The story of bottled water (short film) - <AUTHOR> http://storyofstuff.org/bottledwater/

<comment><USER2> I disagree with most anti-bottled water comments. I drink bottled water. I used to drink it a lot. I have spent significant time trying different brands to find out which I liked best. I always shopped for taste (ie, I have never looked into how "healthy" or clean or whatever it is compared to tap water, nor do I care).

Dunno about where everybody else is, but this is at least true here, in Ireland. Maybe bottled water in the US is different? I don't know.

Until recently, when I got a water filter, I always drank bottled water. I love water and drink a LOT of it and always chose bottled water for taste. The really cheap bottled water usually tastes like crap, but the midrange to higher priced water tastes a lot better. Of the water sold locally, Volvic is my favourite. Tap water here tastes TERRIBLE. Even the filtered water I drink now doesn't taste as nice as bottled water and I'd still drink bottled water if it wasn't so expensive compared to buying filter replacements every now and then. There is a GIANT difference in taste between different brands of water. I don't know if its the water itself or the plastic it is packaged in[1].

Some of my friends think I'm crazy and can't taste the difference. I definitely can and I suspect the reason is that for the first fifteen or sixteen years of my life, I HATED all bottled water because it taste terrible compared to the tap water at home. I grew up in the country and the tap water came from a stream from the mountain at the back of the house. It was collected in a stone well and filtered through granite slabs. Thats it. No bottled water has come close to the taste of that water and until I moved to the city, I hated bottled water. I had friends who grew up in nearby towns and I never liked their tap water very much. But when I moved to the city, the tap water tastes extremely bad and I chose bottled water as the better of too bad options. I've since got used to bottled water, though drink it less due to getting a filter. So: mountain water > bottled water > filtered tap water > tap water

(Sadly the well has since been decomissioned due to contaminants (the mountain was used for farming and there are a lot of animals kept around where the well was) and while the water it has been replaced with is still nicer than town water and most bottled water, it is nowhere near as nice as the old water was)

[1] for example, recently I did a blind taste test with Milk, because I prefer to buy two brands (most shops only sell two or three brands. All shops sell at least one of the two brands I favor and often at least one other one. These others generally depend on the shop and region, some shops do have other brands I like, generally they are sold in tetrapak cartons, see below) of Milk due to taste. I could not taste the difference between tetrapak milk between the two brands that I buy, but I could between plastic cartons of the same two brands. With plastic, I could also taste the difference between the brands I buy and other brands. I am certain the taste difference is due to the plastic used in the cartons, not the Milk itself. I bet its the same for bottled water.

</comment><comment><USER3> This is not something I get too outraged about. Yes, it's a waste of energy, but this problem will solve itself when we run out of cheap energy. Pollution is bad, but governments are beginning to see this and are penalizing the polluters. These two factors will eventually make bottled water unprofitable, and it will be on to the piece of low-hanging fruit.

The reason I don't get too outraged is two-fold. One, it's better that people drink water instead of sugar water. Two, the landfilled bottles are annoying, but it's a problem we can solve later when we need the space. Right now, there is plenty of space on the planet for people, agriculture, and garbage. As we begin to need more space for people and agriculture, we will clean up the garbage.

I personally wouldn't buy bottled water, but this is not something I am losing a lot of sleep over either. Let the market work this problem out.

</comment><comment><USER4> Great video. While I do buy bottled water occasionally (i.e. I'm in a place where I don't have convenient access to tap water) it's very very rare. I am constantly amazed how many people actually pay for water.

In college (now about 10 years ago) I did a blind taste test study for a statistics class project and my results agreed with what they said in the video. Most people, including my roommate who was the biggest bottled water drinker I knew preferred the tap water to bottled, and yet after he saw even his own results it changed nothing. I just don't get it.

<comment><USER5> The thing you are missing is convenience. Bottled water is easily kept at temperature in diverse locations, is extremely portable, and immediately accessible. There are no fountains in classrooms.

And that's the point. Bottled water isn't being brought to the dining room. People are drinking it on the bus, during meetings, and walking down the street.

<comment><USER4> My college roommate used to buy them in bulk and keep them warm under his bed and then drink them even in the room. I get being on the road forgetting to bring water and getting a bottle for that, but you can prepare and bring a reusable bottle of your own on the bus, to your meeting, walking on the street, etc.

<comment><USER5> Although you are right that it does not take much of an effort to carry and maintain a reusable bottle; it does take more effort in comparison to prefetching a carton of evian under your bed. There is no washing, if you misplace 12oz of evian you are not out 10$, there is no 2 minute wait at the fountain for a refill.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> The only reason I drink bottled water, is because our tap water has sodium fluoride in it (rat poison, which is apparently good for your teeth :P )

Besides, as first-post said: "let the market work this problem out". The girl in the video, herself, admitted that there was a reversing trend in the market. Problem...?

<comment><USER7> Market can't and won't solve some problems. Wasn't US debt crisis caused by market?

We could let market solve the problem if all people were intelligent and aware of biochemistry (at least when we're talking about food). This, however, is very rare.

</comment></comment><comment><USER8> If you want the best of both worlds, go to a nearby filtered water store and refill your 3 or 5 gallon jug(s) with municipal water that's been through a 10-stage filter (or distilled, but I prefer filtered).

Where I live (SFbay) it costs about 5 dollars (and a schlep down to the refill location) per month (~20 gallons) for a family of 3... and no wasted plastic or barrels of oil transporting the goods.

Best part is it tastes _better_ than bottled or tap water, significantly.

</comment><comment><USER9> There's nothing wrong with regular city tap water.

Many folks are hyper-sensitized to the taste of a very small amount of mineral content that some water may or may not have. Bottled water manufacturers have latched onto these childish preferences and cultivate them in order to (very successfully) con people into paying for nothing and waste enormous energy and resources in the process.

Turn on the spigot, drink up, and don't fuss about it so much.

</comment><comment><USER10> Yet it's still considered OK to buy any other beverage in a bottle or can. Why buy beer in bottles when you should be brewing your own at home!

</comment><comment><USER11> You're buying the bottle not the water. People buy bottled water for the same reason they buy cans of pop rather than 4 gallon jugs of coke that they can use to refill smaller containers. It's so cheap that the convenience is worth it.

</comment><comment><USER12> Penn & Teller on bottled water:

<http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=C0A7v8PeFNk> (1/2)

<http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yw3px6o-6-w> (2/2)</comment>


Show HN: Turn GPS tracks into 3D-Printed mountains - <AUTHOR> http://www.nicetrails.com <comment><AUTHOR> Hi, this is Bernat, 3D printing designer...

we launched nicetrails to create unique trophies for mountaineers and outdoor sport activities.

the idea is: 1\. Upload a GPS track (.gpx) 2\. View the trail in 3D 3\. Choose map style: satellite / snow 4\. Order your trophy (3D Print in full color)

are you a hiker? biker? trail runner? I'd like your feedback, you can try to upload a .GPX file and see if all looks as expected.

*no need to register

I hope you like it.

Cheers from Barcelona!

<comment><USER2> This is super neat. Is the vertical scale fixed? Midwestern US hills are a challenge to bike IMO but probably not impressive when compared w/these fantastic alpine landscapes.

<comment><AUTHOR> For long routes (>100km), the terrain tends to look flat, due to the proportions of altitude (Z) vs width/length...

to solve that, we added a "terrain enhancer", a slider to exaggerate the altitude and give a dramatic look to the 3D model :)

<comment><USER2> Nice!

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER3> Nice work. I'm getting a timeout on [http://app.nicetrails.com/api/createXML3D_base_noUV_nobase_U...](http://app.nicetrails.com/api/createXML3D_base_noUV_nobase_UV.php) when trying to upload my own .gpx

<comment><AUTHOR> Strange, After uploading it should load the viewer instantly...

Please try to upload again from here: [http://www.nicetrails.com/app/](http://www.nicetrails.com/app/)

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> I would love to use something like this to capture a ski day. If I could just turn on a mobile app at the beginning of the day to track my route and then export from the app that would be sharp. Maybe integration with Strava and other such apps?

</comment><comment><USER5> This is extremely creative and cool. Nice job!

</comment><comment><USER6> Love this. Wish my recent hikes were more ambitious (and thusly deserving of memorialization)!

</comment><comment><USER7> This is super cool. Too bad 3D printing is still so expensive.

<comment><AUTHOR> right, that's the main drawback... :( specially because 3Dprinting prices escalate volumetrically... which means that something double the size is not twice expensive, but like eight times more expensive...</comment></comment>


Google, Microsoft, Comcast Say Verizon's New Cellular Tech Could Wreck Wi-Fi - <AUTHOR> http://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2015-12-03/google-microsoft-comcast-say-verizon-s-new-cellular-tech-could-wreck-wi-fi <comment><USER2> Here is the actual study - it is an interesting read: [http://apps.fcc.gov/ecfs/document/view?id=60001078145](http://apps.fcc.gov/ecfs/document/view?id=60001078145)

In a nutshell; the LTE transmission cycles on and off on a regular cadence without sensing if the channel is clear. This tramples over the 802.11 frames and results in higher utilization of the medium than that which is claimed by Qualcomm

<comment><USER3> Well the good news is that LTE-U appears to be for the 5 GHz band, not 2.4 GHz. You would think that it would be easier to put micro cells in the home gateways (using the bands they already own) vs. rolling out a new capabilities on the 5 GHz band in the client (I mean won't they have to wait for Apple/Android to switch to a new generation of chips?).

I guess the bad feeling is that the unlicensed bands would be used for a subscription service, whereas WiFi is controlled by the consumer (though in practice each ISP ends up using WiFi).

<comment><USER4> > Well the good news is that LTE-U appears to be for the 5 GHz band

I worry that it could make the 5G band look like 2.4G looks now. I too like the idea of a piece of spectrum used mainly by consumers or small businesses and not saturated by the big commercial gorillas. If today they are desperate enough to consider running their precious services on the wild unregulated bands then sooner or later they will be desperate enough to squeeze every last bit out of them.

Another thing is that once they are allowed in and their bottom line starts to depend on WiFi bands, they will fight to the death to stay there forever and only grow.

<comment><USER5> Where I live we have 2 WISPs - the 5GHz band already looks like the 2.4 band. This would potentially just wreck internet service for thousands of people.

<comment><USER6> Are the WISPs attaching WiFi APs to (or near) their antennas to provide service to the surrounding area?

If they _aren 't_, then -AIUI- 5GHz (and 40GHz) gear commonly used by WISPs is _highly_ directional and requires somewhat careful alignment in order to work. (I've heard the term "pencil beam" thrown around to describe the antenna pattern.)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> That comcast is part of this coalition is hilarious. My apartment building is flooded by xfinitywifi beacons, in addition to each subscribers private SSIDs. Why they insist on turning on this functionality even in urban environments boggles the mind.

<comment><USER8> Buy RF blocking window film if you are having so many issues. [http://www.slt.co/Products/RFShieldingWindowFilm/RFWindowFil...](http://www.slt.co/Products/RFShieldingWindowFilm/RFWindowFilm- SignalProtect-Clear.aspx)

There's also a wallpaper (and even paint) version of this which isn't terrible expensive if you are living in an apartment building with exterior dry walls instead of concrete.

This is pretty much the "civilian" version of stuff government agencies use to RF proof undercover sites which could not be fitted with active jamming, it works extremely well.

I have one in the bedroom put it on because BT set up one of their metro wifi towers in line of sight of the window, it also blocks all the other wifi SSID's from outside.

<comment><USER9> But would that not risk breaking your cellular signal?

<comment><USER8> It didn't affect cell reception for me, you should be able to find something that only works on 2.4> and leave lower bands alone.

LTE uses 2.5 but it's not that common 1900-1800 and 800-900 are still the most commonly used cellular bands.

I also plugged only a single window if you check which walls/windows leak the most and plug them it should allow cell reception through.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> Verizon has paid many billions of dollars to license spectrum over the years. It is in their business interest to charge customers $10 per GB of data while offloading the traffic onto free spectrum. Qualcomm wants to sell millions of new chips that will be required to power this new scenario.

It would be extremely unwise to let them push LTE-U thru without lots of independent testing and analysis. Even then there is a case to be made for keeping some spectrum 'open' and unlicensed lest we see it all end up owned by a handful of corporations.

<comment><USER4> > Even then there is a case to be made for keeping some spectrum 'open' and > unlicensed lest we see it all end up owned by a handful of corporations.

I think this is the important point. Let cell carriers in and they will subscribe as many people as necessary to fill the available bandwidth. After all, that's pretty much what they are paid for.

It's like road congestion - the amount of suffering depends on people's tolerance to endure suffering, not on the amount of available resource. There will always be more people willing to watch lolcat videos on their phones if they don't stutter _too badly_.

Keeping some spectrum aside from big operators allows at least small LANs to operate reasonably, while opening it to them may easily end up bringing suffering to everyone.

</comment></comment><comment><USER11> Sitting at about 0 worries. The second Verizon (or any other company's) new wireless tech started to mess with WiFi in practice (as in, at the consumer level), and was clearly attributable, they would instantly be hit with a giant tidal wave of bad PR.

Wifi works. People will not be very happy if you single-handedly break all their wifi-enabled things.

<comment><USER12> And what if it's not really clearly attributable? Imagine if there are only problems in areas with particularly high densities of LTE-U users. And even then, the problems could be sporadic, resulting in occasional wifi disconnects, or generally slower speeds. Wifi service wouldn't be "single- handedly broken," but service quality would definitely be degraded. And consumers won't be able to explain or prove why it's happening, so they aren't likely to get out their torches and pitchforks.

<comment><USER13> Depends. If Google et al are right and they have studies which show it degrades performance under certain conditions, then all it would take is one class action to get off the ground.

People will pile on, and the evidence that Verizon knows their technology can cause problems is already mounting. That they're pushing their products through without reviews or certifications could be seen as evidence of negligence or maliciousness.

<comment><USER14> > all it would take is one class action to get off the ground

What would be the cause of action? Why aren't the manufacturers of microwave ovens sued under the same cause of action?

<comment><USER15> Microwaves _should_ be properly shielded. If your microwave is interfering with your Wifi, its time for a new microwave.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> Celluar companies has payed to the state to have monopoly on certain air frequencies for a number of years which brings in good profits. Now these celluar companies want to sell paid services on the non licensed bands which will make free services like Wifi slower.

Here is an analogy, its like a company wanting to sell paid access to a public beach.

<comment><USER17> I'd say it's more like a street food vendor setting up a stall on a public sidewalk. Sometimes that's really convenient for both of you and it's exactly what you want, and sometimes the area is too congested so he's just in your way and it's super obnoxious. (And obviously it makes a big difference whether you're out in the suburbs or you're just off Times Square.)

<comment><USER18> And guess what? At least in NYC, there are rules about where and for how long those food vendors set up. (Not that all of them follow the rules, of course, but not having your permit is rather costly, I understand.)

"Let the market decide" doesn't work with commons. It's a tragedy, I tell you.

<comment><USER19> > not having your permit is rather costly

It sure was for Eric Garner…

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER20> If LTE-U degrades WiFi won't it work in the other way too, WiFi degrading LTE-U? If this is the case it's going to be difficult to use LTE-U inside or close to homes, which are probably the most crowded areas and so the use case of LTE-U. It could be a difficult product to sell.

<comment><USER21> Depends on wifi's reaction to what amounts to noise. Given a polite protocol that checks before sending, and a protocol that rudely blasts out a signal without checking, the latter will "win".

</comment></comment><comment><USER22> So if Wi-Fi performance is hampered then we might have to rely more on cellular data.

<comment><USER23> That can not happen.

 _Cellular data_ is not another dumb pipe, it's data transmission grafted with duct tape onto GSM et al., which are ridiculously centralized and proprietary services. There are no open source implementations, no open source hardware, certainly no open source drivers. Even if there were, you would be at the mercy of whoever operates the base station.

<comment><USER24> [http://osmocom.org/](http://osmocom.org/)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER25> I have been following this technology since FCC first call for response. Here is the other side of the story: [http://apps.fcc.gov/ecfs/document/view?id=60001104452](http://apps.fcc.gov/ecfs/document/view?id=60001104452)

EDIT: For all I know, the result used by Google is mostly simulation based (NOT TRUE).

Qualcomm did their due diligence on simulations AND lab trials to show different results. IMHO, Qualcomm clearly has a better arguments.

Note that the link provided in the top comment by rupellohn is old. The latest one, referred in the news link, is probably (there are multiple filings) this one: [http://apps.fcc.gov/ecfs/document/view?id=60001331188](http://apps.fcc.gov/ecfs/document/view?id=60001331188)

Full list of recent filing here: [http://apps.fcc.gov/ecfs/proceeding/view;ECFSSESSION=Xp4PVvB...](http://apps.fcc.gov/ecfs/proceeding/view;ECFSSESSION=Xp4PVvBJlz3JDb0m0s222YmCyR5Vm17z96s5JnG41wHDnd18tPnP!-1926356709!-1673700907?name=15-105)

TL;DR: 1\. LTE-U has been proven to be a better neighbor to a WF AP than another WiFi AP. In other words, two WiFi APs in the same room perform worse than One WiFi AP and One LTE-U station.

2\. Fairness: 2 WiFi APs should each share each have 5% airtime according to the standard, right? Wrong. Lab trials show one AP could take up to 80% +. Refer to [http://apps.fcc.gov/ecfs/document/view?id=60001104452](http://apps.fcc.gov/ecfs/document/view?id=60001104452) "Wi-Fi/LTE-U Airtime Fairness". LTE-U always gives 50% Air time to its WiFi neighbor.

3\. It is more of a political argument than a technological argument now. Note that at this point LTE-U spec does not violate the regulation on unlicensed spectrum.

DISCLAIMER: I don't work for Qualcomm. But it is easy to see who has a better argument.

<comment><USER26> > _For all I know, the result used by Google is mostly simulation based, > whereas Qualcomm did their due diligence on simulations AND lab trials._

I find it ironic that you've been "following this technology", have quick access to Qualcomm filing links, are happy to fill in details, but couldn't be bothered to even skim Google's filing.

The Jindal and Breslin study is well written and understandable. I'd suggest reading it since you seem invested in the topic.

<comment><USER25> I stand corrected.

I confused the filing by Google with other WiFi supporters (which uses simulation results). I have read through the all the filing months ago and apology for the bad memory. I agree that Jindal and Breslin study is solid and raised a valid concern. But they were all addressed in a response though.

Now I'd love to know how others think after reading Qualcomm's filing and not just take on one side of the story.

<comment><USER27> The response was a vacuous non-response that didn't address any of the technical points. If Qualcomm provided a detailed technical response I'd love to see it.

<comment><USER25> What do you mean by technical?

Section 3 of Qualcomm's filing did respond to many concerns in either simple analysis and/or lab tests. For example, the concern on the impact of rate control algorithm in WiFi.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER28> Why does Verizon want LTE-U so badly? They were against _wifi calling_ until recently! I thought their network was perfect :)

The only thing I can think of is that they don't have enough high-frequency spectrum (1700/1800/2ghz+) which means lower theoretical data speeds.

</comment><comment><USER29> Do not trust Verizon in the slightest.

They already violate their open/unlocked agreement for LTE and prevent other LTE devices from coming on their network and prevent theirs from going on other networks.

They are going to do whatever they can get away with.

<comment><USER30> So if I buy an unlocked LTE device from somewhere, I cannot use it on verizon?

<comment><USER29> Nope. 99% of them won't be allowed.

* with extreme exceptions there are some just so they can claim they meet federal guidelines

Now you might be able to trick activate an LTE sim for verizon on a verizon phone and then get it to work on your phone but technically verizon doesn't allow it

One day there is going to be a really large lawsuit about this, specifically because it violates the spirit of LTE licensing if not the actual letter of the law.

What the do to prevent their phones being taken to other carriers is even more devious. To get around LTE portability requirements, they simply disable specific LTE bands like the ones for T-Mobile, etc. So yeah you can put a T-Mobile sim in there but the phone won't get any signal.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER31> Why do we have to keep saving the internet!

<comment><USER32> Because the Internet was the first - and so far only - global free or mostly free market that has ever existed. It came of age at a time in which every major economy is highly regulated, rigid and bureaucratic. By design it came into this world with: free speech and expression, the ability to create and start things at will without permission (no little bureaucrat to get approval from first), and had little to no taxation placed on top of it for a long time (even if eg in the US those sales taxes were supposed to be paid anyway). The powers that be have had to work for two decades to try to cripple it to strip that very high degree of freedom away and acquire the control they want over it (whether for data espionage purposes, or control of commerce, or control of speech for social purposes, or taxation et al). Most governments were caught entirely off-guard with the speed at which the Web emerged.

Any time large bureaucracies run into a free market, they inevitably try to kill or regulate it (whether for the benefit of entrenched companies, or for state control purposes, or out of misguided nanny-state protectionism). There are few nations across the globe that haven't followed the same increasing regulation / control path with regards to the Internet, to one degree or another.

<comment><USER33> Um - in this case we're saving the internet (well, really radio spectrum that people use to access the internet) from private corporations, not the government. A totally free market sucks because there will never be a properly-maintained commons. If it weren't for the government, maybe I'd bolt my router to a 10-kilowatt transmitter so I can get my home wifi signal while I'm grocery shopping. So what if it sucks for everyone else! The government quite rightly regulates me in that area and says I can't do that.

If the internet as we know it today ever dies, I'm 80% sure it will be due to private corporations screwing everyone to make an extra buck, not due to government over-regulation.

<comment><USER34> I understand your point in general, but in this case you could probably solve it by building a faraday home, and/or use a frequency that decays rapidly, combined with repeaters around your home to counter _your_ signal suffering decay.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER35> Speculating gently that this 'new' tech is intended to enable the signalling layer for LTE Direct (was FlashLinq) a quasi-P2P system, designed primarily for retailers to push stuff at you, rather than create 'classic' P2P filesharing networks. Perhaps someone more knowledgeable than me on this topic can join the dots...

[http://www.pcworld.com/article/259680/emerging_lte_direct_st...](http://www.pcworld.com/article/259680/emerging_lte_direct_standard_would_go_peer_to_peer_for_4g_mobile_location.html)

[https://www.qualcomm.com/media/documents/files/lte-direct- wh...](https://www.qualcomm.com/media/documents/files/lte-direct- whitepaper.pdf)

</comment><comment><USER36> What does LTE-U do that you can't already do with wifi, and WiFi calling? Seems like a solution looking for a problem. Or an evil conspiracy to cripple the open, free, firmly established standard.

<comment><USER37> > What does LTE-U do that you can't already do with wifi, and WiFi calling?

It gives the telcos a way to measure and control your access to their network and services so they can bill you for it. Wifi calling offloads everything but the actual phone call to a 3rd party (i.e. not Verizon) so Verizon can't keep their fingers in the pie.

</comment></comment><comment><USER38> Here is the link to the Qualcomm docs (LTE forum). [http://www.lteuforum.org/documents.html](http://www.lteuforum.org/documents.html) The interesting one I think is the SDL coexistence one. The good news is it is restricted to the 5Ghz band which is the lesser used. It does interoperate with the DCF backoff so in theory would be no worse than any other AP, but it is understandable why it would make people nervous.

</comment><comment><USER39> This article explains a few points that explains how LTE-U can co-exist apparentely counteracting the research conclusions: [http://hightechforum.org/can-lte-unlicensed-steamroll-wi- fi/](http://hightechforum.org/can-lte-unlicensed-steamroll-wi-fi/)

</comment><comment><USER40> Take the 600Mhz band that is going to be up for auction and make it unlicensed explicitly for LTE.

<comment><USER41> I believe some over the air TV still goes over the 600Mhz band.

</comment></comment><comment><USER42> If your WiFi were getting stomped by LTE-U, would it help to get a high-power AP from Ubiquiti etc? If so, maybe prices of such APs would drop as volume increased. Also, maybe WiFi AP software could be tweaked to compete better with LTE-U.

<comment><USER43> Higher powered APs don't help transmissions from the client which face the same interference.

<comment><USER42> Doh. Thanks.

So software tweaks, then. Yes?

<comment><USER6> I gather that the only currently feasible software tweak you could add to WiFi [0] would be to make it a substantially ruder radio neighbor by failing to wait to transmit until its transmission channel is clear.

In that world, noone wins.

[0] Other, cooler schemes require that WiFi radio manufacturers put more smarts into their radios. There are several 802.11 standards that would make WiFi devices more performant in the face of interference, -probably- remove the hassle of AP channel selection, and distribute relevant metadata about an AP to clients _before_ they connect to aid the human in selection of the proper network and the machines in determining if the client possesses -say- credentials of some kind from a partner network that _this_ WiFi network will honor. The benefit of adding stuff like this is pretty obvious to techies. However, because most computer users are largely non-technical, it's (apparently) impossible to make the business case to increase the unit cost of one's WiFi products by $20 or so to cover the R&D costs. :(

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER44> Wow, Qualcomm is getting desperate to have the next thing everyone will rely on.

</comment><comment><USER45> Buy Spectrum. They ain't making any more of the stuff. -- Buck Rogers

</comment><comment><USER46> I don't understand how LTE-U is useful for long-range when the unlicensed spectrums have strict TX power limits.

<comment><USER47> It's not about long range. It's about getting more usable spectrum in crowded areas, or areas where the carrier failed to win a bid for sufficient licensed spectrum.

</comment></comment><comment><USER48> One would think Verizon had enough spectrum already. Sprint, sure, but Verizon?

<comment><USER49> Are you aware that Sprint has 40 MHz of spectrum in 90 of the top 100 markets? That's far more than any other provider.

It's entirely Sprint's fault for not building up a reliable network (of course it's in the 2.5 GHz band) on what the FCC has given them.

Edit: Maps of the relative amount of spectrum for U.S. LTE providers is here (Sprint leads the way):

[http://www.fiercewireless.com/special-reports/2015-how- much-...](http://www.fiercewireless.com/special-reports/2015-how-much-lte- spectrum-do-verizon-att-t-mobile-and-sprint-have-and-wher)

</comment></comment><comment> a-dub I think unlicensed spectrum should be reserved for use by the public.

<comment><USER37> For the public - interesting stance there. Your home Wifi connects to a private network, and presumably an ISP - what makes that dramatically different from this with respect to 'public' use?

A 'public' wifi hotspot is either run by, or connects to, an ISP. What's the difference there?

LTE-U will be used by the 'public' to access an ISP (that happens to be a cell phone company). By your standard, would all of the above be disallowed as they run through a company network to get to the Internet, or would they all be allowed as they are being used by the 'public'?

<comment> a-dub Maybe that was a little unclear. If you're an individual and you don't buy bands from the government, unlicensed spectrum is for you. If you're a utility who does buy bands from the government, then spilling over into unlicensed spectrum to boost your capability seems kinda bullshit to me.

Sure, it gets quite complicated when you start talking about customer operated equipment that provides commercial service (xfinity is a good example) but perhaps the critical test would be "is the transmitting equipment fully managed and controlled by the individual?"

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER50> Considering 5 GHz doesn't really travel well through walls, is this a serious concern? 5 GHz Wi-Fi typically requires an access point in every room. Conversely, I imagine their cellular tech would really only improve the outdoor cellular experience.

<comment><USER51> Do you live in a concrete bunker? I have one dual band AP for my entire house.

<comment><USER50> I live in a huge concrete building, yes ...

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER52> why is spectrum so expensive? only Goliath size corps can afford it.

<comment><USER53> Because physics doesn't like startups I guess...

Or to phase that another way: There is a lot of spectrum. But very little spectrum that is suitable for mobile phone usage. When a resource is finite and valuable, it gets expensive.

If you want a "real" solution that would allow startups to play in the ballpit? Pass new national laws which split the cellular companies into two organisations, one that offers consumer services, and another which exists to maintain/install/upgrade the physical cellular network (and who then resells access).

It actually makes little sense to have competing and exclusive cellular infrastructure. The infrastructure should just be like a public resource, like a road, and the cellphone companies should be like shipping companies, utilising a public resource (the road) to sell a service (shipping stuff).

I'd be all for the government using eminent domain to seize every single cellphone tower in the country, and then reselling access to them to every cell phone company equally. But it isn't very capitalist...

<comment><USER54> So there is a lot of theoretical economic work on how to allocate limited rival resources like spectrum (and water). The consensus is that the efficient way to do it is auctions. I have quibbles with certain assumptions in that research,[1] but for stuff like cellular spectrum (where the owner can achieve extremely high utilization), auctioning to private companies is probably quite close to efficient. It would be more efficient if we got rid of restrictions on use and transfer.

Yes, that does mean that you end up with mega-corps providing your cellular service. But the same is true for say retail. Amazon will eat the whole industry. Physics as well as economics strongly favor mega-corps. Startups have advantages, but specific and narrow ones.

[1] See [https://www.scribd.com/doc/292530059/Spectrum-Allocation- Loc...](https://www.scribd.com/doc/292530059/Spectrum-Allocation-Local-Area- Wireless)

<comment><USER55> An alternative would be to split wireless companies into 1) infrastructure companies and 2) companies that sell actual products to end users. The infrastructure companies would be allowed to bid on limited shared resources (= the spectrum), but a requirement for this would be that they would need to provide fair, reasonable and non-discriminatory access to the resources to other companies.

This is similar to the approach that some countries used when privatizing railroad companies: Instead of creating a new private company that's effectively a monopoly, they created one company that provides the infrastructure and another company that runs the trains. This allowed new private companies to enter the market, as they were allowed to use the resources under the same conditions as the former monopoly.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER56> Oh no, the unregulated spectrum is unregulated.

Not sure which side I am on. I don't like Verizon, but I don't really support heavy regulation.

<comment><USER57> >Not sure which side I am on

I'll tell you! (It's clear to me what side you're on.) You do really support heavy regulation, and you don't think some guy with a cheap and crappy device in the vicinity should be able to disrupt your cell phone reception, FM radio, the GPS wherever you are trying to figure out your location, or, yes, wifi. Likewise you don't want to have to drive from California to Boston because it's too dangerous to get in an airplane with all the unregulated recreational drones in the airspace. You want the radio spectrum, class A airspace, vehicle and factory emissions, and a bunch of other stuff to be heavily regulated. (What these things have in common I'll leave as an exercise.)

EDIT: this is at -1 but it's true. I'm leaving it. I guarantee that the guy is for heavy regulation and doesn't want me disrupting his cell phone, GPS, or wifi due to crappy devices that do not even give me any benefit but just ignore regulation / or there isn't any. he enjoys the benefits and is for them. I guarantee it.

</comment></comment><comment><USER58> This tastes a little like "pull the ladder up behind you". WiFi operates on unlicensed spectrum, and Google et al greatly benefit from it. Now someone else wants to use the spectrum, and they shouldn't be allowed to? It's just funny to me.

<comment><USER47> The FCC prevents devices that knowingly cause interference. I think this is an argument that the tech should be banned because they can prove ahead of time that it will interfere with other devices.</comment></comment>


An open letter from the founders of Scribd to those of you who didn't get into YC - <AUTHOR> "The best place to work, if you want to start a startup, is probably a startup. In addition to being the right sort of experience, one way or another it will be over quickly. You'll either end up rich, in which case problem solved, or the startup will get bought, in which case it it will start to suck to work there and it will be easy to leave, or most likely, the thing will blow up and you'll be free again." - PG
So you didn't get into YC.  We all know it probably isn't your fault - PG admits that with so many applicants, the choice becomes increasingly arbitrary.  The question is: what do you do now?  If you're a hacker, you're probably weighing three options: (1) Start your startup anyway;
(2) Work for Google, Apple, etc; or
(3) Work at someone else's startup
If you want to do 1, more power to you.  It would have been easier with YC, but if you work hard you could still pull it off.  Unfortunately, too many great programmers see only options 1 and 2, and forget that the next best thing to starting your own successful startup, is getting in on someone else's while it's still young.  It's also a great path to eventually starting your own company.
Although Scribd now has 8 people, working at Scribd is a lot more like doing your own startup than working at a big company.  This is true in terms of the work environment: at Scribd you'll work with a bunch of YC hackers, you'll have a huge impact on the product, and you won't have to deal with management or bureaucracy.  But - and this is often overlooked - it is also true economically.  Valuations are always debatable, but the cash value of the equity you would get in Scribd is actually higher than the cash value of the equity you would get in a new YC startup, which is only about $125K.  At Scribd we'll either all get rich or we all won't, and you'll participate in that.
Scribd was originally started by the merger of two Y Combinator companies, and since then, everyone who has joined has either been a YC applicant or someone who started a company themselves.  YC startups often "cannibalize" each other in that way, and it makes sense.  We want to keep this trend going, and right now we need help more than ever to scale our insanely fast-growing website and to develop the technology that is going to revolutionize the way that documents are shared on the Web.
If you are interested, send us an email at firstname.lastname@example.com, or just call Trip's cell phone at 617-335-6685.  Feel free to get in touch about anything, even if you just want some advice about what to do now.  For more details about working at Scribd and our uncorporate culture, check out our jobs page: http://www.scribd.com/static/jobs
Sincerely, Trip, Jared, and Tikhon <comment><USER2> So let me ask everyone who reads this, why would you not want to work for Scribd?

As clear by this ad, Scribd doesn't seem to be your typical company (which is a good thing). The boss is someone social (ie. actually wants to talk to people with real, live speech), they've got balls enough to tell you the truth ("We'll either all get rich or we all won't"), and even if Scribd is the worst failure in business history, you probably met/know some pretty cool people.

To many YC-wannbes focus on the code, the image, the company, the money but have no understanding that the best thing in a startup is always the people. If people stop taking everything so fucking serious, you might actually unclentch and have fun.

I wish there were more companies like Scribd, and yes I definently wish I worked for one (sadly I'm in the Navy). Trust me when I say if your <25, apply; don't think, just do it.

<comment><USER3> "I wish there were more companies like Scribd, and yes I definently wish I worked for one"

I echo the regret! The startup scene in Bangalore(ideas, people , funding etc) is utterly pathetic. The options are to suffer years of yucky jobs in the USA (all the while praying for the green card to come through) or work in one of the local outsource farms.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> Good job Scribd. I aplaud your seriousity and maturity you are showing(even if you guys are really young), yet you can have fun also. Honestly, your page and everything you guys said, makes me think your company is a good place to work for. Unlike the Xobni video, which raised too many eyebrows, you guys seem to be say the right things, and having the right attitude.

I am not looking for a job, but if I was, I would have applied for you guys.

<comment><USER5> Yep, After reading detail and checking their site - I am tempted to apply for this job but I won't because still I am not at a stage to decide between own startup vs joining startup.

<comment><USER6> If you worked for a YC funded company, probably it could help you get funding from YC itself if you left at some point and needed it...

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> I wish all jobs ads were like this.

</comment><comment><USER8> Curious: How many phone calls do you get? I find phone calls so intrusive -- I can't imagine getting calls from random hackers looking for a job :)

</comment><comment><USER9> any advice for non-hackers trying to start up?

our rough plan is to find a hacker to make a beta/demo for us based on our design, and ride that demo into seed funding, which we'll use to hire some hackers, and ride that into a VC.

are we missing something? it's obviously a bit different than what this crowd generally does, but, do you see any fundamental flaws in this approach?

<comment><USER10> I would suggest laying out your design in html using a WYSIWYG tool like DreamWeaver. Also write down the "business rules" for each page like "user signs up here, is provisioned an account, is sent an email, and then is forwarded to the administration area"

Then hire someone off of Craigslist (or similar venue) to add a backend to it. If you could spend one or two thousand you could get enough put together to have a demo to show others.

<comment><USER9> right now what we're doing is 1 step below that.

we're laying everything out in this program called conceptdraw, hoping we can give that document to a developer and be like "see, this is what we want."

that's a great suggestion though, we might end up having to do that.

<comment><USER11> No offense, but I would have posted almost the exact same "advice" as a sarcastic joke.

If you follow that advice, make sure that you don't make the mistake of thinking that you can build the real service on top of whatever the guy from craigslist throws together.

I don't think you'll have much luck unless you can find one or more coders who're as excited about your idea as you are, and who you respect enough to treat as equals.

I've seen a few friends take coding jobs like the one you're planning to fill, and while they got their pay, the people who hired them never truly got what they wanted.

<comment><USER12> I knew of one such instance where a bunch of MBAs outsourced their idea to a _single_ Indian coder. He did a passable job, but the app was full of bugs. And _that's_ when they realized that a .war file doesn't contain source code.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> What YC companies merged to make Scribd?

<comment><AUTHOR> Hulist, Hackerarchy and JobBook are the official YC companies to merge into Scribd. Tricloud and Nanobeep were great YC applicant companies that joined us, and Buzzshout was a non-YC but very cool company whose founder is now with us.

<comment><USER14> It doesn't seem honest to say that Hulist+Hackerarchy+JobBook=Scribd. That's like saying 0+0+0=1. ;-)

<comment><USER15> The whole is more than the sum of its parts?

Or you should be casting to float ;)

<comment><USER14> Of course. You miss my meaning. Scribd = 1 (ie. cool company doing good things), and 0's being unsuccessful attempts. We're allowed unsuccessful attempts. I sure have a couple under my belt. ;-)

I understand what point the Scribds' are trying to make, but knowing their history, I just thought I'd call them out on their white lie.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> i cant believe you posted your cell #.

get ready to change your number.

<comment><USER17> this isn't justin.tv

</comment></comment><comment><USER18> I don't think Scribd has much of a chance against the Open Library:

<http://www.openlibrary.org/>

<comment><USER19> Great point - check out the traffic comparison on Alexa: <http://tinyurl.com/2mdocw>

Not a chance ;)

<comment><USER18> We all know Alexa is useless:

[http://www.techcrunch.com/2007/08/13/alexa-says-youtube- is-n...](http://www.techcrunch.com/2007/08/13/alexa-says-youtube-is-now- bigger-than-google-theyre-wrong/)

The chart you mention just shows that Open Library users have enough common sense not to install that crappy spyware Alexa toolbar.

<comment><USER19> Good point.

Apparently they also have enough common sense to prevent their ISP's from logging their traffic and sending it to compete.com ;)

<http://tinyurl.com/2rvfxu>

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER20> > PG admits that with so many applicants, the choice becomes increasingly > arbitrary.

No no no -- PG was _very_ insistent that YC's selection process is specifically NOT arbitrary. Where do you find anything he said to the contrary?

<comment><USER21> I think the phrase is 'fraught with error'.</comment></comment>


Gynecology Board Reverses Ban on Treating Male Patients - <AUTHOR> http://www.nytimes.com/2014/01/31/health/responding-to-critics-gynecology-board-reverses-ban-on-treating-male-patients.html

<comment><AUTHOR> So many examples of gender discrimination posted recently on HN, here's another, reverse, example. Although at first glance going to a gynecologist as a man sounds absurd, they are it is reported that "have also proven essential in the treatment of marginalized communities for a range of sexually related diseases, regardless of the patient's gender." ([http://www.slate.com/blogs/xx_factor/2013/11/25/the_american...](http://www.slate.com/blogs/xx_factor/2013/11/25/the_american_board_of_obstetrics_gynecology_cracks_down_on_ob_gyns_treating.html)).

The irony of the situation is that the "misandric" decision of the board was taken by the mostly male board (as opposed to, say, "feminists"), which the Slate article argues is increasingly out of touch with the fast increasing ratio of women in gynecology.</comment>


Is Algebra Necessary? Absolutely. - <AUTHOR> http://pinojo.com/2012/07/29/is-algebra-necessary-absolutely/

<comment><AUTHOR> This was my response to the NYTimes article ( [http://www.nytimes.com/2012/07/29/opinion/sunday/is- algebra-...](http://www.nytimes.com/2012/07/29/opinion/sunday/is-algebra- necessary.html?pagewanted=all) ) that questioned whether algebra should be required for American students. I believe that it is a powerful way to learn how to problem solve.</comment>


SSH scans - I caught one - <AUTHOR> http://seclists.org/fulldisclosure/2010/Nov/228 <comment><USER2> I was the victim of an SSH scan once. I set up an old box as a dev server in my apartment for a project course in college. I was in a group of about 12 students. One of them whose username was robert set his password to robert (a brilliant move).

We only realized the machine was compromised because the interloper decided to pick two user accounts at random and delete them (another brilliant move).

Upon investigation I found that a keylogger had been installed in order to discover the root password. I inspected the output of the keylogger to trace the attacker's steps. Similar to the SSH scan in the article, the attacker had logged into his own FTP server to download various scripts and crackers. Well, the keylogger had logged his FTP password as well (whoops). Naturally I logged in and deleted absolutely everything in sight. :-P

<comment><USER3> > Naturally I logged in and deleted absolutely everything in sight. :-P

...and you probably completely screwed over some hapless soul who was a victim of the same guy who cracked you. Do you think these guys put their IP address and FTP password out there for anyone to collect as evidence? Most likely, he hacked into an FTP server and hosted his malicious files there along with everything else that was already hosted there. Congratulations on breaking the law and ruining someone's day.

<comment><USER2> I should have mentioned that I definitely thought of this scenario before I deleted anything and confirmed, via the hostname of the server, directory names, and file names, that everything on that server was for h4x0ring (at least for that user account).

I also thought of more subtle and clever ways to exact revenge, but decided I was too busy to pursue any of them.

Also: _Do you think these guys put their IP address and FTP password out there for anyone to collect as evidence?_

Yes, I do. You're giving the script kiddies far too much credit.

<comment><USER3> I'm glad to hear that, thanks for clearing it up. Of course, I also intended my comment as a warning to others that the origination of hacking might not necessarily be the culprit.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> Lots of needless clutter in the discussion, so I thought I'd drop a quick comment with clarifications:

1\. As far as I can tell, this specific attack is meant to target MIPS-based OpenWRT/DD-WRT devices, like the Linksys WRT series.

2\. lsof and all that crap isn't available by default. So, use 'ps' and 'netstat -a', and 'ls -la /var/tmp' to poke around your router.

3\. Go into the web admin interface and disable sshd on the WAN interface, if it isn't already (it's off by default). In DD-WRT, go to Administration->Management-> and ensure "SSH management" is disabled.

</comment><comment><USER5> Interesting idea. Reading through the threads it becomes apparent that the attackers are targeting home wired/wifi routers. The attacker sits on your gateway and passively monitors your traffic with you being none the wiser!

<comment><USER6> How would you detect if your router was compromised?

<comment><USER7> Analyze the firmware. If it doesn't pass a checksum, it could be compromised. If the software doesn't pass a checksum, it's compromised. Strange traffic coming out of the router is a bad sign. If the router is running analysis on your packet, you will likely experience diminished throughput on the high end because of limited resources on the router.

I think if you can go without enabling remote access to a router, then you should. This will protect the router itself from direct login attacks from the outside, but if somebody compromises a machine on your LAN, you're boned. If you can't, and you have security concerns, you need to establish metrics of verifying whether or not the router is behaving the same way it was when it came out of the box and (presumably) was not compromised. Like I mentioned, software/firmware checksums are a possibility (these could be hard, though...getting a router to dump its internals out probably isn't a feasible solution for everything), but YMMV depending on what you do and what you need your router to do. My biggest guess at the tell-tale sign of a compromised router is that it just starts slowing down.

<comment><USER8> Another "defense in depth" step would be to move your router off of 192.168.1.1. I recall seeing some browse-to-evil-webpage based attacks a while ago, and if the evil webpage can't guess your router IP (and it's not like it has access to your TCP settings in general) that can't work.

Obviously, just like moving SSH off of 22, this isn't a real defense, but it'll make it that much harder.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> The correct way to address this is not to rely on fail2ban or start moving ports around (although these will remove noise from your logs, they shouldn't be solely relied upon) but to use public key authentication. It's not hard to set up and once you disable password authentication support on OpenSSH then the scans can try all they like, but they're not getting anywhere.

<http://wiki.centos.org/HowTos/Network/SecuringSSH>

<comment><USER10> I have this problem right now.

A botnet found one of my computers. Most likely through IRC. They have been trying relentlessly to get my computer added.

They have no chance of getting in - using public key authentication - but it still takes quite a toll on my network speed.

That said, I have a file containing about 366 IPs belonging to this botnet, as well as a half-meg file containing nmap scans of all these IPs. What should I do with it?

<comment><USER9> With the places you access the computer from do you use dynamic or static IP addresses?

If they're all static IP addresses, try to block everything on port 22 except for your static IPs.

If it's dynamic you should have a pool address block, you can add the block in but there's a risk that if your block is in an ISPs home user pool that the botnet could infect people in your block.

If you can't use upstream filtering then I'd suggest you configure a firewall to do the same thing, either in hardware (preferable) or software.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> A friend had me look at a server that had been compromised by SSH bruteforce a few months ago. The intruder was using it as an IRC bouncer, and he was a romanian named Alexino.

I actually found him on the IRC network, and he tried to get me to pay him to tell me how he got in :)

</comment><comment><USER12> This gentleman is illegally hosting my tools, which are copyrighted and not licensed for redistribution. Just because I try to pwn your box doesn't mean you have the right to violate my copyrights. Expect to hear from my lawyers.

<comment><USER13> Would you care to post a quick synopsis of what these tools are doing/their purpose? The thread mentions targeting routers - can you confirm?

<comment><USER12> I say, that's a joke son. </foghorn leghorn>

<comment><USER13> That's what my original thought was, but it didn't contribute anything to the discussion and wasn't really funny, or witty Given HNs population I had hoped you did author these tools. That you have so many votes is disheartening.

<comment><USER12> When it comes to investigating these sorts of thing, gray areas often pop up. Now, is fetching the payload yourself and hosting it for the world without the author's in this gray area? Probably not, definitely in the very light side of things if it is at all. It's not completely unworthy of thought and consideration however.

>wasn't really funny

Well, that's your opinion, and you are welcome to it. Do try not to be so puzzled that other people don't share your sense of humor though.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> I've seen similar things come up before on HN and on mailing lists I'm on. Rather than keep repeating myself whenever this crops up, I've posted here: [http://www.minklinks.com/weblog/2010/11/19/practical- guide-s...](http://www.minklinks.com/weblog/2010/11/19/practical-guide- securing-openssh/)

</comment><comment><USER14> Looks like it tracks to a server/VPS place in The Netherlands

Wonder if he followed-up with the hosting service by reporting the address as being used in an attack. It would be interesting to turn the tables and listen in on some of his traffic going to that address.

<comment><USER15> Anyone had much luck lately reporting to hosting companies/ISPs? I've reported 7 IPs in the last couple months (4 for malicious/bot activity, 3 for spambots), and never got any responses. Granted, they were all located in Hungary, Romania, or China.

<comment><USER16> As someone who runs a hosting company -- yes I fully investigate with the information given. Just please try to give as much as possible and make it easy for me to easily pinpoint things.

Oh, and please don't come with a snooty attitude, it's not pleasant to work with.

<comment><USER17> Do you respond to abuse reports? I've sent a bunch, and while I'd imagine at least some were actually followed up on, I've never received even one thank- you.

<comment><USER16> I'm not actually an ISP so my perspective is different but yeah I do, and I know the ISPs that I work with do too (Leaseweb, OVH). I have to work to keep things clean on my servers and to take reasonable steps to abide by their policies and inform my customers (although this kind of goes without saying).

One of the problems I imagine is size, I can still handle my couple of thousand customers and provide "good" support with enough time to investigate something that is described as a slowloris attack. I can open a dialogue with the customer and tell them that what they did was a little bit stupid and for the most part, the customer will understand and stop.

Although there was a time when I did investigate, couldn't find anything immediate (I'm spending say 5-10 minutes pruning a few TB of data here...) so the next point was to catch them in the act with a few iptables rules. Then the person who e-mailed me (and my host) pretty much turned hostile/gained a sense of entitlement and that was that. I wasn't much interesting in putting more time into it (so, didn't!). However this guy only produced a few text logs that could have been easily forged and I never heard more about it... who knows?

That also leads to another angle, how do you know who is telling the truth? The hosts are likely to side with the paying customer (well you never know with OVH) and there is little an outsider can do to prove their case in point except with easily fabricated text logs and events.

It's strange really, some of the people who I have followed up on have been very grateful (perhaps because they got their way), much in the same way going the extra mile for a customer might.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER18> That's really quite sad - are the script kidiots hoping to take over a bunch of SGI's?

edit: I stand corrected..

</comment><comment><USER19> book recommendation: [http://www.amazon.com/Cuckoos-Egg-Clifford- Stoll/dp/06717268...](http://www.amazon.com/Cuckoos-Egg-Clifford- Stoll/dp/0671726889)

</comment><comment><USER20> I blocked all of China and my logs decreased 65%.

</comment><comment><USER21> There will always be the usual crowd of "conservatives-just-for-the-sake-of- being-conservative" crying out whenever this advice is given, but here goes: if possible in your environment, and for your users, just run your SSHd on a non-standard port, and the problem of automated scans will be a non-problem.

</comment><comment><USER22> _cd /var/tmp;_

When I see things like this it makes me think that if standard paths weren't used, then it would it at least make things a little more interesting for the hacker. (They'd have to find a location first.)

<comment><USER23>
      find / -maxdepth 3 -perm -7 -type d -print

and tweak as needed.

<comment><USER22> But a find on root takes a _lot_ of time in some cases, during which the attacker could be compromised. And the scripts might not use it for that reason. The script could use it as a backup only if the standard one doesn't exist, but still, it is a bump in the road, and might be worth it to cause the script to use find and delay it.

<comment><USER23> Hence the -maxdepth 3 param:

      # time find / -maxdepth 3 -perm -7 -type d -print
      /tmp
      /var/tmp

      real    0m0.034s
      user    0m0.005s
      sys     0m0.028s

This was run on a pretty anemic VPS. Might have to up the depth to 4 if it doesn't return anything, but IMO that's pretty unlikely.</comment></comment></comment></comment>


The Terrifying Impact of Deep Sea Bottom Trawling - <AUTHOR> http://www.penelope-jolicoeur.com/2013/11/take-5-minutes-and-sign-this.html

<comment><USER2> This page lost me when it claimed that most coral exists in the deep sea kilometers below the surface. Anyone who scuba dives recognizes that coral prefers warm water and filtered sunlight and is rarely found more than 30 meters below the surface.[1]

There are a lot of reasons to oppose deep sea bottom trawling, but this infographic based on naive and erroneous assumptions may do more harm than good.

[1] [http://www.coral.org/resources/about_coral_reefs/coral_overv...](http://www.coral.org/resources/about_coral_reefs/coral_overview#where)

<comment><AUTHOR> Thank you for sharing this scuba diving experience. However, please run a broader research before crying wolf.

There _is_ such a thing as "deep sea coral". The third paragraph on the corresponding Wikipedia article [1] states that "cold-water genus Lophelia surviv[es] as deep as 3,000 metres (9,800 ft)". You can check out the _Deep Sea Corals Collected by the Lamont Geological Observatory_ [2] for more scientific information.

[1] [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Coral](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Coral) [2] [http://digitallibrary.amnh.org/dspace/handle/2246/2502](http://digitallibrary.amnh.org/dspace/handle/2246/2502)

<comment><USER2> I said that coral _rarely_ exists below 30 meters - and that was in contrast to the OP who said that "most corals live in the deep sea." As for research, beyond the scuba mention I also provided a citation from a reputable organization whose mission is to preserve coral. But in any case you're missing the main point: that the OP is conflating the diverse fauna found around warm-water tropical reefs with sea life found in in colder waters.

As I said, there are plenty of reasons to oppose deep sea trawling and I hope the ban is successful. But an infographic that implies that there are colorful Finding-Nemo-esque reefs a kilometer down with "roads, hospitals, kindergartens, dorms" doesn't help. It just makes supporters of the ban look naive.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER3> I quote this from one of those images there: "Water makes up 98% of the Earth's volume." A quick estimate on my part, while making some large assumptions (a uniform layer of 11km lying on top of a perfect sphere of radius 6356.8km), says it is 0.5% water by volume. I don't know what else you are trying to sell but I lost all interest at that point.

</comment><comment><USER4> Deep sea trawling is bad, because it's part of a wave of depopulating our oceans. (This is compounded increased acidity from CO2, plastic pollution and other things)

Spinning a story that's strong on cute graphics but light on true facts doesn't help.</comment>


Cron Expression to English Translator - <AUTHOR> https://crontab.guru <comment><USER2> There was something like this a while back. It was discussed at the time[0] and had some serious faults. The link[1] no longer works.

So I thought I'd pull out one of the examples from my crontab that didn't work for that one and try it on this one:

        6/2-59 * * * *

Nope, doesn't work.

[0] [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8122129](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8122129)

[1] [http://www.cronchecker.net/](http://www.cronchecker.net/)

<comment><USER3> Hi Colin,

I'm curious, what is the expected behavior here? `6/2` would say "every 2nd minute, starting from minute 6". You _can_ combine a range and a step like this: `6-30/2` but I'm not sure how to parse your step with a range.

Is it possible crontab.guru is exposing a bug in your crontab that your version of cron just happens to be tolerant of?'

Edit: You can see in this line how a range and step is used in a normal for loop in the cron scheduler: [https://github.com/rhuitl/uClinux/blob/master/user/vixie- cro...](https://github.com/rhuitl/uClinux/blob/master/user/vixie- cron/entry.c#L430)

In this case, the variable "num3" is the step value.

<comment><USER2> Huh, that's weird. It looks like something got screwed in the copy/paste process, because the previous article I linked definitely has the correct "range/step" format. I thought I had copied it from there, but can't find this example there. And you're absolutely right, the version I quote here is syntactically invalid.

So the syntactically valid version does _not_ work in that earlier cron-to- English translator, but it does appear to work in this version.

My apologies for the error on my part.

<comment><USER3> Thanks for following up -- we take correctness of Crontab.guru very seriously!</comment></comment></comment></comment>


Program learns to recognize rough sketches of objects - <AUTHOR> http://arstechnica.com/science/2012/09/program-learns-to-recognize-rough-sketches-of-objects/

<comment><USER2> Here is a link (PDF) to the paper:

[http://cybertron.cg.tu- berlin.de/eitz/pdf/2012_siggraph_clas...](http://cybertron.cg.tu- berlin.de/eitz/pdf/2012_siggraph_classifysketch.pdf)</comment>


Poor People Use Yahoo, Those Better Off Use Google - <AUTHOR> http://www.techcrunch.com/2008/02/16/poor-people-use-yahoo-those-better-off-use-google/

<comment><USER2>
      Struggling Societies, Urban Essence, Blue Collar Blackbone,
      Varying Lifestyles, Aspiring Contemporaries, Remote America,
      Rural Villages and Farms, Metro Fringe, American Diversity,
      Upscale America, Small-town Contentment, Affluent Suburbia

OMG? New low in PC? It's like J.Crew colors to explain geographic groups. My curiosity got the best of me and I found this explanation: <http://www.tactician.com/support/mosaic_documents.asp>

<comment><USER3> Marketing clusters like those are nothing new..

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> I remember an article from last year or so that said Google Mail users were far fewer in number than Yahoo! or Hotmail users but were wealthier. This makes sense as GMail was still relatively new two years ago, and more tech savvy (and higher income) users switched to GMail first.

Also, people who rely on Yahoo! Mail end up using those services as a lot of Yahoo! sites require logins, such as Yahoo! Games. Without Yahoo! or MSN Mail, people would eventually stop visiting those portals, as most users trust Google for search results. So that explains why users even visit those portals any more.

As far as Google, one isn't required to have a login, except for things like business/calendar tools, document management, and adsense, as far as I remember. One can clearly notice Google targets wealthier and smarter users. (I'm not saying wealth equals brains--Google simply targets nerds, education, and corporate users while Yahoo is still trying to target everybody at once.)

<comment><USER5> I don't think "more tech savvy" is part of the mechanism. GMail was originally invite-only, and Googlers tend to be fairly well-off, and so their friends tend to be fairly well-off.

As for "Google targets wealthier and smarter users", I don't think it's intentional. If you go to any tech talks given by their usability folks, they say they intentionally _don't_ do user personas, precisely because they want to target "everybody". I find it far more likely that they design things that work slightly better for them, and their friends who help them test, who, again, tend to be of similar socioeconomic background.

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> I actually just assumed the title was talking about mail services, in which case I can see some truth, though it is probably a corollary to the actual facts.

I think people who are more technologically-inclined are using Gmail. It offers a lot of obvious advantages to a power email user over Yahoo! Mail. I have also noticed that those who are technologically inclined are often slightly more affluent than those who are not, perhaps due to in-demand skillsets causing jumps in pay rates versus other jobs. So maybe the money is sort of a side effect of technological knowledge.

Just my .02.

<comment><USER4> Wow, I thought of the same thing...

</comment></comment><comment><USER7> I would think it would be the other way around. people with no money have slower connections and can't wait the 30 minutes for yahoo's portal to open where as you can load Google pretty fast even on a 56K ( they still make those? ) connection. I call BS on this article.

</comment><comment><USER8> I disagree that money has anything to do with the service people use.</comment>


Show HN: Mongo DB management and GUI, built using Electron - <AUTHOR> http://mongotron.io/ <comment><USER2> Damn it! Someone make a manager called Sheriff Bart. Mongo loves Sheriff Bart.

</comment><comment><USER3> Huh, the darwin build triggers Chrome's built in malicious file protection.

<comment><USER4> OSX doesn't even let me open it.

<comment><USER5> ctrl-double-click or ctrl-right-click > open

<comment><AUTHOR> yup exactly right, for now you'll have to do this until we do a real release of the app and codesign it Apple

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> How do projects like this gets funded?

<comment><USER7> What makes you think there is funding involved?

<comment><USER6> I have something similar to this, that I haven't opensourced it yet. I'm thinking of ways to get funding when I opensource the project. Here's what it looks like [https://curtain-ui.herokuapp.com/?/new](https://curtain- ui.herokuapp.com/?/new)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> I made something similar a while ago (pre-electron): [https://github.com/contra/smog](https://github.com/contra/smog)

I published some modules along with it that made the process a lot easier. Maybe you can use some of them to make your life easier with mongotron :) Editing/inserting documents was a pain but it's all there if you want to yank it.

</comment><comment><USER9> Can this connect to remote databases? I would love to use this to connect to my Meteor app's database.

<comment><AUTHOR> absolutely you can connect to remote database. In the connection manager (cmd-o) click the 'Create' button, enter the remote address to your database in the host field and the port, username, password etc.. let me know if you have any issues

</comment></comment><comment><USER10> Looks good! There are some "apps built with Electron" lists you could add this to (like the one on the frontpage of electron.atom.io).

<comment><AUTHOR> yea great idea, thanks! I'll submit a PR and see if the Electron guys will add it.

</comment></comment><comment><USER11> seems the edit document is not implemented yet. Other than that would start using this today. great little project.

<comment><AUTHOR> yea edit document is a very new feature I'm just starting to work on, one of the last couple of things I'm hoping to finish up before a v1 release.

</comment></comment><comment><USER12> Great name.

<comment><AUTHOR> thanks!

</comment></comment><comment><USER13> 150mb? Am I the only one who thinks the size is ridiculous?

That's what you get when you build desktop applications using web technologies.

<comment><AUTHOR> Yea that's definitely a down side to using Electron. Looks like around 130mb is the expected size for an Electron app.

[https://github.com/atom/electron/issues/2003](https://github.com/atom/electron/issues/2003)

<comment><AUTHOR> although looking at the Slack app (which is built on Electron) it's only 18mb, so maybe I just need to look into slimming down the build.</comment></comment></comment>


Ask HN: What's your cross-platform PDF / ePub reading workflow? - <AUTHOR> Has anyone figured out a cross-platform setup for reading PDFs / ePubs with the ability to synchronize highlights / bookmarks among iPad / iOS / Android / PC / Linux etc?<p>What do people use today? <comment><USER2> My setup right now is to upload my ePubs to Google Play Books. Once your document/book is uploaded you can access it from the app on Android/iOS or directly from the web-reader on any browser.

Play Books automatically syncs your reading progress, notes, bookmarks etc and there's no additional overhead on your part.

<comment><USER3> Interesting solution,thanks ! However, upload seem to only be available from the desktop and annotations are quite primitive (especially on phone/ipad). So it works perfectly for books, not so much for storing and annotating all documents

<comment><USER2> You can also upload from iOS by using the "Copy to Play Books" option in the Share menu.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> I've been playing with Polar ( [https://getpolarized.io](https://getpolarized.io) ) as a cross platform PDF "consuming" app. By "consuming" I mean reading but also note taking / flashcard making. So far it's been pretty good, and in addition to the note taking functionality, it doesn't have the creepy surveillance of Kindle or whathaveyou.

<comment><USER5> doesn't support epub

<comment><USER6> epub support will be implemented in Q1 '20 finally

<comment><USER5> Nice, that would be a big one for me to switch over for language learning as well

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> I use a remarkable tablet[0] in order to mark/highlight/read stuff, and the send to remarkable extension[1] to print pages and pdfs to the tablet.

[0] [https://remarkable.com/](https://remarkable.com/)

[1] [https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/send-to- remarkable...](https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/send-to- remarkable/mcfkooagiaelmfpkgegmbobdcpcbdbgh)

<comment><USER8> I'm intrigued by the remarkable, and may well buy the color e-ink version when it arrives (I gather it's expected late this year).

One question, if I may: is there any way to import screenshots (ideally .png files) into otherwise handwritten remarkable notes? I use this functionality fairly often on my Chromebook (doing screengrabs with the stylus, then embedding them into otherwise handwritten Squid [0] notes, sometimes annotating them, then exporting the entire note as a PDF).

[0] [https://www.squidnotes.com/](https://www.squidnotes.com/)

<comment><USER9> I dont see a widget for that on mine. Most of the needed functionality is there, tho- you can eg trace around a section of writing and move it around on a page, and the notebook pages have the notion of layers.

<comment><USER8> Interesting, thanks. Sounds like it's something that could eventually get done... (On ChromeOS I often split-pane Squid and Xodo, or a video player -- not that I would ever expect that to work on e-Ink! -- and just embed complicated diagrams, long code blocks, or video stills in my handwritten notes.)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> Reading PDFs on Kindle Paperwhite is much more comfortable with KOReader. Thanks to [https://www.willus.com/k2pdfopt/](https://www.willus.com/k2pdfopt/) it can crop pages and reflow text unlike the native reader. It's not the best experience with some types of documents, but generally it works very well.

I don't have a solution for synchronization at this point. My current workflow is quite involved: import a document into Calibre, upload it to Kindle via Calibre wireless connection (KOReader supports it), read and highlight, get the modified doc back to Calibre, extract highlights with [https://github.com/0xabu/pdfannots](https://github.com/0xabu/pdfannots). It'd be more convenient to send new highlights from Kindle somewhere immediately without transferring the document itself. I haven't looked into it, but I believe it should be possible with a KOReader plugin.

<comment><USER11> Koreader is a great program! It works on touchscreen Linux devices as well.

You might be interested in replacing your paperwhite with a "boox" or "likebook" ereader device. Both of these run Android, so in addition to koreader you can install e.g. syncthing and have a shared directory copied between all of your devices and your own PC.

</comment></comment><comment><USER12> I use zotero ([https://www.zotero.org/](https://www.zotero.org/)) for all of these functions of reading, note taking and managing references.

Also bonus - support latex and bibtex. You can highlight in the pdf, and zotero will extract those highlights and add them to the entry as notes. Very handy.

<comment><USER13> Adding to this, it has webddav support, so you can use gdrive/onedrive or even next cloud. I use my self hosted next cloud instance as the storage and sync.

And for mobile, i use this seemingly now-abandoned app called papership [ios][0]. It lets you signin to zotero and your webdav provider, so you have a sync of books/papers, along with your highlights, notes and whatnot. Thankfully, it seems like zotero are hiring ios devs, so a first party app might be on the horizon.

[0]: [https://www.papershipapp.com/](https://www.papershipapp.com/)

edit: seems like papership recently started getting updates again, so its not abandoned anymore.

</comment></comment><comment><USER14> It's no use for technical books but for all normal text I use (the real) Kindle for reading most of it, with Pocket for web pages synced over to it via p2k and non mobi books converted via either Amazon through email or Calibre or online equivalent for epubs.

</comment><comment><USER15> Honestly, I'm a little bit ashamed of this, but I print things out and attach them together with brass tack thingies.

<comment><USER16> Physical reality is a useful abstraction.

<comment><USER17> Makes sense, since pdfs are designed to be printed, not read on a screen...

<comment><USER15> Yeah. The agony of PDFs on mobile phone screens is just awful. Please, world, let there be portable documents that can reflow text so as to render at a size that doesn't make my eyes bleed.

<comment><USER17> If only someone could invent ePub/HTML !

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> I have a jury-rigged system, as I use my 2-in-1 stylus-equipped Chromebook for most of my reading and annotating. It's not very elegant, or FOSSy, but it works reasonably well.

I basically use Dropbox as a back-end, using Autosync for Dropbox (fka Dropsync) [0] on Android and ChromeOS (and the vanilla Dropbox Linux desktop client on Kubuntu) to keep the files synchronized (storing them on SD cards on my phone and Chromebook). I have it automatically sync frequently, and the app automatically uploads local changes to the cloud.

For PDFs, syncing the highlights is of course trivial; as a reader, I use Okular on Linux and Xodo [1] on Android/ChromeOS. Xodo has more features -- I like using my Chromebook's stylus to scribble notes in the margins -- and everything ports well to Okular, and vice versa.

For EPUBs, I use Calibre on Linux and Moon+ Reader Pro [2] on Android / ChromeOS. In practice, though, I use the latter almost exclusively; it has a built-in Dropbox sync functionality [3], though I'm not sure the highlights etc. are accessible by other apps.

[0] [https://metactrl.com/](https://metactrl.com/)

[1] [https://www.xodo.com/](https://www.xodo.com/)

[2] [https://moondownload.com/download.html](https://moondownload.com/download.html)

[3] [https://raymondlamsk.blogspot.com/2018/03/moon-reader-how- to...](https://raymondlamsk.blogspot.com/2018/03/moon-reader-how-to-sync- bookmark-bet-devices.html?m=1).

<comment><USER18> Your setup sounds ideal for BookFusion. Would love to get your feedback.

BookFusion currently allows you to easily upload,organize and sync your eBooks across Android, iOS and Desktop(via Web). All your highlights, bookmarks, notes and reading progress will always be synced.

More at: [https://www.bookfusion.com/reading](https://www.bookfusion.com/reading)

Calibre plugin: [https://www.bookfusion.com/reading/calibre](https://www.bookfusion.com/reading/calibre)

There are some gaps and features that are missing but they all will be filled with our new release in Q3 2020.

<comment> Brave-Steak This looks interesting. Is stylus-support (iOS and Android) planned? Free-form marking and writing notes directly on an ebook (in whatever format) would be awesome.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER19> I have to rename my epubs to png and then I can send them to kindle via the share button (send to kindle doesn't support epubs directly for some reason)

After that it's available everywhere including my mobile phone and kindle reader which makes it quite easy to remain in sync (bookmarks, highlights, last page, etc)

<comment><USER20> Do they format correctly that way? I use Calibre to convert EPUBs to MOBI and then email them to my Kindle account.

<comment><USER19> Yes I've never had issues doing that. Just an extra step to rename epub to png that's all.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER21> I'm always looking to better my flow for PDF reading so really appreciate this question.

I have settled with Notability due to its nice iPad app where I use my Apple Pencil to annotate - the annotated PDF syncs to iCloud so it's available on Apple products (don't think it supports Android/Linux so maybe not cross- platform but something I'd recommend checking out if you can live with that limitation). If it's a book I'm using to learn something (usually tech), I then transfer notes to Bear in outline format (using the Notability mac app to read notes) and sometimes Anki for flashcards. One downside is that Notability doesn't support ePub so I either convert those or read on Kindle.

I tried OneNote recently but the iPad app seems unable to handle larger PDFs like textbooks which is a major bummer and surprising to me.

</comment><comment><USER22> All my non-technical reads are done in Kindle, so it takes care of synchronizing bookmarks, highlights and notes. When work permits I can read non-technical stuff in my computer (Ubuntu), I use Kindle Read on the browser.

For everything else, I use Calibre and the standard PDF reader that comes out of the box with Ubuntu. I keep notes, highlights and bookmark indications in separate Google Keep notes, one note per title or, sometimes, one note per "subject", which would include various books and articles I'm reading. The method sounds like extra work, and it is, but it's rewarding because Keep is very flexible and easy, its tagging feature and "searchability" work fine.

</comment><comment><USER23> I suffer from the same issue. I use KOReader, which does do sync, but uses its own zsync protocol, which basically nothing else supports.

I use Kybook 2 on my iPad. I think Calibre supports syncing with Kybook 3, so you could try that.

If you really want highlight syncing etc, it might be worth migrating to a Kindle-first workflow? But PDFs aren't there.

Why is this so hard :( Why can't everything use a standard progress sync protocol? (KOReader's is at [https://github.com/koreader/koreader-sync- server](https://github.com/koreader/koreader-sync-server))

<comment><USER18> Could you take BookFusion for a spin and let me know what you think?

BookFusion allows you to upload and manage your eBook collection across Android, iOS and Desktops. All your eBooks, bookmarks, highlights, notes and reading progress are always synced across all devices.

More at [https://www.bookfusion.com/reading](https://www.bookfusion.com/reading)

Calibre Plugin - [https://www.bookfusion.com/reading/calibre](https://www.bookfusion.com/reading/calibre)

Send to Kindle - [https://blog.bookfusion.com/how-to-quickly-easily- transfer-e...](https://blog.bookfusion.com/how-to-quickly-easily-transfer- ebooks-to-your-kindle/)

There are a few gaps but a brand new and refreshed platform is being launched in Q3 2020

<comment><USER23> Looks interesting, will try it out thanks.

Right now, I support sharing via my own Ubooquity/elibsrv servers which run OPDS as well. OPDS works well with Kybook, which is what I run currently on iOS.

Unless this supports an OPDS server, I don't see myself using this long term, though. OPDS on Kindle (with KOReader) makes my life so much simpler (I can browse my entire collection on the Kindle).

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER24> I used to run a pet-project that was basically pdf.js that would save your last scrolled position in the database so you could continue from where you left.

Also, you could upload your PDFs and you would have a simple online library.

</comment><comment><USER25> I use SumatraPDF on linux with wine. If you just want a good reader nothing comes close, sadly.

<comment><USER26> > I use SumatraPDF on linux with wine.

I just discovered Foliate[0,1], which is a very small reader (252kb, deb) for .epub, .mobi, .azw, and .azw3 files. It's based Epub.js[2]. I was looking for a standalone epub reader (wanted to avoid the document management stuff) and stumbled across this gem.

It's performed very well on the epubs I've tossed at it.

[0] [https://github.com/johnfactotum/foliate](https://github.com/johnfactotum/foliate)

[1] [https://johnfactotum.github.io/foliate/](https://johnfactotum.github.io/foliate/)

[2] [https://github.com/futurepress/epub.js/](https://github.com/futurepress/epub.js/)

</comment></comment><comment><USER18> Hey There,

BookFusion is exactly what you are looking for. BookFusion allows you to upload, organize, manage and sync your eBooks(PDF,EPUB, MOBI and several other formats) across iOS, Android and Desktop(via Web). All your bookmarks, reading progress, highlights and notes are always synced across all devices.

More details at [https://www.bookfusion.com/reading](https://www.bookfusion.com/reading)

Calibre Plugin - [https://www.bookfusion.com/reading/calibre](https://www.bookfusion.com/reading/calibre)

Native iOS and Android apps. We will be releasing our native cross platform app in 2020.

PS: Founder at BookFusion. Will be happy to hook the HN crew up. Let me know if you have any feedback. Tons of improvements and new features coming in 2020.

</comment><comment><USER27> I just use Dropbox. It's straightforward, on Mac/PC it's just use system reader. On iOS you can just open it with Dropbox itself.

There are a lot of publications like Manning also have Dropbox integration, and automatically deliver new copy every time when new versions are available.

<comment><AUTHOR> Dropbox doesn't allow any kind of annotation or bookmarking. It just allows you to view books.

</comment></comment><comment><USER28> Calibre on PC & clients on mobile devices that can sync against Calibre ?

<comment><USER29> would you be able to specify the clients/

</comment></comment><comment> martin-adams I do all my reading now in LiquidText on the iPad. I absolutely love the app and it's ease of extracting and cross referencing information onto your own notes section. Sadly, not cross platform.

</comment><comment><USER30> After being all in the Apple ecosystem for the next 5-10 years but wanting to use a Kindle I decided to use Kindle + Kindle App in iOS (iPhone and iPad), after reading I export the highlights and add them to a Notion DB of my read/reading list where I can easily review the highlights when needed.

At one point I think i will give up on Kindle as a book reading and go all in for the iPad and I will switch to Apple Books but I think i will still export the highlights to somewhere.

</comment><comment><USER31> I use Mendeley, I go through books and then export and print the highlighted version.. I might give zotero another go though.. Polar kind of ran like crap last I tried it.

</comment><comment><USER32> I have my Calibre library - and lots of other stuff - autosynced to the much maligned but actually superb MEGA service where some small fee gets me 8 TB to play with. So stuff is instantly retrievable on various phones and secondary PC's.

If I really need sync of progress, I either rely on something called memory, or work from Calibre's built-in webserver.

</comment><comment> a-saleh I bought Onyx Boox, that runs Android 6, and that means I can read pdf, login to Kindle, Play Books, e.t.c.

For pdf's I usually just use SyncThing (but I don't have bookmarks there), for the rest I use the various apps. I am considering trying out Mendeley again, that is geared more towards researchers, but works cross-platform :-)

</comment><comment><USER33> Zotero on Linux for my scientific library, syncs to my iPad using Zotfile and a personal Nextcloud server.

</comment><comment><USER34> iBooks. [https://imgur.com/a/TzZjbwz](https://imgur.com/a/TzZjbwz)

Works great. Has all the research papers I read. Dunno about synchronizing highlights, but airdrop makes it simple to get PDFs on and off my phone.

</comment><comment><USER35> For PDFs, I've been using Readdle PDF Expert or Readdle Documents for years now. It syncs with Dropbox (both ways), and I have huge collections of PDFs that I mostly read on the iPad. A subset is also available on my iPhone.

Highly recommended.

</comment><comment><USER36> I mostly have pdf docs and syncing my changes across platforms is very Well managed by syncthing's incremental syncing. Irrespective of the application i use to read, if syncthing is installed, i can access and sync any file.

</comment><comment><USER37> evince on my desktops / laptops (all of which run Debian), and Adobe Reader on ipad. I upload to my ipad through google drive, then access in safari on ipad, download the pdf, and export to Acrobat. The reason I don't use ipad's builtin Preview app is because it doesn't support continuous reading (so need to manually zoom in a bit every time I turn a page), and also because it doesn't support inversion of colors (I'm aware you can invert colors for _everything_ in ipad, but that comes at the expense of disabling night-shift, and I want both night-shift _and_ inverted pdf colors).

</comment><comment><USER38> Wonderful thread with many interesting ideas. Along the same lines, does anyone know a shared solution to this? Ideally FOSS. I have huge numbers of PDFs that it'd be nice to be able to share and annotate in a small group.

</comment><comment><USER39> Zotero with Zotfile to extract highlights, highlights get sent to Devonthink

</comment><comment><USER40> Does anybody know of an application I can use as both a PDF/ePub reader and a manually sortable reading list? It seems so simple, but I haven't found any program that does both.

<comment><USER41> MarginNote 3. It is more than reading. MarginNote combines reading, annotating, mindmapping etc. so it's a great tool to read and arrange your hard-to-reading books.

</comment></comment><comment><USER42> On Android pocketbook reader (imho most practical ux experience for reader), Macos - preview and ibooks. I'm still looking for epub/pdf reader with good ux on Windows.

</comment><comment><USER43> I thought iBooks would be my answer to this, but for PDFs it just opens OSX Preview so you don't get the page syncing feature.

</comment><comment><USER44> I haven't really overthought it and just use Kindle. But then again it's just ebooks bought from Amazon - no pdfs.

</comment><comment><USER45> I use the Kindle App, Mobi files instead of EPUB and use Calibre. Apart from that, it's just PDFs all the way.

</comment><comment><USER46> Send my ebooks to my kindle over whispernet. Takes notes, highlights and bookmarks with an external notepad.

</comment><comment><USER47> I read all my pdf's using the Emac's library pdf-tools and epub's with the library Nov.el

Works pretty great

</comment><comment><USER48> I upload them to Google Play books.

</comment><comment><USER49> Zotero is my go-to

</comment><comment> tekcyb-org I still buy physical books and print stuff out

</comment><comment><USER50> I use [https://hypothes.is](https://hypothes.is) to annotate pdfs, webpages, etc.

</comment><comment><USER51> iBooks, no?

<comment><USER52> I use it for ePubs. Really don't like reading PDFs with it. Might be a limitation of PDFs but no Night Mode, for example. Reading pdf's doesn't count towards reading goal either. And can't highlight notes.

Wish some form of ePubs would replace pdf's.

<comment><USER17> It's called "HTML". ;) (Pdfs are for printed documents, you really shouldn't use them on screens...)

<comment><USER52> I think you missed the point. I don't want to read on the web. I want to replace books.

I want books published in a better format. Too many books are pdf only:

[https://www.freetechbooks.com/](https://www.freetechbooks.com/)

ePub is an HTML format. It's just not sufficient

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER53> Emacs + org-mode is cross-platform. Anyone using it for their PDF workflow? If so, what works or doesn't work well and what is recommended setup? And is there any way to map digital ink annotation into something more emacs friendly (i.e. text-based representation)?

<comment><USER54> I'm using it with org-noter. That wsy my annotations are saved in an org file, and they are linked to the PDF.

Then, since it's org mode I can organize and edit the notes.

<comment><USER53> Org-noter looks useful ... only minor issue so far is apparent lack of support for djvu format.</comment></comment></comment>


China perfecting the police state - <AUTHOR> http://www.rollingstone.com/politics/story/20797485/chinas_allseeing_eye/print

<comment><USER2> I'm convinced that there is a use for this tech and surveillance for good purposes, but in situations such as this, good always corrupts. I don't think China can stay communist without giving way to capitalism, as they already have.

On another note, I visited Shenzhen last summer. That description is an accurate representation of its modernity.

</comment><comment><USER3> What an interesting read. It may be cliche to say, but the description of China's surveillance system is so 1984.

</comment><comment><USER4> seems like the u.s. is headed that way as well.</comment>