NSA infected 50,000 computer networks with malicious software - <AUTHOR> http://www.nrc.nl/nieuws/2013/11/23/nsa-infected-50000-computer-networks-with-malicious-software/ <comment><USER2> It's stories like this that make me wish we had the term "national security" as narrowly defined as the term "treason".

I wouldn't be surprised if many of America's largest corporations most often present their corporate interests as national security interests when they are lobbying our politicians.

Looking at that map, we need to be asking questions about where so many of those "implants" are located. I'm not surprised by all the little yellow dots covering China and Russia, But what are they doing littered all over Latin America (except Venezuela and Cuba). I would like to here the justification for considering Brazil a national security threat. Same for the red dots in places like Spain, Portugal and France.

The only national security threat in Brazil AFAIK is the Comando Vermelho[0], which operates out of Rio de Janeiro. And even then, only a few of the criminal organization leaders in Brazil tenuously relevant to US national security interests, such as Fernandinho Beira Mar[1].

The only way to justify the extent of such offensive implants is if we are using a definition of "national security" that is overly broad.

The only conclusion I can come to is that we've effectively waging a war against the rest of the World without an act of Congress declaring such a war.

[0] [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Comando_Vermelho](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Comando_Vermelho)

[1] IIRC, FBM is responsible for supplying a lot of the advanced Russian-made arms to the FARC. Even then the FARC is only a national security interest of the US because of our completely failed war on drugs.

<comment><USER3> Not to excuse the actions, which I find deplorable. Isn't Brazil one of our major agricultural trading partners? Making the internal security interests of Brazil our security interests? If our food supply was cut by 1/3 during half the year, that could be a big issue.

<comment><USER4> > If our food supply was cut by 1/3 during half the year, that could be a big > issue.

That would also be a massive issue for _Brazil_ to lose their largest agricultural trading partner. It's a competitive marketplace. Their industry, law enforcement agencies, and courts are sufficiently incentivized to protect it, or risk losing it to other countries.

I'm amazed that people view the need for some World Police to control and monitor our economic interests abroad, when there has been no clear failure of markets or democratic processes at protecting them historically.

These rationalizations sound border-line schizophrenic and paranoid. With scenarios comparable to conspiracies theories.

Are there really economic threats that necessitate secret intelligence agencies intercepting private communications of citizens within friendly sovereign nations? And a threat to whom? The representative population? Or primarily the special interests of the government - from where these secret orders/intelligence are held, classified, and acted upon in secret?

<comment><USER2> Furthermore, once you toss out the schizophrenic/paranoia explanation of why the NSA is doing this, the only other explanation is economic espionage, which they've claimed they haven't been doing. However know one knows the truth, and given what has been demonstrated so far, most countries should assume the worst with respect to the use of the NSA for economic espionage, and treat the US as a suspect trading partner.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> As an American, I feel like my country is actually putting me in long-term danger. The government is making America and Americans enemies of the _entire_ world.

If and when I ultimately have to feel the country, will I even be accepted into anywhere else?

What if they are suspicious that I work for the NSA? Or what if they just decide to treat Americans the way the US treats would-be immigrants to the US now--no, you can't come in?

<comment><USER6> >> _As an American, I feel like my country is actually putting me in long-term danger. The government is making America and Americans enemies of the entire world._

That has been happening since forever; it's just that the NSA stuff has made that fact visible to people who didn't see America's hypocrisy before.

I mean, there are people who actually believe this ---> [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=p6HOcLWP- Ls](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=p6HOcLWP-Ls)

<comment><USER5> I don't want to take the time to watch that video, but I actually do think that 99% of hatred of America historically has been due to the moral inferiority of the haters.

For example, fundamentalist Islamists, and all those who wish to sympathize with them, are " _right_ " to hate America. Socialists are _right_ to hate America--the American constitution fundamentally stands for the opposite moral code, and American prosperity is evidence that the American morality is the right one.

That said, the GOP is opposed to that very morality, and the Democrat party even more-so, so the country is being rapidly destroyed from the inside (and has been on that path for almost 100 years, just accelerating or decelerating occasionally).

<comment><USER7> Nope. The reason some people hate the US is because the country interferes (up to the point of overthrowing governments) with the entire world.

Yeah, it can be argued that there is some kind of problem with people more prone to hating than to actually dealing with the problem. But there is no excuse to think the reason that they target the US any other than them destroying their country.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> We don't need the Snowden disclosures to know this; it has for 15 years been the worst kept secret in computer security. People from the various groups in NSA that do this work talk about having done it on Twitter. Some of the smartest people in vulnerability research came from stints in NSA.

Be outraged that we're spying on your country if that makes you feel better, I guess. I'd rather nobody spied on each other either. But it is intellectually dishonest to pretend that people are just now discovering that NSA was breaking into computers around the world. That is literally the _charter_ of the NSA. It's why they exist at all. There isn't even a pretense of a different purpose for the organization.

<comment><USER9> >But it is intellectually dishonest to pretend that people are just now discovering that NSA was breaking into computers around the world. That is literally the charter of the NSA. It's why they exist at all.

You're presenting a red herring here, tptacek. Any third grader who played played Splinter Cell would say, "No duh!" But the news isn't that the NSA is breaking into computers. The news is the _scope_ of the intrusions (installing malware on 50k computers), and of the _motivations_ for the behavior. We've been told it's to protect us from the extremist muslims attempting to establish a caliphate here in America [1]. That was a lie. 50k computers with US-planted malware on them is not a defensive maneuver. It's an offensive one. It's not about protecting America. It's about global information dominance.

Now, whether we want that or not is a different question; there are advantages and disadvantages to the issue depending to a large degree on whether or not you believe in American exceptionalism. But this is about an executive power grab, not about "spies spy, let's all go home now," and you're deluding yourself if you believe otherwise.

[1] [http://www.nsa.gov/public_info/_files/speeches_testimonies/T...](http://www.nsa.gov/public_info/_files/speeches_testimonies/Transcript_of_GEN_Alexanders_Black_Hat_Speech_31_July_2013.pdf)

<comment><USER8> The NSA was breaking into huge numbers of computers long before we were worried about a "caliphate", and the fact that they were doing it was showing up on people's resumes before 9/11 as well.

And this isn't about "American Exceptionalism". China didn't hack Google because they were upset about NSA hacking; they did it because Google had information they wanted, so they took it.

<comment><USER9> Then let's stop deluding ourselves and make it clear that the NSA's charter is about promoting what a small number of powerful unelected beaurocrats believe to be American interests, both politically and economically [1], without significant oversight. Then we can have an honest discussion on whether or not that's a good thing.

[1] [http://www.theguardian.com/world/2013/sep/09/nsa-spying- braz...](http://www.theguardian.com/world/2013/sep/09/nsa-spying-brazil-oil- petrobras)

<comment><USER2> And while we're at it, let's stop letting them wave the "but the terrorists" flag every time they justify a program for which the goal is a lot more than terrorism (assuming many programs are about terrorism at all. Personally, I suspect most programs have nothing to do with terrorism, but that there is no better way to push through support than to argue "but the terrorists").

<comment><USER10> Many attacks against USA are motivated because of actions like the ones from NSA. Other countries are starting to consider the USA an enemy to be defeated because bulshit likes this is getting shown. If citizens of other countries start to make an outcry their leaders will make retaliations even if just for show.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> Don't people usually get to spend decades in prison for that? Shouldn't justice be the same for the NSA as it was for Kevin Mitnick?

<comment><USER6> As much as I _really_ don't like what the NSA is doing, this argument isn't valid. Law enforcement privileges cannot be directly compared to those of regular citizens. If you want to argue they've abused their privileges... then I'm with you 1,337%

<comment><USER12> Is NSA "law enforcement" though? They are spies. It is (or should be) also quite _illegal_ for them to be doing that to its own citizens, so if they do that, they _should_ be in prison.

Too bad we live in a time where the president of US and Congress, prefer to _protect_ these guys no matter what (whether it's spying or torture), instead of punishing them according to the law.

<comment><USER2> I really don't consider the NSA to be law enforcement. What, if any, US laws are they responsible for enforcing?

The FBI, Secret Service, Highway Patrol, city, state and country police departments, sheriffs, etc. are all in charge of enforcing laws. The NSA and the CIA as far as I can tell are not. Additionally neither are really tasked with domestic operations of any kind. National domestic law enforcement issues fall under the jurisdiction of the FBI.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> What would happen if NSA mistakenly targets a nuclear reactor, and a bug in the malicious software caused a meltdown.

Is that a declaration of war, similar to a US launching a nuke? Would US be liable, and under what jurisdiction? Could the US President be put under Interpool arrest warrant, charged as an terrorist?

Sabotage, especially when the target can not be fully verified, is a dangerous game. IP addresses are easily mistakenly taken as identity, even if proxying is the number one method to evade detection.

<comment><USER8> Yes, that seems pretty simple: if NSA hacking caused a nuclear disaster, that would be an act of war. And?

<comment><USER14> No, that would not simply be an act of war. If that was the case, it would actually be a war crime, according to the international humanitarian law.

<comment><USER8> "International law" is a lie we tell ourselves to make us feel safer. And, I'm on the "all wars are crimes" side of this issue as well.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> So, the 250 lb gorilla in the room: Linux, or Windows or ...?

Seriously, I'd like to know. I mean it's probably Windows for all the usual reasons (incomparable installed base, lots of attack surface, active exploit community, MSFT gives exploits to NSA before publishing), but what if it isn't? What if all this is done by Cisco IOS?

<comment><USER3> Given the amount of closed source routing hardware built by U.S. companies, it would surprise me more if they weren't complicit in similar activities to Microsoft on this topic. I've never been big on conspiracy theories, but this isn't really so much a conspiracy as what would be an obvious point of being able to distribute information from global sources.

When Iran buys computer hardware via third parties, odds are the software may well be a generation or two older... Having knowledge of internal exploit vectors would be invaluable to a state actor (like the NSA).

In my career I've been contacted (usually by recruiter) to consider projects by the RIAA, MPAA and the NSA... None of these were cracking projects or otherwise covert that I am aware of. Just the same, I don't think I could work for an organization that works directly against ideologies that I believe in.. those being liberty, privacy and the greater public good. On the last point some may well believe that these organizations work towards that, I disagree.

</comment></comment><comment><USER16> Is it me or with NSA entities power we do not live in democracy anymore? They can manipulate everything, from google results, voice, emails to the actuals votes.

</comment><comment><USER17> what pisses me off most about this is that if you, Joe Public does it, it's illegal and if you get caught, you're arrested and charged for computer fraud, espionage or whatever else they can pin on you. But it's fine for them to do the same thing. The hypocrisy is disgraceful.

<comment><USER18> Steal a little and they throw you in jail, steal a lot and they make you King.

<comment><USER17> Ain't that the truth

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER19> On one hand I can see how this looks bad (along with all the other revelations), but you've got to admit, for the taxes we've been paying, it's impressive how, albeit arguably misguided, talented and prolific our intelligence agencies are.

</comment><comment><USER20> By treating allies like enemies US is creating new enemies.</comment>


Ask HN: An app which allows you to follow a Facebook page without liking it in fb - <AUTHOR> Hi.
Did you ever not like a facebook page just because you were worried that your friends will know about your interest? I believe we need to give users an option to `follow` a page without letting his/her friends know that he/she follows/likes a certain page.
I made an app which allows you to follow facebook pages without actually liking those pages in facebook. This app will allow you to `follow` various facebook pages and this app will have a `wall` where you will have a PICTURES FEED of the facebook pages that you are following. Will you be interested in trying out this app?
Please let me know. Thanks for your time. <comment><USER2> If it meets the guidelines, this could make a good Show HN. Good luck. [https://news.ycombinator.com/showhn.html](https://news.ycombinator.com/showhn.html)

<comment><AUTHOR> As the app is a hybrid app, ready for its release only on Android platform, I am uncertain on how many will actually try it out when posted in Show HN. What do you think?

<comment><USER3> A couple of thoughts:

This indicates a dependency (on mobile devices) that is not inherent in the problem domain (following a page on Facebook). The dependency on mobile devices impedes the critical business function of receiving feedback from potential users. The app prototype could just as easily be a web page.

Overall, the app has a dependency on Facebook's API's and terms of service. Facebook can change theses arbitrarily or decide the app violates their intent.

Good luck.

<comment><AUTHOR> 2nd dependency, Facebook deciding that the app violates their intent, I never thought it. If Facebook in fact does that, I don't think I can do anything about it.

1st dependency, dependency on mobile devices, yeah, I regret starting with the mobile app. Though this is a hybrid app, considering the time that I can spend on this and my pace, I might take nearly a month to make a web app. And now, I am not sure if I should go ahead and release the Android version, or work on the web app and release web app first. Any suggestions?

<comment><USER3> If it's ready for release on Android then nothing is lost by releasing it now. In fact it might bring the dependency on Facebook into play faster and it's good to get to 'No' quickly. [1]

As a general observation, many successful apps have a website in addition to a presence in the app stores. So it makes sense to assume you'll be building a web page anyway. For an app like yours, it's probably easier to test and iterate core logic on a webpage than in a mobile device.

Whether it makes sense to build a web page at this point requires looking at the risk of the second dependency versus the cost of building a page and that's a business decision for your business.

[1]: [http://venturebeat.com/2013/06/26/get-to-no-as-fast-as- you-c...](http://venturebeat.com/2013/06/26/get-to-no-as-fast-as-you-can/)

<comment><AUTHOR> I released the app in Play Store and made a Show HN too. If you can, please try it out and please share your thoughts. Thanks for your time.

[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13262155](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13262155)</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment>


Developer: Reasons I don't blog or write - <AUTHOR> https://medium.com/@kwketh/reasons-i-dont-blog-or-write-67a8165f7ef1 <comment><USER2> How refreshing to read, I feel much the same way.</comment>


Creature & Castles - HTML5 Game converted from iOS (disclaimer: I wrote it) - <AUTHOR> https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/hfpeacgpdnhofhebmincihdelcemhagd

<comment><USER2> I played to level 10 and enjoyed the game. I laughed a bit when I saw "You were touched by a priest!" ...

</comment><comment><AUTHOR> I'm glad you liked it :D</comment>


False Banana Tree - <AUTHOR> https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ensete_ventricosum <comment><USER2> Musaceae are (by my surprise, I must admit) one of the most important edible types of plants in the world, but developped countries know only about one single cultivar. Is crazy if we think about it.

Ensete ventricosum is not really hard to find in occident. With its red or mottled red leaves is the main banana tree cultured indoors as ornamental plant, and can be found in most professional gardens. I didn't knew that the root is edible, is very interesting.

Musa velutina is also very ornamental with its minute pink bananas full of seeds. Both species can have >3m long leaves easily. Dwarf forms are more suitable for standard houses</comment>


Random Thoughts on the Admissions Scandal - <AUTHOR> https://blog.computationalcomplexity.org/2019/03/random-thoughts-on-admissions-scandal.html <comment><USER2> > 1) Your kid likes (1) helping the homeless and (2) Ramsey Theory and (3) > helping the homeless learn Ramsey Theory.

Bad form sir, bad form.</comment>


Show HN: Weekly – a simple and fast todo list for every device - <AUTHOR> http://www.getweekly.co

<comment><AUTHOR> Developer here, would love to hear feedback from HN on the app, website, or anything else.

Also for curious developers: this was built using the really cool new 'Chrome Apps for Mobile' tool. It's a Google fork of Apache Cordova that allows you to publish Chrome apps to Android and iOS. I built this with AngularJS on top of that tool. I'll also happily answer questions on the development experience.

<comment><USER2> Always nice to see new apps. As it is free and (?) Ad-free: any chance of publishing the source? Or a "making-of" blog post?

I see the Android version is a whooping 32mb... : / I suppose it bundles a run-time of sorts? Why does it ask for permission to access files and photos?

<comment><AUTHOR> And the files and photos are because the web app has external image resources.

<comment><USER2> Sounds like a bug that those are not bundled (by the tool) into the app. "Access to files and photos" is a pretty wide permission (not that Android is particularly secure anyway -- but one can hope some of the parts will be patched up eventually).

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER3> What happens if you fail to complete a task on the assigned day? Does it automatically carry forward?

I used to use Teux Deux and quite liked how it did that: [https://teuxdeux.com/](https://teuxdeux.com/)

No matter what I try, I always go back to paper though.

<comment><AUTHOR> It stays on that day, however on Sunday when a new week begins all of your tasks that were incomplete from the last week get moved to the current week.

Also Teux Deux looks great, I'll try to see how they do things. I too tend to resort to pen and paper, but I'm working on making Weekly my replacement.</comment></comment>


Digital Disruption in Insurance - <AUTHOR> http://pebblecode.com/blog/disruption-in-insurance/ <comment><USER2> Not sure I understand p2p car insurance. Pooling drivers together is already called insurance. Where you run into issues is each state has it's own insurance regulations. Also, new business underwriting is pretty risky. Underwriting/pricing is notoriously complicated. And lawyers love when you screw stuff up. Most of the time it could take 5-10 years to see if an insurance business is profitable.</comment>


Registered domain one day, got 23 calls from marketers the next - <AUTHOR> Has anybody else experienced this lately? I wonder if it is related to gdpr drying up data on older registrations? Any other theories?
Edit: I used Godaddy, didn't pay for privacy. No calls today so far today (10am east coast).
Edit 2: Just talked to a coworker, it happened to his son recently and he registered at register.com. I think that supports my theory. <comment><USER2> I had this recently happen as well. I always go through namecheap and use their (now free) privacy offering, yet from one of my domains (a .digital) I received lots of spam calls from Indian dev shops offering their services. Thankfully it only lasted a few days.

</comment><comment><USER3> You're not providing a lot of details. What registrar did you use? Did you opt in with the anonymity/privacy most of them offer? Because if you don't anyone can get your info from a simple whois lookup.

<comment><AUTHOR> Edited the summary. Yes, it is a simple whois to look up my info, but I have registered well over 100 domains exactly the same way in the past and this has never happened.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> In inquired about a domain ~3 years ago that was grossly overpriced, from my work email address.

Two weeks ago I got a call on my personal cell from someone wanting to know if I was still interested in buying the domain.

</comment><comment><USER5> Do not use a your personal e-mail address in a domain registration. Either use a fake one, or some dedicated one you can filter.

Don't use your real address or phone number.

<comment><USER6> > Don't use your real address or phone number.

This is terrible advice that could possibly result in you losing your domain, from the Registrar trying to contact you on your fake address or phone, and deciding to suspend / delete your domain per ICANN Agreements / Rules.

> 2013 Registrar Accreditation Agreement (RAA) – The Whois Accuracy Program > Specification of the 2013 Registrar Accreditation Agreement (RAA) requires > registrars to validate and verify certain Whois data fields, which may > include contacting you by phone, email or postal mail.

> Registrars must suspend or delete domain names that are not timely verified.

Source: [https://www.icann.org/resources/pages/contact- verification-2...](https://www.icann.org/resources/pages/contact- verification-2013-05-03-en)

</comment></comment><comment><USER7> I'm in the UK. I find that .com purchases generate much more spam.

</comment><comment><USER8> "didn't pay for privacy"

If you don't pay your info is public.

What did you expect?

<comment><USER9> Not paying extra to hide your data doesn't mean giving consent to being repeatedly harassed over the phone.

We're used to the abuses of marketing departments, but we shouldn't.

</comment></comment><comment><USER10> Yep that's a lesson learned for me as well. I got blasted with Indian dev shops asking if I wanted their "expert" services.

I did follow up to see what "expert" meant and I was not surprised to find a site that looked like early 2000s.

</comment><comment><USER11> yes fuck go daddy they purposely did this because i didn't opt in for their paid privacy crap service. They also emailed the shit out of me.

<comment><AUTHOR> Yep, I used Godaddy too and didn't pay for the privacy. I got several emails but that's normal for me to get a lot of crap emailed to me. The phone calls were not normal. I tried asking one person where they got my number but they just hung up on me.

</comment></comment><comment><USER12> Same thing happened to me on bluehost.

</comment><comment><USER13> Yes, emails too for about 3 months</comment>


Github makes it so easy, so Box UK starts sharing its libraries  - <AUTHOR> http://www.boxuk.com/news/announcing-box-uk-open-source-software-libraries

<comment><USER2> Thanks for sharing your code! Much appreciated!</comment>


Location-based data wiping for Android phones - <AUTHOR> http://idealab.talkingpointsmemo.com/2011/10/paging-james-bond-researchers-develop-system-that-wipes-data-based-on-location.php

<comment><USER2> Location seems like a great input for a security policy if it's reliable enough. Companies might want to wipe data if a cellphone enters Gawker Media's or TechCrunch's office. A useful policy would be to wipe data if it enters a law enforcement agency. It would help protect one's Fourth Amendment rights in states that allow all data on a smartphone (including email, text, photos, call history and contacts) to be searched without probable cause.

</comment><comment><USER3> [http://www.engadget.com/2010/06/18/apple-launches-find-my- ip...](http://www.engadget.com/2010/06/18/apple-launches-find-my-iphone-app/) funny that nobody commented that iPhone had this :).

<comment><USER4> That is not the same thing as what this article is talking about. Remote wipe has been available for some time through different methods.

What is being done here is an "enterprise" type integration, that data put on the phone is kept track of and if the phone leaves a "secure" area, then the tagged data can be automatically wiped.

This enables some different models for wiping that might be more fluid then the "nuke it from orbit" option. By tagging specific pieces of data as sensitive (and performing information flow analysis to track wherever that data gets propogated to), they can target the wiping to just the sensitive data. So before you even realize a phone is stolen, it can be securely wiped.

Another interesting use case is to automatically wipe the sensitive data whenever leaving the workplace, or perhaps some radius around work. That way, whenever you go on travel (or even just home for the day), the sensitive data is wiped, but say your contacts, personal email, and other app data could be retained, leaving it as a perfectly functional smartphone, without any of the company's data to lose.

Holes in their technique include simple attacks like turning the phone off (and pulling the SD card), but hopefully the sensitive data is also encrypted whenever it resides on disk.

<comment><USER5> Bypasses for this sort of technique seem too obvious to have escaped the research team. I could be wrong as it's happened before. The article describes limiting functionality of the device based on location. Perhaps a few of the more obvious bypasses could be mitigated this way?

The wording strikes me as backwards, though. The device ought to be largely disabled outside of the facility, nearly useless. Proximity to certain areas of the facility would enable the device with additional functions (hardware and software), as well as accessibility to data.

I see this benefitting a negligent user more than deterring a malicious one.</comment></comment></comment>


Why Can't Silicon Valley Take a Joke? - <AUTHOR> http://nymag.com/daily/intel/2012/11/why-cant-silicon-valley-take-a-joke.html <comment><USER2> Kind of like the racist "jokes" at Kixeye? Oh, no. Actually this is all about Randi Zuckeberg's lack of popularity. Which seems to have nothing to do with humour. And everything to do with her lack of actually making something (useful).[1]

_______

[1] Except a reality TV show.</comment>


Linode GPU Instances - <AUTHOR> https://blog.linode.com/2019/06/19/introducing-linode-gpu-instances/ <comment><USER4> Hey peeps full disclosure I work as one of Linode's RnD engineers. I want to try to get to as many of these as I can.

One of the biggest questions is why the Quadro RTX 6000? Few things:

1\. Cost it has the same performance as the 8000. The difference is 8 more GB of RAM that comes at a steep premium. Cost is important to us as it allows us to be at a more affordable price point.

2\. We have all heard or used the Tesla V100, and it's a great card. The biggest issue is that it's expensive. So one of the things that caught our eye is the RTX 6000 has a fast Single-Precision Performance, Tensor Performance, and INT8 performance. Plus the Quadro RTX supports INT4. [https://www.nvidia.com/content/dam/en-zz/Solutions/design- vi...](https://www.nvidia.com/content/dam/en-zz/Solutions/design- visualization/quadro-product-literature/quadro-rtx-6000-us- nvidia-704093-r4-web.pdf) [https://images.nvidia.com/content/technologies/volta/pdf/tes...](https://images.nvidia.com/content/technologies/volta/pdf/tesla- volta-v100-datasheet-letter-fnl-web.pdf) Yes, these are manufactures numbers, but it caused us pause. As always, your mileage may vary.

3\. RT cores. This is the first time (TMK) that a cloud provider is bringing RT cores into the market. There are many use cases for RT that have yet to be explored. What will we come up with as a community?!

Now with all that being said, there is a downside, FP64 aka double precision. The Tesla V100 does this very well, whereas the Quadro RTX 6000 does poorly in comparison. We think although those workloads are important, the goal was to find a solution that fits a vast majority of the use cases.

So is the marketing true to get the most out of MI/AI/Etc? Do you need a Tesla to get the best performance? Or is the Tesla starting to show its age? Give the cards a try I think you'll find these new RTX Quadros with Turning architecture are not the same as the Quadros of the past.

<comment><USER5> If you really want low cost to compute for Deep Learning and you needs lots of compute and don't want to pay for V100s, then the AMD Vega R7 is the card for you. 700 dollars, 16GB Ram, 1TB of GPU bandwidth (higher than the V100!), works with Tensorflow (pip install tensorflow-rocm), and about 60% of the performance on resnet-50.FP64 is not fully gimped (it is halved, i think - <USER3> still quite good). Put lots of them in servers with PCI 4.0, and you can do great things. Here's a recent talk on it:

[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=neb1C6JlEXc](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=neb1C6JlEXc)

<comment><USER6> _If you really want low cost to compute for Deep Learning and you needs lots of compute and don 't want to pay for V100s, then the AMD Vega R7 is the card for you. 700 dollars, 16GB Ram, 1TB of GPU bandwidth (higher than the V100!), works with Tensorflow (pip install tensorflow-rocm), and about 60% of the performance on resnet-50.FP64 is not fully gimped (it is halved, i think - <USER3> still quite good)._

Two of my colleagues use high-end AMD GPUs to train RNNs and transformers with tensorflow-rocm. There are still some nasty bugs (e.g. [1]), so it is currently not for everyone. _However_ , given how far they have come compared to 1-2 years ago, it is very likely that in a year or so, they are a real competitor to NVIDIA for compute. That competition was long needed.

[1] [https://github.com/ROCmSoftwarePlatform/tensorflow- upstream/...](https://github.com/ROCmSoftwarePlatform/tensorflow- upstream/issues/325)

<comment><USER5> Agreed, it is not quite prime-time yet. They are trying to upstream all the ROCm stuff in TensorFlow, and when it gets into mainline and stabilizes, i agree that it has great potential for take-off - particularly from price- sensitive researchers and large companies who need huge GPU farms.

<comment><USER7> Two Questions.

I wonder if Google is in any way helping AMD in the TensorFlow and ROCm?

What happen when Intel join the GPU race in 2020. Making their own _ROCm_ again?

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> I would go with Hetzner: [https://www.hetzner.com/dedicated- rootserver/ex51-ssd-gpu](https://www.hetzner.com/dedicated- rootserver/ex51-ssd-gpu)

GTX1080 for 100$ a month. Grantend, it is older, but it still works for DL. Let's say you do 10 experiments a month for ~20 hours. Thats 0.5$/hour and I don't think it is 3 times faster.

If you then want to do even more learning the price goes even down.

//DISCLAIMER: I do not work for them, but used it for DL in the past and it was for sure cheaper than GCP or AWS. If you have to do lots of experiments (>year) go with your own hardware, but do not underestimate the convenience of >100MByte/s if you download many big training sets.

<comment><USER9> How does data in/out work in practice with them? I see this 4 Tbit bandwidth but do you happen to know what that translates to and what happens if you exceed that?

Also check availability shows a 5 day wait current: "EX51-SSD-GPU for Falkenstein (FSN1): Due to very high demand for these server models, its current setup time is approximately up to 5 workdays.*" Or maybe there are other regions/dcs.

<comment><USER10> I have like 18 of their auction servers that are unmetered at 1gbps and really make that bandwidth sweat. I've never had issues honestly, and they've never tried to dreamhost me. I love it.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> Still way too much money when a 2x 2080Ti comparably specced machine under my desk costs less than 2.5 months of their billing rate, and 4x 1080Ti servers in my garage cost about 1 month of their 4-GPU machine _and_ have more SSD storage. This pricing is totally insane, especially if not billed per-minute (which in Linode's case it is not) and if there are no cheaper preemptible/spot instances.

<comment><USER9> I'm starting to think one can adopt the simple rule of switch to a DIY build whenever there enough work to keep a GPU busy for 2 months, otherwise if the workload is intermittent then better strategy is leasing, especially considering the purchase cost/performance is constantly dropping.

<comment><USER12> It would seem there could be a market for multi-month rentals of a ML/gaming rig, with return shipping/packaging?

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> Looks amazing. Linode has worked really well for me over the years.

One thing I noticed when recently trying to get a GPU cloud instance, the high core counts are usually locked until you put in a quota increase. Then sometimes they want to call you.

So I wonder if Linode will have to do that or if they can figure out another way to handle it that would be more convenient.

I also wonder if Linode could somehow get Windows on these? I know they generally don't do anything other than Linux though. My graphics project where I am trying to run several hundred ZX Spectrum libretro cores on one screen only runs on Windows.

</comment><comment><USER14> That pricing isn't too bad. They come with decent SSD storage too, which is key for the large datasets that make a GPU instance worthwhile.

Linode skews more towards smaller scale customers with many of their offerings so I think the GPUs here make sense. The real test will be how often they upgrade them and what they upgrade them too.

</comment><comment><USER15> I love Linode support. There are cheaper places but I have my Key VPSs there.

</comment><comment><USER16> Interesting to see another cloud provider go with Quadro chips. NVIDIA repackages the same silicon under several different brands (GeForce, Quadro, GRID, Tesla) and we ([https://paperspace.com](https://paperspace.com)) have found Quadro to offer the best price/performance value. Despite minor performance characteristics, such as FP16 support in the Tesla family, Quadros can run all of the same workloads eg graphics, HPC, Deep Learning etc. If you're interested in a similar instance for less $/hr, check out the Paperspace P6000.

</comment><comment><USER17> Huh. Given that cheap cloud GPUs are nowadays sought for training AI, launching with a Workstation-oriented GPU is an odd product decision.

<comment><USER7> Are there any difference? Seems to support CUDA as well, I don't see anything wrong with it.

Also seems to be a lot cheaper than AWS counterpart.

<comment><USER17> It seems like a Quadro RTX 6000 is comparable performance-wise to a P100 ([https://askgeek.io/en/gpus/vs/NVIDIA_Quadro-RTX-6000-vs- NVID...](https://askgeek.io/en/gpus/vs/NVIDIA_Quadro-RTX-6000-vs- NVIDIA_Tesla-P100-SXM2)), although there are no tests for the ML angle.

A P100 on GCP is $1.46/hr alone, so maybe Linode is a good deal if the performance is indeed comparable.

<comment><USER18> RTX 6000 is significantly faster than a P100 outside of FP64, and is the fastest or 2nd fastest GPU outside of FP64 work [1] (the GV100 is sometimes faster, sometimes slower than the RTX 6000 but costs more). For FP64, GV100 based GPUS are quite a bit faster than P100s.

Also, you should really ignore pretty much all of the comparison sites that show up when you search for computer component comparisons as they're nearly all awful. The one you posted doesn't show a single benchmark comparison between them, and compares numbers like clock speed which isn't comparable between architectures, or memory clock speed instead of memory bandwidth leading to the laughable conclusion that the RTX 6000 has "9.9x more memory clock speed: 14000 MHz vs 1408 MHz" vs the P100 when the P100 uses HBM2 and has 732.2 GB/s vs 672.0 GB/s of actual memory bandwidth.

[1] [https://www.reddit.com/r/hardware/comments/9xx6cz/nvidia_qua...](https://www.reddit.com/r/hardware/comments/9xx6cz/nvidia_quadro_rtx_50006000_teardown_review/)

<comment><USER9> [https://www.techpowerup.com/gpu-specs/quadro- rtx-6000.c3307](https://www.techpowerup.com/gpu-specs/quadro-rtx-6000.c3307)

Has this section:

Theoretical Performance Pixel Rate 169.9 GPixel/s Texture Rate 509.8 GTexel/s FP16 (half) performance 32.62 TFLOPS (2:1) FP32 (float) performance 16.31 TFLOPS FP64 (double) performance 509.8 GFLOPS (1:32)

Perhaps for at least rough performance comparisons it is a good start.

My impression the current favorite card by DIY types is an RTX 2080 Ti.

[https://www.techpowerup.com/gpu-specs/geforce- rtx-2080-ti.c3...](https://www.techpowerup.com/gpu-specs/geforce- rtx-2080-ti.c3305)

However I think nvidia will take legal action against any service provider trying to use those in a cloud or server offering.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER19> Isn't AWS cheaper?

edit: could be wrong thought I read of AWS being .65 dollars an hour for deep learning GPU use. edit2: Did a quick look, the .65 dollars doesn't include the actual instance, so its around 1.8 an hour on the low end, I think this cheaper.

<comment><USER20> p2.xlarge comes with an NVIDIA Tesla K80 GPU for $0.90/hr, but this is now an "old" GPU and the RTX Quadro 6000 should have much higher performance (but I was unable to find any machine learning benchmarks).

p3.2xlarge has NVIDIA Tesla V100 GPU which is NVIDIA's most recent deep learning GPU, but it's $3.06/hr.

That said, AWS is among the most expensive providers if you just need a deep learning GPU (but obviously AWS offers a lot of other useful things). For example, OVH Public Cloud has Tesla V100 for $2.66/hr. And comparable NVIDIA GPUs that are not "datacenter-grade" should be even cheaper; AWS, GCP, Azure, etc. are unable to offer them because of contracts when they buy e.g. the Tesla V100.

<comment><USER21> The K80s are super outdated now. Google used to offer them for free for 12hrs a day on their Colab platform, but they upgraded them to using the Tesla T4s. Note you can get a K80 on GCP (unreserved) for $.45/hr.

This is a good deal.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER22> Does anybody know if there are any cloud instances with AMD GPUs?

<comment><USER23> What would you want it for over nvidia in the cloud?

<comment><USER24> Testing if nothing else, I'd you are shipping to be people running AMD GPUs then that would be useful without having to buy a card and another machine for it to go in

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER25> Oh, hey! It only adds 1/5th of the GPU's purchase price.

</comment><comment><USER26> Can these be used for crypto mining at any level of efficiency? I was able to mine GRLC back in the day on AWS spot instances at a VERY mild degree of profitability.

<comment><USER27> not really, most cryptocurrency is at the stage where the only thing effective is a combination of custom ASICs and nearly free electricity. About twelve months ago I looked into mining ethereum with state of the art GPUs and it would not have had a reasonable ROI unless I was literally paying $0.00 per kWh. And that was before its value per coin dropped a lot.

<comment><USER28> Let's replace baseboard heaters with cryptominers.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER29> Can you rent them by minute?

<comment><USER20> Linode bills per-hour: [https://www.linode.com/docs/platform/billing-and- support/bil...](https://www.linode.com/docs/platform/billing-and- support/billing-and-payments/)

</comment></comment><comment><USER30> Will this profitably mine bitcoins? :p

<comment><USER31> No.</comment></comment>


Life beyond HTTP 1.1: Google's SPDY - <AUTHOR> http://www.igvita.com/2011/04/07/life-beyond-http-11-googles-spdy/

<comment><USER2> Nice, but a bit worrysome. Is such binary protocol a Good Thing?

Ancient people — even though they hadn't much CPU, memory and network resources — in all their wisdom made high-level protocols text-oriented. Sure, they didn't consider everything (so we're still haunted with evil spirits of, for example, UTF-7 and quoted-printable), but overall design was simple yet perfectly functional. And anyone could use just a telnet client to talk to HTTP (FTP, SMTP, etc) server. With SPDY you can't do such thing anymore, you need specialized software.

I'm all for something like "Upgrade: SPDY"/"HTTP/1.1 101 Switching Protocols" (then binary framed message-oriented protocol goes into effect), but I somehow worried with binary-from-the-beginnig "HTTP 2.0". Maybe I'm just too conservative?

(Side question: If we want multiplexing streams so badly, why noone cares about SCTP? Is it flawed or inappropriate?)

<comment><USER3> Is there any need today to talk manually to a web server using telnet?

<comment><USER4> I most commonly do it to read the HTTP headers using HEAD.

<comment><USER5>
        curl -I

is an easy way to do that as well.

It requires fewer keystrokes :P

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> I don't like SPDY. It's trying to solve a transport problem at the application level. Plus it seems to be quite complex.

I'd love to see Google promote a transport protocol like SCTP[1], and do HTTP over SCTP instead. If Google pushed SCTP a little bit, we might see it pop on Linux and Windows within a few years.

[1]:[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stream_Control_Transmission_Pro...](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stream_Control_Transmission_Protocol)

<comment><USER2> Same thoughts.

Present-day GNU/Linux should work with IPPROTO_SCTP, it's only Windows who lack the implementation out of the box.

<comment><USER7> Correct me if I'm wrong, but as far as I'm aware, GNU has nothing to do with SCTP. Linux supports SCTP.

My non-GNU Linux system talks SCTP just fine.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> Whoa, so Google Chrome is now talking SPDY to www.google.com ? I had no idea.

Anyone know a good way of running a packet sniffer on OS X so I can see it in action?

<comment><USER9> chrome://net-internals/#spdy

<comment><USER10> Wow! When they removed the "<http://> from Chrome, I knew exactly why they were doing it: to hide the SDPY rollout while simultaneously not breaking copy paste interop with non-Chrome uses. However, I had _no idea_ they had already done it! Amazingly clever and effective. I totally saw it coming and then totally missed it's arrival. Awesome.

<comment><USER11> No, this is pure conspiracy theory. :-)

The decision to drop "<http://> from the display was a UI decision and had nothing to do with the internals. The idea is that the "<http://> is just user-confusion. Most users can't spell HTTP, much less know why it is there. Why do we subject our poor users to it? Personally, I don't care.

Chrome does not recognize "spdy://" as a protocol scheme, and the UI display changes nothing with respect to how chrome selects protocols.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> The author is wrong about his HTTP history.

Keep-alive was a feature of HTTP/1.0 and was phased out in HTTP/1.1 in favour of "persistent connections."

<comment><AUTHOR> Hmm, that's good catch - thanks. HTTP 1.0 didn't explicitly specify anything around persistent connections, so in practice you can add Keep-Alive header and hope that the server will respect it. By comparison, HTTP 1.1 defaults to persistent always and requires a "Connection: close" header to indicate otherwise.

</comment></comment><comment><USER13> So wait, if we somehow ran SPDY on our own servers, would Chrome auto-detect it, or is it hardwired to Google services?

<comment><AUTHOR> There are several proposed mechanisms to "enable" SPDY. The preferred is to run over SSL, and to use their NPN extension to negotiate SPDY support: [http://tools.ietf.org/html/draft-agl-tls- nextprotoneg-00.htm...](http://tools.ietf.org/html/draft-agl-tls- nextprotoneg-00.html)

Alternatively, there is work on sending an "upgrade" header in your regular HTTP response: <http://code.google.com/p/chromium/issues/detail?id=69688>

The NPN route is obviously the best in terms of performance, since the protocol can be negotiated as part of the TLS handshake..

Long story short: you can definitely run your own SPDY server and Chrome will auto-detect and use the protocol.

</comment></comment><comment><USER14> Does anyone know of plans to build this into Firefox? Sounds like an interesting project.

Edit: already found it <https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=spdy>

</comment><comment><USER15> great thing is that Google has enough gravitational mass to move world in such direction without many years delay of negotiations inside protocol specification committee.

Once everybody is onboard, when the license fee will be requested?

</comment><comment><USER16> What I don't understand is why having multiple streams inside a single TCP channel is preferable to having many TCP channels.

<comment><USER17> Because setting up a TCP connection is costly in terms of roundtrips/latency. With SSL inside even more.

Also when you have only 1 connection you might better utilize the bandwidth you have because of TCP's slow-start algo.

<comment><USER16> I wonder if the better plan would be to insert another layer between TCP and HTTP (or any app layer protocol) that provides for multiple streams between the same points.

(If that's exactly what SPDY is, never mind.)

<comment><USER11> That's basically what SPDY is. It has two halves, a framing layer (which is generic), and a definition of how to embed HTTP within that framing layer. In theory, you could use the framing layer for other purposes, but we designed it tailor-made for http.

For the original question - HTTP can only send one request at a time. SPDY can send many all at the same time, avoiding lots of round trips. As a side effect, it sends fewer bytes and packets too. look for the IETF slides for the latest data.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER18> The title seems to imply HTTP 1.1 is already dead/abondoned, when in fact almost _nobody_ except Google is supporting SPDY.

Firefox doesn't support it, but if it's open enough there's a chance they might add support for it. MSIE support is far away and I wouldn't but any bets on it being supported any time this year. If SPDY is supposed to be more than a http-option (i.e. "beyond http 1.1") all clients need to support it. That's far from the case today.

Given that last time I heard about it was quite some time ago and little has changed, I would say a better title would be "Http-times: SPDY is still around, still looking for friends".

Just because it comes out of Google's door doesn't make anything a guaranteed success and I outside HN's usual Google-praising sphere I haven't ever heard a single geek mention it. I'm not saying it's dead either, but at this point it seems to have gathered very little interest and momentum.

<comment><USER19> Also SPDY does everything HTTP does, as seen from the 'upper layers' it looks and acts just like HTTP. Maybe more like HTTPS.</comment></comment>


Taking the guesswork out of airfares - <AUTHOR> http://story.getflyr.com/post/88989665178/taking-the-guesswork-out-of-airfares

<comment><USER2> "\- Asses"

Pretty sure that doesn't mean what you want it to mean.

<comment><AUTHOR> Indeed! more like: " Assess whether a better deal might become available during the period." Good catch ;-)</comment></comment>


New ICO "Graft Network" apparently oblivious to 2nd definition of "graft" - <AUTHOR> https://www.graft.network/ <comment> aaron-lebo Chuckled at the credit card with GRAFT on it. It's a typical ICO site: bootstrap, social buttons, popup to join Telegram channel. Well executed trolling?

</comment><comment><USER2> "Blockchain-based", "Untraceable, Unlinkable, Fungible. All Features of CryptoNote Plus Confidential Fee Amounts"

`New ICO "Graft Network" apparently oblivious to 2nd definition of "graft"`

Or maybe not

<comment><USER3> We have monero, no thank you.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> Holy shit it's real: [https://github.com/IPGlider/GraftNetwork](https://github.com/IPGlider/GraftNetwork)

<comment><USER5> Well... "real" is a stretch. It's a clone of Monero, modified only minimally.

[https://github.com/graft- project/GraftNetwork/commit/2737bf7...](https://github.com/graft- project/GraftNetwork/commit/2737bf7099445522699d477c3b45584043412102)

(Bonus: In a number of commits, they've deliberately removed copyright headers crediting Monero -- which may make this project a copyright violation.)

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> I like how their "Featured Media Coverage" links just to homepages of news networks and/of "paid press releases" about Graft.

</comment><comment><USER7> I am not a native English speaker. What definition are you referring to?

<comment><USER4> Bribery, corruption, embezzlement.</comment></comment>


Ask HN: If the WWWeb disappeared next month, what would you archive? - <AUTHOR> In view of https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21582942 and worse scenarios <comment><USER2> If we do archive anything, it is in the hopes to use it, but more certainly to share it again later.

What would this other sharing network be afterwise?</comment>


Tweethook: Twitter data, pushed to you - <AUTHOR> https://tweethook.com/

<comment><AUTHOR> Official press release is available here: <http://www.pitchengine.com/free- release.php?id=27243>

</comment><comment><USER2> Here is the "Review My Startup" thread for this: <http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=850819>

<comment><AUTHOR> Sorry Chad, I got a little excited and posted it here. :)

Everyone, upvote his Review thread.

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> How dpo they get the data? Do they have access to the firehose?

<comment><USER4> jazzychad, how do you get the data?

<comment><USER2> I definitely do not have the firehose. I get the data with already available API methods.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> I would be very nervous that this is something Twitter themselves are thinking of doing. This was talked about being one of the possible revenue streams for Twitter, and I fear that if and when Twitter turns this function on this website would be null-and-void.

Great idea though; however, I think the prices might be a little high for the common user. If you are focusing solely on businesses, you have hit your price point.

I wish you luck!

<comment><USER6> seems like doing something they are trying to do themselves could be good, perhaps they'll purchase it? that's what they did with summize.com for twitter search... and they have quite a bit more cash now than they did then

</comment></comment><comment><USER7> Why would someone use this over the twitter stream api directly?

<comment><USER2> Good question. Here are some reasons:

-Stream only tracks keyword tokens. TweetHook uses the Twitter Search query syntax.

\- Using the stream requires a dedicated server with a dedicated TCP connection resource to consume and parse/handle the data. TweetHook only requires that you have a web server somewhere that can handle POST data. Also TweetHook supports multiple endpoints, whereas the Stream can only terminate in one location.

\- Using the stream requires the consumer to multiplex the data and determine what keyword was matched when receiving data. TweetHook provides the actual query that was matched with the POSTed data. No multiplexing required.

\- The Stream requires a good bit of technical knowhow to get it running correctly. TweetHook aims to make receiving search data easy and accessible to anyone who has a website and knows some scripting. A Wordpress plugin could be developed, for example, to receive and display tweets relevant to the blog's content. Tweets could then be loaded from a local cache instead of depending on fetching data from the Twitter servers using a javascript widget (which usually delays page loads).

\- Currently the Stream and the Twitter Search data have different EULAs/TOS (this could change, of course).

This question is something I have thought quite a bit about as the Streaming API was launched after development on TweetHook had started. Currently I do not point out these differences on the website since I did not want to make it look like I was downplaying the Streaming API, which in itself is actually pretty cool.

Personally, I think that webhooks are more accessible to developers, and eventually to more tech savvy users like some bloggers. That's my $0.02 at least.

[edit] made some grammatical corrections

</comment></comment><comment><USER8> Also similar to GNIP</comment>


Why Does College Cost So Much? - <AUTHOR> http://economix.blogs.nytimes.com/2011/02/18/why-does-college-cost-so-much/ <comment><USER3> I suspect that Peter Schiff is closer to the mark.

<http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AIcfMMVcYZg#t=1m30s>

His hypothesis is that increasing the capacity of students to pay (to almost arbitrarily high levels) by providing government guarantees of student loans allows allows schools to charge ridiculously high tuition. To some extent, this is correct, and there is no reason for the people involved not to want to increase tuitions. For the school, higher tuition will mean the school can improve itself and become more attractive to students. For the lenders, higher tuition means more loans returning 5% or more for which the government assumes all the risk.

It isn't entirely accurate to say "the government assumes all the risk" either. Student debts are the most toxic debts around, and cannot be thrown off in bankruptcy. If you refuse to pay, the government is authorized to garnish your wages or raid your savings.

This isn't to say that Schiff's hypothesis explains the entirety of the increase in the cost of tuition, but I think that it plays a much larger role than what is discussed in the article.

<comment><USER4> This seems to be a much better explanation than the article provides, which seems to be along the lines of "the smart people teaching in college must be paid a lot."

The answer to the question posed by the headline is: It isn't. The correct question would be "Why does College cost so much IN THE US?," which implies there's a fundamental difference between the higher education system of the United States vs. that of a large part of the world.

You COULD claim that professors in other countries are being paid ridiculously low wages, but this sounds far fetched. A much more convincing explanation, in my opinion, would involve the difference in the way the economy of higher education works in the US versus other parts of the world.

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> Where I went to school, there was an "international programs in engineering office," a "minorities in engineering program office," a "engineering student entrepreneurship office", and many more that I can't remember, presumably duplicated on the liberal arts side, all populated by people earning salaries from the University.

It seems like there are a lot of people earning livings off of the University system who aren't educators or researchers. Maybe there's been a lot of growth in this sort of thing since the cheap-college days of yore?

<comment><USER6> The high-level administration has multiplied also, in addition to the more peripheral administrative initiatives growing. Where there might have once been a Chancellor and perhaps a Vice Chancellor, there's now a whole Office of the Chancellor, a slew of Vice-Chancellors and Executive Vice Chancellors and Provosts and Deans and Associate Deans, all with staff, etc. Their pay has also increased, even relative to other university pay; the salary multiple of top-level administrators relative to a median professor in 2010 versus 1960 is much larger.

It seems to largely be a result of the professionalization of the administration; in ye olden days universities were largely self-run by the faculty, with Deans and Vice-Deans just being professors who moved up into that position, sometimes rotating in temporarily. Now there's a whole category of professional career administrators who jump school-to-school, roughly parallel to the executive-management class in private-sector organizations (and they expect salaries in the $200k-$600k range).

</comment></comment><comment><USER7> I wonder what role the diminished state of funding has had on increased college costs. In the 90s, the money from DARPA/ONR and even NSF flowed quite readily into schools, which take 50-55% of that as "overhead" costs. Now, military research funding is more commercially targeted, and the combination of competition and shrinking funding for the NSF has turned it into a dogfight over scraps (at least so it seems in CS).

</comment><comment><USER8> how I love socialist europe: free world class college in germany and france, in holland and danmark, in austria and switzerland. that and world class health care for free too.

yes taxes are high, insanely high by american standards - but in the end it more than evens out. plus life is less stressful.

<comment><USER9> From what I understand about the German education system , significant features of US education are missing [I cannot speak to the others] - primarily a pursuit of universal access to higher education and the opportunity for second, third, and fourth chances at a college degree.

To put access in perspective, University of Phoenix has 400,000 students - <USER2> entire German higher education system issues about the same number of _Abitur_ each year. In the US more than half the population [55%] has some college compared to 22% of the German population with post-secondary education. The percentage of the US population with Masters and PHD is almost as large [10.5%] as the percentage of German population with any type of University degree [13.6%].

[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Educational_attainment_in_the_U...](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Educational_attainment_in_the_United_States)

[http://www.destatis.de/jetspeed/portal/cms/Sites/destatis/In...](http://www.destatis.de/jetspeed/portal/cms/Sites/destatis/Internet/EN/Content/Statistics/BildungForschungKultur/Bildungsstand/Tabellen/Content100/Bildungsabschluss,templateId=renderPrint.psml)

<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Abitur>

<comment><USER10> Is it possible that German businesses do the smart thing and don't require a bachelor's degree for basic data entry and other similar tasks?

I have a hard time believing 55% of the jobs in the US require a college education to perform.

<comment><USER9> Some people believe education has intrinsic value.

<comment><USER11> Some people believe an XBox has intrinsic value.

And much like the people who believe education has intrinsic value, they should pay for it themselves.

<comment><USER9> In the US, most people pay for education with private money.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> College is how the older generation exploits the younger generation, in addition to ss and medicare. The demand for work is inelastic (and purchasing a college degree is roughly purchasing a necessary license to work), there is no competitive market in colleges (colleges do not compete for students on price), and basically there is no way the system could NOT financially destroy the upcoming generation. The bastion of hope is that as old people die off and young people take political power, student indebtedness will be erased.

<comment><USER13> This pattern is more common than you realize. Anytime the government introduces a subsidy, from farm bills to mortgage deductions to limits on the number of doctors, it hugely benefits those with an existing stake in that market. The value of the subsidy is quickly capitalized into the market-- farmland prices escalate with the subsidies, for example. As a result, new entrants get none of the benefit of the subsidy, but instead get to pay higher, distorted prices to enter the market to provide or buy that good or service. Government subsidies not only cheat the public at large, but even in a specific industry they reward the current stakeholders and punish the next generation of stakeholders.

</comment></comment><comment><USER14> The article links to this other article which I find to be a better summary of the book and answer to the question:

<http://www.insidehighered.com/views/2010/10/19/feldman>

</comment><comment><USER15> A year in college (tuition + room and board) is still cheaper than a year in prison (tuition + room and board).

Both have price pressures that are similar in some respects, including both state-funded and for-profit versions.

Both systems have mediocre performance at their primary missions (rehabilitation, education). There are significant start-up costs in both systems that make starting a new facility difficult.

Decisions are made by leadership in both systems to optimize for things other than customer benefit.

</comment><comment><USER16> On top of this, I'm amazed at the differences in cost between state and out of state tuition. Is this because of state funding, or is it because it's another income stream for colleges and universities?

<comment><USER9> Traditionally, the former. More frequently the latter as state universities increasingly strive to attract out of state students as a way to offset price controls set by state legislatures.

</comment></comment><comment><USER17> Inevitably the comparison will be made to those countries that provide free higher education as being superior. I strongly disagree, for several reasons:

1\. Anything that's free but is limited gets abused. You need look no further than the NHS in the UK were most GPs are employees of the NHS. Office hours of 9-4 (ie no incentive to provide a better service) are typical, the system clogged up with people who either don't need to see a doctor or, in the case with many old age pensioners, they simply go to the doctor for someone to talk to.

2\. I would love to see some study in this but it is my belief that reducing the cost of higher education increases the earning potential of college graduates. When I went to university (in Australia) it certainly seemed to be the case that the earning potential difference between graduates and non- graduates wasn't anywhere as near as the difference in the US;

3\. Free systems create extra demand from people who don't really want to be there and are simply going for the lifestyle, which may in turn keep others who really want to go out;

4\. Governments may pay per college student but those funds aren't distributed equally. When I went almost nothing was spent on first-year students. Most of that money was diverted to research activities, which brings into question the quality of education the government was paying for;

5\. If you accept the premise that paid college leads to higher earning potential, countries that have free higher education will lose people to those countries where you pay as the labour mobility is high and only getting higher. I believe this at least in part explains the brain drain from Eastern Europe to the US in the 90s; and

6\. Demand will be increased by other countries. In Germany, for example, you have a lot of Brazilians who go there for free university, typically going there for 6-12 months prior to learn German.

One of the reasons that college costs so much is probably the same reason health care (in the US) costs so much: it's a protected market of sorts. In the US, IP laws mean drugs in Canada and elsewhere cost a fraction of what they do in the US (and most of the cost basis for drugs in the US goes on marketing not research).

If you want to be a doctor (of cours) you need to go to college. But what about a computer programmer? Many of the best companies will require a college degree. A computer science education is obviously useful but not a prerequisite to learning to program. Most programmers I know learnt to program before or outside college.

So what you have a captive market.

It would be reasonable to assume that competition between colleges would sort this out but that doesn't seem to be the case. Sure there is competition for students and teaching/research talent but that's not the same thing. For example, a friend of mine believes (rightly or wrongly) she'll probably never get a great teaching job because her PhD (in history) isn't from a top school like Harvard or Princeton (IIRC).

So you can choose to make a purely economic decision and go to a cheaper school but the cheaper and more expensive schools aren't necessarily equivalent, either in fact or in perception (which can be far more important).

I suspect this won't change until something disrupts the higher education system itself.

<comment><USER18> Your conclusions are poorly supported by the evidence and reasoning you proffer.

> 1\. Anything that's free but is limited gets abused.

Free does not mean unrestricted. Degrees in law and medicine are highly sought in Denmark, and the universities raise the academic requirements for initial entry and continued study accordingly.

> 2\. I would love to see some study in this but it is my belief that reducing > the cost of higher education increases the earning potential of college > graduates. When I went to university (in Australia) it certainly seemed to > be the case that the earning potential difference between graduates and non- > graduates wasn't anywhere as near as the difference in the US

Supposing there is a correlation, what is its relative significance? For example, Danish doctors are paid less than most of their US counterparts. But that is due to uniform salary standards in the public healthcare system.

> 3\. Free systems create extra demand from people who don't really want to be > there and are simply going for the lifestyle, which may in turn keep others > who really want to go out

How so? If the academic standards are raised to compensate for higher demand, only the most talented and willful be able to complete their studies. On the contrary, in an educational system where money is often the gating factor, you lose talented people who cannot afford tuition.

> 4\. Governments may pay per college student but those funds aren't > distributed equally. When I went almost nothing was spent on first-year > students. Most of that money was diverted to research activities, which > brings into question the quality of education the government was paying for;

Professors are contractually obligated to spend a large percentage of their time on teaching. As a consequence, assuming you don't teach empty classrooms, the total teaching load across a faculty scales roughly with the number of students.

The first-year classes are cheaper to teach per student because classes are larger. But if you break everyone into groups of 15-20 people with their own TA (another professor or graduate student), the quality of the teaching doesn't suffer. In fact, the best teachers usually teach the first-year classes.

I don't see a difference here compared to US universities.

In Denmark there's no such thing as a research-only professorship supported by per-student government contributions, and equipment expenses and research assistant salaries are only covered at a very low level or not at all. My cousin is a biomedical researcher at the University of Aarhus, and his group spends an inordinate amount of time on applying for research grants to cover such expenses. That part is not very different from the US.

> 6\. Demand will be increased by other countries. In Germany, for example, > you have a lot of Brazilians who go there for free university, typically > going there for 6-12 months prior to learn German.

That's a real and present problem but it can mitigated by stricter quotas. From talking to academics at Danish universities, my sense is that many Ph. D. programs are being overrun by Chinese students who are studious but not very talented. For various reasons, that hasn't happened at the undergraduate level.

</comment></comment><comment><USER19> College costs a lot for the same reason that houses do: you can either be rich and buy in cash, or leverage up and amortize a huge payment into relatively small monthly payments, making it seem affordable.

Once purchasers start leveraging to purchase a good or service, price elasticity goes way up. Not to mention both are part of the classical 'American dream'.</comment>


Ask HN: What Mouse Do You Use/Suggest? - <AUTHOR>

My simple Logitech optical mouse is flaking out and disappointing me (it misses cursor movements, etc). I'm looking for recommendations for a new mouse, especially one that will be easier on the tendon of my index or "mouse-click" finger?  Suggestions? <comment><USER2> I really love the Microsoft Intellimouse Explorer: [http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16826105...](http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16826105122)

It's a 5 button corded optical mouse. Some people don't like the symmetric extra buttons, but they're really awesome for web-browsing (forward and back), and in other applications too. It has great accuracy and the mouse wheel 'clicks' when scrolling (so you know how many increments you've scrolled).

Your tastes may vary.

<comment><USER3> I have this very mouse, and have for years. It's great because it's comfortable to grip and very light. A lot of mice these days are so heavy I don't know how people can use them for 8-10hrs at a time. Also, it has just enough buttons to be useful without having so many it's annoying (you don't accidentally hit them).

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> For my main desktop PC, I have for some time now had a Logitech G5, which I love. Coupled with my fUnc Surface 1030 mouse pad, it's awesome. Super light buttons and super smooth movement.

I also have a Logitech G15 keyboard to go with, which is equally as awesome, mainly due to the feel of the keys, they too are very light and easy to use.

All these products were originally bought by me for gaming reasons, but I have not had time to game for a very long while now, and have found that these products, while billed as gaming centric (which they are), are also excellent for general purpose use.

<comment><USER5> I also own a fUnc 1030 mousepad. It does kick a lot of ass. It is amazingly smooth and seems to last forever. I've had mine for 5 years and it looks pretty much the same as the day I got it.

As for mice, I was told by someone while playing counterstrike about the ultimate mouse: the Logitec Mouseman Dual Optical Mouse.

It was only 30 dollars and let me tell you, it's ridiculous. It came out during a time when 800 dpi were top of the line. In fact, it was the only mouse that had 2 of them! It was also about 20 bucks cheaper than most other mice with a single 800dpi sensor. It was discountinued not long after I purchased it, and there doesn't seem to be many of these mice floating around.

It's shape is also really nice and seems perfect for most hands. It also has a conveniently located but hard to accidental actuate thumb button too.

This mousepad/mouse combo has given me optimum performance ever since my high school gaming days. It has honestly spoiled me which explains my disdain for using any other computer for web browsing.

I am getting better at using the keyboard for a lot of things, but web browsing seems to be designed around the concept of a mouse. I have tried vimperator, and it just didn't seem natural (not to mention certain mode- change oddities).

<comment><USER4> Yep, can't say enough good things about the fUnc Surface 1030, it's the best mouse pad I've ever owned. Yeah I guess it is expensive for a mouse pad, but I think it's so worth it. I have also had mine for some years and it's still just as good now as the day I bought it.

Mine's an original Surface 1030, but they've also got the F-Series and the Archetype now.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> I actually try very hard to do everything with the keyboard. I'm an emacs zombie, though I'm sure the vim-o-nauts would agree: mousing is just really inefficient.

BUT! It depends on what you do. Occasionally I have to break out the graphic design "skills" and for that, I have my Mighty Mouse. I don't know that I would recommend it, it's pricey, some people like having a tactile right click (me, I just disable the shit because it's a fucking farce on the mighty mouse anyway, getting it to work reliably is impossible and I have no problem with holding down an extra key for context menus). It depends on what you plan on mousing around on. My advice is to just keep getting the cheap $7 Logitech opticals and try more keyboard, less mouse.

<comment><USER7> That's interesting. I recently bought a (cordless) Mighty Mouse, and I'd never noticed any problems with the right click on mine. Perhaps yours is a bit flaky? It sounds like it's not affecting your usage anyway.

I do agree with maximizing keyboard usage (as I tend to spend most of my time in Vim). I was suffering from "mouse thumb" and recently did an experiment with my office PC. I removed the mouse completely and turned on the MouseKeys accessability option (using the numeric keypad to move the mouse pointer around). After a couple of days, it felt as natural as using a mouse, and my thumb felt a _lot_ better.

</comment></comment><comment><USER8> I absolutely love my logitech MX Revolution, except it's for right handed mousers (I like using both). I use a razer copperhead for gaming.

To be honest, I prefer my tablet or the touchpad on my laptop. Feels more natural and comfortable.

<comment><USER9> Absolutely love my MX Revolution. At one point, I lost the dongle that connects it to my computer and I went out and burned another $100 to get another. Only thing I wished was that the scroll wheel was a bit heavier.

<comment><USER8> couldn't contact logitech support about buying just that?

this is actually my second mx revolution. the first one got wonky on me, but logitech quickly replaced it.

only wish their driver software was as good as their hardware..their OS X software is jawdroppingly awful.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> I switched to a trackball a couple of months ago. I own the Logitech Cordless TrackMan Wheel: [http://www.logitech.com/index.cfm/mice_pointers/trackballs/d...](http://www.logitech.com/index.cfm/mice_pointers/trackballs/devices/159&cl=us,en)

It's a pretty awesome piece of hardware, big and very comfortable and with a nice touch. It uses an optical sensor so almost no cleaning is needed. Being cordless, the battery is not a problem as you're not supposed to move it around.

</comment><comment><USER11> I always prefer those wired optical mice. They light and very responsive. I never liked those wireless ones. SO heavy :-(

</comment><comment><USER12> I'm an Apple fanboy, but I use this MS Wireless Laser Mouse 8000 with my Macbook Pro:

[http://www.amazon.com/Microsoft-Wireless-Laser- Mouse-8000/dp...](http://www.amazon.com/Microsoft-Wireless-Laser- Mouse-8000/dp/B000I4UQFC)

I like it because I can switch to my right and left hand (I'm right handed). I used to get the sore finger and shoulders, so I switch sides often (every hour).

The Bluetooth works without using the USB dongle but it's a bit flaky connecting sometimes. So I use the dongle now and I rarely have any connection problems or lagging.

The rechargeable cradle works great and stays out of the way.

Since I'm on OSX, I have to use SteerMouse to be able to customize all the extra buttons. <http://www.plentycom.jp/en/steermouse/>

<comment><USER11> for my macbook pro, i am used to using the trackpad - even while Photoshoping ^_^ i dont have the multi-touch though...

<comment><USER12> I like the trackpad, but I'm hooked up to a monitor and a keyboard 80% of the time.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> IBM Trackpoint. I'd use a Trackpoint keyboard with a desktop if I regularly used a desktop.

</comment><comment><USER14> I have a logitech vx revolution and I love it. The freespinning mouse wheel is pretty awesome, and it has a few configurable buttons. The logitech control center on OS X sucks really hard, though. I recommend SteerMouse to solve that problem.

</comment><comment><USER15> I highly recommend Logitech's VX Nano. I've had mine for almost 6 months now still using the original batteries, and I use it every day! It's small which I thought would be a pain at first (remember Apple's infamous "hockey-puck" mouse?), but it really feels natural in my hand. Also, it is precise on any surface I use it on, using the laser sensor. I really like the dual scroll wheel (clicky until you press down and then it freesrolls through any doc in 2 seconds) and the forward/back buttons. Its receiver is so tiny I just keep it plugged into my laptop and never worry about it. I could go on and on and on, but you get the point.

</comment><comment><USER16> Kingston Expert Mouse :- The sturdiest, healthiest most hacker friendly, RSI defending pointing device ever built.

Worth their weight in gold (and they're quite heavy).

<comment><USER17> i have to totally agree on that one. i have had a very heavy tendonitis for the last three weeks. i took measures to alter the strain loads by buying a kingston expert mouse trackball (which was actually an interesting discovery: seems like everybody using a trackball knows that a mouse is an unergonomic, unhealthy device...). additionally i bought a kinesis freestyle keyboard and am very happy with both devices...

</comment></comment><comment><USER18> How about trying to repair your mouse first?

Just open it. Most of the time (microsoft wheel mouse in my case) the prism lens is not aligned to the LED. Securing these with ducktape solved the problem

But really, use keyboard more and just ditch the mouse (or use less) so that u don't worry about it -- the biggest advantage being able to survive in environment where mouse is unavailable (say dead batteries while using wireless mouse)

</comment><comment><USER19> I love the "IBM USB Optical Scroll Travel Wheel Mouse" (search ebay with those terms to see what I mean). $1-2 each (I buy them by the dozen and spread them around liberally to friends and family; when they wear out (scroll wheel gets sticky or clunky) I just throw them out like a used-up pencil).

Wonderful, small, responsive mouse with smooth scrolling. Works on any machine. (I use them with Macs as I'm a fanboi.)

</comment><comment><USER20> I've used all three of the Logitech Revolution mice and I recommend them to anyone I meet who uses a computer. Simply put, they are badass.

</comment><comment><USER21> Laser is a must. It's inexpensive and is that much more reliable. Less frustration => less wrist pain.

I use a G5.

(If the tendon of your index finger is an issue RSI is on the way. This might be one of those cure the problem not the symptom situations.)

<comment><USER22> There's been lots of discussing on RSI, as you can imagine. Wrist curls, learn to mouse with both hands, ... Unfortunately, not an easy term to search in searchyc.com

<http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=185743>

<http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=199493>

oh, yeah, i use the new-shape wired optical logitech mouse. $19, fits both hands pretty well. The only thing is cursor accelerates/scrolls funny in OS X, so i use the mighty mouse, which i'm not too fond of.

</comment></comment><comment><USER23> My main computer three pointing devices, a mouse, a trackball, and a tablet. If my hand gets sore from using one device, I just switch to another one. This works pretty well, since all three devices need different hand positions and muscle motions.

</comment><comment><USER24> Is there a way to keep crud from accumulating on the low-friction pads on the bottom of my mouse? I thought that getting a Wowpad would take care of this, but it hasn't. Maybe the Surface 1030 that was mentioned solves this?

</comment><comment><USER25> I use both the new G5 and the G9, alternating when I get tired of one or the other. However, all the new Logitech mice have inferior rigid cords (non- plastic), and it's fairly hard to middle click on either mouse.

</comment><comment><USER26> i couldnt be happier with the logitech v470 laser bluetooth mouse. if you have a laptop with built in bluetooth, this little mouse is fantastic. excellent mouse features (back, forward, scroll, and middle click) and the batteries last for weeks even with heavy usage. it takes AA batteries, so you can just use rechargeables.

</comment><comment><USER27> Contour Perfit Optical Mouse (5 sizes righty, 4 lefty) three finger buttons, thumb-op scrollwheel + 2 thumb-op buttons.

</comment><comment><USER28> when life gives you lemons, make lemonade ;)

<http://www.nongnu.org/ratpoison/>

</comment><comment><USER29> My 3M ergonomic mouse takes away 90% of my RSI pain.

</comment><comment><USER30> Call me crazy but I like my bluetooth mighty mouse.

</comment><comment><USER31> MX510 + Steelpad QcK

</comment><comment><USER32> razer diamondback mouse. on mac, the razer proclick mac drivers work for it.

it's designed for gamers. i like the mousing accuracy. i used to have a cheap mouse. one _can_ tell the difference; this is much nicer.</comment>


The Fall of China's Hedge-Fund King - <AUTHOR> http://www.nytimes.com/2016/04/03/magazine/the-fall-of-chinas-hedge-fund-king.html <comment><USER2> I submitted this article also, with less luck in the up vote game.

It is really a great read! If anyone wonders how screwed up the Chinese stock market really is, this pretty much describe the core problems: it is basically an insider market where those with connections and power (e.g. the princelings) basically steal money away from naive and greedy retail investors by pumping and dumping (even government aided!). Basically, exactly what we've suspected all along!

The smart money attempts to ride the manipulated flows to profit, or just stays out of it and plays in the less (but still) manipulated real estate market.

</comment><comment><USER3> > _The ubiquity of wrongdoing, he said, did not make anyone safe._

This is a great companion piece to the recently updated (and ongoing) back- story with TrueCrypt. Lots of powerful people. The temptation of greed. Fascinating read and culturally quite enlightening about how 'red capitalism' seems to be working in this day and age. Worth the read.

<comment><USER4> What article on TrueCrypt?

<comment><USER4> Just found it...crazy..I was unaware of developments in the TrueCrypt story let alone how long the US gov kept it in secret.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> Chinese investors are less educated in general. A lot of investors in the venture space are actually just wealthy people without a high level of education who is skeptical of the stock market. There is also a high level of fraud in Chinese startups.</comment>


Change your PyPI password - <AUTHOR> http://mechanicalcat.net/richard/log/Python/PyPI_password_related_security_changes

<comment><AUTHOR> The above is linked to directly from <http://pypi.python.org/pypi>. Also, PyPI sent an evening a little while ago with the same content.</comment>


St. Louis Fed Study about the Evolution of the U.S. Interbank Network and Crises - <AUTHOR> https://research.stlouisfed.org/wp/more/2019-002 <comment><AUTHOR> This study may interest you, whether you're working in the blockchain space or have a passion for systems and network dynamics</comment>


Is College Worth the Cost? - <AUTHOR> http://awealthofcommonsense.com/2018/04/is-college-worth-the-cost/ <comment><USER2> short answer, no</comment>


Ask HN: Is there a Hacker News type of website for game development? - <AUTHOR>

Ahoy,
I've been lurking on HN for a few years now, and it's always good for a great read, but I am always looking for more sources of information around the industry I work in: video game development.
Just wondering, are there other communities or news aggregators out there specifically for game development?
I am aware of the bigger sites and subreddits, but always looking for more! <comment><USER2> Have you tried reddit?

[http://www.reddit.com/r/gamedev](http://www.reddit.com/r/gamedev)

[http://www.gamasutra.com/](http://www.gamasutra.com/)

<comment><AUTHOR> I am a regular reader of both r/gamedev and Gamasutra, but was wondering if there were any larger communities. :) Thank you for your response though!</comment></comment>


How many simultaneous people can follow simple instructions? - <AUTHOR> http://humanity.invalidcast.com

<comment><USER2> An interesting idea, but one that wholly fails at achieving its stated aims.

> This is an experiment to determine how trustworthy humanity is.

No, it isn't.

If I have _given my word_ that I will not click on the button, and yet I click on it anyway, then I am not trustworthy.

I someone tells me not to click on the button, and I do, then I am not obedient to them. I am also perhaps a bit presumptuous and irreponsible (depending on the situation).

But if a _webpage_ tells me not to click on a button, which is clearly provided solely to be clicked on as an experiment, and I am _absolutely_ sure that no harm will come from clicking, and I click, then I am merely curious.

And, having clicked, I am also rather disappointed.

<comment><AUTHOR> Whether you are curious or not, if you click the button you cannot be trusted to follow the instructions that tell you not to click it.

I wanted to know how many people hit the page and are able to resist their curiosity in favour of following the instructions.

36 sets of visitors ended up viewing the page. The largest set that followed the instructions was 7 before someone clicked it.

<comment><USER2> Ah, but I object to the word "trust" here. Using your definition, I'm a terribly untrustworthy person: name just about anything, and I can't be trusted to do it. For example, I can't be trusted to say, "oblong walruses" to the next person I meet.

Ah, but I never _said_ I would do that. And the fact is that if I promise to say that, then I _can_ be trusted to do so. And if I commit to following the instructions on your site, then I _will_ do so.

But I didn't commit to that, and there was no reason to follow them. Thus, I don't see what my failure to follow these instructions has to do with "trust".</comment></comment></comment>


Ticketmaster apologizes for beer fest presale disaster - <AUTHOR> http://www.greatamericanbeerfestival.com/ticketmaster-letter-of-apology/

<comment><AUTHOR> Some additional context:

The Great American Beer Fest had Ticketmaster handle presale tickets this year (available to Homebrewer's Association members), and it was an absolute disaster.

A form validation error prevented members from buying tickets for the first two hours of the presale. At the same time that this was going on, the general public was able to buy tickets through the Ticketmaster mobile site. As a result, most of the tickets for the "members only" session were purchased before actual members were able to make purchases.

See the twitter rage at: <https://twitter.com/i/#!/search/realtime/gabf></comment>