The Multiverse Is an Ancient Idea - <AUTHOR> http://cosmos.nautil.us/short/128/the-multiverse-is-an-ancient-idea <comment><USER2> I wish there was more focus on non-Western philosophy in such articles. Often there are one or two Greek philosophers, one or two Muslim philosophers and a brief mention of something something Buddhist philosophy. What about Hindu philosophy? What about Chinese philosophy? I can ascertain that the two facets he describes, cyclical nature of universe[1] and multiverse[2] are both part of Hindu philosophy. I wish there was more focus on diversity of ancient thought. Time travel is something that was alluded to in many ancient cultures and is a vast topic, imo[3]

[1] [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wheel_of_time](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wheel_of_time)

[2] [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kakudmi#Meeting_with_Brahma](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kakudmi#Meeting_with_Brahma)

[3] [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Time_travel#History_of_the_tim...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Time_travel#History_of_the_time_travel_concept)

<comment><USER3> I agree with you in spirit, but I also realize this is a piece on the internet. If you want something completely definitive then you should be looking elsewhere.

As Emerson said "round every circle a larger can always be drawn" (paraphrase)

<comment><USER2> Of course. Thing is - I think I understand the goals of the publication(Nautilus) and want them to be better - it would benefit everyone.

<comment><USER3> You know more about nautilus than I do. Would they usually have covered all major viewpoints? Beyond the top three but all the way to, say, top 20 (just for instance).

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> So there's an essay I thought it was called The Scientist and The Sage by Asimov (or Sagan?) but I can't currently find a link.

The point though is that there's only a couple useful things you can say about the universe: it has a definite begin and a definite end, an infinite beginning and no end, some combination of that, or it's cyclical... and because there's a very limited set of possibilities it's trivial to find an ancient sage opining on something that sounds like the big bang and the heat death of the universe.

Similarly either this universe is all there is or 'the multiverse' which means it's very easy to find historic sources spouting off things that sound like a multiverse. With out actual evidence, math, _science_ behind it though it's not interesting that they came to this conclusion because simply guessing that this is the way of things doesn't push our understanding forward.

<comment><USER5> I don't think that _evidence_ is what would determine if it's worth of scientific study. For me it's _testability_ the criteria. If the thesis is testable it's worth of scientific study because we will learn something form the test result.

If a thesis is not testable, it's just an idea in millions (i.e. existence of God). The validity will remain undetermined and there is nothing to learn from studying it.

The concept of _evidence_ defines a narrower scope.

The testability is determined by the existence of constrains that must be satisfied.

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> Of course; even "this new idea is actually old idea" is an old idea: Ecclesiastes 1:9, "The thing that hath been, it is that which shall be; and that which is done is that which shall be done: and there is no new thing under the sun."

</comment><comment><USER7> Nautil.us seems to be obsessed with the multiverse. This seems to be related to "Fake physics": [https://www.math.columbia.edu/~woit/wordpress/?p=9053](https://www.math.columbia.edu/~woit/wordpress/?p=9053)

<comment><USER8> Nautilus Cosmos is a special project exploring astrobiology, fine tuning, the multiverse and dark matter. That is the reason for the amount of focused content.

</comment></comment><comment><USER9> Do physicists take the multiverse idea seriously? Specifically, the one in the article that says that there are multiple universes each with _different_ physical laws? (This is very different from QM many worlds, where universes share the same laws.)

<comment><USER10> Most physicists don't think about other universes with other physical laws because they don't really affect what we see.

Cosmologists interested in fine-tuning might.

Quantum foundation theorists often consider alternatives, not because they think they are real, but because it's useful to understand why QM has the form it does. Mostly their results suggest QM is difficult to modify without becoming trivial or useless.

I think the drive comes more from the metaphysical direction. It's hard to imagine why one set of laws would emerge as physical unless all sets of laws are physical, just by virtue of existing mathematically.

</comment></comment><comment><USER11> Anyone who proposes multiverse theory (or any theory for that matter) please include the process to test it and if you can't then please don't waste people time. Always remember the idea of scientific method.

</comment><comment><USER12> Nautil.us breaks the back button on Chrome.

To recreate...click the link and scroll down a bit, they fill your history with the same page, so you can't use the back button.

Dark pattern or honest mistake?

<comment><USER13> Seriously annoying whatever they're doing.

</comment></comment><comment><USER14> Multiverse isn't just an ancient idea. It's the center piece of pre-modern philosophy.

Bruno and Leibniz were arguing from the plenitude principle. The principle asserts "the universe contains all possible forms of existance". The idea is introduced by Plato's ontology from which everything after is arguably a derivative.[1]

1\. [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Principle_of_plenitude](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Principle_of_plenitude)</comment>


Ask HN: Sideprojects/passive income businesses with little or no own coding? - <AUTHOR> Whenever sideprojects or ways to gain passive income are discussed here, the conversation focuses on programming projects that can be run on the side. Of course, this is very much connected to the nature of the side.<p>However, I'd like to hear from people who do/did sideprojects that involved little programming from their side and that, maybe, even provided them with a passive income. For me it's a bit difficult to imagine such projects and I think it would be a novel topic to talk about. <comment><USER2> The best side project I had involved no coding whatsoever. When in college, I applied for and received a "peddlers license" which I used to allow me to set up a table downtown by a bus stop and sell holiday themed items at the appropriate times of the year.

In my third semester, I got some freshmen to take over the daily operations just taking a percentage off the top. Those freshmen passed the gig onto the next class and that kept going, that little table is still bringing in about $1000 four times a year for me (Valentine's day, independence day, thanksgiving and christmas)

<comment><USER3> How did you source the items?

<comment><USER2> Mostly sams club, dollar tree and Alibaba. Pretty much the same today, but I have met some people who allow me to source certain hand-made items for a good bargain.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> Niche knowledge.

We had our first house built for us. I learned a ton in the process and lots of "if I ever have a house built again I will remember to..."

Some years later, we decided to move and build another house. Alas, all those things I "learned" were mostly forgotten. So I decided to journal the entire experience and turned it into a blog.

Most of the content I just gave away for free. But I also put up a $9 "kit" that provided a printable copy of the blog, additional pictures, my full budget breakdown, spreadsheets I developed to help manage the project, etc.

I've done nothing to promote the site but have earned in the low thousands over the years.

<comment><USER5> This. Actual value you know, have, or are creating anyway. Many people will happily pay a reasonable fee for such things. Pros: not a gimmick, satisfaction of being an author. Cons: target of opportunity.

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> If you want passive income with no work, then you have to supply capital. If you don't have capital, then work is required. Unfortunately there are no passive income businesses that require zero capital and zero work. They just don't exist.

Passive no-coding ways to make money: >Public market investments: stock market, ETF's, bonds, derivatives, commodities, real estate, bitcoin >Non- public investments: start-ups, business ventures, hedge funds, private equity, etc.

There are other businesses which people think are passive but they are not. Having a website that makes money is not a passive income. Ask anyone that has one, they have to put in some sort of work. If they don't the money dries up. You have to create new content and really target your ads to actually make money.

Good luck!

<comment><USER7> You can hire copywriters, PPC marketers and a manager using revenue of the site

<comment><USER8> But you'd have to supply work/capital to get it to the point of generating revenue.

<comment><USER7> I don't think the question was about passive income that's free to set up. There is no such one, why would anyone work if you could just wave your magic wand?

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> I built this site [1] that lets people find and list internet businesses that are available for sale. I didn't write a single line of code, used Carrd and Airtable to build the whole thing. Let me know if this is the type of answer you were looking for?

[1] [https://soochi.co](https://soochi.co)

Edit: If anyone does have a business they'd like to list, just include HN at the beginning of your story to get $10 off!

<comment><USER10> This is a cool idea. Are you using Airtable as a CMS or just using it to collect form data and manually updating the Carrd site?

If you are using Airtable are you using Zapier or some other tool to connect it to Carrd?

</comment></comment><comment><USER11> At work, I had a client say "I wish we had software that did this." What they were asking for was little more than a Google Form with a few reporting options. So, I whipped them up something in PHP/MySQL and handed it off.

I quickly found more clients (word of mouth) that want the same software and can't find anyone that will provide it for less than $5k/yr. I work for a non- profit (education industry) that isn't really built to operate on funding streams like this, so I set up my own business and bought the rights back to my code/ip.

I'm currently in the pre-launch phase as I re-factor a bit and make the code better suited to multi-agent use, but honestly, it's something an experienced developer could code in a weekend. I'm a total hack, so it's taking time. I already have 4 clients and more calls coming in, so the only thing holding me back is myself.

</comment><comment><USER12> Drop shipping. Haven't done it, don't recommend it, but I see it mentioned in places like

[https://www.reddit.com/r/Entrepreneur/](https://www.reddit.com/r/Entrepreneur/)

<comment><USER13> Doesn't that run the risk of making yourself accessory to someone else's credit card fraud?

<comment><USER14> "Victim" not "accessory"... if it is fraud there will likely be a charge back which will cause you to lose money the if you can't document it well but the customer / fraudster still gets the item.

You pay the dropship warehouse, you don't pass the customer card info to them. It is as if you bought the product and picked someone else's shipping address.

No more / less risk than standard eCommerce, just someone else is doing the fulfillment for you.

Drop shipping is great in theory, one problem is that the margins are usually lower than if you bought the items wholesale but you don't have any warehousing or handling cost. The real problem is that if you are drop shipping an item odds are 1000 other people are and it is a race to the bottom to see who is willing to sell for the least profit.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> iOS sticker packs - never did it myself (can't draw to save my life) but there was at one point good money [2] to be made in them. The full title of [1] is _How I made two ridiculous iOS 10 sticker packs for Messages without any coding experience_ so think that fits the bill. The reddit post [3] is from 4 months ago, so perhaps there's still room to get somewhere with it.

[1] [https://9to5mac.com/2016/09/13/ios-10-sticker-packs- messages...](https://9to5mac.com/2016/09/13/ios-10-sticker-packs-messages/)

[2] [https://techcrunch.com/2016/06/13/chat-app-line-makes- over-2...](https://techcrunch.com/2016/06/13/chat-app-line-makes- over-270-million-a-year-from-selling-stickers/)

[3] [https://www.reddit.com/r/Entrepreneur/comments/6kyair/i_just...](https://www.reddit.com/r/Entrepreneur/comments/6kyair/i_just_made_1k_usd_selling_imessage_stickers/)

</comment><comment><USER13> What other type of work would you be discussing? Obviously there are no opportunities that don't involve either work or capital investment...

<comment><USER10> I believe the OP is asking about projects making income that are not programming heavy. Some quick thoughts off of the top of my head:

\- Writing Books

\- Content-Focused Websites or Newsletters

\- Selling Digital or Physical Products

It probably depends on your skillset. Without some sort of specialist knowledge it may be tough. In the design world icon sets, UI kits and typefaces are popular things to sell.

<comment><USER16> Lightroom presets come to my mind.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER17> > I'd like to hear from people who do/did sideprojects

ITT: almost exclusively people who didn't do the projects they're spitballing.

</comment><comment><USER18> If you have some niche or specific knowledge, you can set up a blog and sell infoproducts (courses, books, templates, etc.). I've done this on the side and there is money to be made. I had earnings of low thousands some months.

But it's difficult to grow an audience, it's hard work to create quality products and even though you can set up an almost automatic selling machine with little coding, just plumbing WordPress, Mailchimp and PayPal, there are still some customer support to be done.

So it's long term, not completely passive income, but if you know something and other people are willing to pay for that knowledge, it can be done.

</comment><comment><USER19> There is now potential for side-projects involving small-scale manufacturing thanks to recent advances in 3D printing.

A friend and I created Enstaved [1] ("Customized Staves and Accessories") after a prop that we designed and 3D printed for a talk I gave at PyCon AU proved really popular.

We did put in quite a bit of up-front work designing a product line and a website. Now most of our job is promotion and manufacturing the staves people order. Frankly that doesn't feel like "work" at all...:)

[1] [https://enstaved.com](https://enstaved.com)

</comment><comment><USER20> I know a guy who sells Hot Sauce on Amazon, he's a talented programmer but probably makes more money selling sauce!

</comment><comment><USER21> Books and courses come to mind (require some coding). Affiliate websites etc

Can't remember one now, but there are plenty of examples of startups that faked to be fully automated software but behind the scenes all was done manually.

<comment><USER14> Books and courses are actually a tremendous amount of work upfront. Last book I wrote for a major published I only got $6000 and it consumed hundreds of hours.

Self-publishing is high profit but the same amount of work (if you care about quality and reputation), no upfront advance, and you have to do your own marketing.

</comment></comment><comment><USER22> Amazon FBA businesses, dropshipping, blogs but that will take a while for SEO to kick in, Amazon affiliates, and other affiliate programs but you'll need traffic to do that.

</comment><comment><USER23> A friend of mine put together a deal to purchase a rental property, and I invested with him, and my investment is earning dividends now.

</comment><comment><USER24> gofundme Just open a page, tell a sob story and wait for the money to roll in.

</comment><comment><USER25> Selling music is also often mentioned.

<comment><USER26> What are we talking about; selling third party music or one's own music?

<comment><USER25> Primarily own music, but both is possible of course ;) For instance there are a lot of "digital only" labels around

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER27> Directory Listings or Job Openings sites using Wordpress and specific plug- ins/themes.

<comment><USER27> I wonder why I got downvoted here.

</comment></comment><comment> ju-st candyjapan.com comes to my mind (not my project)

<comment><USER6> Candyjapan is definitely a business supported by a lot of custom code. Read this: [https://www.candyjapan.com/behind-the-scenes/how-many- lines-...](https://www.candyjapan.com/behind-the-scenes/how-many-lines-of- code-is-candy-japan)

<comment> ju-st Yes, but it would be possible to create a similar thing without much coding (paypal checkout button, email, excel, wordpress).

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER28> Real estate. Rental units are a great passive income

<comment><USER29> There's a slight barrier to entry there that someone looking for small amounts of passive income might not be able to overcome...

<comment><USER30> Property management would probably be the next closest thing minus the barrier.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER31> Not something I've done personally, but lawyers selling form letters is a common passive income source which requires no coding ;).

<comment><USER27> Yes. Or if you are a specialist within your industry, you can put together a collection of useful templates and sell them online via a mini e-commerce site.

<comment><USER32> The real money in that is made by offering support, which might as well be another full time job.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER33> Become an escort.

<comment><USER34> That's probably the least "passive income" business there is.

<comment><USER33> it was a joke.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER35> If you google "get rich quick", you will find 100ths of schemes.</comment>


Show HN: How I learned Javascript in 7 days - <AUTHOR> http://nclx.ghost.io/learn-javascript-in-7-days/

<comment><USER2> Great to read that you're excited about your progress on CodeAcademy nick, but you've just started learning javascript. I just took a look at the lessons in the CodeAcademy Javascript course you took, and though it may be a great course, there is still a lot of Javascript yet to learn. So realize that you're just at the beginning, not at the end.

<comment><AUTHOR> Haha, yes of course, i know. The tile was a bit ironic. But still it's a great start i think.</comment></comment>


How I Fired myself: about loss, mistakes and getting your shit together - <AUTHOR> http://mijndertstuij.nl/2013/03/how-i-fired-myself/

<comment><USER2> I'm happy for you. When you take something on like this it is a great asset to have someone for emotional support. After your girlfriend dropped the bomb this must have been harder to come by, which could explain why you were fooling around trying to fill a void.

You can still surround yourself with smart people while freelancing. It is just a little harder to do. You also appear to be scarred by the experience which is why you never want to do it again. Good luck with the new job.

<comment><AUTHOR> It's not that I'm scarred, it's just that I don't want to take on the burden of going freelance again. There's more important things to do right now, like hanging out with friends, connecting with new friends, taking on hobbies and travelling the world.

Thanks for the kind words. :-)

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> I wrote a post titled "How I Fired Myself" a month ago. It really resonated with the community, and I'm glad to see someone else take up the mantle. I think it's healthy to air-out these kind of dark moments. You have my sympathies for what happened, and I'm excited that things are looking up.

Original post: <https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5292591>

<comment><AUTHOR> I remember that post, it's what inspired me to write one of my own. It just took some time to 'get my shit together' as they say. Thanks for the kind words. :-)

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> For me the reverse happened, back in 2009ish, lose the job then lose the girlfriend because you're not as spendy as before. I dodged a bullet on that one. In hindsight it was the best thing to happen to me. But while I was going through it, it was like the world was ending.

Now that I'm older and wiser, I've got my shit together, I don't see employment or love/girlfriends as a source of validation that you belong here and are appreciated.

When things get rough, I envision myself as a tiny bud on the tip of a branch on a tree. When life is created, it's not new, it's just a new branch and a new sprout, and when life ends, it's just the older buds making way for the new ones.

So love, and employment is a process by which the tree sustains itself. But the tree represents the entire DNA meta organism found on earth, from the bacteria, through the beetles, on up to us. Death and life are illusions, employment is simply a process, like photosynthesis, to expand the size of the tree. The reason I think this way:

1\. Reproduction, having love, girlfriends, wives and kids is not necessary. The other branches of "you" will create plenty.

2\. Having a good job, vs a sucky one, is in the grand scheme of things not all that important. You are one bud on a gigantic tree. You think if you can make the next huge thing, then you'll be more important. Not really, it's the cooperation between all the units that cause increases in the sentience of the whole.

The meaning of life is to expand the growth and prosperity of the tree (all dna based life), and eventually transcend biology and get off this rock so we can fill the universe with our proud waves. You either contribute a macroscopic amount to that goal, or take away from it. Look at yourself from the edge of our galaxy and tell me again how your situation warrants an emotional blog post.</comment>


Show HN: Minimal Meteor Scaffolding - <AUTHOR> https://github.com/GriffinMB/astral

<comment><AUTHOR> Lately I've been working on Meteor projects in my spare time, so I put together this small scaffolding tool to make my life easier. If you work with a similar file structure, this could save you a few minutes for every project!

I intend on adding simple generators for routes, collections, and templates, but my main goal is to have a strong default selection of oft-used packages -- for forms, auth, routing, etc.

Let me know what kinds of things you find useful in a scaffolder, or what your go-to tools are for Meteor development!</comment>


Valeant Sold Some Drugs Twice - <AUTHOR> http://www.bloombergview.com/articles/2016-03-21/valeant-sold-some-drugs-twice <comment><USER2> As the spouse of someone who was laid off as a result of a Valeant acquisition, I'm torn between hoping they go under and hoping they get a decent board/leadership and start making ethical decisions. Pearson disrupted so many careers through their process of buying patents & firing almost all of the staff of most of these companies he purchased.

<comment><USER3> It annoys the hell out of me when I see articles referring to Valeant's "acquisition and cost-cutting" strategies. No, they were slashing and burning. What they did to the companies was not "cost cutting", it was corporate raiding plain and simple.

I'm hoping to see them burn all the way down so that everybody who invested in them, _knowing_ full well that their whole business plan was shady as hell, loses all the money they invested. It seems we're already 80% the way there, at least.

<comment><USER4> Don't get me wrong, I think Valeant is shady as hell, but what's the difference between cost-cutting and slashing-and-burning?

The companies Valeant purchased did not have a gun to their head and I'm sure they were fairly compensated when purchased. Who cares what Valeant does after the acquisition?

<comment><USER3> It's one thing to buy a company and then do layoffs to realize efficiency gains, and another to buy a company essentially for its IP and fire everybody. Sure, it's "cost cutting" taken to its logical extreme. But it's also incredibly wasteful and disruptive.

Valeant's was able to overpay for these companies because it was betting that its shady practices would allow it to realize outsize gains for the IP acquired, and that's turning out to be a bad bet. So not only have they gutted numerous companies, disrupting the lives of many researchers and others, but they are also now under a mountain of debt and have a bunch of husks of companies that aren't worth near what they were paid for. It's lose/lose/lose. The only people who made out are the ones who original owned the companies Valeant bought.

<comment><USER5> >It's one thing to buy a company and then do layoffs to realize efficiency gains, and another to buy a company essentially for its IP and fire everybody.

Isn't that basically what Google did with Motorola?

<comment><USER2> No, not at all. Motorola Mobility was bleeding cash for years (basically since the end of life for the original Razor -- they didn't have any profitable phones again until the X & G). Yes, Google wanted their patent portfolio, but it's not like MMI was making money before the acquisition ... which was why even prior to the Google purchase Motorola had split into MMI & MSI, which is absolutely profitable selling radio gear & services.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> I don't get this. Valeant sold the drugs twice, but only because they:

Valeant made the drug

Valeant sold the drug to Philidor

Valeant bought the drug when it bought Philidor

Valeant sold the drug again.

The best I can tell, the issue is only that Valeant knew it was going to buy Philidor when it sold Philidor those drugs.

I really don't see how this matters. Even the Author seems to admit that it doesn't matter and that the real issue here is how Valeant was allegedly using Philidor to trick insurance companies into paying more for drugs.

IMO, that makes the whole article title clickbait.

<comment><USER2> You should read this: [http://www.latimes.com/business/la-fi-1101-valeant- pharmacy-...](http://www.latimes.com/business/la-fi-1101-valeant- pharmacy-20151101-story.html)

</comment></comment><comment><USER7> What I'm getting from this read is that Valeant is pretty much using these acquisitions to create their own version of a ponzi scheme.

Is that right or am I not quite reading this correctly?

<comment><USER8> It seems more correct to say that their real goal was to have a set of "independent" pharmacies (but really not) that would pay high prices for Valeant's drugs but still appear to insurers to be doing so because the pharmacies concluded Valeant was the best supplier on its merits, not because they were secretly controlled by Valeant. Seems like someone should be spending time in Club Fed, but won't happen of course.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> Anyone familiar with the pharmaceutical industry could tell Valeant wasn't headed anywhere but down.

Just take a look at their portfolio of drugs. There is nothing special there. For the most part they were selling brand names drugs in diseases where a generic drug would work just fine. The only reason they made money is because they used every trick in the book to make sure nobody noticed what they were doing.

The company was bound to fail at some point in time.

<comment><USER9> Did you short them?

<comment><USER4> Good question! Nope!

What's the saying "the markets can stay irrational longer than you can stay solvent"?

I've played the biotech markets before and quickly realized I'm not cut out for them!

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> as a user of some of their medications, they can go to hell. $950 for a tube of cream for a skin condition (without insurance) and $5 for the tube with insurance.

Its crazy. First prescription I got was through philidor and i never saw the cash price for the drug, after Philidor went under they partnered with Walgreens and thats where i saw the cash price for the drug.. holy crap.

</comment><comment><USER11> I love that table column names: "sell in", "sell through", _" why not both?"_

Edit: clarity

</comment><comment><USER12> Must be painful for Ackman. He told that the stock price was close to what they had in mind as 'fairly valued' a few months ago...

</comment><comment><USER13> Can anyone give a background on this story?</comment>


Six indicted in multimillion dollar scheme to bribe Amazon staff - <AUTHOR> https://www.justice.gov/usao-wdwa/pr/six-indicted-connection-multi-million-dollar-scheme-bribe-amazon-employees-and <comment><USER2> Yikes. Corruption in an organization at Amazon-scale, economically, is a totally different beast. More like corruption in a governmental organisation than a private one.

 _" $100 million of competitive benefits to those accounts, harm to competitors, and harm to consumers."_

At this point, there are "officials," with rubber stamps that are worth millions to a large number of businesses. Google, and facebook too. The difference between doing well or poorly on the ad marketplace, adwords, feeds, results, and such can be the difference between a business worth a fortune and one worth nothing.

It's similar in scale, incentive complexes and such to whatever public body approves real estate development plans. Friendly decision makers are worth a fortune. No details on who the culprits were, but it sounds like corruption near the ground level.... $100m. Different beast.

At this point, expect less criminally blatant forms of corruption to emerge. Hiring former facebook & adwords people as "consultants with contacts" is already a meaningful sized thing. Sound familiar?

<comment><USER3> Try not to create monopoly this large and wait for market to sort this out. There should be like 7 amazons, 7 Facebook and such.

<comment><USER2> A part of the reason for the existence of these monopolies is that 1/7th of a facebook (in terms of usage) is worth much less than 1/7th of a facebook in terms of revenue and even less in terms of profit and market cap.

Breadth is very valuable to and ad business. Targeting makes it moreso.

<comment><USER4> 1/7 of Facebook would cover the US or EU and would be very valuable.

<comment><USER2> Sure, those are the most valuable pieces. But all together: 7X(1/7) < 1.

This is the split (most valuable markets kept whole) that would be least detrimental to value, but also least beneficial in monopoly busting terms.

<comment><USER5> I'd argue that 7X(1/7) > 1\. Many (most?) users will be participating in more than one of these concurrently.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> > In total, after their fraudulent reinstatement, the products and merchants > earned in excess of $100 million in sales revenue.

Woah. Was not expecting it to be that big.

> More specifically, the Indictment alleges that the defendants served as > consultants to so-called third-party ("3P") sellers on the Amazon > Marketplace.

Most companies have their employees sign onboarding documents or do an annual "business conduct" policy review. Any thoughts on a better way to manage something like this at scale? On one hand, I have a bad taste in my mouth from past employment situations that dictate "we own every though that enters your mind 24/7" \- but consulting regarding your current employer, yikes.

I guess ethics aren't boolean to some.

<comment><AUTHOR> Don't outsource critical business logic (like whether an 8-9 figure account should be suspended) to Indian low level contractors?

This has long been a major issue with Amazon - often the people making the decisions as to whether a business with dozens of employees gets to keep selling or goes bankrupt are being paid less than US minimum wage in another country.

<comment><USER7> > to Indian low level contractors

So this style of casual racism / xenophobia is ok if directed at approved targets?

Pretty sure if it happened to be 6 African American individuals who were indicted it would not be acceptable to say "Don't outsource your work to low- level Black contractors".

<comment><USER8> Consider that the US DOJ has no authority to investigate, arrest or prosecute in India, India being a sovereign independent state.

Also,

[https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html](https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html)

>Please respond to the strongest plausible interpretation of what someone says, not a weaker one that's easier to criticize. Assume good faith.

<comment><USER9> What a good rule to live ones life by!

<comment><USER10> Many examples can be hiddenly loaded, not well-constructed rule

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> I work for Amazon and have had people reach out to me about doing this with a large price tag attached to it.

<comment><USER12> How much is "large"?

<comment><USER11> Much more than I'm getting paid at Amazon.

<comment><USER13> Over what length of time?

<comment><USER11> I didn't get into the details because I was adamantly against doing it.

<comment><USER14> What you're getting paid at Amazon has the dimension of money/time; a bribe is presumably just money. We need to know the time period to reasonably compare the two :). Otherwise it's like saying "the distance to city is much larger than the speed of my car".

<comment><USER11> tbh, I've already said more than I'd like to about the matter.

<comment><USER15> Did you consider reporting the people who reached out to you? Is there even a method in which to doso? Not sure if that would internal or externally.

<comment><USER16> I work at a different large tech company and there are absolutely internal ways to report any kind of suspicious contacts. I'd be shocked if every large company didn't have at least some way.

<comment><USER17> Even if there isn't a way, you just lift the phone and dial the general counsel.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><AUTHOR> [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17999282](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17999282)

Story from two years ago

</comment><comment><USER18> How, as an Amazon customer, do you report something that looks odd and could be shady? (It involves the term "debit card credit voucher", if that helps any. And do you all have your Amazon purchases show up as Seattle ATM withdrawals?)

<comment><USER18> The other thing that's funny, is that Amazon.com's "help/ customer service" page doesn't offer a way or visible path to speak to a customer service human anymore.

<comment><USER18> And today my chromebook has suddenly lost all its history, settings, and downloaded local files. I wonder if there was a way to have backed them up.

<comment><USER18> "and local files, that I had downloaded." Unfortunately these also included the screen captures I had made of oddlooking browser window content.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER19> > (a) sharing competitive intelligence about competitors' revenues, customers, > advertising campaigns, and suppliers; (b) using their inside access to > Amazon's network to suspend competitors' 3P accounts; and (c) providing > consultants with information about Amazon's internal algorithms,

This is mildly amusing, because obviously Amazon does all of these things, but it's _fine_ because they're Amazon.

[https://www.cnbc.com/2020/04/23/wsj-amazon-uses-data-from- th...](https://www.cnbc.com/2020/04/23/wsj-amazon-uses-data-from-third-party- sellers-to-develop-its-own-products.html)

[https://www.washingtonpost.com/technology/2020/07/29/bezos-t...](https://www.washingtonpost.com/technology/2020/07/29/bezos- testimony-data-antitrust/)

</comment><comment><USER20> "conspiracy to access a protected computer without authorization, conspiracy to commit wire fraud, and wire fraud"

Ah yes.

They are charged with "using electronic __communications or digital networks __to obtain money based on false representation or promises. " Remember fraudsters: If you just meet these people at a McDonalds you wont be charged with a crime. Do not use mail or wires and watch the government squirm.

[https://www.justice.gov/archives/jm/criminal-resource- manual...](https://www.justice.gov/archives/jm/criminal-resource- manual-941-18-usc-1343-elements-wire-fraud)

<comment><USER21> For it to be a federal crime there (typically) needs to be an inter-state aspect to it. It's typically very easy to show that the communication crossed state lines if it was over the Internet, which removes jurisdictional challenges.

If you defraud your local grocery store with your coordination meetings in a local mcdonalds, it's _probably_ a state crime. ( _)

(_) (1) there are many ways a crime can slip into federal jurisdiction; (2) IANAL, so don't take advice from me when you're about to commit fraud.

<comment><USER22> Amazon operates in all 50 states.

For it to be a federal crime, there just needs to be federal interest. They can make it a federal crime if they're interested.

<comment><USER23> That's not true. To pick the first example I was able to find:

In United States v. Lopez, ___ U.S.____, 115 S.Ct. 1624 (1995), the Supreme Court invalidated, as beyond the powers of Congress under the Commerce Clause, the Gun Free School Zone Act, which criminalized the possession of a firearm within 1000 feet of a school.

[https://www.justice.gov/archives/jm/criminal-resource- manual...](https://www.justice.gov/archives/jm/criminal-resource- manual-1112-constitutionality-carjacking-statute)

<comment><USER22> I'm not a lawyer but I'm super willing to bet that someone who embarasses both Amazon and the FBI is gonna wind up with a federal rap and very few friends to fight it.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER24> Whats the difference between a bribe and payment for services? legally?

For example, is an employee selling their knowledge about how a company works a bribe? Software contractors often sell information like that. But it does seem bribe-like.

<comment><USER25> The difference is whose pocket the money goes into. If it goes to the government, or the company, that the official represents, it's a fee. If the official pockets the money, it's a bribe (or possibly fraud / embezzlement).

Good rule of thumb: always get a receipt. No receipt, it's a bribe. If you're given a genuine-looking receipt, then you can probably get off the hook as a victim of fraud.

<comment><USER26> Plenty of ways to pay a bribe AND get a receipt.

A popular scheme in my country:

\- politician runs, possibly through proxy, nearly defunct NGO

\- company supports NGO

\- politician votes in favor of a company

\- after politician's stint is over, he runs a series of speeches for the NGO to cash out

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER27> The article says 10 employees and contractors accepted the bribes but this seems to be focused on those paying. I hope they also go after those accepting the bribes.

<comment><USER28> There's a weird dynamic in bribes. If I offer you a bribe and you don't take it, I can still claim that you did. Or I can muddy the waters by claiming that you asked for it.

One idea I've seen is that it should be legal to accept a bribe but not offer or solicit one. On taking the bribe, your legal protection is conditional on handing over the bribe to the appropriate authorities. There's still some game theory at work, but you've at least given people that are susceptible to bribes some additional power.

<comment><USER29> My personal gut reaction is to avoid touching dirty money at all costs. Life's too short to try and explain that to a law enforcement professional with no imagination.

<comment><USER30> Or you can use the dirty money and hire high profile lawyers and just get a slap on the wrist, pay a small fine and move on.

<comment><USER29> In some places, they slap you on the wrist with a sword.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER31> _" According to the Indictment, since at least 2017, the defendants have used bribery and fraud to benefit merchant accounts on the Amazon Marketplace, resulting in more than $100 million..."_

Interesting that only the 3rd party sellers are indicted here. At least that's how it reads.

Maybe it's more complex on the Amazon side and some second wave is coming.

</comment><comment><USER32> I would assume this goes on A LOT. There is a lot of trust given to employees in tech companies.

<comment><USER33> Agreed. I think the people who set up these contracted "decision centers" (things like user report reviews, fraud handling, adult content policing) subconsciously assume the workers will have the same loyalty and comfortable lifestyle that salaried tech employees get. Take contracted US-based call centers: a significant fraction of their employees will be home-insecure (staying with relatives or partners, or moving every few weeks), living out of their car, or straight up homeless, making minimum wage with less-than- fulltime weekly hours. A significant majority will be short-term employees who bounce after a few months or years. Even $10k bribe—especially untaxed—could be a year's spare income or more. It's a very different value proposition.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> The most interesting part of this is that Amazon's confidential data was revealed. What level were these employees operating at? Or is this just trumping up charges on support center employees?

100k is not nearly enough to bribe several tech employees. But it's impressive how effective bribing support can be.

</comment><comment><USER34> Yes, as the world moves more and more toward online commerce, a statute specifically crafted for "fraud using transmission of information over wires" is just the modern tool we need to fight back.

</comment><comment><USER35> Looks like they bribed the wrong people.

</comment><comment><USER36> Amazing. Bezos outsourcing compliance to the federal government, saving money and getting access to harsher punishments than he can dispense himself. Genius

<comment><USER37> Hard to say if they saved money. This fraud definitely has a negative impact on both sellers and buyers. Buyers are losing trust in Amazon due to sub standard products. Sellers are getting fed up and quitting or moving on.

</comment></comment><comment><USER38> Waiting for the real indictments from 2008 fraud. Until then, whatever.

<comment><USER39> Which fraud are you referring to?</comment></comment>


Ask HN: Between jobs for two weeks, what should I do? - <AUTHOR>

My last day at my employer of 10 years is fast approaching, and I'll have two weeks of 'unemployment' before starting in the new role. I'm at a bit of a loss over what to do with that time, so looking for ideas..
I'm torn between planning absolutely nothing and just let nature take its course vs. trying to use the time as fully as possible (take an intensive language course for example.)
What would you do? <comment><USER2> ... take a holiday. Rest your brain. Spend a day in bed without Internet. Go out for a walk. Buy a second-hand paper book and read it in the park.

Do everything that isn't work.

</comment><comment><USER3> Do Something or Do Nothing for two weeks is the proposition...

It's an enviable opportunity to get stuff done, or daydream. Imagine what your ideal life would look, sound, or feel like. Write out your biggest fantasy about where you want to go in life.

Here's an interview with GTD author David Allen, good food for thought...> [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=w_mLp6x8rts](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=w_mLp6x8rts)

</comment><comment><USER4> Surely you have hobbies, so enjoy those as much as you can. I get tempted to do things such as learn a new framework or tool or a language as you suggested only to find I can not invest that much time in the end.

I find that handling some unfinished business and doing something that is completely off track from your daily routine is best to keep unnecessary stress out of your life.

</comment><comment><USER5> I'm in the UK. I'd spend a week in France. Probably around here [http://donsmaps.com/regourdou.html](http://donsmaps.com/regourdou.html) but anywhere would do. The culture shock really helps make a holiday feel real.

</comment><comment><USER6> Clean house hard the first day.

Then maybe go on a day trip or a vacation. Just enjoy having time off.

</comment><comment><USER7> Just enjoy your life! As for me travelling is the best

</comment><comment><USER8> Follow the fun dude, easy.

</comment><comment><USER9> Gardening</comment>


Rift Between Apple and Indian Telecom Regulator TRAI - <AUTHOR> https://www.ndtv.com/india-news/rift-deepens-between-apple-telecom-regulator-trai-over-do-not-disturb-app-1829351?amp=1&akamai-rum=off <comment><AUTHOR> Lately there's been a lot of discourse happening in India over privacy laws especially after the Adhaar breach where Adhaar information was reportedly sold for $8 per person. It was also revealed that the Narendra Modi app, which is the official app of the current Prime Minister, had been - or rather, is still- collecting user's information without consent. Now the rift between Apple and TRAI over the development of a 'Do Not Disturb' app is particularly interesting because of two main reasons. A few months back the Indian government released a list of '42 Chinese Apps' that could be providing the Chinese government with intelligence data. The list included Truecaller as well. Truecaller later clarified that it was a Sweden based company and that its servers were not based in China. Furthermore the Indian Army also directed its personnels to remove Truecaller. The second reason being the development of a 'Do Not Disturb' app by a government agency which raises more questions. All this comes at the midst of several privacy violation policies of the new government.</comment>


Yelp Cash Back Rewards - <AUTHOR> https://www.yelp.com/rewards/signup <comment><USER2> They won't tell you who the participating merchants are, or how much the return, until after you give them your credit card info.</comment>


Polygenic scores mediate Jewish phenotypic advantage in academic attainment - <AUTHOR> https://psycnet.apa.org/record/2019-03287-001 <comment><USER2> It is obvious that at least Eastern European jews, as oppose to Sephardi (and North African and near eastern Jews, who are genetically more identifiable as ethnic Jews) are a very mixed bunch indeed, if can even be considered "Jewish" in any meaningful way other than culturally.

[https://www.nature.com/articles/ncomms3543#results](https://www.nature.com/articles/ncomms3543#results)</comment>


Crystal Oscillator (Transistor Based Amplifier) - <AUTHOR> http://forums.adafruit.com/viewtopic.php?f=8&t=36508

<comment><AUTHOR> This is one of my favorite forum exchanges ever, the support engineer Mike and one of Adafruits customers, discuss making a transistor based amplifier work. It is a tour de force of basic linear circuit analysis and was really fun to read through.</comment>


Ask HN:How to get into MIT Media Lab? - <AUTHOR> I applied to MIT Media Lab last year, application was rejected. I've solid projects on Fluid Dynamics, Image processing, and some of them align with their interests too. Any inputs on what it takes to make the chances of application really stand out? -is it the GPA? -is it ability to publish? -is it the recommendations? <comment><USER2> A fundamental misconception about the Media Lab is that it is an engineering lab. Yes, the technologies that are developed are forward-thinking enough that most students and professors there must be at least moderately skilled engineers. However, the primary goal of the media lab is to birth new ideas, not new implementations.

This may sound a bit blasé, but a well-faked demo of a totally original 2040 technology is going to be more well received than a well-designed product with 2011 technologies.

This varies depending on the particular group at the lab, of course--some groups, such as Biomechatronics (<http://biomech.media.mit.edu/>) are more grounded in reality, whereas others, such as Lifelong Kindergarten (<http://llk.media.mit.edu/>) are more experimental.

My advice: READ THE PAPERS that Media Lab groups are publishing. Especially recent Phd theses, and papers at the high-profile conferences (SIGGRAPH, SIGCHI). Think about them. Write about them. Figure out how you'd build upon them. Then talk to the authors of the ones that excite you the most.

NOTE: This is based upon my own experience, and my views do not represent those of the Media Lab. I've worked at the Media Lab in the past, but I'm not speaking from any official capacity here.

<comment><AUTHOR> is it true that knowing someone there helps? i notice the difference bw media lab and other schools. so someone who knows how to show off might have a better chance than someone really good at it?

<comment><USER2> Yes, it's definitely true that knowing someone there helps, but more specifically, having a dialogue about intriguing ideas with someone there helps.

I don't think knowing how to show off is necessarily more important than being a good artist/innovator/engineer, but it's at least as important. The Media Lab wants to show off too, after all, and they need people who are good at it.

I'm not sure how you see the Media Lab as different than other art/design schools in that respect. It's definitely different than engineering schools, yes, but it's not an engineering school.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER3> I have a friend who works there.

According to him, word of mouth is paramount. Who do you know there?

As he put it...treat this as a the interview. If you can't befriend someone who works there they you aren't qualified.

</comment><comment><USER4> Best of luck. I'm feeling the same brand of anxiety.

Prof. Raskar has a good set of advice on the Camera Culture page <http://cameraculture.media.mit.edu/join>

I'd recommend reading all of the pages relevant to the groups you want to be a part of. I second Storborg's advice to read some recent graduate papers.

I'd also recommend working on your site specifically for the eyes of MIT professors. Highlight your work and how it applies to the world outside the field in which it was made. Talk about what inspires you and what you want to pursue in your own work. Think of it as an ad campaign with your professors as your target audience. You need to sell them on why you are right for that lab. Ask yourself the question "why should I be at Media Lab versus anyone else" and then answer it through your portfolio.

<comment><AUTHOR> When are you applying to ML? I saw you've worked at Eyebeam! Awesome, how's the place?

<comment><USER4> I'm applying this round.

Eyebeam is amazing. Or, that is to say, the group I worked with was an amazing group of people. There were lots of creative people making the shops hum, teaching classes, and sharing ideas. Though, the group of people using it as a work/research facility changes almost entirely every six months. It's possible that the personality of the group changes substantially with it.

It's universally guaranteed to be brilliant. There are also a lot of dramatic transformations the whole place goes through as different people change the gallery spaces to suit their projects. While I was there working on Fairytale Fashion it changed from a formal art gallery, to a small faux bookstore, to a museum, to a fashion runway. It was sometimes like watching mushrooms grow in fast motion.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> Like any competitive program, you need to be among the best of the best across the board. The MIT Media Lab has relatively few openings each year ( [http://admissions.media.mit.edu/admissions/facts- figures/stu...](http://admissions.media.mit.edu/admissions/facts- figures/students-graduates) ) and I'm sure they receive a staggering number of applications for those few positions.</comment>


Firefox can now block the web's autoplaying videos - <AUTHOR> https://www.theverge.com/2019/3/19/18272377/firefox-66-release-date-news-features-autoplaying-videos <comment><USER2> I've been using the "Mute sites by default" extension [0] for a while now and it does the job.

0: [https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/mute-sites- by...](https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/mute-sites-by-default/)

</comment><comment><USER3> [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=19430684](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=19430684)</comment>


Ask HN: How do you find your next book? - <AUTHOR>

<comment><USER2> For fiction books I simply browse bookshops, new and old and read a lot of blurbs. I'm fortunate in that there are all kinds of niche and speciality bookshops alongside the more mainstream chains around me so I can spend an afternoon perusing a few favourites on the lookout for my next reads. I'll tend to buy a few in a go and then repeat once all are read. Rarely do I seek out or encounter reviews for books and I do no tracking or analysis, other than mental notes of authors I've enjoyed etc.

For non-fiction books my approach is markedly different and I seek out a lot of online and peer reviews. With non-fiction books being a more significant investment (time and cost vs expected advancement of knowledge) I can spend weeks deciding which books will be useful to me.

</comment><comment><USER3> I track the books I've read and want to read on Goodreads ([https://www.goodreads.com](https://www.goodreads.com)). I currently have about 200 books on my "to read list". I find interesting books suggestions everywhere - on the HN (special topics for books but quite often in the random commments), articles, blogs etc. I don't blindly add new books, I first research it for a few minutes (table of content, reviews, similar books).

I also recommend Farnam Street Blog ([http://www.farnamstreetblog.com/](http://www.farnamstreetblog.com/)) for a lot of interesting suggestions.

</comment><comment><USER4> The annual threads on HN about, "What was the best book your read in $YEAR", tend to have some brilliant books that I would have never encounted any other way. Bill Gates annual list tends to be solid as well, but only a handful of books each time. Mark Zuckerberg's reading club could potentially be useful too.

I still find a lot of success in just going to a second hand book store and finding gems in a fairly short amount of time too. But obviously more niche books are unlikely to be there.

Goodreads, does tend to be fairly good at identifying authors of a similar theme, but that has only been of limited usage to me.

</comment><comment><USER5> If you find yourself in the position of saying "Hey, I have some free time; what should I read?" I recommend focusing first on what you want to know or do, secondly on determining what book and articles are likely to contain useful information, and only then determining a plan for what to read. Here is the process I follow.

For each subject in which I am interested, I maintain a bibliography. The most common way entries are added here is by discovering references to books or articles in other things I am reading.

When reading books in physical media, I usually draw an arrow by references or notes that indicate books I should add to these bibliographies. When I am done with a book or article, I go back through and add any such references that still seem relevant to my bibliography. (I do this at the same time I am transcribing notes and quotations, files of which are also an important part of my system.) I usually include a brief note on why I believe this work will be of value and where I got the reference.

Where this becomes useful is when I am pursuing some sort of study. I have learned that I study best with some object in view, so even if my study is for general education, I prepare a syllabus that presents objectives of some sort (code to write, questions to answer, etc.).

Once I have the objectives prepared, I use my living bibliography files to create a reading plan. Of course, once I really delve into a subject, that plan usually expands and I add more references into both my general bibliography and reading plan.

This process provides me an apparatus to pursue my interests in a structured way to make the most of my time. I don't worry much about what to read next except in the context of some such study.

I have found that without this sort of structure to focus my reading, I am in danger of becoming a dilettante. I don't have an exceptional memory, and if I read without a structure, I easily fall into the trap of cultivating superficial knowledge without ever getting deep enough to answer substantive questions or do original work.

I do, however, want to encourage serendipity, so I subscribe to and read periodicals in variety of fields. I have also found The London Review of Books and book reviews in leading newspapers to be useful sources of references and lines of thought that I would probably never otherwise discover.

</comment><comment><USER4> Forgot to mention the site BookFlocks [1] which interviews people about books that were proven important to their career and life. Thou it looks like it might be dead on new material.

[1] [http://bookflocks.com/](http://bookflocks.com/)

</comment><comment><USER6> Fiction or non-fiction?

<comment><AUTHOR> Both.

When it comes to technology, I find books to be a secondary citizen. If I look at things I know and use in my day job. Things like stack overflow, blog posts and reading man pages have been my primary knowledge sources.

But off late, I've been reading books and mostly enjoying the titles I've read. But the biggest problem for me is finding my next book.

Amazon mostly recommends titles very closely related to what I've purchased, and I haven't had much success with goodreads lists. So I'm curious how HN users find their next book.

<comment><USER6> I discover books through three sources:

1) New releases from publishers/editors/authors I like. If you like 3 books from one publisher, you're probably more likely to like another book from that publisher despite its topic. Same for editors. And, for authors although author releases are less frequent than editors which are less frequent than publishers.

2) Colleagues and friends. Word of mouth still seems to be the number one way people discover books. Ask your friends what they are currently reading. Hop over to GoodReads.com and see if you can find a network that reads genres similar to what you like.

3) Blogs/forums. We like to talk about what we're reading since that makes an otherwise rather solo activity more social. Search the personal/academic/company blogs for topics you like.

Finally, why not create a hacker news thread called "What are you currently reading?" :)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> gutenberg</comment>


Huawei is working on its own mobile OS in case things sour with Google - <AUTHOR> http://www.theverge.com/2016/6/23/12011732/huawei-developing-own-mobile-os <comment><USER2> Currently working in this company, I guarantee you Huawei is working on its own version of everything. Any tool we use is always considered as something we should aim to replace with a version of our own.

A custom OS does not suprise me in the slightest, considering there are custom ARMv8 CPU's in development as well

<comment><USER3> Pretty much every Android OEM has a plan B. It would kinda stupid not to. Samsung has proudly shown off Tizen and even releases products with it. Actually, its the fourth largest mobile in term of market share. Sailfish is reportedly used internally in several companies as well.

The more the merrier. I would love to see Android be a Nexus-only product where there's a high level of quality, fast updates, and years of security/platform updates opposed to the excessively skinned Android phones that maybe get one major update in their lifetime and then get tossed into the landfill.

edit: I should note Tizen isn't a Samsung product, they are just one of its biggest users and contributors. Its an open source OS managed by the Linux foundation.

<comment><USER4> >Pretty much every Android OEM has a plan B. It would kinda stupid not to.

I am genuinely not capable of understanding this logic.google is not a small company and they are not going to destroy Android with these kind of stupid decisions.

So why Samsung and etc does spend billions on new softwares when they can simply fork Android (in most extreme situations to respond to Google, just like what Amazon did).

<comment><USER5> The concern is not that Android "goes away", but that google enslaves the hardware companies like good old MS of yore enslaved the PS clone makers.

<comment><USER6> That ship has sailed. Learn how to prosper in that role or do something else. If you think you can do an OS, go for it. I would like to see a third successful mobile OS.

<comment><USER7> >If you think you can do an OS, go for it.

It's not about competing with Android. It's about bargaining power. If you depend on Google, they can dictate any terms they like. Having an alternative to Android, even a crappy one, sets an upper limit to how hard Google can screw you over.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> The main issue here is that a bunch of multi-billion businesses are dependent on a company that has its own agenda. Google doesn't care about Huawei or Samsung or Sony. If dropping Android and joining Windows Phone camp could somehow improve their ad revenue and data gathering they would probably do it.

So while I don't think Huawei will get anywhere with their OS. They (and Samsung) are trying to send a message to Google: act like a real partner or we are out.

<comment><USER9> > So while I don't think Huawei will get anywhere with their OS. They (and > Samsung) are trying to send a message to Google: act like a real partner or > we are out.

Well I agree with the first sentence, but the second? They really don't have that much leverage; I highly doubt that's anywhere near the message they are trying to send. You seem to imply Google should feel threatened by these moves, which I imagine is far from the case.

</comment></comment><comment><USER10> Samsung is allegedly doing the same thing with Tizen: [http://9to5google.com/2016/06/13/report-claims-that- samsung-...](http://9to5google.com/2016/06/13/report-claims-that-samsung-is- considering-moving-all-of-its-devices-to-tizen/)

I don't think this is likely to happen, it would destroy both Samsung's and Huawei's markets in the West. Perhaps Korean and Chinese consumers might switch to the new platforms but I can't see those of us in the Americas and Europe giving up our Google services.

<comment><USER11> From native point of Tizen already had two reboots.

First it was based on Meego APIs, then it got the C++ dialect from BADA OS (very similar to Symbian) and now they rebooted it again using EFL + C, but adding another C++ API in the process.

Native is not always open to everyone, for example for TVs app developers can only use WebApps and need to become a partner for native code.

So I doubt that Tizen will ever get an app eco-system that people will bother to use.

</comment></comment><comment><USER12> So who do I distrust less, Google, who is shamelessly harvesting all kinds of data just because they can, or a company with history of malware/spyware allegations?

<comment><USER13> > or a company with history of malware/spyware allegations

I'm not familiar with Huawaei, what's the story behind this?

<comment><USER14> There were a few stories a while back, although IMO they were fairly light on details and data to back up their claims: [http://au.idigitaltimes.com/malware-found-pre-installed- xiao...](http://au.idigitaltimes.com/malware-found-pre-installed-xiaomi- huawei-lenovo-phones-107190)

More generally however, a lot of tech manufactured in China has concern around it. Numerous western govt's have blacklisted the use of anything Chinese- produced over fears of espionage and general quality. A good example is the 'backdoors' that have shown up in Lenovo computers post-acquisition.

I think there may be a little confusion between the the fact that Huawei makes networking gear which is blacklisted with a number of western govt's, with their mobile offerings - and several reports of 'malware' haven't helped muddy the waters.

That said I wouldn't use a Huawei phone.

Edit: here's the report regarding Malware: [https://public.gdatasoftware.com/Presse/Publikationen/Malwar...](https://public.gdatasoftware.com/Presse/Publikationen/Malware_Reports/G_DATA_MobileMWR_Q2_2015_EN.pdf)

It got a ton of upvotes on HN much to my confusion, given that the PDF reads like a marketing release trying to sell mobile AV (there's a whole side-topic of conversation there). Furthermore, the click-bait title highlights Lenovo, Huawei, etc when the actual report only outlines 3 never-heard-of-before vendors and mentions they 'suspect' the other vendors of distributing infected phones.

Again, I would never own a Chinese-designed phone, but I think it's worth verifying claims.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> The source article: [https://www.theinformation.com/how-a-former-apple- designer-i...](https://www.theinformation.com/how-a-former-apple-designer-is- updating-huaweis-look)

</comment><comment><USER16> If Huawei's history is any indication they're probably just taking the android code, and doing a find and replace.

</comment><comment><USER17> There are so many innovations that can be done in the world (and to Android itself as well), but another new OS is not one that would make sense (maybe a HTML5+JS based, but there are already open source OSs based on that). Even Microsoft has a hard time getting into the Mobile OS market. Anyways, good luck to Huawei (and I wish they would try to beat Samsung in the high-end the mobile market).

</comment><comment><USER6> The choices are pretty grim:

The only OS other than iOS and Android that has a managed language runtime is Windows. It's not a bad phone OS. But it is US-made and if you are Chinese, you don't want NSA inside.

Possibly the best alternative is to do an OS derived from AOSP. But only Amazon has done a good job with this, building a really polished commercial product with a complete (for their purposes of media consumption) ecosystem.

Then there is Sailfish. The main problem with Sailfish is that C++/Qt/Linux is not a competitive app environment compared with Swift on iOS or Android's Java-like runtime.

Web app runtimes on Tizen and other contenders taking this route have also proven to be underdeveloped, slow, and too under-resourced to get them past general problems with web apps, framework consensus, etc.

<comment><USER11> Tizen is also a very schizophrenic OS.

First they ditched the API inherited from Meego by their own BADA flavored ones with that Symbian C++ touch, and recently they ditched those again by C + EFL with another new C++ one to avoid losing C++ developers.

Also the native APIs aren't available everywhere where Tizen runs, for example on TVs only the Web app runtime is available to all developers. For native one needs to pay extra.

So besides going back to stone age C style APIs, their continuous change of direction doesn't inspire any confidence to invest into the platform.

</comment></comment><comment><USER18> For any partnership with billions at stake, I would consider such experiments as insurance. It's a good thing that Huawei is being proactive in this regards. Although I do wonder why don't they build it on AOSP instead of building something from scratch.

</comment><comment><USER19> I would love to see Creative Labs return to the scene with Plaszma OS, which they were doing before iOS and Android took all the ice cream.

So many alternative ways to use Linux to provide an awesome user experience ..

</comment><comment><USER20> EMUI is terrible, if only they would make it easy to run stock Android.

<comment><USER21> Yep. It shows that Huawei, at least those UI developers, fundamentally do not understand how OSes work. EMUI, when you invoke the switch window function, has a single button to kill all running processes (or activities or whatever Android calls them). Hitting it by accident is easy. And once you do so, the UI proclaims with glee how much memory it freed up. Even when, on my phone, I've never seen free mem under 800MB.

Are there any non-US companies that do well in creating UIs?

</comment></comment><comment><USER22> After my disappointing experience with the Nexus 6P, I can't imagine a situation where I would roll the dice with Huawei hardware, let alone software.

<comment><USER23> Can you elaborate? I'm interested on the Nexus 6P.</comment></comment>


Ransomware What-to-Do: Best Practice - <AUTHOR> https://www.reddit.com/r/sysadmin/comments/b6u4m9/ransomware_what_to_do_best_practice/ <comment><USER2> Nice tips, the one with "don't reboot the system" is very useful, that's like the first thing I would do :D</comment>


Ask HN: Should I purchase a .video domain - <AUTHOR> I am working on platform where videos can be created and hosted; Any thoughts on purchasing a .video domain for this purpose? <comment><USER2> Would you like to use the domain Free.TV ?

I am the founder of OpenDomain - we are "Open source for domains".

contact me hacker.news AT domain

<comment><USER3> Firefox Developer Edition 70.0b9 on MacOS is throwing up a security error when trying to navigate to opendomain.org - you may want to get that looked at.</comment></comment>


The Soviets Unbreakable Code: The Hidden History of the Fialka Espionage Machine - <AUTHOR> https://foreignpolicy.com/2019/04/27/the-soviets-unbreakable-code-fialka-encryption-espionage-russia-kgb-spy/ <comment><USER2> The photo seems to show a wax seal mechanism on the card containers and a matching slide holds them in the lid of the box.

I'm wondering if it's some kind of tamper check, or to prevent reusing cards?</comment>


List Processing in C - <AUTHOR> http://www.dekorte.com/blog/blog.cgi?do=item&id=3119

<comment><USER2> _I guess it's just not very well known that C has functions which can also be passed as values._

Perhaps more interesting and newsworthy in this context are Apple's blocks, which are closures:

<http://thirdcog.eu/pwcblocks/>

<comment><USER3> That's not standard C, though.

<comment><USER2> That's why it says 'Apple's blocks' and not 'C99 blocks' or 'C1X blocks'. Though, it is part of mainline clang, so it is not restricted to OS X in any way.

<comment><USER4> Of course blocks also requires runtime support. The compiler is useless without a matching runtime library. Is there a production-quality "C-with- blocks" runtime available for other platforms than OS X?

<comment><USER5> I'm not sure if it is production quality, but I have successfully used this to get C-with-blocks in Archlinux. <http://compiler-rt.llvm.org/index.html>

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> _I guess it's just not very well known that C has functions which can also be passed as values._

Sure, C has function pointers. But it doesn't have closures: the things you can do with just a function pointer are fairly limited.

The callback syntax in the post should really be:

        typedef void *(ListMapCallback)(void *item, void *state);

...which gets ugly quickly (passing your closure state around as a void*) and doesn't compose well (passing your closure state into your implementations of List_map_, List_fold_, etc.)

<comment><USER7> It's not necessarily just ugly but plain idiomatic C. It's just C: a function pointer + userdata pointer.

All hooks, callbacks, etc. use this approach because that's what a closure is on a low enough level. And in C it looks like void( _)(void_ userdata).

<comment><USER6> My "ugly" comment comes from spending my career programming against APIs like this :)

        typedef BOOL (* WNDENUMPROC) (HWND, LPARAM);
        BOOL WINAPI EnumWindows(WNDENUMPROC lpEnumFunc, LPARAM lParam);

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> A couple of years back, I wrote an implementation of a list in C that provided a List_ForEach(list, callback, context) function, because I really liked that idiom in Ruby. 2 years down the track, I almost never use that function, preferring to simply do this:

      for (pItem = List_First(pList); pItem; pItem = List_Next(pList))
      {
            //do stuff to pItem
      }

It really isn't that much wordier than the ruby (or lisp, or python etc, they all have similar styles for this):

      list.each do |item|
        #do stuff to item
      end

and as you do it all of the time, you don't even have a high cognitive load, your fingers can pretty much type it without having to engage the brain.

OK, so it's implemented using control structures rather than closures. Is that really such a terrible thing? Am I missing some big advantage here?

<comment><USER9> A lot of people use #each this way in Ruby, yes, but I don't think it's usually justified. #each is primarily designed to handle side effects. "Do stuff to item" is usually better accomplished with a chain of #map, #select, #inject, #grep, etc. If "do stuff to item" is a multiline set of steps, sure you can use #each. I prefer, though, to abstract that set of steps into a lambda or named function and then map the function onto each item.

Then again, I'm biased. I really like Ruby for its higher-order Lispiness, and not for its webbiness.

</comment></comment><comment><USER10> sys/queue.h has some really useful list macros.

It has FOREACH, HEAD, TAIL, INSERT_*, the works.

[http://freebsd.active-venture.com/FreeBSD- srctree/newsrc/sys...](http://freebsd.active-venture.com/FreeBSD- srctree/newsrc/sys/queue.h.html)

<comment><USER8> And may it rot in hell for forcing you to add fields into every struct that _might_ find itself in a list at some point in it's life. May it _doubly_ rot in hell for forcing you to add those fields for _every_ list that the object might be a part of. May it _triply_ rot in hell for using unsightly macros that are impossible to debug, particularly when working in an embedded environment.

queue.h - just say no.

<comment> rw2- so, what's the alternative? do you have a nice typesafe library for external lists?

<comment><USER8> If I have to throw typesafety onto the sacrificial bonfire to avoid queue.h, then I do it with a light heart. I really don't see any value in it. You have two possible situations:

1) The list contains only items of one type - in this case you already know what the type of all objects in the list is - it's a list of widgets, so all items are of type Widget. Whilst queue.h will give you a compiler warning if ever you try to put a File into your widget list, is that every really likely to happen in real life???

2) You have a list of mixed-type objects. In that case you need code to identify at runtime what the type of the object was anyhow, so type safety gets you nothing in that case either.

So, considering how little you get back for the decidely annoying problems of macros and polluted data structures, I really have no hesitation in counselling the avoidance of queue.h.

In answer to your question, no, I don't have a nice _typesafe_ library. But I do have a nice non-typesafe library.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment> rw2- very ugly...

ccan has a much nicer list-for-each: <http://ccan.ozlabs.org/info/list.html>

</comment><comment><USER11> Rather than

      #define LIST_FOREACH(list, index, value, code)

I'd prefer

      #define LIST_FOREACH(list, index, value) \
      for(index = 0, value = list->items[0]; \
          index < list->size; \
          index++, value=list->items[index])

It lets you treat a LIST_FOREACH(...) as a normal for(...) in terms of the other syntax.

edit: I did some looking around and determined that the following is probably BS

[1] If you're wondering why I didn't do

      index++, value = list->items[index]

it's because expressions separated by a comma can be evaluated in any order (I believe). My friend ran up against it with a bug in jscore.

<comment><USER12> > it's because expressions separated by a comma can be evaluated in any order > (I believe).

Expressions separated by the comma operator are always evaluated left to right. On the other hand function arguments (which are separated by comma) can be evaluated in any order.

<comment><USER13> > Expressions separated by the comma operator are always evaluated left to > right.

That's correct (for C), but I feel the need to add that in function calls the parameters are separated by commas, and they can be evaluated in any order.

<comment><USER14> In the contexts of a function declaration/definition/call, comma is not acting as an operator.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> He quotes:

 _For example, LISP, Python, and Ruby all offer beautiful and concise constructs for operating on lists of things._

This might be a matter of taste, but macros, void pointers, lack of closures, etc. don't really spell "beautiful and concise" to me. And I think that's what the original quotation is about - you can get similar things done in Java using anonymous classes, and C using function pointers, and probably more or less any language if you try hard enough, but it's just neither beautiful nor concise.

</comment><comment><USER16> I once used function pointers in C to generate -- and iterate over -- menu options in a Mac app I was writing. I felt like such a _naughty, naughty boy_ for doing so.

There's probably a rule in those Joint Strike Fighter C++ guidelines that says function pointers _shall not_ be used.

<comment><USER17> What's wrong with function pointers? Did you know that when you call most I/O functions in GNU libc they go through function pointers? It's a bit of faux OOP.

</comment></comment><comment><USER18> Regarding first class functions, I've never heard of the requirement that they be compilable at runtime. Compilation is orthogonal to the definition of a language.

</comment><comment><USER19> The tip about using function pointers to iterate a list is good but... macros, really?

<comment><USER20> Are macros are inherently evil? If you had a convention (e.g. only capitalised words in macros, none in your program propper) then they could exist safely. Perhaps a good DSL could sit on top of C macros to shield developers from the syntax. Are there any good preprocessors that do this?

<comment><USER21> I don't think macros are _inherently_ evil - but they certainly facilitate Lovecraftian horrors. I have seen production embedded code where the authors didn't really like C and decided that vaguely Pascal like syntax would be better and did this through macros - probably vaguely influenced by the original Bourne shell sources but with a darker madder twist.

<comment><USER22> It seems like you could say that about any sufficiently powerful construct. Sharper knives require better judgment to be used safely.

This is why we often give novices rules of thumb like "don't use macros" or "don't use goto." I've seen some people criticize this practice, but I think it's actually a good thing; when you're just starting out, you don't know when these things are really called for. Working under some constraints simplifies things.

With experience, you learn the pain points well enough to outgrow those rules and use macros/goto/whatever when called for.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER23> Please remember to put the year in the title if a submission is old (in this case it's from 2007).

<comment><USER24> Is that really necessary? The article is only a few years old. Also, the elements involved (in this case, C) have not changed significantly in that time.

Tagging posts with dates like that IMHO encourages the view that anything technology related is instantly obsolete. Since the industry seems to keep rediscovering old ideas every couple years and then rejecting them as "old", this probably does far more harm than good.

" _You want to make your way in the CS field? Simple. Calculate rough time of amnesia (hell, 10 years is plenty, probably 10 months is plenty), go to the dusty archives, dig out something fun, and go for it. It's worked for many people, and it can work for you._ " - Ron Minnich</comment></comment>


Why (most) High Level Languages Are Slow - grey-area http://www.sebastiansylvan.com/post/why-most-high-level-languages-are-slow/ <comment><AUTHOR> Thanks for the link to this post! I want to know if garbage collection could be done in "all-or-nothing" fashion. When you collect you simply increment the "generation counter". Since all data is tagged with a "generation" you can with one assignment collect everything. Could this work or is it completely not useful? I would like to make an efficient garbage collector if possible when I have learned more.</comment>


Xkcd: Exploits of a Mom - <AUTHOR> http://xkcd.com/327/ <comment><USER2> Well known here, and referenced many, _many_ times:

[http://www.hnsearch.com/search#request/all&q=bobby+table...](http://www.hnsearch.com/search#request/all&q=bobby+tables)</comment>


Minimodem – General-purpose software audio FSK modem (2016) - <AUTHOR> http://www.whence.com/minimodem/ <comment><USER2> I bought a laptop in the late 90's with a 'winmodem' and was sad to find it had no Linux support. I set out to add it.

I bought the Linux device drivers book and started researching winmodems. I discovered the low level driver interface was built in to the audio chip. I believe the standard was called 'AC97'. Borrowing code from the audio driver, I managed to activate the RJ11 jack, which I hooked a tiny speaker to, and played audio out the phone jack. I got as far as playing DTMF tones before giving up on the project. The details of how modems work at the modulation level was way over my head.

<comment><USER3> Today we have many projects with no Windows support, like this Minimodem. I couldn't even develop React or React Native apps on Windows until a few years after they had been out. I would love to be able to use Redis on Windows in production for corporate Intranet apps where they often run Windows only.

It's kind of annoying to me, but I don't blame the authors. I feel like many Linux users blamed Microsoft for things like this, but honestly - why should anyone go out of their way to support an OS that they don't use?

<comment><USER4> Presumably because that OS supports you right back. If windows open-sourced a few key components, like directx, I'd be a lot more inclined to support it.

<comment><USER3> Yeah, I hear what you're saying. I deploy my stuff to Linux, but putting aside any ideology, I just vastly prefer a Windows desktop.

<comment><USER5> Sorry about hearing you three days late, but I agree with you on this.... and so I decide to use windows, and the box shuts down automatically does an update, and I wait 20 minutes for it to apply it's patches,

And then I reboot into linux, and sudo apt-get upgrade, and remember why I use linux all the freakin time.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> Also tangentially relevant: In amateur radio, soundcard "A"FSK (A for audio) is super popular. The most popular are the time-synchronous WSJT-X modes (JT65, JT9, FT8, etc). It's super fascinating from a technical robustness point of view, especially the FT8 mode. The program is authored by a Nobel laureate in physics, and a very active radio ham, K1JT.

[https://physics.princeton.edu/pulsar/k1jt/wsjtx.html](https://physics.princeton.edu/pulsar/k1jt/wsjtx.html)

Tune to any of the FT8 frequencies on [http://www.qsl.net/sv1grb/psk31.htm](http://www.qsl.net/sv1grb/psk31.htm) using almost any receiver on [http://websdr.org/](http://websdr.org/) \- 20m in the daytime, and 40m during evenings is usually full of activity.

There are dozens of other time-asynchronous modulations supported by fldigi, like the 2nd popular PSK31 and RTTY. And morse code too :) [http://www.w1hkj.com/](http://www.w1hkj.com/)

<comment><USER7> Just a small nit, most of those are FSK but PSK31 and it's variants are actually Phase Shift Keying[1] which is pretty cool in its own right. Rather than changing frequency it's a shift of phases when combined with a 90' signal(often called quadrature, hence I/Q signal you see in SDRs) you can encode more than one bit per symbol.

Either way it's pretty cool stuff.

[1] [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Phase- shift_keying](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Phase-shift_keying)

<comment><USER7> Also forgot to mention it but an even wider use of AFSK than FT-8 and it's WSJT cousins is AX.25/APRS over VHF. Sadly it's not nearly as advanced as FT-8 since it most commonly uses 202 Bell tones and a _blazing_ 1200bps. There's been other digital formats but the whole situation is pretty fragmented.

The infrastructure side of APRS is pretty nifty, you have sites like aprs.fi[1] that let you see the current state of the world in near realtime anywhere an I-Gate is present.

[1] [http://aprs.fi/](http://aprs.fi/)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> Only tangentially relevant, but one of my favorite images on the internet: an annotated frequency domain visualization of a modem handshake by Oona Raisanen

[http://oona.windytan.com/posters/dialup- final.png](http://oona.windytan.com/posters/dialup-final.png)

<comment><USER7> That is such a great diagram. Pretty awesome seeing the split tones in DTMF, frequency probing and negotiation.

</comment></comment><comment><USER9> Steve Underwood has a FAX softmodem called spandsp[1]. Dude knows a lot about but signal processing which is a topic way beyond my wizardry level.

Many years ago I've used it successfully for a FAX server made with Asterisk and cheap telephony cards. Since a FAX is just a TIFF file encoded over sound I think this may be useful for someone that wants to transfer a binary blob over sound.

[1] [https://www.soft-switch.org/spandsp-modules.html](https://www.soft- switch.org/spandsp-modules.html)

<comment><USER10> It's a different image format described in the ITU T.43 spec, but it's fairly trivial to convert to TIFF.

</comment></comment><comment><USER11> You really, really want to play with this for yourself, if just for two minutes.

It takes <5 seconds to compile from source. However, I'd recommend you

      $ ./configure --without-pulseaudio

as PA _really, really_ chews CPU when used as the audio pipeline for this. However, if your soundcard isn't set up for (or capable of) loopback audio, you might need to use PA.

From there, it's just a simple case of

      $ cat walloftext.doc | ./minimodem --tx --tx-carrier 1200

in one terminal while you

      $ ./minimodem --rx 1200 -q

in the other. (Start the receiver first.)

My (very) old laptop seems to be able to go up to 9600 baud (sans PA); beyond 10000 it completely falls apart, with literal (!) modem line noise in the data (looks hilarious), ALSA underruns on the transmit end and 100% CPU usage between the two processes. (Hardware from != 2006 will probably be able to go much much higher though.)

This is an extremely simple modem implementation: it's just stdio<->DSP, with nothing else on top. And of course it's not bidirectional, so you need one process for input and another for output. You'd need two copies each running on both sides of a link for full duplex. And then you'd need a tunnel interface on top of that to get a PHY, and probably PPP over the top of _that_ for low-level retransmission and flow control. (The major additional missing piece would have to be that real modems "train" to find the best baud rate and audio characteristics to use for the link. This of course has none of that. You have to figure out the best the best link speed yourself.)

Having said all that... I just learned how fast 9600 baud really _is_. That was absolutely awesome.

I also discovered that 600 baud is kind of hypnotic to listen to and watch. lol

And now I'm wondering about socat...

<comment><USER12> Even for a decade old computer 9.6k feels surprisingly low, considering that we were pushing 56k on softmodems far earlier.

</comment></comment><comment><USER13> I wrote a little GNU Radio patch and flow graph to transmit TCP/IP over audio, not sure if it still works though as I haven't tested it on recent versions - [https://www.anfractuosity.com/projects/ultrasound- networking...](https://www.anfractuosity.com/projects/ultrasound-networking/)

</comment><comment><USER14> Would this work between two modern laptops a few feet apart using built in mic and speakers, assuming some ambient noise?

<comment><USER15> Yes, me and a friend from the robotics club at school tried it the other year (everyone else in the room was pretty annoyed) it works but it's very finicky:

Your sound card is going to work best in some small band of frequencies (around 3khz if I remember) the mark and space tones have to be pretty far apart and the volume has to be turned up pretty high.

Turning the baud rate up increases your error rate so unless you're including error correction in your transmission that has to be pretty low.

<comment><USER16> My guess is that the soundcard works pretty uniformly well between 100Hz and 15kHz. But the speakers and microphones might not.

<comment><USER7> Yup, you can run a speaker cable between mic/line-in and speaker/line-out to pretty good effect. When I'm working on radio protocols I usually use this if I don't feel like setting up a pair of radios.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER17> Inquiring minds want to know: can this thing run FidoNet over VoIP?

<comment><USER18> There is a demo video where someone dials out on a VoIP line @ 300 baud using Bell103 modulation. Apparently most modems, when they sense the carrier for that modulation, will skip negotiation and go right into 300 baud mode.

The aggressive compression on the VoIP line and lack of compression does cause problems.

</comment></comment><comment><USER12> See also [https://github.com/quiet/quiet](https://github.com/quiet/quiet)

Not as much oriented towards standard modes, but if you are working on custom applications then quiet can be useful

<comment> brian-armstrong And there's a browser demo too :)

[https://quiet.github.io/quiet-js](https://quiet.github.io/quiet-js)

</comment></comment><comment><USER19> See also: [https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fldigi](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fldigi)

<comment><USER20> and [https://github.com/EliasOenal/multimon- ng](https://github.com/EliasOenal/multimon-ng)

</comment></comment><comment><USER21> HAHA wooow. I used this to make tones to allow asterisk to control an emergency alert system from the late 80s early 90s. This was in 2013 I believe.

</comment><comment><USER22> Well, the first question that comes to my mind, and I'm not sure if it is the right question, is how can I use Minimodem for side channel analysis? Reading about it gives me a faint idea that I can carry out a timing attack / acoustic cryptanalysis / electromagnetic attack. Would anyone here knowledgable shed more light on my line of thinking, please?

</comment><comment><USER23> I did a brief armchair check of the patent dates related to v.34 and I think they should all be expired (from the dates on the ISO site) - so connecting at up to 33.600 bidirectionally on a robbed-bit-signalling DS0 line should be implementable in software legally ... I think Hylafax or a similar project has a library implementing these...

</comment><comment><USER24> Can you get it to transfer data ultrasonically?

<comment><USER25> Computer sound devices tend to have a roll-off filter just beneath the Nyquist limit of the DAC. So, higher-end audio devices that can sample at 96 KHz or higher could presumably do so.

But, then, you'd need speakers that can reproduce it and a microphone that can pick it up, too. Also, reflections are surely a problem at higher rates. The examples shown are well within the range of human hearing (but, old modems had to work within the bandpass range allowed by phone networks, which was rolled off at something like 8 KHz).

<comment><USER26> It depends on what you mean by "ultrasonically". You can quite easily send and recieve 19 khz tone using ordinary 44.1khz equipment, and virtually nobody is going to hear it.

<comment><USER25> Young folks and dogs would probably be annoyed. I could hear up to about 19k into my 20s. So, depending on your use case, it might not be workable. I also used to get headaches and my ears would feel fatigued from a CRT monitor that squealed at a frequency I couldn't "hear" (but could detect by other means), so I suspect those frequencies do interact with our ears and brains in ways that we can't "hear" in the usual sense. (Though I also know that there's a lot of woo around this issue in audiophile circles...I think anything beyond about 22k can be considered safely out of range of human hearing. Our ears just don't have receivers for those frequencies.)

I'm trying to think of use cases for ultrasonic data transmission, and they're mostly nefarious. Traversing an air gap, for instance. Higher frequencies are difficult to transmit over distances and through walls, so you'd need to get your receiver into the same room or make it a very high SPL.

I have a wifi camera that uses bleeps and whistles and warbles from a phone or tablet to configure itself before it gets on the network, which is pretty neat but seems weird in a modern world. But, I guess that's something that could be done ultrasonically to make it seem more like magic. But, since it is already pretty error-prone, I would bet pushing tablets and phones (including crappy ones) to accurately produce very high frequencies at a volume sufficient to program a nearby device wouldn't be worth the added magicalness.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> This is very awesome... I was looking for something to decode SAME codes a while back.

</comment><comment><USER27> Do any melodic/rhythmic transmission protocols exist?

<comment><USER28> If you count 10MHz and up as rhythmic then yes! But kidding aside it would be really nice to have a musically encoded version of TCP/IP that sounds nice to the ear.

You could start by picking a major key and then dividing up all bytes to be transmitted into groups of three bits (have fun with the shifting...), that way all 8 tones get to be played, and since it will be monotone it should not sound too bad. Major points if you can do this with chords that sound harmonious.

<comment><USER27> Combining Zipf distribution, Levenshtein distance, and chords/scales -- might lead to something accommodating with aesthetic qualities.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER29> This is so awesome. I can't wait for someone to add MNP5 (should be feasible).

</comment><comment><USER30> If you want to play with it on OS X you can `brew install minimodem`.

<comment><USER31> Is this the first step toward restoring fax functionality to OSX?

I wanted to add a faxmodem to my Mac a couple of years ago and everything I read on the internet said that telephone modems of any kind are no longer supported on OSX.

</comment></comment><comment><USER32> I wonder if this could be used to write C64 tapes?

<comment><USER33> There's already a tool for that: [http://wav-prg.sourceforge.net/](http://wav- prg.sourceforge.net/) \- also works with the ancient mini-jack-to-cassette adapters.</comment></comment>