Designing Hardware for the Internet of Things - <AUTHOR> http://www.evenchick.com/cc3000-shield-and-the-internet-of-things.html

<comment><USER2> Awesome - keep up the great work!

I'm working on one of the next upstream problems in the IoT space: once you have a way to connect a device this to a network, how do you tie it into the greater set of things, program it, make it discoverable, and manage it.

My stab at this is called Magenta, which is an MIT licensed project based on node.js that aims to make it easy to build devices that can securely communicate in real time and applications that interact with those devices over a message passing model (its hard to explain in one paragraph but think of it like this: twitter for devices with agents watching those messages).

I'm only a month into it and a few hundred commits, but if you are interested, check out the (very early) project at <https://github.com/magentajs> or contact me on twitter at @timpark. I would love to get some feedback or find folks interested in helping collaborate on one of the subprojects (client sdk, service, administration tool, or use it to build devices and provide feedback and bugs).

Ok, I'm done hijacking your thread!

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks for sharing that, I'll check it out. One problem I'm looking forward to working on is what the embedded device will do to take care of communications, and what the firmware to do that looks like. Lots of neat problem including authentication, minimizing power consumption, etc...

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> Another interesting internet of things module: " The RS9113 M2MCombo supports dual-band 802.11n and dual-mode BT 4.0 in addition to Zigbee. Redpine (San Jose, Calif.) will ship the device before June in a variety of module form factors at a cost of $6 in 100,000-unit quantities."[1]

Hopefully it will also get into a shield form factor, at a reasonable price, since it seems ideal to trying all kinds of things out.

[1][http://www.eetimes.com/electronics-news/4406270/Redpine- devi...](http://www.eetimes.com/electronics-news/4406270/Redpine-device-packs- Bluetooth--Wi-Fi--Zigbee-)

</comment><comment><USER4> The CC3000 is IPv4 only - what the f __k?! I understand it greatly increases cost in manufacturing, but isn't one of the key sale points of IPv6 that the IPv4 address space is going to run out in part because of the Internet of Things!?

<comment><USER5> Eh. Is everything in my house (i.e. my subnet 192.168. _._ ) going to run out of IPV4 addresses? Right now cost is a far more important factor.

<comment><USER4> People need to get used to IPv6 development. IPv6 development and deployment is way way behind schedule already, to sell NEW stuff today without IPv6 support is foolish to say the least. All that stuff will have to be replaced in not-so-far future.

<comment><USER6> Selling stuff that can't handle IPv6 isn't foolish, it just makes you a leech on society, since everyone else will have to clean up your mess. Buying such equipment, on the other hand, is quite foolish.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> FWIW, that image is a preview from the OSH Park ordering site[1]. I can highly recommend the service for prototype 2- and 4-layer boards. The price is right, the turnaround time and customer service are awesome, and the specs are better than anything else I've found in the price range. And they're purple.

[1] <http://www.oshpark.com>

<comment><AUTHOR> Yep, it's an OSHPark render. I'm not quite ready to release the design files, so I figured I'd post that picture since it's nice an purple.

I'd also recommend OSHPark.

<comment><USER7> Good luck with the waveguide! Have you done anything that high-speed with OSH Park before? I'm waiting on a PCIe board from them that I hope will do Gen3 speeds (8GHz) over 2.5-inch traces, but the lack of impedance control has me nervous.

I suppose the waveguide looks pretty short (under an inch?) so it might not matter much?

<comment><AUTHOR> Haven't done anything high speed, but I'm not too worried since it's short. It might not be perfect on the first run, but hopefully it'll work.

8 GHz and multiple traces would be a bit more concerning without impedance control. Hope it works out.

<comment><USER7> To be clear, my differential pairs _are_ impedance controlled in the sense that their trace/space yield the correct single-ended and differential impedance values at the nominal dielectric permittivity and thickness, but OSH Park doesn't additionally guarantee permittivity and thickness tolerances to guarantee that my nominally-50-ohm traces will be actually-50-ohm traces +/- 10%. That said, I've run the numbers (using the excellent and free Saturn tools [1]) for the stated Er range of 4.2 +/- 0.3, and a little variation in the nominal 7.8 mil thickness, and things still looked OK.

Fingers crossed!

[1] <http://www.saturnpcb.com/pcb_toolkit.htm>

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> I'll point out that it is very clear that there will be BLE support in stock android(Samsung supports BLE via a device specific SDK) after the Google IO release of the Android.

Google's Glass supports BLE based on the FCC approval documents. It appears that BLE support was prioritized after the Bluetooth stack rewrite that happened in 4.2.

The Galaxy Nexus, Nexus 4, Nexus 7 and Nexus 10 all have hardware capable of BLE that should be available after the update.

</comment><comment><USER5> Great work. I've been keeping a close eye on the CC3000 for some time. I've also looked at the Wi2Wi modules/chips. I've been working (whenever work and home allows) on some hardware to connect the CC3000 with a Xilinx FPGA. Hopefull, I will have some results soon.

Also, I really like seeing hardware on the front page.

</comment><comment><USER9> I've played around with a WiFly module sold by sparkfun that seems pretty functional and reasonably cheap at 35$.

<https://www.sparkfun.com/products/10822>

Any idea how much cheaper this could be?

By the way your site doesn't seem to have a valid RSS or Atom feed. Your html has an incorrect feed link back to the homepage itself:

      <link href="./" type="application/atom+xml" rel="alternate" title="Eric Evenchick ATOM Feed" />

</comment><comment><USER10> This looks like a nice shield for that cc3300. Nice to see more hw-related stuff on HN - thanks for sharing.

<comment><AUTHOR> I'd like to write more hw stuff for the HN audience. I'm curious if there's anything in particular that the HN community, who seem to be more sw focused, would like to see.

<comment><USER10> IMHO most real innovation is happening in the space between hw and sw (duino / pi / etc.). The idea that you can call yourself an "innovator" and only know software is quickly becoming quaint. I don't claim to speak for the HN community-at-large, but I'm interested in seeing anything in the vein of hw/sw synthesis like this.

<comment><USER11> Real innovation is happening _everywhere_. Unfortunately, only the consumer- facing (and hobbyist) stuff gets covered here. Arduino, Raspi, etc. are interesting, but not technologically innovative. Their innovation is in addressing poorly-served markets: just as important, but not quite the same thing.

The "internet of things" is interesting from a consumer perspective. I've been involved in it for a few years in terms of being able to remotely monitor and diagnose complex equipment. There's a long list of companies with lots of dollars behind them that want to get started in this arena and don't know how. I suspect that this is soon going to be a hot area of consulting.

Just look at what businesses like Axeda have been doing for the last 10 years if you want to see where industry is heading.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> Cool project.

If your interested in some feedback on the PCB layout I'd be happy to help (e-mail in profile). There are a few things about the pictured layout that will make it very prone to noise and EM radiation as well as some heat dissipation issues.

<comment><AUTHOR> I would really appreciate your feedback. Can't see your email though. Could you get in touch through my site (under About)?</comment></comment>


Solvespace – parametric 2d/3d CAD - <AUTHOR> https://github.com/solvespace/solvespace <comment><USER2> This seems to be more than _just_ a parametric 3D drawing program (at least based on a quick look at a tutorial). The workflow seems to be heavily constraint based. You make a bunch of connected lines of no particular orientation and dimension and then specify a bunch of restrictions on what sort of thing is possible. Eventually you end up with your design based on a bunch of tiny specifications.

Strikes me as different than something more drafting oriented like Freecad. It's more like a type of 3D breadboard.

<comment><USER3> >The workflow seems to be heavily constraint based.

That strikes me as being very similar to the Part Design Workbench of FreeCAD which uses the Sketcher and constraint solver. Anyone have more details on a comparison of Solvespace and FreeCAD?

[http://www.freecadweb.org/wiki/index.php?title=Basic_Part_De...](http://www.freecadweb.org/wiki/index.php?title=Basic_Part_Design_Tutorial)

<comment><USER4> SolveSpace is indeed similar to FreeCAD's Part Design module. One major difference is that SolveSpace uses the same solver for constraints in 2D and 3D, as well as for sketches and assemblies, whereas in FreeCAD the Assembly module is separate.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> I've been using this software quite extensively to design a small 25m2 house I'm building earlier this year. It can be a bit rough around the edges, but it's already quite usable and powerful!

IMO the main issue is that the constraint solver recomputes everything whenever you add/move something, even though past additions are already properly constrained. As a result, the software gets less and less responsive as your design gets more complicated. I don't know if the devs adressed that issue (it's a tough one), but I know it was already on the radar a few months ago.

<comment><USER6> Does it get as bad as OpenSCAD? I found that anything even remotely complex using OpenSCAD brings the machine down to a crawl. And I'm on an overclocked 5930K with 64GB ram ;-)

I'd be very curious to see a couple screenshot of your project! I used Google Sketchup to do landscaping last year around my house; I wonder how this would compare...

sketchup plan: [https://goo.gl/photos/Qc5mEnFiFm9UWBvv8](https://goo.gl/photos/Qc5mEnFiFm9UWBvv8) reality: [https://goo.gl/photos/Gn66MSc8UPshR3CC8](https://goo.gl/photos/Gn66MSc8UPshR3CC8)

<comment><USER7> Have you tried freecad? I think it uses openscad as backend but has a slightly better (and faster) UI.

<comment><USER8> It uses Open Cascade: [https://www.opencascade.com/](https://www.opencascade.com/)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> Solvespace is the best open parametric CAD package I've used by far. For people coming from commercial CAD packages like SolidWorks the design process is easy to pick up. The UI is definitely a bit rough, but it's so much more powerful than anything else I've used.

<comment><USER10> How is the crash rate?

I used to use Inventor professionally, and that had a MTBF of perhaps 4 hours. I haven't needed a CAD program since then, but one of the things that'd make me try Solvespace first is that whitequark appears to actually care about reliability.

<comment><USER4> I care a lot about reliability! In fact, FreeCAD's incessant crashing (and the fact that it corrupted the savefile when doing that) was the single biggest reason I put so much time into improving SolveSpace, although working assembly support is a close second.

Even in case that SolveSpace does crash, it has an autosave facility (with a five minute interval by default), and so you should _never_ lose more than five minutes of work.

You should also use the 2.x branch and not the released version 2.1, as the branch has some important bugfixes. I will release 2.2 within a few of days though.

<comment><USER11> I can't believe I hadn't heard of it before. I just went through the tutorial and I'm duly impressed. I'll definitely try this for my next design. I couldn't find a way to donate, but I'd gladly send an appreciation to the people working on this.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> Let me plug qcad, a free and open source cad system that allows you to work parametrically as well using plain javascript.

I've done some pretty complex stuff in it and it hasn't let me down yet.

I'll give solvespace a shot to see how it compares, for me the reason to use parametric CAD is that I'm far more comfortable programming something than editing it in a GUI, and besides it makes changing stuff so much easier.

<comment><USER13> That's 2D only, though.

<comment><USER12> That's true. But when you're drafting machine parts/machines you rarely need true 3D and that's what I'm using it for.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> That looks interesting -- especially the path generator, as most CAM software are non-free and all clunky..

Funny that one of their example of clamps looks exactly the same as the one I've designed to hold the spindle on my CNC! (cut from sheet aluminium [https://github.com/buserror/buserror- reprap/blob/master/stl/...](https://github.com/buserror/buserror- reprap/blob/master/stl/buserror-spindle-cnc-mount-cnc-lazor.stl))

<comment><USER4> I've been planning to integrate libarea (of HeeksCNC fame), which can generate HSM toolpaths.

</comment></comment><comment><USER14> [https://m-labs.hk/solvespace/](https://m-labs.hk/solvespace/)

<comment><USER14> "Currently, the focus of development is to improve SolveSpace's handling of complex assemblies with many similar parts by allowing to load a hierarchy of sketches instead of a single sketch and propagate the changes as they are made, and to derive many variants of geometry from a single sketch. For example, these changes would allow to use a single basic sketch to model framework made from varying lengths of 80/20 profile, whereas currently that would require a separate sketch for every size of cut."

</comment></comment><comment><USER15> FreeCAD & OpenSCAD have both been mentioned a lot in this thread. If you like the thought of the scripting power OpenSCAD gives you, but like the convenience of a GUI at times, the cadquery plugin for FreeCAD may be worth a look. It provides a Python scripting environment in FreeCAD that you can use in tandem with GUI operations.

[https://github.com/dcowden/cadquery](https://github.com/dcowden/cadquery)

<comment><USER16> Does the FreeCAD plugin enable live-coding (instant preview on the normal canvas)?

</comment></comment><comment><USER17> 6MB installer free .exe, oldschool. Makes me wanna contribute a lot.

</comment><comment><USER18> Anyone care to weigh in on how this compares to FreeCAD?

<comment><AUTHOR> If you are using FreeCAD, probably try to run Solvespace or read one of it's tutorials, and you'll see the difference.

I have not used both apps extensively, but clearly FreeCAD is much bigger tool with wider use-cases. If talking about 3D cad only, I like minimalist Solvespace's approach better (from UI/UX stand point and from source code's perspective as well), easier menus, easier use (simple shortcuts), readable and rather small-ish codebase.

</comment></comment><comment><USER19> The maintainer, whitequark, has an equally interesting portfolio outside Solvespace: [https://lab.whitequark.org](https://lab.whitequark.org)

</comment><comment><USER20> the examples page [[http://solvespace.com/examples.pl](http://solvespace.com/examples.pl)] is very well thought-out

</comment><comment><USER21> Is there a product roadmap? Would be interested only if/when some sort of iLogic-like implementation is present. Otherwise, keep up the great work.

<comment><USER22> I'm not aware of any plan to incorporate programatic costraints into Solvespace. I've given this a little bit of thought before, and I suspect it could be best done with a scripting language tied into Solvespace, in the style of Blender.

<comment><USER4> There are vague plans for integrating Lua in a way that lets people implement new constraints without touching the C++ code, but the current architecture makes it very hard. We're refactoring it but it will take a while until such scripting is viable.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER23> I like the concept, and I am sure that I will try it out soon. I do however miss some screenshots on the website of the full application, and asking a user to download a video on a website in 2016 seems a bit off, why not use YouTube or some other service that offers embeds?</comment>


Elon Musk: Tesla 90% autonomous in 2015 - <AUTHOR> https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EJmhpgW0Dmc

<comment><AUTHOR> This is prequel to "D" \- some thing big on october 9: [https://twitter.com/elonmusk/status/517486950589014016](https://twitter.com/elonmusk/status/517486950589014016)

<comment><USER2> "unveil the D" sounds like a bad joke, I wonder if it was intentional. It seems in line with the S3X joke.</comment></comment>


Deadspin Staffers Are Quitting - <AUTHOR> https://www.thebiglead.com/posts/deadspin-writers-quitting-g-o-media-controversy-01drf9syxbdp <comment><AUTHOR> Here's (some of) the reasoning from (one of) the horse's mouth: [https://theconcourse.deadspin.com/the-adults-in-the- room-183...](https://theconcourse.deadspin.com/the-adults-in-the- room-1837487584)

<comment><USER2> _The real and less romantic story is this: The journalists at Deadspin and its sister sites, like most journalists I know, are eager to do work that makes money; we are even willing to compromise for it, knowing that our jobs and futures rest on it. An ever-growing number of media owners, meanwhile, are so exceedingly unwilling to reckon with the particulars of their own business that they refuse to accept our eagerness to help them make money._

 _(...)_

 _A metastasizing swath of media is controlled by private-equity vultures and capricious billionaires and other people who genuinely believe that they are rich because they are smart and that they are smart because they are rich, and that anyone less rich is by definition less smart. They know what they know, and they don't need to know anything else._

Why don't the journalists who know how to run the business pool their resources up and start a business then? What's stopping them? What do they need those venture capital vultures for?

<comment><USER3> I mean they did. The actual business we are talking about was started the way you suggest, and was then destroyed by a vindictive billionaire, and is now being (apparently) mismanaged by a bunch of other rich people.

Is your premise that the journalists have no right to be mad at what they perceive as an unjust wielding of economic power?

<comment><USER2> _The actual business we are talking about was started the way you suggest, and was then destroyed by a vindictive billionaire, and is now being (apparently) mismanaged by a bunch of other rich people._

If so, that's only more reason to leave. If they all leave, they can start a competing business managing it the way they want, while the rich people are left with worthless husk.

I'd also like to note that it was not destroyed by "vindictive billionaire", but by a result of jury trial, which punished them for keeping a private sex tape up despite the court order telling them to take it down. Allow me to opine that it doesn't really give me a feeling that they know how to run a successful business.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> I like how a site with autoplay ads is reporting this.

<comment><USER5> According to WSJ [1] the issue was that the ads were autoplaying with sound on. Just auto playing by itself isn't considered intrusive by the industry.

[1] [https://www.wsj.com/articles/hostilities-rise-inside-g-o- med...](https://www.wsj.com/articles/hostilities-rise-inside-g-o-media-over- autoplay-video-ads-and-politics-11572392147)

<comment><USER6> Some of us don't want to spring for unlimited data plans and get rather frustrated when reading textual news incurs the charges associated with streaming video. Bandwidth is not boundless for everyone.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> Not sticking to sports is why they failed and needed new management and more invasive ads for revenue in the first place.

<comment><USER8> This is completely wrong. Gawker Media was a profitable, growing company until Peter Thiel wrecked it and its subsidiary sites were sold to a series of increasingly incompetent owners. Deadspin's "non-sports" articles were regularly among its most widely read.

In fact, here's a person whose job it was to sell ads for Deadspin explaining that you are incorrect: [https://twitter.com/jillian_schulz/status/118967386127042969...](https://twitter.com/jillian_schulz/status/1189673861270429696)

<comment> at-fates-hands > until Peter Thiel wrecked it.

This is wrong.

Gawker media were confident they could operate freely in legal grey areas and fall back on their "freedom of speech" defense when they published Hulk Hogan's sex tape without his knowledge.

The fact they decided to go to court and challenge Hogan over his claims of defamation was their own poor choice. The only thing Thiel did was bankroll Hogan's legal team.

A.J. Daulerio's deposition and subsequent cavalier appearance and court testimony was probably the last nail in their coffin.

In short, Gawker had been playing with fire before and escaped. The fact they thought this would be another easy escape proved to be their undoing.

Nobody but Gawker and their editors who thought they could publish anything, about any celeb is what cost them their publication and their jobs - not just one guy who financially supported Hogan in his civil case.

<comment><USER9> Let's not forget why Thiel was upset at Gawker. They outed him as gay, putting his life in danger because he did business in places where the penalty for homosexuality is death.

<comment><USER10> No, a _billionaire_ is not in danger of death because he _does business_ somewhere that has such a penalty.

A billionaire can afford security or not go in person.

Does not going in person harm his ability to make deals? Maybe, maybe not. But that doesn't even resemble "life in danger".

<comment><USER11> This is an outrageous position to take. You're basically acknowledging that Thiel could come to face physical violence due to Gawker's irresponsible actions but that he could just change his actions and choices to avoid this. That is, it reads like "No his life isn't in danger if he goes out of his way to avoid the danger".

<comment><USER10> Going to a very small list of countries purely to make more money, when you already have a billion dollars, is not at all a necessary or important life activity. The inability to do so is a very trivial inconvenience.

<comment><USER7> Running a tabloid news story is not a necessary or important life activity either, especially when it actively harms someone else (regardless of their wealth or connections).

<comment><USER10> Yep, entirely accurate. There was no need to run that story, even though the harm done wasn't life-changing.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> This was Univision wasn't it? Kotaku is falling apart right now too, also done an impressively terrible job killing off the AV Club (I reckon there could be a case study in there about how not to do a rebrand tbh, have hardly viewed it since). They seemed to think they could just pull the audiences from about a dozen very different websites and mould them into one site.

<comment><USER13> Univision bought most of the remains of Gawker, merged it with their own site Fusion (later renamed Splinter, now defunct) and the Onion/AV Club, and sold it to the current owners of G/O at a massive loss.

In this media environment, with profitability seemingly tied to the whims of Facebook's recommendation algorithm and major sites like Mic and ThinkProgress dropping left and right, I don't know if anyone can survive without a deep- pocketed owner who can fund years of losses.</comment></comment>


Google will not renew Pentagon contract that upset employees - <AUTHOR> https://mobile.nytimes.com/2018/06/01/technology/google-pentagon-project-maven.html <comment><USER2> Previous discussion:

[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17208892](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17208892)

</comment><comment><USER3> We already have troops stationed in 146 countries around the world, the thought of adding killer AI drone capabilities to the mix isn't exactly comforting.

Then of course, if gets sold to everyone labeled an "ally" by whatever administration in five years time.

</comment><comment><USER4> It's likely that it'll continue under Alphabet instead of Google, as a seperate entity. According to those leaked emails, they clearly stated the financial benefit if pursuing the collaboration, so I assume they'll spin it out of the Google plex but keep it inside the Alphabet portfolio</comment>


Ask HN: Is anyone running Ruby 1.9 in Production? - <AUTHOR>

I have a Rails game (www.forumwarz.com) that's moderately popular. Right now it's running on Ruby 1.8. It's holding up well with our current load (about 2M dynamic requests/day), but we are in between episodes of the game.
Soon, we will launch our third episode and expect a large spike in traffic. We plan on adding another server to our pool, but it occurs to me that Ruby 1.9.1 might be a good idea too.
After a day or two of tweaking, I seem to have the app running on Ruby 1.9.1 in my development environment. Early benchmarks show that it's 3x as fast as the Ruby 1.8 version, which is quite promising.
I am curious as to whether anyone running a similar or larger Rails site are running Ruby 1.9.1? Is it stable enough for a production app? What are your experiences? Is there anything I should watch out for? <comment><USER2> Ive been running 1.9 in production for about 6 months now, no issues. Generally if all your code works, you're good to go.</comment>


In defense of Google. And, more importantly, the user. - <AUTHOR> http://richoakley.com/post/15664881511/in-defense-of-google-and-more-importantly-the-user <comment><USER2> _We all know very well that social context is the next revolution in web search_

I honestly would like to see some actual argument supporting this beyond "search was revolutionary, social was revolutionary, therefore social search will be revolutionary". At least a couple of examples where the social context adds value would go a long way.

I just hope Google has some data internally which suggests that these changes improve result quality and not doing this merely to catch up with the latest buzzwords.

<comment><USER3> I think the Google Search, plus Your World explanatory video has some pretty concrete examples on how social can improve search: [http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=8...](http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=8Z9TTBxarbs)

I especially like the example of Chikoo - a type of fruit, but also the name of someone's dog. By Google knowing that you and your family have a bunch of photos with Chikoo in the caption, it will show you those pictures instead of the fruit.

My dog's name is Milo: <http://www.google.co.za/search?q=milo>

<comment><USER4> This seems like an echo chamber counter-example to me. I know where to look for photos of my dog. I Google for things I don't already know.

<comment><USER5> I think Google would be quite happy if you also used them to get to things that you already know how to locate in another manner. It might be easier for you too. For example, I find even myself searching for partial urls on Google rather than type them in full on my phone.

It's one more opportunity to gather info and display targetted ads after all.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment> buff-a _No; the issue isn't the functionality - it's the fact that it's Google's own product that is being pushed._

I thought the issue was that when searching for an article it gave greater prominence to people from ones circles talking about the article than the article itself. As much as I value my friends' experience, I'd like to read the article myself, and maybe see their opinion appear lower down, if at all.

Anyway. I've switched my browser default search to duckduckgo and its working quite well.

</comment><comment><USER6> I just wish that Google will include in the social search everything that they got access to. That's the only way that this thing won't be evil.

By the way, I think that social search is very overrated. But I might be wrong.

</comment><comment><USER7> I think this could mean either a threat or buy out opportunity for Greplin.</comment>


Show HN: My project PocketLoot (direct link) - <AUTHOR> http://www.pocketloot.com/

<comment><USER2> I struggled to work out what your project does, I think a better screenshot could help. The text in the screen shot looks like it's telling me what my daily budget it is which if tat's what the app is about then it sounds quite good. Maybe if that stood out more? Also, I'd assumed it was a phone app, am I wrong? If so and it is about tracking my expenditure during the day then I think a phone app would be preferrable.

Best of luck.

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks, yeah it's all about what is my daily budget and how much have I saved this pay period.

Rather than tracking all of your expenditures you just tell PocketLoot what your account balance is. That way you don't have to keep track of everything and you only update it when you want.

A mobile version is in the works for those who prefer to update expenses through out the day and who want to play what-if with their daily budget and potentially large expenses.

Thanks for checking it out!

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> I like the fact that I can start using it without having to sign up, and that you let me create an account later if I want to save my data.

I'm not entirely sure what I would use this for though. It seems like I have to constantly update your site with the amount of money I spend, and that is a lot of work just to be able to have a daily budget calculated for me.

I use mint.com, and I don't have to enter anything, everything is just automatically pulled from my credit cards and bank accounts. They let me set monthly budgets for different categories of spending, and let me see if I am on track for my budget or if I need to reduce my spending to meet the budget.

<comment><AUTHOR> That's great feedback thanks. People who actually use this really only update it when they think they went over their daily budget. Maybe the use of the word "daily" is a bit misleading?

For me personally, what I never got from mint is how much can I spend today and how much have I saved this pay period. That's a key reason why I built this.

Thanks again! I <3 critiques. :)

<comment><USER2> aha, I think I get it. Cool. Are you going to gamify (everyone else is!) it? Ie awards for a streak of weeks/months not spending more than earned etc?

I'd suggest some bullet points about how it works on the landing page, ie 1) Enter your account balance 2) Update your account balance when you want (weekly, monthly, every St Swithins day) 3) Keep track of how much you're spending and how much you're saving each month.

<comment><AUTHOR> Great points!

Yeah I'd like to allow people to do the following: * When a user saves money in a pay period allow them to share a tip with everyone else about how they did it. (along with an optional shout out to FaceBook/Twitter) * Definitely awards.. I think they'd be great to show to friends and family. * I'd like to also trend the data so I can show people what their minimum typical daily spending is so they know what a realistic daily budget for them looks like. * Improve communicating of the core mechanics and how this is different.</comment></comment></comment></comment>


Is String a Palindrome - <AUTHOR> https://harrisonbrock.blog/blog/is-string-a-palindrome <comment><USER2> It's more efficient to compare r[beg] and r[end] directly than to construct a temporary string.

The tests should include failing test cases too, that is, strings which aren't palindromes.

The test cases are all of odd-lengths. An even-length palindrome should be included because palindrome implementations sometimes fail with even lengths but not odd, or vice versa.

The empty string should also be a test case, for the same reason.</comment>


Google aquires duck.com and points at own search site - mike-cardwell https://twitter.com/yegg/status/17212142386151424 <comment><AUTHOR> To be fair, it came as an asset in an unrelated acquisition (On2). But it just sat their (pointing to this Duck Corporation history page) for a long time.

I first inquired about it on 11/4/09. After several attempts, I got back a response "from management" on 3/25/10 that they didn't want to sell it. Understandable.

Now <http://www.on2.com/> points to a Google explanation page about the On2 acquisition, yet <http://duck.com/> points directly to Google search.

<comment><USER2> please somebody explain i am totally blank

<comment><AUTHOR> What do you not understand?

<comment><USER3> some people, even on news.yc, might not know that you run <http://duckduckgo.com> (which is a search engine.)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> Google closed its acquisition of On2 this year. On2 was known as The Duck Corporation as early as 1995. That's why duck.com belonged on On2--duck.com was registered more than a decade before duckduckgo.com, and I have to admit when I see duck.com, I still think primarily of the Duck codec.

It looks like duck.com changed nameservers from ns1.on2.com to ns1.google.com about a month ago; my guess is that duck.com started pointing to Google as part of the switchover of nameservers from On2 to Google.

I don't know what Google's policy on selling domains is. I don't remember Google ever sell any domains offhand, but I dropped an email to one of our domain people to ask about that.

</comment><comment><USER5> Just an FYI: This has nothing to do with Google getting scared about Duck Duck Go.

<comment><USER6> no, it just means they are as classy as any big corp.

<comment><USER7> What do you mean?

<comment><USER8> buying duck.com to squat on it == fear

buying the corporation that owns duck.com for 100+M == classy

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> Considering how many acquisitions Google has made, and that "organize the world's information" is part of their mission statement, I'm dismayed they think deliberate linkrot is an appropriate way to handle acquired assets. It's not as if they have no capacity to keep those pages in the web.

</comment><comment><USER10> Sorry, but does this mean Google have purchased DDG?

<comment><AUTHOR> No.</comment></comment>


Does anyone have an idea for a new level for my teach-people-to-program game? - <AUTHOR>

Thanks everyone for the feedback on Peanutty.
I'm trying to come up with ideas for new levels that will engage people with the site and encourage them to start playing around with the code.
If anyone has an idea for a good physics-based puzzle I'd love to hear it.
You can see the existing levels at http://peanutty.org (clickable link below - it only works in Chrome right now).
Thanks in advance for the ideas. <comment><AUTHOR> clickable link: <http://peanutty.org> (works in chrome only)</comment>


Civil Liberties Groups Speak Out Against CISPA in Lead Up to Hearings - <AUTHOR> https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2013/03/34-civil-liberties-groups-speak-out-against-cispa-lead-hearings <comment><USER2> One of the biggest (and most frustrating) problems with the legislative process is that the people who really want this to go through KNOW that we - "the masses" - eventually start to suffer from "protest exhaustion". They can propose a bill - we can rally our troops and get on TV and black out Wikipedia and do 100 interviews and maybe - just maybe - we can kill it.

The first time. And maybe the second time. And maybe even the third time. But after a while we're going to start to get numb to the calls-to-arms. And eventually our sometimes-well-intentioned-but-pulled-in-30-directions representatives are going to stop getting those concerned phone calls and emails from constituents, and they're going to fall prey to the typical "think of the children" argument that often gets put forward on any security bill, and something ugly is going to get passed.

I hate resigning myself to this, but it's the disappointing reality.

What to do?

<comment><USER3> I worry that most of the opposition to this bill is based on FUD that EFF is spreading. Having experience actually working in the security industry and knowing the limitations that this bill is trying to address, the ability of the government and private sector to work together to keep malicious groups out of their networks, I recognize the necessity and intentions of this bill.

This isn't about spying on Americans. This isn't SOPA with a new name. This isn't about stopping piracy or spying on your facebook profile. This bill is about letting government agencies share intelligence on network threats with private companies so those companies can protect their customers information. None of the agencies or companies involved want to share any private information about their citizens or customers. There are lots of lawyers involved in the process to ensure that doesn't happen.

I wonder if some of that exhaustion is also what leads people to not read the bill or understand the context and just assume it's another anti-piracy bill.

<comment><USER4> I understand what you're saying, but when legislation is proposed I look at what it very easily could enable, not just what it's written to be for. When I look at what's being proposed I see that the government is using its sovereign power to trade away my right to civil suit against a company in event of a data loss, in exchange to that company for it handing over private information (that very well can include customer information) without a warrant. In big broad, abstract ways this is to my benefit if it improves "cyber security" but it also removes some specific rights I have.

"None of the agencies or companies involved want to share any private information about their citizens or customers." The telcos have monetized their lawful intercept programs and receive bad publicity protection from the government by being legally entitled to keep it a secret. They now have a profit motive and the risk of bad publicity is low. And the civil liability immunity agreement (as I understand it) in CISPA will effectively act as a giant gift that only a sovereign power can grant, we'll offer you protection from being sued if you just hand over business data without a warrant.

If you want to talk about confusing, I watch C-SPAN constantly (it's an illness) and whenever anybody in the legislative or executive branch talks about "cyber security" they always talk about IP protection and "preventing a cyber pearl harbor" in the same breath. So if you want to blame somebody for the confusion start with the people proposing this legislation.

<comment><USER5> You are not allowed to make arguments that are directly rebutted by the facts. There were drafts of CISPA that were published in which the assets protected by the bill (which defines attacks in terms of the familiar C.I.A. triad) included "IP", which would have included things like the source code to operating system drivers. But the bill that got voted on included a series of amendments, all published, that neutered that language because of exactly that concern.

CISPA is simply not about the interests of rightsholders.

<comment><USER6> _CISPA is simply not about the interests of rightsholders._

The commenter to which you are replying did not make that assertion. The mention of IP was an attempt to identify the source of the confusion between cybersecurity and IP rights, not about CISPA specifically. Here's what the parent comment actually claimed:

 _When I look at what's being proposed I see that the government is using its sovereign power to trade away my right to civil suit against a company in event of a data loss, in exchange to that company for it handing over private information (that very well can include customer information) without a warrant. In big broad, abstract ways this is to my benefit if it improves "cyber security" but it also removes some specific rights I have....

And the civil liability immunity agreement (as I understand it) in CISPA will effectively act as a giant gift that only a sovereign power can grant, we'll offer you protection from being sued if you just hand over business data without a warrant._

Nothing about rightsholders in there.

<comment><USER5> The bill is clearly not about rightsholders, so it is intellectually dishonest to suggest that there is a legitimate concern about power grabs by rightsholders in it. "I watch C-SPAN religiously and they're always talking about IP rights" is not a substitute for reading the bill.

<comment><USER6> The sentence you quote is referring to the confusion about the bill, not the bill itself. Again, the OP didn't claim that CISPA was about IP.

<comment><USER5> I disagree, but I don't think this subthread is important enough to litigate. If he wants to chime in and say "I absolutely am not saying CISPA is part of a scheme that will increase the powers of rightsholders", I'll apologize for mischaracterizing him.

<comment><USER4> I absolutely am not saying CISPA is part of a scheme that will increase the powers of "rightsholders." I don't see that in there. I was referring to the "spying" claim of the parent post of my first response.

My concern is with limiting of my right to civil suit against a corporation, and my fear that the bartering of these rights for information bypasses legal constraints on information collecting by government and law enforcement.

<comment><USER5> Do you think it is reasonable that an auto insurance company that operates under DPPA, or a classroom management service that operates under FERPA, or credit agency operating under FCRA, or nationwide bank under RFPA, or for that matter any online service managing information that could be considered stored communications --- do you think it is reasonable that these organizations should incur either the risk of a class action lawsuit or the expense of tens of thousands of dollars of legal review simply in order to push a worm signature or botnet identification or DDOS netflow information to a public clearinghouse? In other words, do you think it is in the public interest for you to retain the right to sue these kinds of companies to vindicate your theoretical privacy interest in network security data shared in good faith?

Thanks to Declan Mccullagh downthread for making my arguments about CISPA more vivid by citing all the privacy regs CISPA interacts with. :)

Oh: by the way: if I understand you correctly, you're not at all concerned that CISPA is a backdoor attempt to enable copyright enforcement, and by rebutting that idea earlier, I mischaracterized your point. I apologize for doing that. CISPA makes me jumpy.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> Supporters include companies like AT&T, Facebook, IBM, Intel, Oracle Corporation, Symantec, Verizon, and Microsoft.

[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cyber_Intelligence_Sharing_and_...](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cyber_Intelligence_Sharing_and_Protection_Act#Supporters)

I'm envisioning a web dashboard that lets federal agents do fuzzy queries on individuals, to see all the sites visited, emails sent, web searches, browsing habits, etc, from all the IP addresses used by the given individual in the past several years. The system would aggregate information gathered from ISPs and web companies. The government can already get anything they want from an ISP or web company, but they have to do it on a case by case basis and it is probably annoying to correlate information across sources. In the future, I imagine that a federal agent can go to his big brother dashboard, type in a name, and have immediate access to all sorts of information gathered from credit card companies, search providers, ISPs, telecoms.

<comment><USER8> That would be scary, if CISPA had anything to do with any of that.

<comment><USER9> I find it a great way to tell if a person is worth engaging on this issue based on whether or not they think CISPA involves the government proactively asking for information.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> Just tell the gun lobby that if any of the Gun Shops keep an online database of their customers that's subject to the law. No need to worry about a national gun registry, the GOV gets it for free. Get the NRA involved and ALL OF CONGRESS will run screaming about how this goes against the 2nd Amendment.

<comment><USER9> The Gun Shop would have to volunteer that information to the government according to CISPA, so that wouldn't work.

<comment><USER11> Political maneuvering has nothing to do with what CISPA _actually_ says (as many others in this thread have pointed out).

<comment><USER9> The bill is too short to lie about what's in it. Anyone with about 5 minutes and a 4th grade reading level can at least muddle through.

<comment> fision-e For anyone wants to read it you can find the full text here: <http://www.govtrack.us/congress/bills/112/hr3523/text>

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> As a wise man pointed out on HN the last time around, we haven't won when this law fails to pass. We've only won a law explicitly stating the opposite passes.

<comment><USER5> So what you're saying is, the best possible thing to happen would be a law specifically preventing any American company from relaying threat information --- packet captures of exploits, netflow traffic profiles of botnets, &c --- to the US government, and, further, preventing any agency in the USG from providing traffic capture information, packet filter information, or botnet identification information to private companies.

<comment><USER12> No. In my mind, the best possible thing to happen would be a law specifically preventing any American government agency from requiring any company to hand over such information without due process. Sadly, you would think this was already clear enough from the constitution, but there are already enough loop holes that it happens anyway. Another good thing would be for American internet companies to voluntarily adopt and adhere to privacy policies along the same lines.

<comment><USER5> CISPA does not require any company to hand over any information to the USG without due process!

<comment><USER13> He isn't saying CISPA should be opposed, but rather, additional specific legislation to protect individual's data from being retrieved by the government without due process.

<comment><USER5> But that is already unlawful.

<comment><USER12> I think the recent thread about how people can be compelled to keep searches and confiscations secret makes my point sufficiently clear. I think by "due process" you mean "according the law". By "due process", I mean in a very fair, transparent, limited and well-defined way.

edit: Specifically, this is a precedent that is a big step in the right direction for this kind of thing, IMO: <https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5382891>

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> The White House petition against it passed 100,000 signatures, too:

[https://www.techdirt.com/articles/20130311/16221022286/white...](https://www.techdirt.com/articles/20130311/16221022286/white- house-petition-against-cispa-gets-over-100000-signature-threshold.shtml)

</comment><comment><USER9> I am never more reminded of how smart people can succumb to groupthink than I am when I read HN posts about CISPA. There are a lot of misconceptions about the law, including what kind of data gets shared (only relevant threat data, this isn't your bank account info, and the RIAA can't sue you if shared data reveals you to be torrenting movies - can elaborate more on this if there's interest), who does the sharing (orgs share to the government voluntarily), who has access to the sharing (government and people the government decide to share the data with), etc.

I saw an infographic a little while back that I thought made a pretty good representation of what the bill actually proposes, I wonder if anyone has a link available to it.

<comment><USER15> It's not necessarily the letter of the law that people are worried about, it's the overreach that would result once it's on the books.

<comment><USER5> The USG is actively prevented by current regulations from setting up a clearinghouse that would collect netflow signatures, botnet identification, and traffic captures of exploit code and then sharing that information with companies like Google and Facebook.

Private companies can and do share (heavily scrubbed) electronic signature information, but must go through contortions to do so, and incur huge legal costs to do it. As a result, only the largest companies participate in these efforts.

Because the USG is more or less enjoined from participating in clearinghouses with private companies, information sharing networks are handshake affairs that are often unknown to anyone outside tier-3 network engineering. Other private IT security product companies run de facto clearinghouses, but only for their customers.

As a result, when your startup gets DDoS'd and you call your ISP for help, they generally can't do shit to help you. It may annoy you to know that if your connectivity provider is large, there _is_ a group in there that could offramp your traffic to internal "scrubbing centers" to peel off DDOS traffic. But because high-end DDoS protection at ISPs is done _sub rosa_ , startups have a very hard time finding these people.

There is an actual problem with online security attacks right now, and hysteria over any USG intervention with the Internet at all is helping perpetuate it. And all it appears to take to fuel that hysteria is statements like "think of the overreach that will happen once a law hits the books".

<comment><USER6> How do your last two paragraphs follow from the first three? How does having large companies share threat data help your small startup mitigate a DDoS?

 _There is an actual problem with online security attacks right now, and hysteria over any USG intervention with the Internet at all is helping perpetuate it._

This sounds an awful lot like, "We must do something. This is something, therefore we must do this."

<comment><USER5> ISPs propagate flow-based snapshots of attacks to populate filters and redirect traffic to scrubbing centers, but they do so discreetly in part because of concerns about how well their data --- which is used exclusively to generate filters --- has been anonymized.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> Should we use a the internet bat signal[1] on this issue? What do you guys think? Is it already under discussion?

[1] <http://internetdefenseleague.org/>

</comment><comment><USER17> I supposed I would ask what privacy-protecting language would make the approach envisioned in CISPA (cyber threat data sharing) acceptable to privacy-oriented organizations like the ones listed. If the answer is "none," I would question their good faith in the process--or at least the public face they put on it.

</comment><comment><USER18> Obligatory Maddox from SOPA 1

<http://thebestpageintheuniverse.net/c.cgi?u=pass_sopa>

<comment><USER9> SOPA isn't really related to CISPA all that much, I don't know why people think they're similar.

<comment><USER5> Because the EFF actively campaigned (dishonestly) against CISPA as a sort of second coming of the objectives of SOPA.</comment></comment></comment>


Ask HN: Making money on Facebook with ads? - <AUTHOR>

I'm considering doing a little side project on Facebook. For fun, but it would be great to also generate some revenue.
My question is: does anyone know of success stories of Facebook apps that are ad-supported?
People keep telling me that you can't make money with ads/banners anymore. Is this really true? Would it work on Facebook? <comment><USER2> Most of the really profitable FB apps incorporate some form of virtual currency system. Fluff friends is one.

<comment><USER3> Just wondering if you have any stats to correlate with that assertion.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> i listened to quite a few presentations from fb game developers at w2e a few months ago. they are largely ad-revenue driven. powerchallenge is making $8m. friends for sale makes around $1m. yeah, ad revenue is viable.</comment>


TSA Oversight: Tell Us Your TSA Story - <AUTHOR> http://oversight.house.gov/tsa-oversight-tell-us-your-tsa-story/

<comment><USER3> "Mr. Schneier will not testify at Monday's hearing (UPDATE: 3/23/12)" - <USER2> is very disappointing... It doesn't look like there's any other technical witness who is not related to TSA and/or the government.

The Director of the Government Accountability Office comes from Homeland Security... so what's the expected outcome of that hearing really? Is it too cynical to expect just some patting on the backs for job well done?

<comment><USER4> "Something must be done!" "Hey, guess what, smart guy - there's an oversight committee now!"

This reminds me vaguely of Detroit's highly visible and utterly useless monorail.

PS: Bonus points to any who'd like to compare and contrast this with the ("It's radiation!", "Yeah, but it's the same amount you get on the flight anyway!") tuple.

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> I _really_ don't like that in order to participate in this, you need to have a Facebook account. Am I missing some other submission form? I would be very happy to be corrected on this because it's a gross oversight (ahem).

<comment><USER6> I agree strongly with you. It is outrageous that to have our voice heard in an allegedly democratic society, the government would mandate we agree to an onerous contract put forth by a private company.

</comment></comment><comment><USER7> Interesting that Bruce Schneier isn't testifying - there doesn't appear to be anything on his blog about this: <http://www.schneier.com/>

Hopefully this was just a scheduling issue or similar - in addition to literally having written the book on computer cryptography, he's been a lucid, credible critic of the TSA for quite some time now.

</comment><comment><USER8> On the plus side I haven't once been attacked by tigers or elephants while flying. Bravo.

Also I'm sure everyone in the country can give a long list of the things they were rather the money was spent on, or not spent at all. The TSA has been as effective as setting fire to large quantities of money.

</comment><comment><USER9> Quick complaint: Most of the time when I see people using zoom.it, its completely unnecessary.

Couldn't they have just put the poster in a PDF or a plain image if they thought it was absolutely necessary to see?

</comment><comment><USER10> what about the non tsa stories? the number of times i as a european have heard someone describe an event or opportunity in the usa and then heard but they can't be arsed with the tsa nonsense. is there a measurable reduction of travel to/from the usa since the tsa?

<comment><USER11> tsa != dhs

</comment></comment><comment><USER12> The PL poll was blatant enough (although it ended up generating some pretty good discussion), but does HN really need to play host to tabloid central? I understand why many people are hooked on this particular circus-cum-reality- show, but it really isn't open to audience participation like you think it is.</comment>


A useful tool, for exporting data from excel to mysql database - <AUTHOR> https://github.com/cls1991/xls2db <comment><USER2> Why is this tool so useful?

<comment><AUTHOR> For game designers, who aren't familiar with mysql.</comment></comment>


Sexism in IT - <AUTHOR> http://wjlafrance.net/day/2012/05/12 <comment><USER2> Hiring people on objective criteria only is really, really hard to do: if you're sure that's what you do, you almost certainly don't. We---all of us--- judge people on a whole host of superficial qualities, many of them linked to gender. You don't have to hate women to subconsciously picture brilliance as male. If that's you, and in our culture it's most of us, you're going to miss great coders because they don't look or act like you expect.

</comment><comment><USER3> seriously? i have not met these people in a while, speaking to a few women i know about this issue makes me think there is no real issue. No one has anything against women in IT, if women are not interested...let them to whatever it is they want to do? There are plenty of men not interested in IT as well...</comment>


Img srcset and picture enabled in Firefox Nightly - <AUTHOR> https://plus.google.com/115203843155141445032/posts/Z69ZnshQvh6 <comment><USER2> Wonderful, a new, poorly designed and nearly useless feature. Awesome!</comment>


Windows XP at Defcon: Preparation - <AUTHOR> https://little418.com/2017/07/windows-xp-at-defcon-prep.html <comment><USER2> I'll be there and looking for it :D

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks! Please do say hi in person if you see me :)</comment></comment>


Fastai for PyTorch: Fast and accurate neural nets using modern best practices - <AUTHOR> http://www.fast.ai/2018/10/02/fastai-ai/ <comment><USER3> Jeremy from fast.ai here - I'm sitting here at the PyTorch developer conference, listening to all the really great new stuff being announced. :) Happy to answer any questions about the fastai library release here. It's a rewrite from scratch compared to v0.7.

Docs here: [http://docs.fast.ai](http://docs.fast.ai) . GitHub repo here: [https://github.com/fastai/fastai](https://github.com/fastai/fastai) . It's also available now on Google Cloud Platform, including example notebooks and datasets (Viacheslav Kovalevskyi from Google has posted a walk-thru here: [https://blog.kovalevskyi.com/google-compute-engine-now- has-i...](https://blog.kovalevskyi.com/google-compute-engine-now-has-images- with-pytorch-1-0-0-and-fastai-1-0-2-57c49efd74bb) ). AWS support coming soon.

<comment><USER4> I have a gaming system (Ryzen 1950X w/ GTX 1080Ti). Is there an easy way to create a bootable external media with most of the stuff preconfigured already?

I remember it being a pain to get all the drivers working and there was a lot of version incompatibility in the Python ecosystem.

I'd rather not mess with the bootloader and just have an external drive I can select to boot to in the BIOS. For some reason Windows wiped out GRUB and I can't boot my old Ubuntu distro anymore.

<comment><USER5> You have a couple of options to consider: 1\. Install a modern Linux distribution on the bare metal, get [https://github.com/NVIDIA/nvidia- docker](https://github.com/NVIDIA/nvidia-docker) and run the GPU-accelerated container [https://github.com/Paperspace/fastai- docker](https://github.com/Paperspace/fastai-docker) 2\. Try running the Ubuntu Hyper-V image provided by Canonical/Microsoft

P.S. I'm considering building a DL box based on Ryzen 2600 w/ GTX 1070Ti, so could you please share your experience with Ryzen and Linux.

<comment><USER6> My DL box has a Ryzen 1800x and a GTX 1080ti running Ubuntu 18.04. The Ryzen has given me very few issues, Nvidia gave me some setup issues, but now that it's all configured its rock solid.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> This is great news! Here has been my experience using Fast.ai : I had been training a deep learning network using Keras with Tensorflow, for diagnosing medical images - and it took me several months of hard work - <USER2> parameters, training and testing to get acceptable levels of accuracy for our models. And then last month, I switched to Fast.ai (their pre-release version) and I was blown away - my models trained faster, and I matched and finally exceeded accuracy levels acheived with my earlier models. And I accomplished what had taken several months in Keras, in just a few days! And the biggest reasons for it were in my view, fast.ai's learning rate finder, the differential learning rates, and Test Time augmentation - all which are advanced features built into fast.ai. And the other great thing is that fast.ai uses the best defaults automatically, and it trains much, much faster than Keras / TF for some reason.

So I can't wait to try the new release out. I think Fast.ai has set a new bar for deep learning frameworks in terms of speed and ease of use. Thank you for all your great work!

<comment><USER8> Do you know if you can do object detection on images right out of the box? Or is it just classification?

<comment><USER7> I am using it for classification right now - but pretty sure you should be able to do object detection quite easily as well.

<comment><USER3> It supports segmentation right now, but object detection won't be supported "out of the box" until 1.1 (in a month or two).

You can certainly train a YOLO or SSD pytorch model with fastai, however.

<comment><USER9> Hello Jeremy,

One question, there is any best practice to transform video into [n] frames to then use model.predict(n) to make a "live classification / object detection"?

Kind regards from Dublin!

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> I haven't used fast.ai yet, but extensively use pytorch for anything to do with deeplearning. (it is so much better than tensorflow) It's great to see a keras like higher level abstraction library for deep learning.

A few questions:

1\. what is the benefit of using fast.ai to someone well acquainted with pytorch (for academic use)

2\. how well does fast.ai interface with pytorch itself ? Can parts of program be in fast ai and other parts be in pytorch ?

3\. Am I correct in assuming that despite being very fast, fast.ai is still slower (even if marginally so) than pytorch itself ?

<comment><USER3> 1\. Less boilerplate, so you can focus on your algorithm; best practices built in, so you might be surprised at how your speed and accuracy may improve

2\. Very close integration with PyTorch. fastai is designed to _extend_ PyTorch, not hide it. E.g. fastai uses standard PyTorch Datasets for data, but then provides a number of pre-defined Datasets for common tasks

3\. fastai is not slower than PyTorch, since PyTorch is handling all the computation. It'll othen be faster than your handwritten PyTorch however, since we went to a lot of effort to use performant algorithms.

<comment><USER10> Thanks for replying.

From appearance alone, everything about fast.ai seems to be positive with no obvious negatives over native pytorch.

I often require to train baselines for my projects. That will be the perfect place to start using fast.ai. I am sold.

I have heard a few people lament the lack of keras in pytorch. Fast.ai also appears to take care of that.

Thanks for the great work.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> @jph00 where do I find lstm/gru/seq2seq layers for time-series sequence predictions (not text)? Also interested in autoencoder implementations. The fast.ai docs search does not really work for this. What do you think about other notable APIs built on top of pytorch such as Pyro and AllenNLP?

</comment><comment><USER12> Hi Jeremy, I am a beginner. Going to start your ML course,then follow up with DL- 1 & 2\. My question is when will these 3 be updated to the new version of fastai. I am aware of the fellowship for DL-1, but there's a 12 hour difference. Also, I want to start with ML,so, I want to learn with the new version. Thanks

On the side, I am also taking Andrew's coursera course for a theoretical grounding , Bengio and Goodfellow's Machine Learning Book ,and Hands-On Machine Learning with Tensorflow and Sci-kit( O'reilly book).

</comment><comment><USER13> Cannot recommend fast.ai enough. How they and Jeremy especially communicate is absolutely outstanding, and I guarantee you will learn a lot by the results- driven approach that they have.

</comment><comment><USER3> ZDNet just published an article with some more background about this BTW : [https://www.zdnet.com/google-amp/article/fast-ais-new- softwa...](https://www.zdnet.com/google-amp/article/fast-ais-new-software- could-radically-democratize-ai)

</comment><comment><USER14> Can this be used / intended for production ? Is it fast/efficient enough on common hw ?

We are not really doing cutting edge or research stuff. Just developing a big dumb resnet and hoping to scale up to 10s of GPUs over 2019.

I was really happy to read a comment here about how this framework was used to reproduce a 6 month project in 2 weeks :)

<comment><USER3> It's very fast indeed: [http://www.fast.ai/2018/08/10/fastai-diu- imagenet/](http://www.fast.ai/2018/08/10/fastai-diu-imagenet/)

For inference, new features being announced today at the conference will help a lot too.

<comment><USER15> Will serving be as fast as TensorFlow? I assume PyTorch's dynamic network is inherently slower than TensorFlow's compute graph approach

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> I'm a big fan - I've been using their old version of their library for NLP on medical text, but the course and library certainly removed a lot of the "mystique" around deep learning for me.

</comment><comment><USER17> This is awesome! I'd love to use Fastai, but my company's pretty committed to Tensorflow right now. Is there any work being done to port Fastai over to Tensorflow?

</comment><comment><USER18> Is it meant to be a better alternative to Keras?

<comment><USER3> Keras doesn't support PyTorch, so it's not exactly an alternative. But it would be fair to call it an inspiration for fastai.

</comment></comment><comment><USER19> Is there a guide available for image segmentation? I've only really used TF in the past

<comment><USER3> There's a development notebook for segmentation on the Carvana dataset. [https://github.com/fastai/fastai_docs/blob/master/dev_nb/006...](https://github.com/fastai/fastai_docs/blob/master/dev_nb/006_carvana.ipynb)

Most of the functions in there are pre defined in fastai so you can remove much of the code there in practice.

We'll be adding a proper segmentation example soon.

</comment></comment><comment><USER20> The name fastai sounds suspicious. There is "fast" and "AI" in it, so I fear that it makes the easy things easier and the hard things harder. It just sounds like too much fluff. We obviously don't have AI yet (but pretty convincing machine learning models) and we won't get it in the next years (not fast) - so if software, a company or an organization puts "ai" in its name (or chooses it as top-level domain) I suspect they just want to ride the hype train and am _very_ skeptical ...

@Topic: What is the difference to Keras, PyTorch, etc.? They are already pretty high-level and the basic models for common tasks are available in all libraries at that point.

<comment> pure-awesome I mean, _just_ basing your impression off of the name is not going to get you very far. As a first impression, sure, but if a bunch of comments are saying they really like it, maybe it's worth doing a bit more exploration.

And AI is commonly-used as basically a synonym for Machine Learning in the ML community. Yes, the word has multiple definitions and connotations, and some people prefer to avoid using the term AI at all because of that. But that doesn't meant that someone using the term AI to refer to ML is wrong or up to something.

Furthermore, just because non-legitimate organizations want to ride the hype train, it doesn't mean legitimate ones shouldn't benefit from that effect as well. fast.ai is an organization actually writing software for doing machine learning, as opposed to a completely unrelated company (like an electric toothbrush company) claiming their latest product "uses AI" whatever that means.

The funniest part is that the slogan for fast.ai "Making neural nets uncool again". If that isn't explicitly going against the hype and saying this is _actual_ neural nets and not just fluff, then I don't know what is.

<comment><USER20> > I mean, _just_ basing your impression off of the name is not going to get > you very far.

There are so many neural networks libraries now and I don't find the time to test all of them - dismissing libraries that use .ai in their website's TLD (or in their name) served me very well so far. Sure if it really makes neural networks that much simpler to train, I will take a look, but for now it does not seem to be more high-level than Keras or PyTorch.

It does not matter if you can describe your network in 50, 100 or 200 lines of code as the hard part is to make it learn, choose hyper parameters, change loss functions, etc. - this is possible in all frameworks.

And I _don 't_ think AI is used as a synonym for machine learning in the community, but is used to describe AGI.</comment></comment></comment>


What Trump's Win Means for Cybersecurity - <AUTHOR> https://www.wired.com/2016/11/security-news-week-trumps-win-means-cybersecurity <comment><USER2> Trump's win means almost nothing in most areas, like Obama's win didn't stop police brutality against blacks.

There are tons of private and aggregate interests at play in policy making, and the President is just a single, and not even the most interesting, influence point, just the one that is most visible.

<comment><USER3> While I agree that the President is just one person, what bothers me is that I can't ever remember having someone elected to the highest office in the nation without any experience.

It's troubling listening to Trump talk about world affairs and other issues without getting this sick feeling that he is completed bewildered. Then he seems to surround himself with people who don't have clue either.

It's quite frightening and I feel like America shit the bed and now we are all going to have to sleep in it.

I really hope it all works out because there is just so much at stake for everyone.

<comment><USER2> > _While I agree that the President is just one person, what bothers me is > that I can 't ever remember having someone elected to the highest office in > the nation without any experience._

Trump aside, experience is overrated in politics.

Fresh people get elected to major positions all the time. For the main role of being a President, few things can prepare you. And for all the details, there are tons of advisors etc. to help you.

Whether Clinton, Obama, Trump etc, they are all clueless to the most pressing issues of today and especially tomorrow (with respect to climate change, technology, jobs, etc). Heck, most are clueless even after having been Presidents. At best, they are at the mercy of their advisors and policy influencers, and the best we can hope is that they have good intentions.

I also think it's best to have a wide angle view of society and the world from different aspects (not that Trump has that), than to have experience in backroom discussions and Washington dealings.

<comment><USER4> >Fresh people get elected to major positions all the time. For the main role of being a President, few things can prepare you. And for all the details, there are tons of advisors etc. to help you.

It is nice for the president to at least know the legal framework he/she will be restricted by.

<comment><USER2> > _It is nice for the president to at least know the legal framework he /she > will be restricted by._

It's not like the President will draft any law themselves...

<comment><USER4> The president's job is enforcing all of the laws set by the legislative branch and he needs to know where his authority begins and ends.</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment>


Weekend Project - HTML5 RTS - <AUTHOR> http://www.slothproductions.org/canvas/ludumdare/ I participated in the Ludum Dare game competition this weekend. The prompt was "minimalism" so I made the simplest strategy game possible in 48hrs. All feedback welcome!
You'll get the best experience with Chrome.
Contest Entry: http://www.ludumdare.com/compo/ludum-dare-26/?action=preview&uid=22099 <comment><USER2> have no idea how to play that. or it's broken on ff.

clicks and keyboard keys does nothing there.

also, nothing on the readme.md</comment>


This Is What's Missing from Journalism Right Now - <AUTHOR> http://www.motherjones.com/media/2016/08/whats-missing-from-journalism <comment><USER2> There is another discussion going on on HN here where people are discussing how to fix scientific reporting.

This article covers several critical issues

> It starts with this: The most important ingredient in investigative > reporting is not brilliance, writing flair, or deep familiarity with the > subject (though those all help). It's something much simpler—time.

Mother Jones also points out the known fact that mergers have resulted in firms that must return value to the shareholders, and this is only possible with significant ad revenue.

It feels like we've walked full circle back to paying for subscriptions to magazines. (And now they are tax deductible?)</comment>


Peter Thiel and Y Combinator fund a "litigation financing" startup - <AUTHOR> http://boingboing.net/2016/08/25/peter-thiel-y-combinator-fun.html <comment><USER2> I totally understand why Peter Thiel felt the way he did about Gawker. Outing someone is a HORRIBLE thing to do. I can't underscore that enough. Especially in the way that they did. They engaged in yellow journalism and hid behind the shield of reporting.

That being said, this idea that we can extinguish the flame of reporting with a firehose of money is a horrible precedent. This is essentially saying that the rich few can determine what is reported to the masses due to their wealth. Allowing things like this endangers the important investigative reporting that uncovers things like bad working conditions, corruption and other horrible things that go on in society.

<comment><USER3> Don't understate the serious amount of wrongdoing on Gawker's part in that lawsuit. After that giant, public "we're not going to obey the court order we were just given" article, there's no way in hell Gawker was planning on wining the lawsuit. My guess is they were planning on out-spending Hogan and pushing a settlement on him when he ran out of money.

It wasn't until much later that they found out they wouldn't be able to buy their way out of trouble.

<comment><USER2> I'm not saying that Gawker was right. They were very wrong. But this is not the type of justice that should be doled out. It does more harm to us as a society than good.

I do think that there should have been serious repercussions for Gawker. I can't say what those should have been. But I know that this wasn't the right route to take.

<comment><USER4> What you're saying is that you would have preferred that Gawker's strategy of outspending Hogan had worked, so that not only would he have had his privacy violated and reputation ruined, but he should also be bankrupt.

That's your justice.

<comment><USER2> Where did I say any of that? I didn't.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> Funding lawsuits for profit is a well-known society anti-pattern called "champerty." It is no longer illegal (as blocking it interfered with access to justice) but when used for profit or other agendas it is pretty damaging (think patent trolls).

<comment><USER6> It's only a good thing when it's done with an agenda you agree with and not when it's equally available to others?

<comment><USER5> I wasn't precise. Sorry about that.

By "other agendas" I meant any issue not claimed in the lawsuit at hand, not agendas that differed from my own. It is a bit of a subjective point as one could have a legitimate interest in funding somebody who has been harmed in the same way you have in a different event (so you would not have standing, but at least a related agenda). But funding a suit you have no real interest in just "for the win" is a bit wild.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> This article starts with facts and then quickly becomes a rather vicious personal attack against Peter Thiel.

<comment><USER8> The only attack is a single phrase, referring to him as a "sociopathic billionaire". I don't think his status as a billionaire is questioned, so you must object to the use of the one word "sociopathic". Let's check the DSM-IV:

Antisocial personality disorder is characterized by a lack of regard for the moral or legal standards in the local culture. There is a marked inability to get along with others or abide by societal rules. Individuals with this disorder are sometimes called psychopaths or sociopaths.

Well, not exactly clear-cut, but I think a reasonable set of people, perhaps including Thiel, would agree that he has "a lack of regard for the moral or legal standards in the local culture"

<comment><USER9> "Drinking young people blood"?

<comment><USER10> I recall that Thiel wants to get blood transfusions from people younger than him to prolong his own life.

Many of the apparently absurd claims about Thiel are, well, absolutely true. Indeed, this particular one was linked directly to a news article about it.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> The ability to sell portions of your right to justice is both an important freedom and a check on the ability of those with power to trample on those without. It is interesting that so many people who claim to champion the rights of the powerless are vigorously opposed to the concept.

<comment><USER2> > The ability to sell portions of your right to justice is both an important > freedom and a check on the ability of those with power to trample on those > without.

How? If everyone has equal access to justice and the justice system, there is no need to "sell portions of your right to justice".

<comment><USER12> Yes, in a perfect world, everyone would have <equal access to justice and the justice system>.

But it does not work like that. Not even close.

Money equals access. Sure, technically, you can plead your own case, but it will require you to give up literally everything else in your life and you'll probably lose against the professionals (how well would you do against the professionals in your favorite sport if you dedicated the next 10 months of your life to it -- remember, they've been doing it for decades and make a living at it?).

The fact is that you need serious funds to prosecute or even defend a case bigger than small claims court. I'm in such a case right now and need funding (which is how I got to this article); tho I won't post the details, the requirements will run well into six figures just to pursue what I already had in a written contract. Do you have that kind of pocket change lying around? I don't, and I don't think most of the rest of us do either.

While I had a vague idea before, it has now become blindingly obvious that money is required for access to proper justice. While I have much better access than many people, it is also obvious that I also have much less access than others.

So, yes, IFF everyone has equal access, there's no need. But we don't, so there is a real need.

<comment><USER2> I agree that money equates to access in the real world.

I agree that a common tactic is "spend baby, spend".

But I still fail to see how "selling your access to justice", equates to having a bankroll or how it is fundamental. That was all I was asking, how? In the Peter Thiel case, Hogan didn't "sell" his access to justice, Peter was just bankrolling him because he both didn't like Gawker. Peter wasn't "selling" his access to justice, he used Hogan to accomplish a personal goal.

So I ask again, how is "selling your access to justice" fundamental? Or even in your case, so that we have an example and I can understand, how would you, or anyone else, sell their access to justice in order to benefit you in that case? Imo you would need a bankroll, same as Hogan.

<comment><USER12> I guess I'm reading it as the plaintiff having to 'sell their access' to the system, as part of the potential proceeds, in order to get justice.

If you don't have the requisite funds, you sell part of your potential proceeds (which become profits to the investor) in order to get access to the justice system. Or, in Hogan's case, sold his case (access to the justice system) to Theil so they could both achieve their goals.

(so maybe, it's just a less-clear phrase than it should be?)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> Absolutely biased and devolves rather quickly into an attack on Thiel bordering on insulting.

<comment><USER14> It's basically a personal rant disguised as an article about a new startup. I guess Cory has an axe to grind.</comment></comment>


Choosing Smalltalk on Porpoise - <AUTHOR> https://medium.com/@richardeng/choosing-smalltalk-on-porpoise-9bccb7cd53f

<comment><USER2> That covers a lot of what I love/d about Smalltalk; it was fantastic. If there was a great cross-platform Smalltalk that let me create small, fast, standalone apps I'd probably be all over it in a heartbeat, once again.

Or Lisp, I'm fine either way--but Smalltalk had some advantages even over Lisp. (Operator precedence not being among those advantages :/

<comment><USER3> Is Dolphin Smalltalk no longer available? Cannot reach the object arts server.

As of today, what is the recommended Smalltalk to use if I wanted to create a 3D scientific visualization app using OpenGL/Metal/Mantle?

<comment><USER2> Not sure. The main commercial player these days is probably Cincom. I'm not up-to-date with current Smalltalk impls and how well they interact with external libraries.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> Who the is against OOP like that? Grow up programming in VB?</comment>


Bitcoin Miners on Track to Use More Electricity Than All of Argentina - <AUTHOR> http://fortune.com/2018/01/10/bitcoin-miners-electricity-argentina/ <comment><USER2> If we had as of precise data on both energy & resource consumption as we have on Bitcoin mining we could remove all taxes and create a consumption/VAT tax based on how much resources and energy something used. That could go a long way in shifting costs that are socialized back in to their consumers and producers.

<comment><USER3> Energy taxes are even more regressive than sales taxes. All it would do is increase the vast wealth subsidy.

<comment><USER4> Data? According to the EPA nearly 2/3rds of electricity is consumed by businesses and industry.

[https://www.epa.gov/energy/electricity- customers#commercial](https://www.epa.gov/energy/electricity- customers#commercial)

<comment><USER3> [http://faculty.georgetown.edu/aml6/pdfs&zips/RegressiveManda...](http://faculty.georgetown.edu/aml6/pdfs&zips/RegressiveMandates.pdf)

Just an example: _The poorest 5 percent of households use 247 gallons of gas per year, on average. The richest 22 percent, with incomes over ten times higher, each use about four times as much._

The basic issue is as wealth increases people spend more on services which have lower energy needs than say food. A cheeseburger takes not just energy to cook much energy to manufacture. An account on the other hand uses much less energy per dollar spent.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment> 52-6F-62 Relevant:

* "Quebec's hydro surplus to lure companies into data hub initiative"

[https://www.theglobeandmail.com/report-on- business/industry-...](https://www.theglobeandmail.com/report-on- business/industry-news/energy-and-resources/quebecs-hydro-surplus-to-draw-in- data-hubs/article33697929/)

* "Chinese bitcoin miners eye sites in energy-rich Canada"

[https://ca.reuters.com/article/businessNews/idCAKBN1F10BU- OC...](https://ca.reuters.com/article/businessNews/idCAKBN1F10BU-OCABS)

</comment><comment><USER5> Has there been articles or research done on how much energy is used to coin, print, distribute, and utilize fiat currencies?

<comment><USER6> The Bureau of Printing and Engraving budgeted $14.35 million in FY2017 for "Communication, utilities, and misc. charges." If we assume that 100% of that is electricity costs, and that electricity costs 12¢/kWh, then we get somewhere in the region of 120 million kWh in FY2017 to produce USD. That is 0.1% the annual electricity consumption of Argentina.

<comment><USER7> Just checked the Treasury 2017 budget which is around 3 billion.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> My article on this topic:

[https://hackernoon.com/dummies-guide-to-bitcoin-energy- use-5...](https://hackernoon.com/dummies-guide-to-bitcoin-energy- use-5f38e91c3253)

</comment><comment><USER9> Proof of work was a mistake.

<comment><USER10> I have a hard time understanding proof of stake. I haven't found any discussions that make sense to me.

Do you have any good easy to understand descriptions of proof of stake you could recommend to a layman like me?

<comment><USER11> In a very simplified way, proof of work is a way to roughly uniformily distribute the block generation "queue". In a network without identities how do you prevent someone creating hundreds of accounts to have a hundred times more chance to be next in line? You give them a hard problem, and now the odds of you being next in line is proportional to your computing power, which you can't multiply effortlessly.

Proof of Stake says that instead of distributing the work queue proportionally to the computing power you demonstrated to have, it does it proportionally to the amount of currency you have saved. It similarly prevents the attack where one could create infinite personalities to get in line, with different trade offs. In particular, beside the energy savings, it can be a much more scalable model, where you don't have to wait 10min in average for someone to solve the hard problem and instead you can know right away who are the next people eligible to generate the next blocks.

<comment><USER10> > it does it proportionally to the amount of currency you have saved.

Doesn't this have an inherent disincentive to new people joining and using the network? Sorta like the poor stay poor, the rich get rich?

<comment><USER12> Not anymore then proof of work has I think. Want to join bitcoin mining? You need to invest in mining hardware, and have access to cheap electricity.

<comment><USER10> Do you have to mine for proof of stake, or is simply owning the underlying asset enough to "generate interest on the investment?"

<comment><USER11> For block rewards you'd have to mine. In particular you'd have to have a server running a node joined in the network ready to generate a block whenever your number is called.

Not everyone would want to do that, so there's usually a mechanism to indicate you want to be eligible to do so, depositing your coins or similar.

That's for block rewards - nothing prevents a blockchain currency to be designed to generate inflation and add interest on everyone's investment - some do exactly that.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> Something I've been thinking about is that proof of work "coins" are basically energy credits. When energy is cheap, miners can lower their fees and keep the same return, leading to more economic activity. When it is expensive, they need to raise their fees to stay profitable, thus reducing economic activity.

I think this makes sense. Wouldn't it be beneficial if economic activity scaled with energy availability? It also creates a direct incentive to develop and utilize the most efficient energy sources possible, without regard for the politics between various stakeholders (hydro vs oil vs coal vs wind vs solar, etc).

<comment><USER14> > miners can lower their fees

This isn't how fees work. Fees are based purely on supply and demand. The payer sets their fee level when they create the transaction, and it's up to the miners which transactions they will include. Since there is always an excess of transactions, the miners typically select transactions to maximise their payoff.

If miners were to "lower their fees", they'd be accepting low-fee transactions and excluding high-fee transactions, which makes no sense for anybody. The miners would be getting less money than they could, and the people paying high fees don't even get any better service for it.

<comment><USER15> When energy becomes cheaper, miners can do more mining, leading to an increase in blocks. Given that people are only willing to pay so much for a transaction to complete, there is only so much demand at a certain price point. Once the supply of blocks increases, you eventually have price points where the demand no longer matches the supply. At this point a miner would lower their fee until the demand increases back to supply.

Supply and demand drives prices, but it does so through individual actors setting prices they are willing to pay/accept (or by algorithms that have been setup by some human who set up the rules by which it will set prices).

<comment><USER14> > a miner would lower their fee

They're not "lowering their fee". That's not how it works. They might stop mining altogether, but it can never cost more to include a transaction than not to include it, unless including it pushes out another transaction that pays a higher fee.

<comment><USER15> >They're not "lowering their fee".

So a miner will never reduce the cost to include a transaction into their block, even when they aren't getting enough to fill up the block?

>They might stop mining altogether

Maybe, but any market can experience short term irrationality. Maybe it takes them a few hours to stop mining in which they lose money. Or maybe stopping operations costs enough money that the miner won't stop even at a small loss, at least for some amount of time.

<comment><USER14> > So a miner will never reduce the cost to include a transaction into their > block, even when they aren't getting enough to fill up the block?

Sure, if you want to twist the wording like that, they "lower the fee" to the point where they can fill the blocks. But they're not really "lowering their fees". They don't even have a concept of the fee level they're "charging". They can either accept the fees that are available or not.

If they are mining at all then they want to accept the best fees that are available. There is literally no rationale for them to be mining non-full blocks when fee-paying transactions are available to put in the blocks. It's not like it costs more to mine a larger block. The cost to mine a block is fixed, so you may as well get as much fees as you can find.

<comment><USER15> >They can either accept the fees that are available or not.

Couldn't the same be said of a brick and mortar store? They either accept the offers they are given or they don't. That for some item they only accept offers of exactly 9.99 (plus tax), rejecting not only lower offers but higher offers, doesn't change that the interaction can be described in the same fashion.

All the rest also applies to normal supply and demand. When you do a production run of some item, the cost tends to be fixed per item. Doing another run at a different time may cost different, and it is possible for something extreme to happen (factory accident), but in general the cost of production of a single run is the same.

I see nothing about this that would void basic economic reasoning, where things like 'reducing fees' happens in certain conditions.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> Soon bitcoins will be replaced by patacones.

</comment><comment><USER17> does anyone else think that articles like this are fueled self interested parties who don't have a stake in crypto?

 _if_ crypto is here to stay, wont more efficient mining hardware, potentially more efficient software, and things like recent advances in solar relax these fears in reality?

<comment><USER18> > does anyone else think that articles like this are fueled self interested > parties who don't have a stake in crypto?

Journalists aren't supposed to have a stake in the subject they cover. That's the point. Not having a stake in cryptocurrency is "disinterested," not "self- interested."

<comment><USER19> There are plenty of journalists with conflicts of interest. It's not ethical, but they do. Financial columnists sometimes don't even admit their conflicts, it's crazy.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER20> The energy invested in adding transaction blocks to the Bitcoin blockchain (which requires iterating through nonces until one is found that can partially reverse a cryptographic hashing algorithm, consuming computing power) is what makes the blockchain _immutable_.

Consider: Modifying a transaction block from, say, 3 days ago, is practically impossible, because it would require burning the same amount of energy the entire network has burned over the past 3 days in an instant, before the network invests even more energy adding more transaction blocks. Forget about trying to modify or revert transactions from more than a few days ago.[a]

The energy invested in Bitcoin is _securing_ the transaction history.

There is value in that, no?

[a] Edit: I mean modifying a transaction right now, _without forking_ the blockchain. Please see maxerickson's comments and my responses below.

<comment><USER21> You don't have to match the energy burn, just the hash rate (so efficiency matters).

You also don't have to do it all at once, you just have to be faster than the network (If the private blocks are calculated 10% faster it only takes ~10 days to go back in time 1 day). But of course this attack isn't practical, actually executing it would demonstrate that the public network was a farce.

<comment><USER20> _> You don't have to match the energy burn, just the hash rate (so efficiency matters)._

Of course, but I don't know how anyone could be a lot more efficient that current miners, who are in a rat race to increase the efficiency of their mining operations. They probably think about energy consumption every waking hour of the day.

 _> You also don't have to do it all at once, you just have to be faster than the network (If the private blocks are calculated 10% faster it only takes ~10 days to go back in time 1 day)..._

Of course, but by then the Bitcoin network would have invested ~10 more days of energy into the network, and now instead of being one day behind, one would be ~10 days behind. One would have a different, forked blockchain far behind the original one, with no hope of catching up.

If one wants to modify a transaction from a day ago _over time_ , one must burn at least one day's worth of Bitcoin network energy consumption much faster than the network, in order to keep up with the network. If one wants to modify a transaction from a day ago _right now_ , one must burn at least one day's worth of Bitcoin network energy consumption _in an instant_.

PS. Note that I mean _without forking_. SORRY if that wasn't clear in my earlier comments!

<comment><USER21> Re your PS, there will still be an old and new consensus blockchain no matter how fast you calculate the replacement.

(that's why it is a "chain", the head depends on all previous values)

<comment><USER20> _> Re your PS, there will still be an old and new consensus blockchain no matter how fast you calculate the replacement._

Yes, of course. In fact, at any point in time there are always multiple blockchains, one for every miner burning energy to add a new block.

However, only the longest blockchain (with the greatest proof-of-work) is valid. As soon as there's a longer valid blockchain, the miners discard their individual work-in-progress blockchains and switch to the one with the most proof-of-work.

 _That_ longest blockchain is the Bitcoin blockchain. That is the blockchain one would have to modify to alter the transaction history in the Bitcoin network without forking.

FWIW, I don't think we disagree; I feel like we've been talking about slightly different things until just now.

<comment><USER21> We are kind of talking about different things. I'm talking about how at the protocol level the contents of the longest chain do not matter, it is by rule the "consensus blockchain".

It naturally flows from there that as long as you can calculate blocks faster than the network, you can rewrite past transactions, with the speed difference restricting how far back you can rewrite.

There's no need to do it in an instant and doing it in an instant isn't any different than doing it more slowly (other than the amount of hidden hash power revealed).

<comment><USER20> Yes, I agree.</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment>