San Bernardino County tweets it reset attacker iCloud password at FBI's request - <AUTHOR> http://www.sbsun.com/general-news/20160219/san-bernardino-county-tweets-it-reset-terrorists-icloud-password-with-fbi <comment><USER2> I've worked with the FBI and the Secret Service investigating computer crime.

The Secret Service is extremely competent when it comes to computer forensics, and when they don't know what to do, they don't guess, the consult with experts.

The FBI is the opposite in every way, mostly because of budget constraints and the subsequent lack of training. I hope that this is a good learning opportunity for them and a chance for them to increase their training budget in this area.

<comment><USER3> Also hearsay personal experience but a friend of a friend had his house raided by the FBI and all his computer equipment impounded. When he got it all back they told him his hard drives were empty or unformatted. He had them all formatted as ZFS...

<comment><USER4> I'm unsure as to how to read this; are you saying because they were ZFS, the FBI couldn't read them and because of their lack of expertise, assumed they were empty?

Or that they formatted them before returning them?

<comment><USER5> Judging by how Windows, when presented with an unknown FS, acts as if the disk were unformatted _and_ immediately offers to format it, my guess would be both...

(And by "unknown" I mean of course "anything that is not FAT* or NTFS"...)

<comment><USER6> Johnny clubfingers 5-0 clicks Ok, and destroys "evidence" for being a total idiot... I take it he/she was hungover during that 2 hours of computer forensics in the academy. For crooks, this is good news; for stopping potential future victims, this isn't good, and misapplied to innocent/MPAA/RIAA enforcement, it's destructive and lowers LE credibility.

The moral of the story is for individuals, whom should implictly fear government overreach no matter whom is in office, one has to back their shit up and make it SWAT-proof, even if that means running several TahoeLAFS boxes in countries like Switzerland, because running a server (physical or Linode) or just replicating data to a friend's server just doesn't cut it and never did.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> Wonder if folks realize this is the work phone not the personal one. The personal phone was destroyed by the terrorists. I doubt there's anything of value on the work phone.

But then again obviously FBIs long term goal is to break in all the phones regardless of the circumstances.

</comment><comment><AUTHOR> Also reported by Reuters: [http://mobile.reuters.com/article/idUSKCN0VS2GC](http://mobile.reuters.com/article/idUSKCN0VS2GC)

Some are saying the password reset requested by the FBI prevented a backup and closed the "front door" they already had, forcing the Apple backdoor.

The simplest possible explanation for them shutting themselves out has to be incompetence rather than malice, right?

<comment><USER8> Wired reports: "...the company's engineers had first suggested to the government that it take the phone to the suspect's apartment to connect it to the Wi-FI there. But since reporters and members of the public had swarmed that crime scene shortly after the shootings occurred, it was likely that any Wi-Fi there had been disconnected" [1]

[1] [http://www.wired.com/2016/02/apple-says-the-government- bungl...](http://www.wired.com/2016/02/apple-says-the-government-bungled-its- chance-to-hack-that-iphone/)

<comment><USER9> Am I the only one concerned that an iCloud backup translating into information disclosure is a major security weakness in Apple's platform?

Also, since Apple remembers old iCloud passwords to prevent reuse for a year, what stops them from setting it to the original value in their database? Even if there were information lost in their database when the password changed, surely they have backups, right?

<comment><USER10> backups I can see being a problem. Though just because you can prevent people from using duplicate passwords doesn't mean you can reset it to that password. Just use a hash.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> You people seriously want me to believe that it was the fbi's incompetence that led to the gov throwing away their only get in free card for the most popular American phone used to coordinate the only substantial ISIS affiliated attack on US soil. Come on now, do you guys seriously think that this was unintentional?

You don't put rookies on this and I'd seriously be surprised if the NSA wasn't involved in this matter personally.

The government wants a back door installed into all iPhones period. I mean how do you expect apple to build a tool that can bypass the same security features the government is trying to deal with right now without them inadvertently letting everybody and their mother know that there is some fatal flaw in the security layer of every modern iphone and/or iTunes.

There's no magic way to fine tune a tool like this and if out spy agencies don't know this then god help us all. Isis is probably gonna win. _rolls eyes_

I mean jail breaking is one thing. This is vault busting and once people know there's a bug and where to look they will find it and exploit it.

And apple's only remedy will be to patch the backdoor. Which is obviously what the gov is trying to prevent apple from being able to do by getting a precedent established in the courts that wags a finger at Apple saying "ah, ah, ah you didn't say the magic word"

Please goddamnit!

The gov doesn't want to be Samuel l Jackson anymore. They want to reverse the roles and this case is the perfect cover. Just like the gov exploited the bombing on 9/11 to pass the patriot act. This is no different.

</comment><comment><USER12> Here's the tweet:

"The County was working cooperatively with the FBI when it reset the iCloud password at the FBI's request."

[https://twitter.com/countywire/status/700887823482630144](https://twitter.com/countywire/status/700887823482630144)

</comment><comment><USER13> What's with this stupid 'terrorist's communication device of choice' meme? Oh wait, it's not a meme because no one but the FBI uses it, it's a propaganda ploy. Let's test this:

U.S. dollar is the criminal and terrorist currency of choice. We must therefore, of course, break the dollar.

Ok, fail.

</comment><comment><USER14> I wonder what data the FBI thinks is on the phone that wouldn't be available via other means such a call logs, email, cell tower pings.

<comment><USER15> iMessages for one. They're encrypted and aren't stored on Apple's servers, but are easily accessible (no password on the app) once the phone has been unlocked.

</comment></comment><comment><USER16> Why would you ever do this with the real device without thoroughly testing the circumstances with a stand-in first?

From a technical perspective, it seems very simple and easy to replicate before actually doing it and locking yourself out completely like they seem to have done.

<comment><USER17> Yes. The analytical chemist's credo: never test an irreplaceable sample using an untested procedure. Or as Norm Abrams from This Old House put it, "Measure twice, cut once." Spares one that embarrassing moment when you say, "I cut it off twice and its still too short." :)

<comment><USER18> Shit they didn't even have to do that. A simple phone call to Apple saying "Hey if we reset this password how much are we going to fuck everything up?" would have sufficed.

Straight amateur hour over at the FBI

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER19> Honest question: If the county reset the password, couldn't they reset it again and gain access?

<comment><USER20> They have access to the iCloud backup, but they want access to the phone's contents. The backup is more than a month old.

</comment></comment><comment><USER21> Any details on this? How did they reset it if iCloud is using standard encryption techniques?

<comment><USER22> The iCloud account was probably owned and managed by the city since it was their phone.

Also if the iCloud account in question was pointing at the perpetrator's work email address, the city would have been able to do an email reset.

<comment><USER23> It would also be possible for the County to reset it if they were using any of the myriad "MDM" applications.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER24> Oh, shit, FBI is either stupid, or more likely, has the data and playing the field.

</comment><comment><USER25> The FBI is looking worse and worse here

<comment><USER26> Hope the judge recognizes the apparent level of incompetence demonstrated by this case.

That should be enough to get the FBI's request overturned.

But it probably won't be.

<comment><USER25>
      > Hope the judge recognizes the apparent level of incompetence demonstrated by this case.

I don't think competence is particularly relevant to the laws in this case....

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER27> What kind of work-issued device is not put on an enterprise management policy? (a.k.a. the employer should be able to unlock it)

<comment><USER28> Absolutely, I worked for a small department at a University and we had to use the management policy to get emails

</comment></comment><comment><USER29> I would like to see Apple implement a new firmware signing scheme that requires the user to sign the firmware using a key generated on that device and not backed up that is protected by the passcode etc. Once initialised the device will only accept updates signed with this key and upstream updates would be verified against the Apple key before being signed with the local key.

This would eliminate this vector and not drastically effect the usability of the device. Though it would also need a way to fully reset the device including the removal of this signing key in order to bring the device back to factory settings in the case of loss of the device specific signing key.

</comment><comment><USER9> If Apple did write the firmware that the FBI wants and then signed it, would changing the device UUID hard coded into the firmware not invalidate the signature? Is the concern that there are somehow other signing keys in the chain of trust that exist outside of Apple that would make it a general exploit or is the concern that they would be a much lower threshold for getting this sort of thing? Apple might have a point if it is the latter, but if it is the former, the security of the iPhone is already compromised.

</comment><comment><USER30> Why can't the FBI just work directly on the phone hard drive (removed the hard drive from the phone and connect it to another computer)? Why are the going through IOS operating system?

<comment><USER31> The hard drive content is encrypted. Assuming there are no backdoors, seems like the only thing they can try is to make bruteforcing easier.

<comment><USER32> Should note that John McAfee is offering to "break the encryption" of the data within 3 weeks of commencement using "social engineering".

His intentions: good. His success probability: unlikely (unless they have knowledge of how the encryption key is built from the passcode)

Source: [http://www.businessinsider.com/john-mcafee-ill-decrypt- san-b...](http://www.businessinsider.com/john-mcafee-ill-decrypt-san- bernardino-phone-for-free-2016-2?IR=T)

<comment><USER33> Social engineering?

"Mr. Cook, it's John McAfee on line three, again. He says, quote, 'pretty pretty please.'"

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER34> Your tax dollars at work...

</comment><comment><USER35> I don't really understand how a backdoor doesn't already exist if Apple can reset passwords for encrypted data...

<comment> bogus- Apple has the encryption keys for data stored on iCloud servers. The FBI wants a backdoor into the phone itself.

<comment><USER13> I don't think Apple is in the key escrow business anymore; on OS X they had such an option, to show the user the DEK and optionally store it. I don't think the DEK or KEK are backed up at all in iCloud. If you forget your password, all options I see involve device erasure.

<comment><USER36> It's hard to find this information on Apple's website. According to [https://theintercept.com/2014/09/22/apple- data/](https://theintercept.com/2014/09/22/apple-data/)

> Apple encrypts your iCloud data in storage, but they encrypt it with their > own key, not with your passcode key, which means that they are able to > decrypt it to comply with government requests.

Not sure if things have changed since then.</comment></comment></comment></comment>


Ask HN: Anybody know if supermarkets collect and sell your receipts? - <AUTHOR> I'm a huge fan of buying top shelf bourbons and started seeing ads for Knob Creek bourbon on Instagram recently. It's led me to think that Von's (my local grocer) sells my purchase history to ad networks.<p>Anybody ever have this experience? <comment><USER2> Based on what limited experience I have with FB ad targeting[0], there is quite a lot of data purchased from credit card companies. There may be aggregated receipts funneled into one of their sources, though I haven't yet seen a specific grocery source called out anywhere. Nonetheless, it's pretty trivial to identify purchase behavior via CC data and target people who are known to buy/consume alcohol—e.g., bars, liquor stores, etc.—and push my product.

0: FB ads run on instagram by default</comment>


Hexapod robot launches an ornithopter robot [pdf] - <AUTHOR> http://robotics.eecs.berkeley.edu/~ronf/PAPERS/crose-icra15.pdf

<comment><AUTHOR> This video is good too: [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kumEJtsHuQo&feature=youtu.be](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kumEJtsHuQo&feature=youtu.be)

Something about watching a small robot launch another flying robot amazes me. It also makes my old servo based hexapod robot look like a snail that goes so very slowly.</comment>


The iPhone Is Internet Explorer 4 All Over Again - <AUTHOR> http://blog.wired.com/monkeybites/2007/08/the-iphone-is-i.html

<comment><USER2> Wait what...IE4 made phone calls?</comment>


A new class-action lawsuit takes aim at real estate agents and their 6% fee - <AUTHOR> https://www.marketwatch.com/story/big-name-lawsuit-could-upend-realtors-and-their-6-fee-2019-03-19 <comment><USER4> I'm a software engineer, and I started my career at a well known mortgage company in Detroit. Views are my own, BTW.

I bought a house a couple years after I started working there, and I wanted the full home-purchaser experience. I used my company's services for everything, and as an employee they hooked me up with a real estate agent (among other things).

I was honestly appalled at what little my real estate agent did for me through the whole process. I had what seemed like simple requirements: I wanted to live west of the city, I wanted at least 1 acre, and an outbuilding. The outbuilding is what threw off the search tool the agent was using to find houses for me; he rarely found good ones in my price range that had outbuildings.

I ended up finding the house I purchased. I'm honestly not sure what he did at all.

When it came time to sell my house, I did it by owner. It was super easy to do everything, including getting my home on the MLS with a service called Reozom, for a couple hundred bucks. I used several sources to come up with comps for pricing.

However, the purchasing agent who represented the buyers of my home was an absolute MONSTER to me; extremely rude in nearly every email or phone call. I think she was so horrible because I was proving how absolutely unnecessary she was in the whole process. I sold the house for a little under asking price, plus I paid her a 2% commission instead of 3%, and of course not 6% as if she represented me as well. The funny thing- she didn't notice the 2% in the purchasing contract until after it was already signed.

What I've anecdotally learned is this: real estate agents don't provide enough useful benefit for me to use them, and can be hostile as their industry is increasingly proven to be built on little or nothing.

<comment><USER5> Former real estate agent, now software engineer. Doing a FSBO (for sale by owner) is as old as time. There's nothing wrong with this approach, but you are limiting your market (and you might therefore be selling at a lower price anyways) and it's highly dependent on your: patience, financial situation, free time, marketing skills, general sales skills, local housing market, tricky property situations, ability to assist buyers with locating financing, handling any objections or mortgage exceptions that come up (including zoning and inspections requirements), etc.

Buyer's agents deserve their 3% perhaps even more than listing agents and it's unfortunate you screwed this agent out of that. It's sort of like stiffing a server on a tip. Buyers are fickle, time consuming, and sometimes demanding. It can take many showings and offers to find a good fit for someone. Sometimes I would work with a client for weeks or months. Many clients would fall through and you'd get $0 for those clients. So you have to average out your earnings with the successes.

There's other things you have to do, too sometimes. Like once I had an FHA financed client and there were certain restrictions about the distance a well could be from the septic tank at the Federal level but they didn't match the requirements at the county level (which were looser). So I had to coordinate with local zoning and the FHA to get an exception for this loan. That was a bigger ordeal than I can explain here.

These online MLS listing services have been around since 2004-2005. They're nothing new. Are there crappy agents? Yeah. Just like any profession. But the profession itself is not going anywhere.

<comment><USER6> > Buyer's agents deserve their 3% perhaps even more than listing agents and > it's unfortunate you screwed this agent out of that.

3% of the value of a house is hardly 'a tip', a common fee in Europe for selling a house is around 1.5 to 2%, a typical buyer will not use a realtor at all. Oh, and it is illegal here for a realtor to charge both the buyer and the seller because there is a clear conflict of interest there, you can only work for one party. The real estate market in North America is ridiculous.

<comment><USER7> It's funny to watch American films and TV shows where everyone seems to be a realtor on the side, or getting a realtors licence.

<comment><USER8> It isn't just on TV. A considerable portion of my friends on FB are or have been realtors.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> It blows my mind that the fees are percentage based. The amount of work required for an agent on a 100K house is very similar to that of a 2 Mill house. Presumably the seller agent wishes to get compensation for increasing the value of the house, but for both the seller and buyer agents, the number of deals done far outweighs slight incremental selling prices. In which case, both would prefer to settle on a lower price and move to the next deal. So frustrating. I wish the lawyers all the best!

<comment><USER10> Agreed 100%. Realtors do legitimate work, and deserve to be compensated for sure. But I think the pay is grossly disproportionate to the amount of value provided, and it's propped up by Realtor-sponsored laws and kickbacks. A lot of Realtors won't even deal with non-Realtor(tm) real-estate agents, which promotes their monopoly stranglehold on the real-estate market.

I'm not sure where I fall on what a real-estate agent's cut should be for selling a house. But for the buyer's agent, it's really over-valued IMO. And why should a buyer's agent in San Jose make 4x more than somebody in Des Moines for the exact same value-add?

When I bought my house, my Realtor found some good listings, arranged viewings, did the paperwork, and set everything up for me. All useful services, and worth paying for. But was it worth $12k for less than 40 hours of total work? I don't think so. That's a higher hourly rate than I'd be charged by a good doctor. And my house was a pretty cheap one by modern standards. Those are monopoly prices charged by people who know they've got you over a barrel.

<comment><USER11> >But was it worth $12k for less than 40 hours of total work?

That's $300/hr. Similar to what lawyers ask.

Although, I suspect that a lot more education is required to become a lawyer than a real estate agent.

<comment><USER12> Note they said "less than 40 hours", so that's "at least $300/hour". I feel like my buyers agent, who I really liked, worked more like 10-20 hours for $9K, for $450-$900/hour.

Don't get me wrong, I really liked her and she did a great job, but I'm not sure she did $9K great...

<comment><USER13> It's at least that figure for engagements that result in a transaction. That doesn't take into account the people they spend 40 hours with and don't end in a transaction.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> I'm about to graduate college and move to NYC for a job. The unfortunate norm there is to pay a 15% fee (of the annual rent) to brokers to get a rental apartment. The cheapest the broker's fee gets is one month's rent, so about 8.33% of the annual rent. High end apartments sometimes pay the broker's fee on the renter's behalf [2]. Large apartment complexes sometimes have their own leasing offices, so there's no fee there either. To be clear, this is a one time fee paid when you initially move into the apartment. If you renew the lease, you don't owe another broker's fee.

Meaning if the rent on an apartment is $2,000/month = $24,000/year, the broker's fee on that would be $24,000 * 15% = $3,600. The cheaper apartment are usually owned by small landlords who use brokers to vet applicants. For those apartments, you're required to use brokers. There's no way to opt out by working with the landlord directly as the broker's fee is paid by the renter. The broker provides their services to the landlord for free.

I'm trying my absolute best to find a no fee apartment, but it pretty severely limits my options. For studio or 1 bedroom apartments under $2,500/month, there's currently 1,362 no-fee apartments [0] and 3,395 apartments at large (so, 2,033 for-fee apartments) [1].

[0]: [https://streeteasy.com/for- rent/nyc/status:open%7Cprice:-250...](https://streeteasy.com/for- rent/nyc/status:open%7Cprice:-2500%7Cbeds%3C=1%7Cno_fee:1)

[1]: [https://streeteasy.com/for- rent/nyc/status:open%7Cprice:-250...](https://streeteasy.com/for- rent/nyc/status:open%7Cprice:-2500%7Cbeds%3C=1)

[2]: [https://www.brickunderground.com/blog/2015/12/in_case_you_mi...](https://www.brickunderground.com/blog/2015/12/in_case_you_missed_it_high_broker_fees)

<comment><USER15> I don't understand how this racket is allowed to operate. From my experience (three NYC apartments through realtors), the landlord's realtor provides pre- screening of "desirable" tenants for the landlord, showings, collecting paperwork from the prospect, and handing over the keys. None of this adds value from the (prospective) tenant's perspective, but the tenant must pay the fees (in all three cases, one month's rent).

<comment><USER16> I recently worked on a financial website that does a full credit, background and fraud check online and in real time for issuing small loans. There's some amount of manual auditing that can happen in the background for anyone that raises a yellow flag, but otherwise you can get a loan approved and disbursed with no fees and it happens in a few days and is fully automated.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER17> When we sold our house, it was obvious that our realtor's incentive was to get a deal done. They had no incentive to go for a higher price if it lowered the chances of a deal getting done. If you really want an incentive to get the best price, you should have a base fee and an incentive fee, similar to how hedge funds operate. E.g. 2% of total price, plus 20% of difference of price above some baseline (e.g. assessed value).

<comment><USER18> The Freakonomics guys found that "when real estate agents sell their own homes, they tend to keep them on the market longer (about 10 days) and get a higher sale price (by about 3%) than when they sell homes for their clients."

[https://www.investopedia.com/financial-edge/0311/how-real- es...](https://www.investopedia.com/financial-edge/0311/how-real-estate- agents-sell-their-homes-for-more.aspx)

<comment><USER19> Real estate agents don't get to choose how long their clients' home is on the market.

Quite often real estate agents work with people who want to sell quickly, and therefore price their homes lower than if they had more time to sell.

Also, the advice that real estate agents give on setting prices is often ignored by their clients. Clients routinely think that they know better about how to price their own home than the agent -- even an agent who's been in the business for many decades and who's sold hundreds or thousands of homes.

<comment><USER20> > Real estate agents don't get to choose how long their clients' home is on > the market.

Like hell they don't. The real estate agent's job is literally _to sell the house_. If a house takes 3 months to sell it is likely because either the agent isn't doing their job, or the seller is not heeding the agent's advice.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER21> Where you stand really depends on where you sit.

My wife recently became an agent, and prior to that I was all about disrupting the industry.

But I've come to see the 3% on each side as an almost market clearing price. It's really hard work, with low barriers to entry, and significant upfront costs.

In a tight market, being a buyers agent can be a blessing or a curse. She's been working with one client for nearly a year, submitting over 20 offers and going all over the metroplex with nothing to show for it. On the other hand, she's had buyers who found something within a month. It works out to a decent standard of living, but it takes a long time to develop a pipeline. Most agents quit within a year.

I'm all for disruption, and it's an industry with a lot of legacy, slow moving players. Buts it also a complex one with lots of challenges on the individual agent level.

<comment><USER22> It's not that people don't do something worthwhile. It's more a question that is it worth paying 60,000 when selling your house? It's not. At $100 an hour, do you get 600 hours out of work of them? No. It's not about market prices, because the cartel (real estate industry) prevents lowering percentages - <USER2> they fight to the death any upstart who wants to do it.

It should not be a percentage, it should be a fixed rate. A few thousand dollars. Or hourly.

Until people can set different rates, or you have the option of fixed rates if that is the preference of agent & buyer it won't be honest.

<comment><USER23> Who is paying $60,000 to sell their house? Most houses and agents aren't selling million dollar houses. There are some, but that's not the majority. Also houses that are priced like that don't have as many buyers, they take longer to sell. They have to market them to the right people, and have connections to sell those kinds of places quicker.

People gotta remember, the commission is split 4 ways unless one of the agents is a broker. Most agents themselves are only getting 1.5%

People CAN set different rates. Redfin charges a very low percentage compared to others. There are brokerages who charge flat fees, and will just slap your house in the MLS and then call it a day. You wanna list with a discount broker go for it... You can even sell your house yourself!

This whole thread reads like a bunch of people talking about tech people. "Oh you just sit at your computer all day surfing the web, why do you make so much?" or "Why pay you so much, I can just set up a website on Wix for $10."

Yeah there's some shady shit with the NAR and access to listing services, I'm not disagreeing with it 100%, but the average agent is doing a lot more work than you realize.

<comment><USER24> > Who is paying $60,000 to sell their house?

Allow me to introduce you to a place called California. In Santa Monica, where I live, median home price is over $1.5M. Yes, median. La Jolla is about the same. Irvine is just shy of $1M. In San Francisco it's over $1.2M median. San Jose is right around $1M. Mountain View is north of $1.7M. Etc. These places represent thousands of homes and average time on market is generally around a month. It's really that insane.

<comment><USER22> I am in the Seattle area, where the average home price is slightly above $800k. I'm fortunate to have a house that was a little above that average.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER25> The model's pretty broken now, when anyone can look up listings on realtor.com or Redfin, and get customized alerts based on preferences. I mean what special skills do agents even bring on the buy side? I can mediate things with the seller myself, thank you very much.

On the sell side, an experienced agent can be much more of a help. Even there, we used Redfin the last time we sold, and the difference in commission was a full 2% when compared to a more conventional broker.

<comment><USER23> Anybody can look up listings. And anybody can go directly to the selling agent to buy the house. It's not about negotiating a price, it's about making sure that everything is legit with the transaction. Are you going to make sure that everything is properly filed? Are you going to keep on top of all the other people involved to make sure they're doing their jobs? Are you going to go through 4000 pages of legal paperwork? Are you going to ride the sellers' asses to make sure the sale closes, so you aren't stuck homeless after moving out of your old place?

There's nothing stopping you from hiring a real estate lawyer instead of an agent. I'm sure he'll be happy to charge you by the hour.

And also as the buyer, you don't typically pay anything to the agent.

<comment><USER26> Back in the day I did a FSBO with a real-estate lawyer who charged a grand total of $250 for a sale of $100,000.

I'll take 0.25% overhead any day over 6%.

<comment><USER27> Same, my real estate lawyer charged $350 flat fee. He used standard documents, private sale. He probably spent about 1 hour on it in total, and that was about it.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER28> Fwiw a16z did a video on the realtor setup and ideas around interacting with companies more in the future for real estate: [https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=IRPH3K1GXj0](https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=IRPH3K1GXj0)

I haven't looked into the details of the article, but it seems interesting that the RE startups may have some shared interest in changing the 6% rule, although one could speculate their goals may be to replace an "organic monopoly" of many agents with a (scaled techno-geographic?) monopoly.

Edit: the Hahn blogpost ([https://www.inman.com/2019/03/08/what-the-bombshell- buyer-si...](https://www.inman.com/2019/03/08/what-the-bombshell-buyer-side- lawsuit-means-for-realtors/amp/)) linked by the article posits the suit could be expanded to also involve larger RE brokerages and not just franchise orgs:

"The lawyers picked the top four largest real estate brokerages in their Complaint; I assume that they will quickly realize that RE/MAX and Keller Williams are not brokerages, but franchise companies, and will either amend the Complaint to include some other large brokerages (Howard Hanna? Compass? HomeSmart? eXp Realty?) and/or other large franchisors (Realogy brands, Exit, NextHome, etc.).

The basic claim is that the MLS rule of unilateral offer of compensation is a violation of the Sherman Antitrust Act."

</comment><comment><USER29> Recently bought my first home without an agent on either side.

If you were able to take away the complexities of applying for a mortgage, then the transaction would be as follows: buyer and seller sign a purchase contract(which defines what is being sold, for how much, and under what circumstances), establish escrow, have the property officially assessed for value (for tax purposes), have a title agent validate that the deed to the property is legally the seller's to sell, and finally file the deed with the local recorder's office.

You can pay a lawyer to draft the purchase agreement for you or write one yourself.

To me, its the closing costs and lending instruments that need an overhaul -- but yeah, get rid of the realtors too.

</comment><comment><USER30> This is a big deal for "average" americans. Jack bogle took on the fees eating up retirement plans. Now the next biggest asset has an opportunity to be revamped. While real wages have stagnated, we can lower the costs so those wages go further.

<comment><USER31> There are 1.3 million Realtors(tm) in the U.S. Imagine what a productivity boon it would be if even half of them switched to gainful employment versus rent extraction via their cartel!

<comment><USER32> Better watch what you ask for. When they switched to no-fault car insurance in my home state, many years ago, the number of non-car-related lawsuits skyrocketed.

<comment><USER30> IMO no fault anything sounds like a recipe for abuse. That's generally how society functions -- there are consequences to actions.

<comment><USER32> There are still consequences under no-fault auto insurance. First of all, you can still get a ticket for causing a crash. Second, your traffic record increases your insurance premium. Also you could get injured yourself. I don't think crashing cars is something sane people would do in the absence of the insurance system.

Since everybody has mandatory liability insurance, on average the net money transferred between insurance companies is probably close to zero, whether money changes hands in lawsuits or not.

The aim of no-fault in my state was to reduce the number of lawsuits that arose over petty incidents, that were flooding the courts.

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/No- fault_insurance](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/No-fault_insurance)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER33> currently, it is illegal to pay anyone a commission for selling your house except a licensed real estate agent. If you got rid of that restriction, imagine the opportunities. you could let your friends sell your house by sharing a link on social media and they could get the commission.

Also in England, real estate commission fees are about 1% vs. 6% in US. As the article states, in the US a lot of agents won't show FSBO (for sale by owner). I have personal experience with this where they trash talk or flat out refuse to show you fsbo.

<comment><USER34> Is there a significant difference between what an "estate agent" (UK) and a "realtor" (US) do?

Are they more involved in the actual legal side of things (the sort of thing a conveyancing solicitor would do in the UK), or are they still just there to advertise the property and show people round?

If they were doing a lot more of the legal side of things I could understand the difference, but a four or five percentage-point difference seems ludicrous if they are basically doing the same job.

For context for those outside the UK, an estate agent here just works for the seller, and normally gets a 1 to 1.5% fee (paid by the seller) for advertising the property and showing people round (and good ones will give you advice on tarting the house up etc). Once you make an offer on a house it's pretty much all in the hands of the solicitors and mortgage company from then on.

<comment><USER35> Realtor is a brand name - it's a registered trademark. The generic version is estate agent.

<comment><USER34> TIL!

I've only ever seen it used in the generic sense online, a bit like the way we talk about "a hoover" when we mean "a vacuum cleaner".

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER22> I just realized this is about the same situation as "financial advisors" that you pay a percentage of your assests to to "manage them" and that get hidden commissions when you buy things. They insist that they are doing all for your benefit, and they further insist they shouldn't be held responsible for making advice that helps you (it's too restraining or some other bs).

This field is just like that. Unneeded middlemen who could help but in the vast majority of cases just soak up your money.

</comment><comment><USER36> One thing I haven't seen yet in this thread is that buyers' agents actually make use of some pretty anti-competitive behavior on top of the regular cartel stuff. Not only do they get access to MLS listings a few days before they go "public" in most areas, but they also are starting to deal with "pre-listed" houses that they are able to know are about to go on sale via their personal networks. Of course, that's probably been happening forever, but in hot markets it's becoming more popular simply due to the low average time on market for appropriately-priced homes.

Also, I've taken a few classes on real estate (free) from real estate agents before and one of them told me that he often gets solicited by crooked inspectors who will exchange references for a-ok inspection results. Plus agents on neither side / inspectors can easily be held responsible unless there is provable, outright fraud. I think _maybe_ real estate agents would be worth it if they also carried some kind of transactional liability but since they don't...

</comment><comment><USER37> We bought our house with a realtor who found and walked us through listings. Ultimately, we found the house we ended up buying. Our buying agent was helpful and did a good job but the questions she answered and information she gave was available online.

We sold our house without a realtor and had no real issues. Buying agents tended to stray from our listing and most would communicate with us first to make sure we would "pay their fee". Most also tried to sell us on their agency.

Overall, I probably won't use a realtor again. The value for my price point was not worth the %.

<comment><USER38> This was my experience as well. I've bought two homes and both times we found it ourselves. Used the real estate agent friend of a family member (there's always one) to show us a couple houses and relay offers, but I never felt like they did something I couldn't have done myself. I went along to both home inspections and found things the inspector missed. At all 3 closings (buying and years later selling the first house, buying second house) I've been sitting there in a room full of people sighing and tapping their feet while I read all the paperwork they want me to sign and all three times I've caught mistakes, two of which were several thousand dollars in the other party's favor. All in all it's not just the realtors that are doing mediocre work to extract a percentage, but a whole industry (agents, inspectors, title companies).

I couldn't agree more that selling my house by myself was also a breeze. Maybe the experience is different in a down economy. I paid a flat $175 fee to a website for an MLS listing (which farmed the listing out to an agent in our MLS region 5 hours away) plus the 3% buyers agent fee and people started calling. I'm not a great photographer but I took pictures that were 100X better than a realtor walking around with a cell phone and put the Zillow "zestimate" as the listing price because I did a lot of research and took an honest look at my house and couldn't come up with a reason to go higher or lower. I definitely got the "will you pay my fee" calls despite already putting the buyer's agent fee on the MLS listing. As an experiment I tried to negotiate that with an agent and I realized that wasn't going to go anywhere. The only annoying part of the process was the buyer's agent clumsily slipping in some clauses in the contract that would have made it a terrible deal for me.

If anyone is reading this and wants to try going without an agent I'd recommend asking a friend who recently closed on a house to see their contract. That will help you spot any tricks an agent is trying to slip past you.

<comment><USER39> What kinds of tricks did yours try to pull?

<comment><USER38> Nothing illegal, but the initial contract was definitely a bad deal for me. The most glaring item was some added in language that translated to if the appraisal comes up short of the contract agreement then the seller will lower the sales price to match the appraisal. In Texas at least an appraiser is chosen somewhat randomly (I'm not sure how, but neither the buyer nor seller get to choose) and they give what is at best a guesstimate.

The other glaring things were everywhere a fee was to be paid, they had checked the seller's box, and that wasn't the kind of market we were in. I had already signed for my next house and I wasn't about to pay all the closing costs when I was the buyer and again as the seller.

In Texas all the real estate agents use the Texas Real Estate Commission's forms for contracts. It has check boxes and fill-in-the-blanks for all the standard things. I found that almost any place this agent had deviated from one of the standard boxes she had tried to put something shady in. Maybe in her experience people representing themselves were less savvy sellers.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER40> The 6% fee needs to end! I'm a Co-founder of a new firm in NYC who rebates 50%+ of the buyer side commission back to the buyer.

The average buyer doesn't a ton of assistance and giving them 1.5% of the purchase price back at closing just makes sense.

<comment><USER36> Just curious - why use a percent fee rather than a flat fee?

</comment></comment><comment><USER41> I bought my house, at age 19 without the help of an agent, all the have to do is coordinate: home appraisal, home inspection, title company. If you can make 10 phone calls you can buy a house without an agent.

<comment><USER42> You still paid the seller's agent.

<comment><USER43> Not necessarily. I bought my first house without an agent from a seller who was selling by owner.

It's quick and simple. We sat down at a table and negotiated a price in about 15 minutes, then had an inspection and paid a title company to do the rest.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER44> It would be a good change. In Atlanta, I assume many other large markets, we have more than a few flat fee brokers. however it doesn't escape from having the buyer using a realtor expecting their fee being paid by you the seller.

When I bought my last house I used the same realtor for the home sold and was able to get a reduced fees on my sale.

</comment><comment><USER45> As someone who has bought a couple of houses, a buyer's agent mostly provides convenience because they can access the property just as easily as the listing agent.

While agent fees usually run in the thousands of USD, probably the larger source of tacked-on fees is on the mortgage side, especially when the buyer does not have the 20% down.

So not sure if transferring more of the fee load to buyers will help move real estate. After all, except for strong seller's markets or when shopping for a specific type of home, the seller usually has more incentive to sell their home than a buyer has to buy it.

Regarding selling, I'm not sure this development is the realtor kill-shot - <USER3> would argue outfits such as Opendoor (convenience) or even Redfin (eliminate realtor fees) probably will inflict more damage to a realtor's income.

Because selling a house is a 100x greater PITA than buying.

<comment><USER46> Convenience shouldn't cost 3% though. When I was looking for a house I was able to find houses I liked on search engines and then call the aeller's realtor directly to set up a viewing. When time came for an offer, paying a real estate lawyer an hourly fee ends up saving $10k+.

</comment></comment><comment><USER47> There are some startups trying to fix these issues and price at flat fees to mixed effect (Trelora in Denver comes to mind as an example).

I think the true solution will come not by lawsuit but by mass scale market- making by companies like OpenDoor and Zillow. When you want to sell your home you can go to these companies and get a check within a few days, and when you want to buy a home these will have built software and systems to make purchasing a straightforward process. They'll provide liquidity and take a cut, but with a couple of companies in the market the 'spread' will probably be lower than buyer+seller broker fees.

They may not serve unique and luxury real estate in the near future, but for the 'typical' suburban home it seems like consumers could see a benefit.

</comment><comment><USER48> I've bought houses using an agent and not, and the latter was in every way more pleasant and predictable. The agent (and their supervising broker) overlooked fundamental items in the contract which ought to have been obvious, like ensuring the current renters would be out before close. Even with the seller picking up the tab for both agents, as a buyer I would prefer doing it myself. The only drawback is, of course, that it's much more difficult to get into houses without being represented by an agent.

</comment><comment><USER49> I couldn't buy a house without a realtor even though its a house that found myself and was paying 100% cash. 3%-3% is a lot of money if I don't use any service from a realtor.

<comment><USER50> What prevented you from buying it yourself?

<comment><USER51> In a hot market (e.g., Denver last year), the seller's agent would not return your calls for a showing if you didn't have an agent.

I suppose you could visit an open house and then submit an offer. Some houses never do open houses, or will already have offers before the open house. You would probably be competing with 2-3 other offers all over asking for a properly priced house. The odds of them choosing your offer would be lower since the seller's agent would not like it (it would be a lower offer on paper, since it has 3% less commission). They might go for it if it was all cash, but probably not with a mortgage.

<comment><USER52> In my home state at least, a sellers' agent is legally and professionally obligated to present all valid offers received to the sellers. Failure to do so can result in legal liability, fines, loss of license etc.

If your state is similar, then if you had made an offer by any means, like via the agent's voicemail and the agent didn't tell the seller about it, then you would have had cause for legal action.

<comment><USER51> I never made an offer. I was simply trying to see the house without an agent of my own. The house in question was near where I was renting and had been on the market over a week without an open house. It went to pending a week or two later. The seller's agent never got back to me at all.

It's funny you say that about legality though - some of my relatives recently put in a low-ball offer on a place in AZ. The seller's agent called them back, said it was insulting, and would not be even showing it to the owners. The house had been on the market for months. I wonder if that was legal.

<comment><USER52> If a market is hot then bidding is necessarily going to be more competitive and sellers are going to be less accommodating. It's not unusual for buyers to make an offer site unseen in a hot market. So if you have the cash and you really want the house, I suggest you check out the rules in your state and next time try making an offer by any necessary means.

Or get an agent.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER53> Adding onto the complaints of economic inefficiency here: one of the worst things I found living in Boston (not sure how many other major cities this applies to) is that it's completely standard for the renter of a property to pay a broker's fee, generally equivalent to one month's rent, to the landlord's agent.

In most (healthy, cheaper) rental markets, the landlord will pay a real estate agent a fee (one month's rent, again) to find a renter. This intuitively makes sense, as the landlord requires some number of hours of effort from the agent to list the home, show the apartment to a ton of people, and find one willing to rent it.

It seems economically so incorrect that the renter should bear the cost of the fee the rental agent charges for showing the home to like 10 potential renters— they spend maybe 10 minutes of their time showing the individual renter, and they're late more often than not!

Edit: below commenter rightly pointed out that this is economically perfectly correct— unjust from a value perspective would be better phrasing

<comment><USER54> Standard economic theory predicts that the tax incidence falls more on the party that has lower elasticity — that is, fewer alternative options to make a deal. If it is hard to find an apartment, the renter will pay most of the fee. If it is hard to find a renter, it's the opposite.

</comment></comment><comment><USER55> One of the strangest parts about mortgages to me is the "point" system lenders use to sell buyers lower interest rates. They offer a lower interest rate if you "buy points" rather than applying it towards your down payment. It seems like lenders are prioritizing their short term profit over their customers' long term financial stability.

<comment><USER56> Why is this strange? The majority of lenders repackage and sell off loans that they originate. Of course they are prioritizing short term profit.

As for buyers, also what's not to love? Buying points gets you more cash flow than the reduced principal. There's some math to do, and some financial projection, where you expect to be in 5 years, etc. It's great to have the option.

</comment></comment><comment><USER57> Yeah, I've never quite understood the value proposition of that fee myself. Between that and the gatekeeping that happens to become an agent, it seems like it's a bit inflated and held up by tradition.

At least the iBuyers like Opendoor provide a service whose value I can see, even if it might not apply to every individual. Having someone else take on the hassle of dealing with shady vendors and house showing, repair negotiations and flaky buyers, while letting me move out cash-in-hand whenever I want? I get that.. especially after experiencing my good friends hit every one of those nightmares themselves, ending up having to waste thousands on AirBnB's after contractor issues left them without either home for months.

</comment><comment><USER58> I always wondered who represents home owners who have cheap houses... Like a $50k house. Whether you are selling a 50k house or 500k, there's a similar amount of work. But those houses do get sold.

Also as a rental property owner I hate how realtors charge by the monthly fee. Meaning, if I rent out my house for $2k a month, I need to pay them that amount for a new tenant. A $2k a month property with tenants that have jobs is easier to maintain than $500 property with tenants that barely hold a job.

They also take a 10% cut per month of the rent... $200 for $2000 rent... $50 for $500...just to do the same thing. Real estate fees make no sense!

</comment><comment><USER59> I'm generally OK with commission based sales - if there are guarantees. There's very little due diligence on the part of the Realtor or real estate agent. They can't really be held responsible for anything related the to condition of the house if something was hidden or missed by a home inspector. They'll put anything on the market, and typically make suggestions to sellers that while intended to improve "curb appeal" and "showability" often cover up bigger problems that the property might have.

Purchasing a home is always "buyer beware."

<comment><USER60> > Purchasing a home is always "buyer beware."

I mean, as a rule of thumb sure (because who wants to have to depend on the legal system for restitution), but not legally. Legally, the seller can't make any false representations. If you're worried about accidentally doing so, it's best to hire an agent who then takes on the responsibility for it.

</comment></comment><comment><USER61> Residential real estate is an odd one. Countless times I've seen it warp the ego of agents and their perception of value being provided. A friend was looking to buy a $15m house, so I vouched for a childhood friend that was newer to real estate. Agent friend was able to make it happen by tracking down the owner who lived an hour away and convinced her to sell. After close the agent friend then complained to me that he got hosed on the deal because of the "100 hours" he put in and only receiving 1% - $150,000 ($1,500/hr). A year prior he was delivering pizzas (!!).

</comment><comment><USER62> Sellers fees mostly average 3% to 4% in Christchurch, New Zealand - [https://www.thepropertymarket.co.nz/compare-our- fees](https://www.thepropertymarket.co.nz/compare-our-fees)

The fee structure is X+1% for the first $350000, and X% above that.

One company advertises 1% fees, but they make it up with other charges.

From my experience, few people use a buyer's agent (maybe because property details are well recorded centrally, and often they are not part of a building, and so there are fewer legal risks in NZ).

</comment><comment><USER63> We tried selling our first house ourselves. Ran ads in paper. Put up fliers. Etc. This was before the internet mind you. Tried this for 3 months and literally had no serious interest. We gave the listing to an agent and a week later had two full price offers. Sure, the internet has changed things a bit, but since then I always use a realtor. 6% is fair for the good ones. More challenging in some markets near me is where 6% isn't enough. Lots of $50K houses still. That's only $1500 for each agent.

<comment><USER64> I think the internet changed things a bit more than a little since then.

</comment></comment><comment><USER65> I'm from the UK where it works differently.

If you're a buyer, what does the realtor do? Do they sort the legal stuff? Or are you (/seller) paying 3% to find you a house?

How does the legal mechanics of this work, do realtors have an obligation to work in the interests of the person that engaged them, or the person that's paying them? Presumably its who engaged them, as they won't know who's paying them. Why then are they allowed to not show certain homes???

<comment><USER66> In contrast to other systems used, The US system ensures the buyers are able to make a competitive offer without forgoing representation(because the buyers agent is paid for even if the buyers are unrepresented), and that almost all transactions have both the buyer and seller represented by separate agents. If the buyer is unrepresented, the listing agent is in practice representing them, and the seller still pays 5-6% so most buyers would want their own agent. Buyers agents usually sign an exclusive representation agreement outlining their duties to the buyer, and state law also covers their responsibilities to the buyer even if the buyer is not paying them directly. Real estate agents are only compensated when a sale closes, unlike real estate attorneys, or most everyone else in the real estate industry who are compensated when a service is rendered. This aligns the incentives of the real estate agents with the home buyers and sellers. Real estate agents are spending a lot of money on marketing, which is what allows for sites like Zillow to exist and for buyers to find homes for sale without directly involving an agent.

<comment><USER65> You seem positive about the situation?

As a point of reference in the UK it's around 1% commission to sell your house, they do the marketing, including on a variety of websites.

<comment><USER66> There is a noticeable difference having agents as a buffer when buying or selling a home. For many it is an emotional experience and without representation the sale would not close. There is also a difference between transactions where everyone is represented by an attorney who is paid even if the deal falls through, or where they are represented by agents who are only paid when the deal closes. Having a financial incentive to have everyone represented is overall a positive.

In the US the realtors recommend repairs or other changes before listing the home, sometimes handle staging the home, arrange a professional photographer, pull data for comparable recently sold homes, call the listing agent on pending home for sale to get the contract price(likely will be closed by the time the appraisal is happening) and have knowledge of the local market to help you decide on the list price. After listing a home they handle showings and setting up the lockbox, and this includes screening potential buyers, usually requiring that they have a mortgage pre approved before viewing a home. Really the buyers agent is doing most of the work showing homes. In many cases the listing agent will hold an open house to get more people to view the home, but this is more for the agents benefit than the seller. After getting an offer the listing agent still has a lot of work. They will negotiate counter offers. They will help with preparing the required disclosures. There is a lot of following up with third parties, the loan officer at the bank, making sure an appraisal is scheduled, being present with the home inspector, following up with the buyers agent to get contingency releases, negotiating repair requests or other amendments. Then there is last minute stuff that needs to be done, driving a contract somewhere to get a wet signature the day before closing, getting the county to confirm a deed was recorded today, so escrow can be released before 5pm.

Buyers agents are used in the UK too, mainly by the wealthy. Less well off clients go without because they cannot afford it and still make a competitive offer. 1% is on the low end, and it does not include VAT. If you go with a full service estate agent they are charging 2.5%, and you are paying 3% out of pocket for a buyers agent. 1.5%, and paying 1.8% total inc vat is closer to the average. In a lot of cases that is not far off from what is paid in the US. Another big difference is the US has the MLS, with virtually every home listed, and the UK has multiple marketplaces and not everyone will see every home. To reach almost everyone you need to use multiple agents and pay a higher fee, if you use a sole agent, you are not reaching all registered buyers. This is more of a problem in a buyers market, if you have a home in a hot market you will find a buyer either way. Multiple agency is not needed in the US.

<comment><USER65> It looks like theres been a downward trend over the past decade [1]. And it seems a London premium [2].

1% is about right in my experience. (non London).

I wouldn't expect an estate agent to be doing that much running around last minute though.

[1] [https://www.yopa.co.uk/homeowners-hub/estate-agent- fees/](https://www.yopa.co.uk/homeowners-hub/estate-agent-fees/)

[2] [https://www.housesimple.com/estate-agent-fees- information](https://www.housesimple.com/estate-agent-fees-information)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER67> When I was in OK the 6% seemed like a lot, but it was workable.

Now in CA, after selling my first home, this 6% is simply absurd. After selling and buying a new house, even with considerable equity, if I were to sell my house again I would actually be losing money.

We had several major life events at once recently (job loss, family death, and a couple others), and almost had to sell the house. Doing so would have been like starting over after building up equity for 30 years.

</comment><comment><USER68> > _cost that would be borne by the buyer in a competitive market_

There is no such thing; any such cost is a parasitic loss that comes out of the _value of the transaction_. Two parties are transacting, and in comes this little vampire and sucks away a bit of it, leaving both of them poorer.

Reasoning such as "the other party pays it so it makes no difference to me" is horribly irrational and innumerate.

</comment><comment><USER69> I found this recent publication to be an amazing account of how real estate is being used to launder:

[https://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2019/03/how- kle...](https://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2019/03/how-kleptocracy- came-to-america/580471/)

I wish class-action lawsuits were aimed at the source...

</comment><comment><USER70> I took advantage of the situation when I last sold my house. I knew what the house would likely sell for, and told my agent that I'd pay him his 3% seller commission for that price, but for anything above that amount, I'd split the incremental amount with him (I believe I proposed 40/60). Ultimately I made an additional $10k.

</comment><comment><USER71> The agents themselves have little control over it. What people should take aim at is the licensing process itself.

It's basically an MLM.

<comment><USER72> It's no surprise most the MLMers move on to real estate afterwards

</comment></comment><comment><USER73> So, who is going to go after the lawyers and the exorbitant fees they will surely extract from this lawsuit?

</comment><comment><USER74> Your local real estate listing service (also useful for competitive price analysis) is only accessible by real estate agents. This is anti-competitive. Real estate agents are one of the last bastions of rent-seeking bastards that will fall, and not a day too soon.

</comment><comment><USER75> Im buying a house right now. The work my agent is doing surely deserves the 2.5% she gets.

Not that this doesn't mean it's still broken somewhere.

Don't be afraid to be pushy though if you think you're not getting your money's worth. Or just do it yourself.

</comment><comment><USER76> I just wish they could keep real estate companies from asking to buy the house I just bought a week ago. These people have access to all the listing and sales data. They know I just moved in. Why are they asking to buy my house?

</comment><comment><USER47> There are some startups trying to fix these issues and price at flat fees to mixed effect (Trelora in Denver comes to mind as an example).

I think the true solution will come not by lawsuit but by mass scale market- making by companies like OpenDoor and Zillow. When you want to sell your home you can go to these companies and get a check within a few days, and when you want to buy a home these will have built software and systems to make purchasing a straightforward processes.

They may not serve unique and luxury real estate in the near future, but for the 'typical' suburban home it seems like consumers could see a benefit.

</comment><comment><USER77> This won't succeed for a lot of reasons. I suspect they're after a settlement.

</comment><comment><USER78> Is 6% realtor fee a norm in USA? Isn't 2% the old, established base?

</comment><comment><USER79> Good! I find realtors to be parasites. We sold my wife's house FSBO, which was not hard at all. My mother just bought a house also FSBO.

No parasites involved, and everyone comes out the better. You can always get a real estate lawyer to bless everything.

<comment><USER80> Exactly what I've done over the last 20 years. I FSBO and pay a lawyer by the hour at the doc signing. Not to mention I sell at a higher price than what realtors who try to land my business state I could sell for.

</comment></comment><comment><USER81> This may lead to banks and realtors colluding. Instead or the current model we'll get realtor/banks buying properties that go up for sale. Then the realtor/banks will upgrade the cost to a 50% markup. That will of course be after flippers fix the house and other things. But in general, we're see the rich buying out the poor.

And that model will be 100% legal.

<comment><USER49> > Then the realtor/banks will upgrade the cost to a 50% markup.

What stopping them right now?</comment></comment>


Steve Jobs responding to an insult - 1997 [5 min video] - <AUTHOR> http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=FF-tKLISfPE

<comment><USER2> Yeah yeah, work backwords from the user experience and find/build the technology to make that happen. Peachy.

What I want to know, is, where can I get a pair of those acid-wash jeans with the stark, black patches on them?</comment>


Ask HN: Anybody looking for Mentors or willing to be a Mentor? - <AUTHOR> http://nurall.com

<comment><USER2> My problem is the following: I have quite a bit of knowledge and I like to help, but have no idea how to start actually being a mentor. I've "mentored" quite a few programmers in reverse-engineering, but it's never been a formal thing, just helping out from time to time. I guess these are the questions I have:

      What are the responsibilities of a mentor?
      Is this relationship more like a teacher-student relationship or like a senior team member bringing on someone new?
      How long does this typically last?  (Formally, at least -- I'd imagine that if the process works out well, the relationship will likely continue past the end)
      What sort of time is dedicated to this?

This is something I'm very interested in, just don't quite have all the information I need to jump into such a commitment.

<comment><AUTHOR> It is totally up to the Mentor to decide on the level of engagement with a given Protege. The type of engagement is usually determined by the problem the Protege is trying to solve OR a plan/goal he is trying to validate. It could be one time or a periodic affair. The end justifies the means in a Mentor- Protege relationship. A long-lasting synergistic relationship is the ideal case scenario and we would love to enable that.

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> I think this is an interesting concept, but man, making a mentorship match is HARD. You have to really hit it off with the person, on more of a personal level than anything at first. Then the rest works out. I'll be interested to hear some real feedback once you've made some matches. Please do give us a followup in a few months.

<comment><AUTHOR> We agree, it is a challenging problem to solve and we find that exciting. We will share our progress with HN...

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> It's a nice idea; I hope it works. Dear god how I could use a business mentor.

</comment><comment><USER5> Funny that I few days ago I was thinking about this idea of "peer mentorship". You see, in a typical mentor-protege relationship (like in this site, which is great if it works btw) there's a hierarchy: the mentor advises the protege in a one-way street.

My idea is having connections between two people on the same level, so that they both help each other. So if HN is a gym, this would be like having a personal trainer (and being a trainer for somebody).

Rather than specialized domain or expert advise, this would be more for things like getting a new and honest opinion about ideas/implementations etc, prodding the other person to action (you skipped exercising this week again?!) etc.

I see many ways why this wouldn't work (most people won't 'click' between each other etc) but for instance I would benefit from chatting once a week or a month with someone who's following what I'm doing and vice versa.

</comment><comment><USER6> Let me mentor you in not making arbitrary text blue. It looks like a hyperlink when it's not and makes me frustrated.

In fact upon a second glance I notice that _some_ of the blue text is hyperlinked. Impossible to tell because your stylesheet overrides my browser settings which call for underlined links and the above color issue.

You should have a nice small diagram or paragraph explaining what your "smart matching solution" is. (That was the "link" which initially frustrated me.) Seems like I have to fill out a form and wait for a sales person -- wait, "Nuron" -- to call me back. Instead I just close the tab.

Can you provide more to assure us this isn't a data collection scam?

Good luck!

</comment><comment><USER7> Good idea. Consider offering it to organisations that have mentoring programmes.

My old university has an alumni mentoring scheme, but the web app that does the matching is so broken that not many people use it.

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks for the idea, we have discussed this in the past and we needed more validation, this helps :)

</comment></comment><comment><USER8> Cool. I've always wanted a programming mentor. I work in a really small software company in which I find a lack of standardized software practices. Not that it is bad, but I would love to discover the other side of the spectrum through a mentor.

</comment><comment><USER9> Well, yet another one of my website ideas in action. I wish I could pump them out a little faster.

Site looks alright, I'll be sure to check it out later tonight when I get home. (on the iPhone ATM)

<comment><USER10> This is a very simple site, it's all just WuFoo forms! Must've taken less than a week to design and go live. Smart.

</comment></comment><comment><USER11> This is an interesting concept. I would like to see the quality of relationships that Nurall will be able to generate.Mentoring is a give/take relationship and is a Hard Problem to solve.

</comment><comment><USER12> Who's Nuron? Play on words?

<comment><AUTHOR> Nuron (sounds like Neuron) is our Mentor/Protege Communications Manager and Yes his name is derived from Nurall (sounds like Neural) :)

</comment></comment><comment><USER13> I read "Mentors" as "Mentos". Now I'm eating a mint. Thanks for that.

<comment><USER14> I read it as 'Mentos', too, and now I have that song in my head!! Now you do, too. Sorry.

<comment><USER15> Mentor : Mentee :: Mentos : ?</comment></comment></comment>


ASK YC: Do VC's sign NDA's? - <AUTHOR>

And if not, then how do you trust them? <comment><USER2> <http://www.google.com/search?q=vc+nda>

<comment><AUTHOR> hmm I hadn't thought of that. lol

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> the same way you trust paypal or amazon with your CC#... being reputable is in their best interest

<comment><USER4> I agree. A VC's relationship with key people in the companies which they fund can really help those companies succeed, thereby making the VC money.</comment></comment>


Levitated timepiece sets new benchmark - <AUTHOR> https://phys.org/news/2020-06-levitated-timepiece-benchmark.html <comment><AUTHOR> Link to paper: [https://advances.sciencemag.org/content/6/23/eaaz9858](https://advances.sciencemag.org/content/6/23/eaaz9858)</comment>


Kickstarter for a Futurist Magazine - <AUTHOR> https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/coreylemont/the-emerald-ethos <comment><AUTHOR> I'm the one who is developing this project. Ask me anything.

The magazine will cover modern health knowledge, Artificial Intelligence, Robotics, and will also have short story science fiction.

Update: The magazine will be published digitally on Magzter.</comment>


Advantages of Monolithic Version Control - <AUTHOR> http://danluu.com/monorepo/ <comment><USER2> Both variants are nasty in a huge repo. The quoted example at the end is a good example. If you have different repos, you sometimes can't push to repoA because you are depending on repoC. If everything is in one repo it should just work. But that's not really the case. You still need to wait for changeC before you can go and do changeA. Same problem, independent of the repo situation.

The solution is that changeA must be backwards compatible. In a complex system you always need to have some kind of backwards compatibility, at least for some time.

In the end both (mono and multi repos) doesn't really work in huge, complex scenarios.

</comment><comment><USER3> For a moment I was a little frustrated at how we split everything into separate repos at work, mostly due to the difficulty of finding and refactoring code.

And while a monorepo would help a lot with discoverability, I think that the promises this article makes about cross-project changes are a bit optimistic since it ignores the difficulty of doing deployments in live distributed systems. Even if you have a single git repo, there will certainly be an order you need to deploy them in so that things don't break when the API consumer gets updated before the API provider. Google/FB/Twitter/etc certainly have a better deployment system than we do, so maybe for them it's easy, but it's not something that is just solved by going to a monorepo.

</comment><comment><USER4> The right approach depends on your configuration management strategy, which in turn depends on the kind of product you are making.

If you are developing a big system with lots of components that need to work together (e.g. an embedded machine vision system with a multitude of related data-recording, calibration, simulation & test utilities and subsystems), then the matrix showing which versions and configurations are compatible with one- another quickly grows to an unmanageable size.

Unless you have a god-like configuration management system, the only practical approach is to go "green trunk" and co-version all of your components. Granted, this doesn't necessarily _force_ you to use a single repo, but a single repo is (at least initially) the simplest approach.

Of course, you could go "old-skool" and define interfaces up-front then freeze them, but this just slows your development down to a snail's pace. Better (IMHO) to co-version your components then lean on your integration tests to maintain compatibility.

<comment><USER4> Of course ... when your development team grows _really_ big, then this may well become untenable ... but "green trunk" should work in development teams up to a couple hundred developers or so.

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> One big issue where I would love Open Source to innovate: Test downstream.

If you change an Open Source library there is no way to check with users of your library, because they are hard to track down and use various different build processes. In a monorepo, this is much easier. You could create an automatic "build and test everything".

<comment><USER6> We've been working on tooling for Rust that runs tests across everything in the package repository, as a way of hopefully detecting regressions. [https://internals.rust-lang.org/t/regression-report- beta-201...](https://internals.rust-lang.org/t/regression-report- beta-2015-05-01-vs-nightly-2015-05-03/1990)

</comment></comment><comment><USER7> > Me: I think engineers at FB and Google are probably familiar with using > smaller repos (doesn't Junio Hamano work at Google?), and they still prefer > a single huge repo for [reasons].

I'm a former such engineer; I still prefer smaller repos. There's enough engineers at both companies that I can assure you such opinions (and knowledge) are quite varied.

> it's often the case that it's very easy to get a dev environment set up to > run builds and tests.

I've worked with both; in both cases, the workflow was essentially a checkout, followed by a build, followed by running the tests. I've found this is more a product of the environment (i.e., do the developers care about tests being easy to run) than the VCS in use.

> With a monorepo, you just refactor the API and all of its callers in one > commit.

I'd restate this: with a monorepo, you _must_ refactor the API and _all_ of its callers in one commit. You cannot do it gradually, or you _will_ break someone. A gradual refactor is only possible in multiple repositories, specifically multiple repositories that obey something resembling semantic versioning. You make your breaking change, and because it is a breaking change, you up the version to indicate that. Reverse-dependencies wishing to update then must make the change, but can do so at their leisure.

I've seen some truly heroic work done to get "APIs with thousands of usages across hundreds of projects get refactored". Sometimes it _is_ easy: you can track down the callers with a grep, and fix them with a perl script. But I think you must limit yourself to changes of that nature: massive refactors too great for a script would leave you to edit the call sites. Though, with thousands of callers, this is probably true anyways, I find having to move even a couple dozen through a major change (such as one where the paradigm expressed by the API is completely wrong) is difficult if you must update them all at once.

Last, the most common "monorepo" system I've seen is Perforce, and compared to git it has such stark usability issues that I'd rather not go back to it (staging, git add -p, bisect, real branches). This comment though,

> where it's impossible to do a single atomic commit across multiple files

I would hesitate to use "atomic" to describe commits in Perforce; if you check out CL X, make some changes, and "commit" ("submit" is Perforce's term), the parent of your new CL might be Y, _not_ X, and you might get no warnings about this, either. Collisions on an individual file will prevent the submit from going through, but changes on separate files (that together represent a human- level merge conflict) , will not get caught. (They wouldn't show as merge conflicts in git, either, but git will tell you that someone updated the code, and refuse your push; unit tests must catch these, but in Perforce's case, you must run them after making your change permanently visible to the world.)

<comment><USER8> It is not difficult to achieve the "atomic" commit issue you mention via use of triggers. And indeed streams provides it out of the box.

These days, with the use of shelving, there are integrations with CI tools such as Jenkins which provide "pre-flight" builds before checkin - thus before your changes are world visible.

</comment></comment><comment><USER9> Malarky.

>> With multiple repos... having to split a project because it's too big or has too much history for your VCS is not optimal... With a monorepo, projects can be organized and grouped together in whatever way you find to be most logically consistent, and not just because your version control system forces you to organize things in a particular way.

Uuuuh, if your one project has to be split because it's too big for your VCS, then you aren't going to make that thing smaller by putting multiple projects in with it.

>> A side effect of the simplified organization is that it's easier to navigate projects.

That's a UI issue. Build a better UI, don't use a dirty hack, especially one that has other implications.

>> A side effect of that side effect is that, with monorepos, it's often the case that it's very easy to get a dev environment set up to run builds and tests.

With the growing trend of package managers being able to install dependencies straight from a git repository, I don't see this being an issue much longer. Again, this is a UI issue.

>> This probably goes without saying, but with multiple repos, you need to have some way of specifying and versioning dependencies between them.

Yeah, no shit, that's just good software development. The argument here is that a monorepo lets you be lazy.

<comment><USER10> You're missing a huge part of the benefit, which is that when you go and do internal API cleanups you don't have an awkward dance across N repositories, you just have _a change_ that's atomic across the entire project.

It's a huge benefit to be able to have all your mobile apps and web apps and whatever in the same repo, because then you can easily see who calls what, and how various RPCs are used, etc. Don't knock it until you've tried it.

(I used to think monorepos were dumb, but over the course of several years I came around.)

<comment><USER9> That's what I'm talking about being lazy. These companies provide public APIs and we all will have the same headaches of having to update our software to those APIs. By dogfooding your own APIs in the same way your customers eat them, you force yourself to have to communicate change correctly.

<comment><USER11> You say "lazy", I say "not wasting time on unnecessary things". Versioning dependencies is something done to solve problems, not an inherently good moral imperative.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> Could an alternative be to use individual repos and also a meta-repo? The metarepo contents are the commit ids of each individual repo.

So let's say you want to update a repo which depends on another one:

Update project A, commit changes.

# Your product hasn't changed at this point

Update project B, commit changes.

# Your product hand't changed at this point

In metarepo, checkout to the new 'master' branches of Projects A and B, commit that to metarepo

# Your product is now updated!

<comment><USER13> This sounds a lot like git submodules.

<comment><USER14> Or Mercurial subrepos.

Both of which are far greater of a pain in the ass than monorepos.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> I view the repo as the unit of versioning. If something has its own release cycle with its own semver number, it should be in its own repo, and vice versa. Monorepos make sense if your whole site is at a single version, as in the article. But if you want to have libraries that have stable versions (which I find useful, because it allows teams to own codebases - and I find maven is much much better than this article seems to think) then it's worth putting them in their own repositories.

<comment><USER16> As a counter-argument: I think that using a monorepo encourages a steady and careful movement of API deprecation, which is actually healthier than semver. In fact, I'll contend that semver is nothing more than an effort to bring monorepo-like bug fixes to environments that can't otherwise have monorepo- like management.

Here's the thing: if all the code is in a single repo, it's _really_ easy for me to find all users of a given function. This means that, if I need to alter the behavior of a function, I can sanely pursue any of three options:

      1. Know for a fact I can alter the behavior without impacting
         anyone.
      2. Refactor across the whole code base in one shot.
      3. Deprecate the API and provide a replacement immediately,
         then work with teams to get off the deprecated API.

In all three cases, I can trivially know exactly what I'm impacting and make a decision on how I want to impact it. As a bonus, not only can I much more directly control deprecation times, but it's dramatically less likely that one of my client programs keeps deploying with an outdated, insecure/buggy version of my library.

In my view, the whole point of semver is handling situations wherein I _cannot_ do that. For example, if I publish a library on GitHub, it's simply not reasonable for me to know who's using my library and why. Thus, semver provides a contract between me and you: since I can't know what you're doing, I promise not to do certain things with my library so that you can use it with some confidence. But there is a cost here: it's harder for you to track upstream, it's harder for me to know who's still using what in the older library, and it's harder for me to figure out how I can help people upgrade.

I'm emphatically not saying semver is bad, but I am saying that it's deliberately compensating for source code federated across many repos. A properly managed monorepo keeps you from having to worry about it.

<comment><USER17> You don't need a monolithic repo to do that. Just pull in the library as a git submodule, and you control exactly which version (by git commit hash) of the library you use. And in a single commit, you can change that commit hash and change the code using the library, just as you could in a monolithic repo.

<comment><USER18> With subrepos, you -- the consumer -- are still stuck with either stagnation ("stability") or you need take on a bunch of refactors whenever you update the reference to upstream.

The producer in that case is obviously completely unaware of what you're doing so they cannot make decisions based on that fact. They may, for example, deprecate an API and provide no direct equivalent because they don't know anyone's relying on it. Then you suddenly have to come up with additional code to restore an equivalent API...

The subrepo approach is OK if you're tracking some external code. In that case it's comparable to semver but possibly better integrated with your build/tooling, you win something. But if it's internal to your organization, you're hacking around what a single repo could provide you.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER19> I wonder if Google is still using Perforce? That's one of the arguments used at our company to argue that perforce handles huge repos very nicely.

<comment><USER16> <wrong>Google is still using don't-look-behind-the-curtain-it's-totally-not- Perforce-but-it's-Perforce</wrong>

Google is using a Perforce lookalike that is not actually Perforce, but they're moving to Mercurial. Subversion also scales up to similar sizes, although I confess to not knowing what "similar" means. (I do know that Google did an experiment and concluded that Subversion would scale to their needs, but they were already committed to Perforce by that point.)

EDIT: Got corrected by someone who has good reason to know.

<comment><USER20> > Google is using a Perforce lookalike that is not actually Perforce, but > they're moving to Mercurial.

Do you have a source for this move to mercurial? This is the second time I've heard it, but couldn't find a source before.

<comment><USER16> I don't have a publishable source, no, but you can look at the number of @google.com email addresses on the Mercurial mailing list if you want some to do your own inference, or just hang in there for a bit and you won't have to. :)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER21> _Of course, there are downsides to using a monorepo. I'm not going to discuss them because the downsides are already widely known and discussed._

I searched but I honestly can't find them. The only things I can think of are: implementation problems (repo too large, every git pull takes more time than strictly necessary for your project) and tainting tools like "git log".

Those don't seem very fundamental. Solvable by a "monogit" wrapper, if someone put their mind to it. Or are they?

Is there a fundamental problem I'm missing? I feel stupid for asking, given how matter of fact he dismissed it :(

EDIT: I guess what I'm trying to say is: monorepos feel, theoretically, like a strict superset of many independent ones. It's just the tooling that makes it less convenient.

<comment><USER22> The speed is a serious downside.

Go on vacation for two weeks? You get to go on another vacation while you wait for your monorepo to update. Similarly, good luck ever trying to work from a coffee shop -- at the very least you probably have 50mb of updates because everyone in the company is committing code all the time.

<comment><USER16> This is only true if you do two unrelated things simultaneously: have a monolithic repo, _and_ keep the whole thing checked out at all times. Provided you have a sane build system (pants, Blaze, Buck, etc.), then the only thing that should need to have the full checkout is the CI server; you should be able to safely work from a narrow clone.

That said, I find your note a bit amusing. I'd have agreed a decade ago, but nowadays, 50 MB should take effectively zero time for you to both download and apply. It's worth revisiting things like this as LANs and the internet get faster; I think the speed comment is a bit outdated now.

<comment><USER22> True, however Pants right now does not have support with Git to only checkout dependencies it actually needs for the build.

I agree that it should take effectively zero time for me to download and apply 50MB of updates, but poor quality internet is still pretty easy to find (working with plane wifi) -- maybe my coffee shops have worse internet than yours!

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER23> I've found companies typically use monolithic development because they don't get all of the benefits of modular development. e.g. they don't re-use code cause they only have 1 website (and don't care about open sourcing). I'll stick with modular all the way. :)

<comment><USER24> Most of the arguments in the article were in cases where you do reuse code though.

If you didn't reuse code (across repos) then you wouldn't have any of the problems that a monolithic repo solves.

<comment><USER25> I just cannot imagine trying to make sense of the history of a giant monorepo.

What I don't get is the example from Twitter. If I need a fellow developer to fix projectB and projectC for me to fix projectA, I ask him to fix it. As soon as he has committed it to their respective repos, the buildserver would pick it up, and I can expect the next time it builds projectA, it pulls the lastest version of projectB and C and use them.

<comment><USER26> If you always pull the latest version of other projects, you have no way to have a consistent snapshot of a working system. If you use a monorepo, it means that you always know which versions of every file in every project are in use at a particular commit. This of course is also true if you use separate projects and pin their dependencies. But if you use separate projects and always grab the latest version of each subproject, there's no way to ensure you have compatible versions of different projects in use.

<comment><USER27> You don't need a monorepo to solve this problem. The dependent projects would depend on a specific version of an artifact, rather than a 'latest' pointer. Example: Project 1 depends on version 1.2.3 of Library A, and Library A builds are hosted in an artifact repo. Project 2 needs an update to Library A, and those updates are built and released as version 1.3.0. Project 1 continues to use version 1.2.3, until it's updated to work with the new 1.3.0 API.

<comment><USER26> Of course you don't need a monorepo to solve the dependency problem. My point was that just using the latest version of all projects in different repos is not necessarily an acceptable solution.</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment>


Why Do Mosquitoes Bite Some People More Than Others? - <AUTHOR> https://www.smithsonianmag.com/science-nature/why-do-mosquitoes-bite-some-people-more-than-others-10255934/?no-ist <comment><USER2> My body temperature is 35.5°C. If I move slowly and do not sweat, I am very much mosquito proof.

This property is not always such a joy -- I had to be really sick to be admitted to the hospital in the army, where the limit was 37.5°C.</comment>


Project Tuva: Feynman Lectures - <AUTHOR> http://research.microsoft.com/apps/tools/tuva/index.html

<comment><USER2> Silverlight? Great... I die and my lectures are only viewable with Silverlight...

:>

</comment><comment><USER3> They've created the ultimate geek virus to make us use Silverlight :-(

I guess I'll wait for some hacker to convert this to a viewable format.

<comment><USER4> Yea seriously. This is beyond the most evil scheme I ever thought Microsoft capable of concocting. Can somebody please put this in a torrent?

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> Quite excited about this, but Silverlight seems to freeze at the start of "Preparing Content...". Using a Mac w/ Safari 4.

Disappointing.

<comment><USER6> I get the same - on Windows. Given it seems to impact all OS/Browser combos I can't help but think it's something wrong at their end more than something being inherently wrong with Silverlight on your (platform||browser)

</comment></comment><comment><USER7> browser caution: doesn't work with chrome or opera.

FF 3.5 ok. IE 8 ok.

I am watching "relation betn maths/physics" . This also answered one of the questions about learning math some days back. At about 13.50, He talks about how people try to avoid math(many questions I see here point to learning stuff bypassing math).

The language he uses is so crisp (with NY rich accent)is so 'listenable' unlike the slangy english nowadays. The subtitles are also cool.

I wait for comments from RiderOfGiraffes.

<comment><USER8> Doesn't seem to work for me on FF 3.5. It just gives a Browser not supported message.

</comment></comment><comment><USER9> I get a "Your Browser is incompatible" with Firefox but at least I can see it's "Powered by Microsoft Silverlight".

 _SIGN_

</comment><comment><USER10> It seems many of you have a problem with silverlight (not really sure why, I can't see a philosophical difference between that and Flash and I personally haven't ever run into any technical problems with it).

You have to admit though, that interface is awesome. When I first saw this last night, I was impressed - the subtitles expand into the full transcript, the extras fluidly work with the video while it is playing, and it seems they had some bandwidth issues in the first few hours and during that time smooth playback was in effect, and although the video would hiccup at those points (rarely), the audio was smooth and I liked that.

Really, the only thing I can think of to complain about is that when you full screen it, the background is white. For media, black seems to work nicer on the eyes.

A wonderful interface, high quality video and audio, and of course the content - Feynman - is just wow ... I'm a very happy person right now....although I was up pretty late watching these videos, and so I'm a very happy tired person right now....

</comment><comment><USER11> And here we were, thinking bill had bought them as a public service.

</comment><comment><USER12> I think I speak for every Feynmanophile when I say OH FUCK YES.

</comment><comment><USER13> Disappointed with the side-by-side photo. The proximity of the photos belies the fact that with regard to speaking, the two men are many light years apart.

However, thank you for purchasing the lectures and making them available. It's a good use of funds.

No problems w/silverlight, FF 3.0, winXP.

</comment><comment><USER14> The page doesnt even load here, have tried with FF, Opera and IE (in Parallels)

</comment><comment><USER15> This guy on Youtube has some Feynman lecture videos: <http://www.youtube.com/user/carlosjerez23>

Are they the same ones?

</comment><comment><USER16> can't think, Bill Gates will eat me can't think, Bill Gates will eat me can't think, Bill Gates will eat me

<comment><USER16> Oh, come on. You can't tell me you weren't freaked out when 1/6 of your monitors' real estate was taken over by his smiling visage next to Feynman's.</comment></comment>


Is Virtualization Worth It? - <AUTHOR> http://gaiustech.wordpress.com/2011/07/19/is-virtualization-worth-it/ <comment><AUTHOR> Interested in anyone's thoughts on this...</comment>


Covid herd immunity – NY and Sweden - johnx123-up https://threadreaderapp.com/thread/1295152579941249024.html <comment><AUTHOR> I think articles like this do not sit well with the strong pro covid-19-vaccine, facemask and lockdown leaning crowd on HN. This is another interesting article about long lasting immunity against covid-19. Which I believe is a good counter against the often told herd immunity requires x percent antibodies in the population argument: [https://www.nature.com/articles/d41586-020-02400-7](https://www.nature.com/articles/d41586-020-02400-7)

[https://agencia.fapesp.br/herd-immunity-to-novel- coronavirus...](https://agencia.fapesp.br/herd-immunity-to-novel-coronavirus- can-be-reached-when-up-20-are-infected-study-suggests/33832/)</comment>


Like Facemash for Facebook: Piu sexy di - <AUTHOR> http://piusexydi.appspot.com/

<comment><USER2> I'm not really interested in voting which of my friends is sexier. Maybe this is a french thing?

You could make it more like cubeduel, and just ask, who is the better friend, or something along those lines.

Also, I was turned off by the fact that the app wanted to post to my wall. I'd need a good reason to give it that kind of access.

<comment><AUTHOR> I only requested that permission to be able to publish the top 10 if the user wants. I think there should be a better way to do this (like a one time permission), but I don't know how to do it.</comment></comment>