedious at best.

<comment><AUTHOR> Newer video: <http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aRF1hg6UhQk>

It's mostly the same demo, but looks a bit nicer.

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> The site loads without the www. <http://lexandera.com/aardwolf/>

Here's the github repo <https://github.com/lexandera/Aardwolf>

It seems it works by rewriting your JS to call a bunch of debugging functions, and once it hits a breakpoint, it sends out a synchronous XHR to the server.

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks. I guess the lesson for today is "don't use cheap hosting".

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> The site is down but this sounds amazing.

</comment><comment><USER5> Looking forward to having a look at it!</comment>


Planck Microwave Background Results at 10:00 CET, 3/21/2013 - <AUTHOR> http://spaceinvideos.esa.int/esalive

<comment><AUTHOR> This is perhaps the most-awaited cosmology result of the year. It will place the most stringent constraints yet on much of early-universe cosmology.

In addition to making our understanding of dark energy/dark matter more precise, it may finally allow us to see if the Standard Model of cosmology requires three or four neutrino species.

10 AM CET is 2 AM PDT.</comment>


How we shifted 6Wunderkinder to Wunderlist, again - <AUTHOR> http://christianreber.com/blog/how-we-shifted-6wunderkinder-to-wunderlist-again

<comment><USER2> Pretty disappointed as I had my whole family switch to Wunderkit, and all of us get on board using it.

However... after a few months most of us stopped - it just wasn't clicking like I hoped it would. I know some of my family members still use it personally with their significant others tho, so they'll be bummed by this news.

This sort of thing makes me very wary of choosing to use something to manage things as important as Wunderkit was setup for - especially when they're made 'free'. Right now I use Trello in my work, and even tho they constantly say 'It'll all be OKAY, this will be around a long time' - this makes me weary once more.

<comment><AUTHOR> Wunderkit will remain stable for some time yet. Once Wunderlist 2 is ready we will be offering an export tool, so that your friends and family will be able to transfer their data directly from Wunderkit to Wunderlist 2.

<comment><USER2> Thanks for the reply Christian. I'll be sure to let them know if that fact. I respect the nature of the decision, and i know it was certainly not an easy one. You've handled it very well, and the communication around that fact very well.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER3> "more than 20 engineers" on a to-do list app? Isn't that quite an overhead? I mean 37signals have 9 developers and they successfully run several products (even with their easy-going lifestyle).

<comment><AUTHOR> We focus on building a solid product with a consistent experience for several platforms - Wunderlist 2 will launch with native clients on Web, iOS, Android, Mac and Windows. To build a high quality product on every platform, I think you need at least 2 developers for each platform. If you are interested this is how we split our team:

3 iOS Developers

3 Android Developers

2 Mac Developers

2 Windows Developers

5 Web Developers (they not only build the web app)

5 Backend Developers

1 Sysadmin

<comment><USER4> Why are there both web developers and backend developers? By web developers did you mean frontend developers(primarily JS) ?

<comment><AUTHOR> We split between backend developers (mainly Rails) and frontend/web developers (mainly Backbone). Our backend developers are maintaining the backend of Wunderlist 1, and have built the backend for Wunderkit. Now they are rebuilding the backend for Wunderlist 2 and from scratch. With Wunderlist alone we have three million users, so it is a big job!

<comment><USER3> Oh did I just read "rebuilding the backend from scratch" there?

Joel on Software: Things You Should Never Do <http://www.joelonsoftware.com/articles/fog0000000069.html>

<comment><USER5> It's a nice, pithy answer to give, and in general you shouldn't rewrite a backend "just cause". However, Wunderlist's backend was built with the intention of being a bit of a prototype, and the skills on the team are vastly different from when it was written (in PHP) compared to where we are now (using mainly Rails with a little Node.js in the backend).

In addition, contrary to Spolsky's claim, unmaintained code _does_ rust, or "rot". Libraries you were using might go unmaintained in newer versions of a framework that fixes critical vulnerabilities. Code that held up well to thousands of users doesn't necessarily when you're talking about millions of users. Fighting code/app entropy is a real thing.

But we're taking steps to make sure this backend neither suffers from the "second system effect" (we got that out of the way with Wunderkit ;-)), nor simply needs to be rewritten again in a year or so. Spolsky is correct that in general, code is harder to read than write - which is why we're writing Wunderlist 2's backend to be easier to read at the cost of extra work up front. Strict conventions, enforcing documentation, challenging any code that isn't the clearest way to express the problem it's solving - well, we'll have an engineering blog post to discuss our "Pull Request Parties" and other related process improvements in depth at a later point in time/

The short version, though is that the WL2 backend is probably the most beautiful, readable codebase I've ever had the privilege of working with. Of course I'm more than a little biased, but hopefully the proof will be in the pudding when we launch it out into the world.</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment>


Build REST APIs without coding to increase productivity - <AUTHOR> https://www.byteline.io/ <comment><AUTHOR> I am working on this as a startup idea, but, before going too deep into it, I'd like to know what this community thinks of that. The advantages are no- code test cases, one-click deployments, share components, and more. Any feedback or thoughts are welcome.</comment>


SOPA dies only for two more bills to appear - <AUTHOR>

ACTA - http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dmQN93NqqDM&list=LLDU6AlHwdt_Prtzsn2seXHA&index=1&feature=plpp_video_<p>and Protect Children from Online Pornographers Act http://www.theatlantic.com/politics/archive/2011/08/the-legislation-that-could-kill-internet-privacy-for-good/242853/ <comment><USER2> Acta is a worldwide treaty that probably adds to the Bern convention's law nearly ten years ago. It's a global worry, the equivalents of the MPAA are probably lobbying for it in each country.

Pcopa (or the better name I can't find that was proposed in Congress) wants to keep a massive amount of logs, and I'm not sure I understood who would have access to these logs. At the very least the courts could use it to quickly match torrent logs to ISP logs to find a person. The current system is very slow, the ISPs are taking their time (a slow work protest). Impossible to impose due to the name and the first bill that Sopa is attached to.</comment>


Britain seen from above - <AUTHOR> http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/technology/7539529.stm <comment><USER2> "tracked... second... by second"

: /

<comment><USER3> <http://www.art-for-a-change.com/News/eyes.htm>

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> That is just TOO freaking cool. Love the visualization of loads of data.

</comment><comment><USER5> Second by second. Synapse by synapse.

</comment><comment><USER6> Big Brother is watching you!</comment>


The keto diet, explained - <AUTHOR> https://www.vox.com/science-and-health/2018/2/21/16965122/keto-diet-reset <comment><USER2> But not that well. I haven't heard of anyone trying to do keto and lose weight with 5 meals a day, as pictured in the article.</comment>


What Are Teachers Learning? - <AUTHOR> http://www.huffingtonpost.com/meredith-ely/theory-or-bust-what-are-t_b_777047.html

<comment><USER2> I wonder if these programs have been watered down because graduate-level educational attainment often results in an automatic increase in teacher compensation.

<comment><USER3> This creates a market is easily attainable degrees, particularly for online schools or other nontraditional institutions which promise the ability to get a degree while juggling career and family. They typically charge exactly what the government will subsidize. This is not _intrinsically_ a bad thing: the idea behind increAsing educational access was certainly not to have everyone do Harvard undergrad. But, as always, you have to keep an eye on incentives. (I would prefer rewarding things we care about rather than rewarding proxies which are _known_ to have negligible impact on what we care about. Education and seniority of teachers, which entirely determine compensation in most of the US, are both known to be ineffective proxies.)</comment></comment>


Twitter XSS Worm writer Mikeey gets hacked - <AUTHOR> http://seclists.org/fulldisclosure/2009/Apr/0168.html

<comment><USER2> Summary: he stored all his passwords (for servers, Gmail, Skype, AIM, etc.) in _allinfo.txt_ on his web server.

<comment><USER3> this happen with me sometimes, i think that no one will think of this file to open or think of its content.

Two mistakes he made 1- the file name is easy to guess 2- he allowed file listening in his server

<comment><AUTHOR> I asked the guy who did this what the entry point was,

The file name was not guessed, it was a shell command injection on the website, doing a ls listed an interestingly named file "allinfo.txt". Looking at this, it had the ssh username/password...

<comment><USER4> Cool, that's why it's called HACKER news here :)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> Wow. Street justice does not fool around.

</comment><comment><USER6> Well, there is no way to confirm if the post is really true. Put it sure is funny as hell.

Advice to mike, read up on a little project called Gnu Privacy Guard.

<comment><USER7> Same issue here. I have a ton of my usernames and passwords for services, but I can't confirm if they are true.

I wonder what I should do? Oh yeah, it's called logging on with them.

</comment></comment><comment><USER8> Karma's a bitch, isn't it?</comment>


FBI says it might be able to break into seized iPhone, wants hearing vacated - <AUTHOR> http://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2016/03/fbi-says-it-might-be-able-to-break-into-seized-iphone-wants-hearing-vacated/ <comment><USER2> already submitted: [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11332760](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11332760)</comment>


While Apple Is Criticized for Foxconn, Other Companies Are Silent - <AUTHOR> http://bits.blogs.nytimes.com/2012/04/08/disruptions-on-worker-conditions-apples-rivals-are-silent/

<comment><USER2> I always find it ironic when Foxconn is criticized for not treating their employees well when the fact is, Foxconn has done more to alleviate poverty in China than any single other company I can think of.

I live a few blocks away from the Foxconn factory in Shenzhen and whenever I try to bring up the "poor working conditions at Foxconn" topic with locals, I most often get a blank stare as if I had suggested something completely absurd. The truth is, Foxconn jobs are vastly superior to most alternatives down here.

I would recommend Western "do-gooders" to keep in mind that Chinese people are much more concerned about their own working conditions and well being than anyone else. They are in a much better position to address their own problems and if they ever need help from us Westerners, I'm sure they won't hesitate to ask. Meanwhile, I suggest we humbly mind our own business.

<comment><USER3> I think that's an important thing to consider. Whilst working conditions might be 'bad', they may be much better than what they might have otherwise, or better paid.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> This whole Foxconn scrutiny is a blessing in disguise for Apple. How so?

Apple has deep pockets and very healthy margins that they could afford to fix this whole issue while keeping it in the media's radar and then at the right time turn it back to its competitors to prove their ethics. The competitors whose margins are already spread too thin will have great difficulty in coming clean in this issue. Apple gets a positive PR while others struggle.

</comment><comment><USER5> Apple is criticized more than the others because they are in the media a lot already. They are a hugely successful company that has entered the public zeitgeist in a way that few of their competitors have. So, with this comes a lot more scrutiny, and thus it was easy for Apple to be the focus of attention when Foxconn's labor practices started to be reported on in the US.

Apple is handling this issue well (and much better than their competitors). But the real "issue" here is something that Apple has understood for a while. "The jobs aren't coming back" is a product of many factors, and the cost of labor is a red herring in this debate.

</comment><comment><USER6> I find all of this hand-wringing over working conditions to be the biggest pile of bunk that I have ever heard of.

The only reason that China is manufacturing just about every consumer product out there is that sending work there allows you to exploit cheap labor, lax environmental regulation, and other regulation found in western countries.

So now some westerners who "care" are waxing on about the poor iPhone workers. Why aren't the Chinese people making shoes, underwear, leather coats or other unpleasant jobs worthy of our pity?

<comment><USER7> This may have been the case in the past, but for Apple and increasingly across many industries China is offering genuine advantages beyond labour cost/conditions, and labour cost/conditions are increasingly approaching those in the west. It's like Japan all over again.

</comment></comment><comment><USER8> "While Media Single Out Apple for Foxconn, Companies See No Reason to Bring Attention to Themselves".

How is this surprising? Maybe the NYT should look inwards and cover Foxconn as a general problem, not something endemic to Apple.

</comment><comment><USER9> Overlooked sidebar: the fact that we are having this discussion, that China is listening to some degree, and that Apple is having an influence on Chinese labor conditions speaks volumes about how capitalism changes nations for the better. Anywhere a degree of free trade is introduced, freedom expands. In this case, these workers are going to be better off in the long run with Apple, because someone, somewhere in the Chinese bureaucracy, is making some money in the supply chain, and they don't want that to ever stop - even if that means giving these workers just a little more freedom, safety and salary.

</comment><comment><USER10> Apple is the biggest company in the world, other companies are not.

With great power comes great responsibility.

<comment><USER11> So do you think that Samsung for example, has less responsibility for its worker's conditions than Apple?

<comment><USER12> Equal responsibility but lesser blame. It's like slagging on a poor man for eating unhealthy food on the dollar menu at McDonalds. That man has an excuse, he doesn't have the money to shop for organic food at Whole Foods. Someone already super rich eating the dollar menu just to save a few bucks definitely deserves more blame not for eating healthy.

There isn't much money left over after Apple is done sucking the profit out of the phone industry.

[http://www.asymco.com/2012/02/03/first-apples-rank-in- mobile...](http://www.asymco.com/2012/02/03/first-apples-rank-in-mobile-phone- profitability-and-revenues/)

[http://www.asymco.com/wp-content/uploads/2012/02/Screen- Shot...](http://www.asymco.com/wp-content/uploads/2012/02/Screen- Shot-2012-02-03-at-2-3-12.37.20-PM.png)

<comment><USER11> Since they are doing the most to improve working conditions, perhaps they deserve more profit.

<comment><USER13> Nokia is known for the best working conditions in their plants in Europe because of the labor laws there. For example look at this video:

[http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RqxYiXtzKd0&feature=playe...](http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RqxYiXtzKd0&feature=player_embedded)

However, due to their all their competitors including Apple moving manufacturing to China, they have been forced to close their European plants and move to China as well.

<comment><USER11> Nokia isn't doing the most to _improve_ working conditions. Apple is.

<comment><USER12> So someone who stopped beating the wife is more laudable than someone who never did?

<comment><USER14> To be fair, the correct analogy would be that someone (Apple) who makes a third person (contractors) stop beating the wife is more laudable than someone (Nokia) who never had to do it in the first place.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> Did anyone notice the text under the image "A worker inspected motherboards on a factory line at the Foxconn plant in Shenzen, China, in May."

She is looking at a graphics cards, not a motherboard.

<comment><USER16> First thing I noticed. And unfortunately for the author, that's where I stopped reading, since the credibility is instantly lost.

<comment><USER7> That may (likely) have been put there by a sub editor, not the author. Still impinges on the credibility of NYTimes though.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER17> Wintek poisoning, Riteng factory explosion, Foxconn...

I'm concerned about production in China generally, sure, but Apple suppliers are the ones that keep making headlines.

Maybe Apple's just been spectacularly unlucky, but it's like we have this shoe, and it matches Apple's foot size so well...

</comment><comment><USER18> The real irony, to my mind is this: Apple is the company with the most integrity I've ever known. This manifests itself everywhere- from product quality to service at Apple stores.

Apple has been proactive in making sure their employees are well taken care of, here and abroad, and they've been doing this for the past decade.

They've been auditing suppliers in various ways for far longer than this story has even been in the news, going back at least to the 1990s.

Sure, Apple is the biggest, most profitable tech company, and it is also the one with the biggest brand. I think Apple's brand is a huge factor here- it is a global brand, it is associated with really good values such as quality, respect, integrity, etc, and thus it is the most attractive brand the put dirt on.

This explains why media, and unscrupulous people focus on attacking Apple for "working conditions".

But the reality is, when Foxconn has positions open to work for Apple, they get massive numbers of people who want to come work for them. Everyone in china has methods of communication, if Apple wasn't the best place to work, they wouldn't have so many applicants. Word would get out.

Apple solved this problem before it ever became a problem, but they are attacked because their brand is strong, and the people attacking them lack integrity.

They're also being attacked because it fits a political agenda. Unions and regulation have destroyed the manufacturing employment levels in the USA (actual manufacturing capacity is higher now than then, but a lot fewer people are employed) and so rather than recognize themselves as the cause of business moving overseas, they wish to demonize the businesses that did move overseas in the hope of coercing them to move back here. Every political season there are proposals that companies be punished for doing business overseas. This is why.

Thus perpetuating the fantasy that Apple runs sweatshops or uses "slave labor" is politically motivated.

The reality: When Foxconn cut back overtime (in response to this muckraking) the employees were very upset. They want to work more hours.

The employees have spoken...

\----

I digressed. My original point is, that all these other companies are benefiting from Apple leading the way here. Apple is teaching the chinese how to be ethical and to treat employees well, by requiring it, and all these other manufacturers are benefiting from that.

This is a cost to apple, and it is a profit to those other manufacturers.

Thus it is really ironic when the media smears apple-- the company that has literally revolutionized manufacturing in china, as far as working conditions go.

<comment><USER19> You have a cite for Apple "revolutionizing" working conditions? Please, they're a electronics designer. They contract with whoever bids lowest, and always have. One of the big reason Foxconn is so large now is precisely because they were the low bidder for Apple's business years ago.

Now, I agree with the premise of the linked article that Apple has been unfairly tarnished for problems that are endemic to the industry as a whole.

But to flip this around and claim that Apple is somehow a champion fighting for workers rights is ... just weird (and I'll admit that it makes me sad to see this kind of completely unselfaware fawning on a site where discussion used to be a lot more intellectually robust). Like the rest of the industry, Apple didn't do poop about chinese workers until they were embarassed.

<comment><USER18> > "Please, they're a electronics designer. They contract with whoever bids > lowest, and always have."

Do you have a cite for your claim that Apple has never been holding their producers up to a standard of quality, and has been entering into contracts on the SOLE basis of price? Of course you don't, as this is just an ideological statement, already refuted by my pointing out their history of audits and high requirements.

> "One of the big reason Foxconn is so large now is precisely because they > were the low bidder for Apple's business years ago."

One of the reasons Foxconn was a relatively low bidder _all those years ago_ was because in their partnership with Apple they acquired a great deal of knowledge about how to build products to Apple's exacting standards, and how to run a large business employing large numbers of employees and treat them well. This has, in fact, allowed Foxconn to grow to a very large business, and might be the one thing that separated them from the pack of contract manufacturers that came about at that time-- many of whom offered lower prices and were competing solely on price.

>But to flip this around and claim that Apple is somehow a champion fighting for workers rights is ... just weird

Actually, no flipping is involved. It is a simple statement of fact. Apple has been auditing its suppliers going back decades and including inside china since it started manufacturing there.

>"makes me sad to see this kind of completely unselfaware fawning on a site where discussion used to be a lot more intellectually robust"

Frankly, it makes me sad to see people who cannot make an argument, cannot respond to the argument that has been made, and instead are only able to misrepresent the argument and engage in the kind of ad hominem you just have. There is zero "intellectual robustness" in your response, as your response comes completely from your mindless hatred of Apple. This is why the site is in such decline-- simply mentioning anything positive about Apple (or other chosen targets of hatred) or negative about Google or Amazon (or other chosen targets of adoration) results in down votes and these kind of mindless snotty responses.

> Like the rest of the industry, Apple didn't do poop about chinese workers > until they were embarrassed.

This is a flat out lie. But you believe it because others with the same ideology as you have said it, and so you just assert it here, comfortable that the down vote brigades will have your back. Your entire post is a prime example of the kind of content free, pure ideological response that makes "intellectually robust" discussion impossible here.

Did you make a counter argument? No, you just demanded a "cite". Did you defend your assertions as I did? No, you just made broad, obviously false assertions. Did you respond to the point? No, you attacked me personally with derogatory characterizations. Did you defend your ultimate point? No, you just made an assertion that fallacious on the face of it, as would be obvious to anyone who had been paying attention to this issue for more than a few months (apple's been publishing reports of supplier audits for years, and has been doing the audits for decades.)

You are why Hacker News is in decline and why anyone who is capable of argument-- such as myself-- is hesitant to post here, because there really is no point in attempting to engage in debate given the mindless hordes who make purely ideological posts like yours.

In fact, I'm certain that it is-- ironically-- Apple's decades of integrity that is the very _reason_ you hate them so. They have done right, and they won, even after you all thought there was no way they could ever be something more than a marginal player--- so rather than bashing them for being marginal, you're now bashing them for their success.

<comment><USER20> _You are why Hacker News is in decline and why anyone who is capable of argument-- such as myself-- is hesitant to post here_

I'd hate to see what happens when you aren't being hesitant.

<comment><USER21> You're talking to someone who was convinced Apple was the sole inventor of multi-touch, abused everyone who claimed otherwise, and then disappeared when definitive counter-proof was provided, without apologising. He's an arrogant fanboy (not a term I use lightly), and he's not worth arguing with.

<comment><USER18> Your comment is a perfect example of what I'm talking about. You made six claims, all of which are false, and none of which you provide any evidence of. To best of my recollection, this "counter-proof" was the movie 2001: A Space Odessey.

Your comment is pure insult, and much worse, you tell flat out lies about me.

I'm sorry that you wish to believe the fiction that Apple didn't invent multi- touch, or that a movie counts as prior art.

But you impeach yourself, when you, and others, run around this site telling such lies about people. Its nothing more than personal attack, and you are in fact engaging in the very abuse you accuse me of. By the way, my "abuse" was describing the details of the technology in question.

I am always able to defend my positions with logic, facts and argumentation. The problem is, so rarely do I get counter arguments, that such defenses are not often necessary. (notice all of the responses to my posts here are characterizing me, rather than addressing my arguments, for example.)

Instead, you guys get into such a blinding rage at the fact that I might dare point out these facts that you have no other ability to respond than to attack me personally.

No response from me, should be necessary, but Hacker News is overrun with this kind of partisanship to the point where you feel comfortable saying something that, quite frankly, should get you hellbanned.

> "You're talking to someone who was convinced Apple was the sole inventor of > multi-touch, abused everyone who claimed otherwise, and then disappeared > when definitive counter-proof was provided, without apologising. He's an > arrogant fanboy (not a term I use lightly), and he's not worth arguing > with."

Ah, I see from looking at your comment history, you're attacking me for political and ideological reasons. You're attempting to intimidate me into silence by engaging in ad hominem. Exactly as I indicated was going on on HN.

Thank you for providing such a nice example.

<comment><USER21> That's impressively wrong, well done.

Here, I looked up the relevant portion of the comment thread for you: <http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=3262469> . You supported your claims about Apple inventing multi-touch with a claim that Apple had trademarked a specific definition of multi-touch - thus allowing you to dismiss out of hand people citing earlier screens that supported multiple touches. You accused at least one of these people of lying. I showed you that you were wrong, that the trademark application you cited had been denied because the term _is generic_. Hence, other people's examples of multi-touch interfaces were perfectly valid.

Another user cited a cofounder of Fingerworks stating that multi-touch was not a single innovation: <http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=3263335> .

I'm not really sure what 'political and ideological reasons' you think I have - I have no idea of your political history, and have only noticed your posts related to Apple. I am a happy user of several Apple products and, on the whole, admire them as a company despite certain faults. I'm just not a rabid fanboy.

> The problem is, so rarely do I get counter arguments, that such defenses are > not often necessary.

Funny how you stopped arguing at the _exact_ moment your position became indefensible, and were so keen to do so before then. I'm honestly finding it hard to work out if you're trolling me or not.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> As we are constantly reminded here, Apple takes 80% of the phone industry profits and thus deserve proportionate blame for working conditions.

They make $575 in profit from an iPhone but pay the Foxconn workers $7 to assemble it. They could double the pay and still make a very huge profit. On the other hand, many other companies like Amazon and Microsoft sell the hardware for a loss, hoping to make it up on software and media purchases.

Meanwhile, the other companies are not doing very well, and labor cost increases for them might put them out of business entirely and then the workers won't even have a job. HTC doesn't have $100 billion in the bank and recently reported a bad quarter. This is why Apple is criticized more since it has most leeway of all the companies mentioned in the article to increase wages.

<comment><USER22> That $575 number is nonsensical; the iPhone 4S (the most expensive model) costs $599 off-contract. These phones do not cost $25 to make. The real number is somewhere around $300, most of which paid by the carrier: <http://www.asymco.com/2012/02/26/iphone-sine-qua-non/>.

Regardless, doubling the pay for workers does not solve the real issue here. Their wages are _already_ above average for Chinese factory workers in that area. If you want these workers to be paid a first-world wage, that's a much larger issue than how much Apple pays their final assembly workers.

Also, Foxconn does not build just phones. It's used by most desktop and laptop manufacturers, where Apple is certainly not in the lead, and to assemble all game consoles, where Apple doesn't even have products. Microsoft, for example, is responsible for the workers in the incident mentioned here: [http://kotaku.com/5874706/report-mass-suicide-threats-at- xbo...](http://kotaku.com/5874706/report-mass-suicide-threats-at- xbox-360-plant) (I don't think Microsoft would have an issue paying more, for example.)

Now this is not to underplay the problems in Chinese manufacturing, of which there are many. But Apple is certainly not singularly able to make any changes here.

<comment><USER12> >That $575 number is nonsensical;

Well, then maybe Slashdot is wrong too:

[http://mobile.slashdot.org/story/12/04/08/0546247/google- ear...](http://mobile.slashdot.org/story/12/04/08/0546247/google-earns-2-per- handset-apple-575)

>"While Apple generates more than $575 in profit for every iOS device, and according to estimates in 2007 Apple earned more than $800 on every iPhone sold through ATT, Horace Dediu reports that Android generated less than $550m in revenues for Google between 2008 and the end of 2011, earning only $1.70 per year, per Android device — explaining how Apple is sucking up two thirds of the profit in the mobile phone business.

<comment><USER20> That '$575 in profit' is, from the context, how much profit they make on average per year from an iOS device, not just the profit margin on the sale price, otherwise the comparisons to android's yearly profit would not make much sense.

<comment><USER3> Yeah, they get a cut from contracts and also app sales.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER23> tl;dr

Because we live in a world where success is discouraged, and mediocrity is celebrated.</comment>


There is no nanotech, stop talking about it and start laughing at it - <AUTHOR> http://scottlocklin.wordpress.com/2010/08/24/nano-nonsense-25-years-of-charlatanry/ <comment><USER2> For those that are skeptical about nano machinery, google 'ribosome' and be amazed.

Nano machinery is real, it exists, it powers the world, it's called biology.

The problem is that we seem to have a hard time translating our hard won knowledge of mechanical engineering to the nano scale, I expect some time will pass before the SF visions will become a reality but I think eventually we will get there. Figure another 50 to 100 years or so?

As long as we keep thinking in terms of conventional mechanics (wheels, gears, levers, wires and so on) it's going to be slow progress because we are trying to push down the size limit on our macroscopic ingredients without a real appreciation of what you can do with molecules 'as is'.

I think at some point the 'genetic synthesis' crowd is going to meet up with the 'nano technology' crowd and that's when we'll see some real action. The first little bits of progress in that direction have already been made.

<comment><USER3> Evolution took billions of years to engineer the ribosome (and more importantly to engineer the whole supporting ecosystem where ribosome can do what it needs to do). I doubt humans will be able to do that in next 100 years.

Granted a similar argument can be made for many other comparisons (such as camera or airplanes) but at nano-scales physics of environment plays a tremendous role. The beauty of evolution was that it is an inside-out distributed process so the physics of environment actually helped engineering ribosome.

I wonder if humans will fall back to mechanisms such as guided evolution to create other "nano-machines". Lots of effort has started being put into that direction. Just google "artificial enzymes"

<comment><USER4> > Evolution took billions of years to engineer the ribosome

I see this argument a lot, but it doesn't really hold water. Evolution wasn't _trying_ to engineer the ribosome. In fact, the only thing evolution tries to do is replicate. The biological forms that have come out of that are completely random.

Humans, on the other hand, consciously make efforts at engineering. Thousands of monkeys will never (for all practical purposes) manage to write a Shakespearean work, but Shakespeare did.

100 years ago we barely had phones. Almost no one had a car. There were no televisions and movies didn't have sound. Human flight was relegated to hot air balloons. On the other hand, total Internet bandwidth has increased from about 10 terabytes a month to 10,000,000 terabytes a month in the last 15 years. Trying to guess the limits of what we'll be able to do in the next 100 years is unfathomable to me.

<comment><USER3> > Evolution wasn't trying to engineer the ribosome.

Evolution isn't purposeless. Sure, it is a random process but it has a purpose. And that's of survival of the organism (or if you like Dawkins, genes that encode the organism).

> The biological forms that have come out of that are completely random.

Wow, biological forms are NOT random. They are what they are because of the environment they are habituated in. The exact implementation (animal) may not be deterministic but if you set the right fitness function, evolution will produce what you wanted it to produce. Evolution is like a blind tinkerer who knows he needs to fix but doesn't know where to hit the hammer to fix it. He only gets feedback once he has hit the hammer. From the feedback, he can definitely avoid hitting at the wrong spot again and again. I wouldn't call this process _random_.

My original argument is about engineering macro v/s nano machines. Evolution is great at doing nano work because it is an inside out process.

PS: Thousands of moneys _will_ produce a Shakespearean work if their survival depended on it! (Just kidding)

<comment><USER5> > Evolution isn't purposeless. Sure, it is a random process but it has a > purpose. And that's of survival of the organism (or if you like Dawkins, > genes that encode the organism).

Is survival a "purpose" or is it just the consequence that is selected for? (Survival isn't a property like length or color.)

<comment><USER6> Good point.

As long as we're quibbling/clarifying, it seems we're mixing up natural selection and evolution here.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> I hate to complain about headlines, but I feel this needs saying:

Headlines such as the one this author has chosen strike me as unpleasantly Digg-like. Exhortations to "stop talking about it and start laughing at it" are anti-intellectual; it's a call to glib derision rather than reasoned rejection.

<comment><USER8> Yeah it's just like the whole "Fail" meme. It's indicative of how demanding people are becoming that they no longer can be bothered to write a sentence or even conjugate a verb to express their disgust with some flaw that catches their attention for a microsecond.

I think Louis C.K. captured the essence better than anyone (<http://www.time.com/time/arts/article/0,8599,1885790,00.html>)

</comment></comment><comment><USER9> The name is all about the funding. There are many 'nano'-technology grants, which focus on devices that are tens of thousands, or even millions of nanometers large. Micro-techology, however, doesn't get the same funding from the NSF et al. MEMS (<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Microelectromechanical_systems>) has come a long way in a very short time, and, research-dollars willing, will shrink further, so the author is wrong when he says nanotechnology will take another century.

<comment><USER10> For the same reason, it's "machine learning" rather than "non parametric statistics".

<comment><USER11> well you could argue that Theory of CS is same as Mathematics of Computation. or Biology is just Chemistry and Chemistry is just Physics.

Traditionally statistics is more geared towards hypothesis testing and analytics. While Machine Learning is about making prediction.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> I really wish that the author would have, when complaining about "Drexler's Book", been clear about which one he was talking about.

Also, "Mechanical objects on microscales do not exist" is gratuitously false, we even have really simple mechanical objects (like cantilevers) on the 100nm scale now.

<comment><USER13> "This is an honest summary of Drexler's Ph.D. thesis/book"

<comment><USER14> why summarize and criticize a book published in 1986?

<comment><USER2> Not that I necessarily agree with this particular summary in everything, but the point of summarizing something it to make it easier to digest the core of the argument before criticizing it.

For that to work you have to have a really good understanding of the subject matter though, and I think he does Drexler great disservice when he says "He seems to lack the imagination, and of course, the physics to figure out what a real nanosized doodad might look like.".

That to me is the hallmark of someone with an ax to grind rather than an objective reviewing of a book written quite a while ago.

Of course Drexler didn't have the physics to figure out what a real nanobot might look like, nobody did, and nobody does.

Drexler could not have easily foreseen some of the obstacles a direct translation of mechanical concepts would encounter, but there are more ways to skin a cat, and biology seems to have found at least one of them.

Now it's up to us to find either another path or to harness biology to produce those structures that we can not produce by direct means and to build up a library of tested components to do our 'nano engineering' with.

I see Drexler more as a visionary than as a 'hard applicable science' guy and that's the way to approach his book. If you're looking for a 'ready to build' nano bot or a hard treatise on nano engineering you're not going to find it, if we had had that at that time then we wouldn't be where we are today.

Incidentally, I think that the 'proponents' of nano tech have done a very bad job at raising expectations (Drexler among them), I do believe that long term nano technology will become a reality and will become a mainstay of our technological arsenal. Just like electronics, which were practically non- existent one hundred years ago are today.

<comment><USER14> i understand what summary is for. what i don't "understand" is why he chose as the target a book that's 24 years old in a fast moving field. actually i do understand: it was a strawman!

i agree with your assessment.

<comment><USER15> This is a non-moving "field." It is nothing but a marketing word for third rate research on things which used to be called "tribology" and "chemistry."

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> "We don't even have micromachines. Mechanical objects on microscales do not exist."

That's not exactly true. See, for example

<http://www.dartmouth.edu/~news/releases/2005/09/14.html>

for a 60 micrometers by 250 micrometers robot from 2005.

Of course, that's not nanotechnology, and the article's main point might well be valid. Still, there seems to be a good deal of exaggeration in it.

</comment><comment><USER17> Flying cars have long been a symbol of the possible technological height of human transportation. But we're not exactly surprised by their absence. Similarly, can't Drexler's '90s idealism be regarded as the possible peak of nanotech? Does the fact we don't have tiny toasters in our bloodstream really negate the acheivement of nanotechnology in medicine and materials science? Personally, I don't think so. This article is too deliberately inflammatory, and doesn't properly look into anything beyond what is now an ancient thesis - as far as fast-moving research areas are concerned. This makes his dismissal of nanotech as sweeping as Drexler's predictions.

<comment><USER18> Flying cars are possible today, but not economically viable. I know at least one startup building a flying emergency vehicle for urban areas. But this one just looking like a van, but actually has many things common with helicopters.

</comment></comment><comment><USER19> Refutation: <http://www.zyvex.com>

Much longer refutation: <http://www.rfreitas.com>

</comment><comment><USER20> Alternate view: A bunch of nano machines.

<http://mems.sandia.gov/gallery/images.html>

<comment><USER21> Those are actually "micro" machines. That's a very different scale.

<comment><USER22> The author says this too:

> "We don't even have micromachines. Mechanical objects on microscales do not > exist."

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER23> (off topic a bit)

I think every Russian HNer laughed out loud when they saw this title. Nanotech here in Russia is a synonym of enormous and inefficient government spending on vaporware since they started considering it a "National project". To be fair, I have no idea how true it is, but it does look very much so, especially with frequent appearance in news but no details about actual results.

</comment><comment><USER24> _Is_ this guy actually talking about _Nanosystems_? I don't think he read the same book I did.

I want my 60 seconds back.

<comment><USER25> He is speaking about Drexler's PhD Thesis, that was the draft of _Nanosystems_ , and it's freely available:

<http://dspace.mit.edu/handle/1721.1/27999>

But I also want my (120) seconds back.

</comment></comment><comment><USER11> wow this article is so wrong that I wont even comment about issues with it.

Anyone who wants to read good research in nano tech can browse through this journal: <http://pubs.acs.org/journal/nalefd>

This is same as saying to someone working on EINACS and early computers that they are a laughing stock and nothing but huge calculators. Reminds me of an article by Scott Aaronson : "Whats taking so long Mr. Babbage" : <http://scottaaronson.com/blog/?p=446>

</comment><comment><USER26> If you follow Drexler's blog and see what he actually says, you'll see plenty of realistic near-term topics like [http://metamodern.com/2010/08/13/progress- in-peptoid-toolkit...](http://metamodern.com/2010/08/13/progress-in-peptoid- toolkit-development/) [http://metamodern.com/2010/05/20/a-programmable- nanoscale-as...](http://metamodern.com/2010/05/20/a-programmable-nanoscale- assembly-line/) [http://metamodern.com/2010/03/12/the-molecular-approach- to-a...](http://metamodern.com/2010/03/12/the-molecular-approach-to- atomically-precise-fabrication/) [http://metamodern.com/2010/03/01/ribo-q1-genetic- manufacturi...](http://metamodern.com/2010/03/01/ribo-q1-genetic- manufacturing-expanded/)

You can test the OP's picture of Drexler this way considerably more easily than by studying _Nanosystems_ yourself (which is hard).

</comment><comment><USER27> As someone who's done a fair amount of work in materials science and "nanotechnology", I have to admit there are some valid points in here. Drexler-type nanobots are still just as far away as when he wrote his book, and a large amount of the "nanotechnology" work out there is called such mainly to get funding.

But the author here overstates his case quite a bit. "Millitech"? There are many microscale mechanical systems out there, both in the lab and in industrial applications. Accelerometers are one example; the actuated mirrors in DLP projectors are another. If there's no microtechnology out there, I know a lot of MEMS engineers who are going to be surprised to here it.

A lot of what's called nanotech now could have been called physical chemistry thirty years ago, especially a lot of the "let's put nanoparticles in it!" projects out there. But there's some pretty real nanotech out there too, even if it doesn't qualify under the self-replicating nanobots definition. One example I can think of is the work being done on nanoscale printing--not lithography, but actual physical printing of materials into nanoscale patterns. And there's some pretty cool controlled nanoparticle engineering work out there too.

</comment><comment><USER28> Why don't we have anything that can manipulate objects at the nano-scale? Couldn't we use atomic force microscopes to push some atoms together and at least make some interesting molecules (even if this process couldn't be scaled up)?

Also what ever happened to Feynman's idea of building half size remote controlled arms, which we then use to build half sized of that remote controlled arms, all the way down to a very small scale? Has anyone ever tried that?

<comment><AUTHOR> That is one of the authors points -- no one has done self replication on a macro scale and nanotech just assumes self replication at the molecular level

<comment><USER12> That's not really true, we self-replicate all the time (thanks mom and dad). What we don't know how to do is design things that self-replicate from scratch, but we do already have plenty of existence proofs.

Also, self-replication is actually easier at the molecular level because all the parts are perfectly regular.

<comment><USER29> Somebody just created artificial DNA, put it in another cell, and it self- replicated. So yes we DO know how to do this now.

<comment><USER30> We know how to train the brain of a human being to learn physics (well not always), but that doesn't means that we understand how that brain really works.

The life if full of examples of things we know how to use but that we don't understand. Sometimes it's just impossible to control that things. Think in the stock market or economics. Chemist has been studying this type of things for centuries and you can see the result: there are chemical products everywhere you look.

What the post attack is the concept of creating nanomachines that doesn't degrade (Cosmic rays! oxidation! temperature!!) and do exactly what we want.

And about the "artificial DNA", it's something so simple... Really! the problem is in the emergent properties of DNA, proteins and environmental effects, this is where you loose control. Even nature has problems with that, life forms die, had cancer...

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER31> What about liquid glass coating? First step.

"coating one millionth of a millimetre thick – 500 times thinner than a human hair – can be applied to virtually any surface to protect it against water, dirt, bacteria, heat and UV radiation."

[http://www.telegraph.co.uk/science/science- news/7125556/Liqu...](http://www.telegraph.co.uk/science/science- news/7125556/Liquid-glass-the-spray-on-scientific-revelation.html)

<comment><USER32> Other than that being plain old chemistry, the numbers don't line up. 500 times thinner than a hair is 100+ nanometers, not 1 nanometer.

</comment></comment><comment><USER33> You did not fund molecular nanotech and let billions of funding go to buying new buildings at universities and for chemistry research. Molecular nanotech has been excluded from funding since the 2003 start of major funding. When you buy your Ford SUV, do you send your complaints about it to Ferrari when you did not buy a race car? [http://nextbigfuture.com/2010/09/eric-drexler-ralph- merkle-o...](http://nextbigfuture.com/2010/09/eric-drexler-ralph-merkle-or- robert.html)

</comment><comment><USER34> "Imagining self replicating nanobots or nano machines is ridiculous"

Aren't biological cells replicating nanobots? Or are they bigger than nano scale?

</comment><comment><USER35> "Imagining self replicating nanobots or nano machines is ridiculous." The author does not seem to understand that all of cells of life are nano machines. If you insist on a definition of a machine being a collection of gears and bolts, then you must expand your definition.

</comment><comment><USER36> <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Clarke's_three_laws>

This seems to cover the topic...

</comment><comment><USER37> So, viruses don't exist then?

Because those seem to operate perfectly happily in a nanoscale environment, manipulating things around them.

<comment><USER38> Yep, and we can make those using bacteria machinery. But, it is actually pretty different when compared to some of the possibilities set out by nanotech folk. Viruses passively work in a system where their structure is intrinsic to the system. Most nano-techs can be better explained as catalysts, surfactants, anti-bodies, etc. Technologies and phenomenon long studied in existing fields.

<comment><USER34> I agree that it seems unlikely that we'll achieve nanobots that are more complicated than biological cells. An example of an unrealistic idea would be a remote controlled (or even autonomous) submarine diving through blood vessels, broadcasting what it sees to the outside world in HD quality.

Still, lot's of interesting things should be possible...

<comment><USER39> Such devices are already possible because the scale needed is mm not nano. For example the devices to do angioplasties are pretty big because blood vessels are pretty big. There is also a lot of commercial and research work being done on "remote control" treatment delivery, esp. for cancer treatment. (By remote control I mean externally guided as opposed to joystick control.)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER40> There sure is nanotech. It's called biology, and it's five billion years old.

</comment><comment><USER41> what a bunch of bull

<comment><USER42> how so?</comment></comment>


Ask HN: Review my app. Set Reminders in human language on Twitter - <AUTHOR> http://code.google.com/p/reminder-service/

<comment><USER2> I hate to be all "Simpsons did it!," but you can do a lot of the same stuff with Twitter using Remember the Milk. Still, I think your app would be a more appealing option to people who just want to set reminders via Twitter and don't want an entire task management program to deal with. Good job!

</comment><comment><USER3> Great, a twitter application that is simple, easy to use and does not generate noise. Nice work.

</comment><comment><USER4> It's unclear from the front page what type of reminders I can actually set. You give a lot of examples as to what will be supported in the future, but I can't tell what is actually supported now.

I'm trying it out anyway, but it would be nice to know those things without testing. : D

<comment><AUTHOR> Noted. thanks

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> Cute. Is there a way to see my reminders or manage them? I was thinking of doing something like this but using a Jabber bot awhile ago but never got around to it. I think that would be a good interface for something like this.

<comment><AUTHOR> That's what we are currently working on. Also we would support recurring reminders like "every month", "daily", etc.

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> Looks like interesting, it can be improved (like add management, visualization, etc..) but their simplicity is making the difference.

</comment><comment><USER7> Great idea, but sending me 11 direct messages right after I start following you is not very cool. Makes me reluctant to trust the service...

"Howdy. Thanks for trying me out. Take a look at <http://bit.ly/laterr> to use me more effectively. Thanks."

<comment><USER7> The DMs keep pouring in, and I'm unable to unfollow for some reason :(

<comment><AUTHOR> oopsy .. BUG found and killed.

<comment><USER7> Thanks.

Nothing personal, but I think there's a lot of trust involved in things like reminders, calendars, to-do lists, etc. Having a bad experience like this with my first try makes it much less likely that I'll give it another go.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> What problem is this specifically solving that dozens of other scheduling/task/GTD/Calendar systems haven't solved?. Even the most basic phone now has some kind of alerting feature on it.

<comment><USER9> It's usually a bit of a hassle to set those, since you have to set each of the fields and most date fields are rather annoying. Just using plain text is easier.

</comment></comment><comment><USER10> This reminds me of "I want Sandy".. which Twitter acquired and squashed..

<comment><USER11> That was my first thought. That was a clever little app.

</comment></comment><comment><USER12> Another similar app: <http://www.presdo.com>

<comment><USER13> well .. not too intuitive .. and also too much info needs to be given.

</comment></comment><comment><USER14> Cool. I like it.</comment>


Show HN: Wardrobe services for engineers - <AUTHOR> http://www.dev-sartorial.club/ <comment><USER2> What are you actually offering? Very unclear from this landing page.

<comment><AUTHOR> We are offering a personal stylist service designed especially for software engineers.

Styling services like Trunk Club don't factor for persona and profession at all and often miss the point. They are like catch all services.

Our service is geared towards software engineers. Being engineers ourselves, we know the workplace, the kind of attire and the right price point most engineers would be comfortable with.

<comment><USER3> I'd put that on the landing page or on an about page.</comment></comment></comment>


Cow Clicker and Social Games on Trial - <AUTHOR> http://m.bogost.com/blog/cow_clicker_1.shtml <comment><USER2> The concept of a 'challenge-free game' as the author points out seems to be fed more by narcism and the opportunity to say 'hey I'm doing something', even when that something is to say 'hey I'm doing something'.

A downward spiral that has strangely captured the imagination of many.

Does anybody thing FourSquare is in the same boat? I get awarded for 'checking-in'? So I get rewarded not for meeting a challenge, but for taking a simple action when I do something that I always do anyway? Do I deserve a reward for buying my 5th latte?

<comment><USER3> The same author (Bogost) had an article a bit ago about how Foursquare is similar to and different from frequent-flyer programs, that I found interesting: [http://www.gamasutra.com/view/feature/4269/persuasive_games_...](http://www.gamasutra.com/view/feature/4269/persuasive_games_checkins_check_.php)</comment></comment>


Ozonetel year in Review.Scaling from $1M ARR to $6M - <AUTHOR> http://blog.kookoo.in/2014/11/ozonetel-year-in-reviewscaling-from-1m.html

<comment><USER2> Got some of the best things happening here at Ozonetel Systems! This is just the beginning .. :D</comment>


Censoring Pirate Sites Doesn't Work, Researchers Find - <AUTHOR> http://torrentfreak.com/censoring-pirate-sites-doesnt-work-researchers-find-130108/?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=feed&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+Torrentfreak+%28Torrentfreak%29 <comment><USER2> I'll never understand the fascination HNers have with using torrentfreak.com as a source of information about stuff like this.

"But, Scott - TorrentFreak is just bringing this information to light. It's not like they are the source here."

True, I know, but I'm sure we can all agree that a site named TorrentFreak.com is hardly going to be an unbiased news source with respect to torrenting and pirating.</comment>


10 Largest Canadian Startup Financings in 2013 Aggregate over $500M - <AUTHOR> http://nibletz.com/2014/01/13/10-largest-canadian-startup-financings-aggregate-500m/ <comment><USER2> With the Canadian dollar going back down against the US dollar labour is even cheaper. It's annoying as a worker that salaries for IT in Canada lag the US, but good for companies.

</comment><comment><USER3> The Canadian startup scene to me is something where you get an interesting flavor for every city. I'm based in Montreal, and you definitely get a social enterprise and creative view that might be different compared to other ecosystems. The startup scene can only benefit from more money and resources flowing into areas where different perspectives and innovations can thrive.

</comment><comment><USER4> I would guess this is good news.

What I'd be interested in is how local this phenomenon is though. The major Canadian cities essentially seem to be isolated ecosystems, so what might apply in Vancouver would be next to meaningless in Ottawa.

</comment><comment><USER5> With the increasing housing price here (bay area), it's probably time for me to go back in Canada (I was originally from Canada), Anyone else had done it?

<comment><USER6> Keep in mind, if you're going to an expensive city like Vancouver, the savings in rent will probably be more than offset by decrease in salary.

<comment><USER7> I'll be doing it soon. Currently looking for opportunities in Toronto. Defn not what I'm used to in the US.</comment></comment></comment>


How I overcame my Bitcoin investment fears and just created a goddamn wallet - <AUTHOR> https://hackcabin.com/post/overcoming-fear-first-bitcoin-wallet/ <comment><USER2> NEO</comment>


Hacker Gives Away 386M Stolen Records on Dark Web - <AUTHOR> https://www.forbes.com/sites/daveywinder/2020/07/29/hacker-gives-away-386-million-stolen-records-on-dark-web-what-you-need-to-do-now-shinyhunters-data-breach/#7296d5276f39 <comment><AUTHOR> "I've made enough money now" ShinyHunters said as stolen data is offered for free in a commercial dark web hacker forum.</comment>