Yahoo Japan Data Breach: 22M Accounts Exposed (10% of all Yahoo accounts) - <AUTHOR> http://www.informationweek.com/security/attacks/yahoo-japan-data-breach-22m-accounts-exp/240155216

<comment><USER2> Claiming that this affects "10% of all Yahoo accounts" or that the breach in June 2012 is related is disingenuous---Yahoo and Yahoo Japan connected in brandname only ("Yahoo" accounts are not valid "Yahoo Japan" accounts, and vice versa).

<comment><AUTHOR> I agree -- in the headline, I took the number directly from the article as they stated "[t]he potential data breach affects 10% of Yahoo's user base."

Another article clarifies that the total number of Yahoo Japan accounts as 200 million, so it was actually 10% of all Yahoo Japan accounts. My apologies for contributing to that impression.

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> I have a Yahoo Japan ID. The day after this was announced I got an email from Yahoo japan with a subject that translates "Requesting regular password changes." I expected some kind of explanation or apology but the email didn't even mention that there was a breach. It just went on about how I should change my password from time to time and keep my passwords safe by not using on other sites etc. Given the news I found it kind of rude for them to act like nothing happened, yet ask me to be more careful with my password.

パスワードを定期的に変更しましょう! Let's be sure to change passwords from time to time!

パスワードの管理には気をつけて! Be careful with your password management!

etc....

It reads like a direct translation of an English communication, and feels culturally out of place.

<comment><USER4> The same thing happened to me a couple of weeks ago. Got a patronising mail from dinos.co.jp (ディノス) saying they were increasing their security measures and that I should change my password. I went and checked a few news sites and sure enough, they'd just had a massive breach. Disgraceful to not disclose it in their mail, IMO.

Ironically, they also preached how important security is - パスワードは、お客様の財産を守る重要な情報です (passwords are important information that protect your assets).

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> It had never occurred to me that "User IDs" were all that confidential. At the very least, the MTA pool will usually let you know (Just checked, Yahoo's MTA does), so, if you are patient, and don't trigger its anti-DOS mechanisms (usually by using a botnet to slowly, ever so slowly query them) - you can brute force quite a few account names.

<comment><USER6> Japan's IPA (Information-technology Promotion Agency) include in their general application development guidelines that user ID's should not be email addresses for the exact reason that they "are easy to guess".

I spent some time arguing that this was a silly requirement but in the end I had to change my program to use non-email address user IDs (which no one can remember as they are specific to this application... )

</comment></comment><comment><USER7> This sort of thing happens pretty regularly though nothing of this scale. While I was at Yahoo! we dealt with 3M compromised accounts.

I feel for all the engineers involved in resolving this issue. We had a team of 3 or 4 working on the resolution for a few weeks.

It's normally the result of a successful phishing attack. The affected users probably have no idea their accounts were compromised.

<comment><USER8> out of curiosity, how do you go about "resolving" such a situation?

<comment><USER7> At Yahoo! there's a dedicated security team that handled identifying the exact cause and worked with us to resolve it.

To identify compromised accounts we looked for profile photos matching a certain md5. The attackers were using the accounts for viagra links and updated compromised account profile photos with one of about 50 photos.

Once we identified the accounts they were "quarantined". But the attackers got smart and started shifting a pixel so that the md5 wouldn't match our set of known bad photos.

There were other patterns we identified to isolate the compromised accounts but it was ongoing which meant as we cleaned up accounts the attackers adapted.

For the 3M accounts a bit was flipped in their account. The membership team which handles logins handled the first step of the compromised user signing in. They redirected the user to a specific page that took them through a password reset flow. It wasn't the standard password reset flow. After all, we couldn't know if it was the attacker or the user logging in.

This was all a while back but it was more or less something along those lines. It was not fun.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> The article has a few things that aren't correct, as posted by other users.

If you are using Yahoo! Japan, check out the feature I was in charge of... alerting you when you have a login event on your account from a new device, and possibly locking your account: <http://login.yahoo.co.jp/alert/intro>

</comment><comment><USER10> Wow.... i can't imagine what if something like this will happen to Google or Facebook. If it happened to Yahoo, why not to them?

<comment><USER11> Yahoo! Japan is an entity separate from Yahoo!. It is a joint venture between Yahoo! and SoftBank (a Japanese telecom).

And to put this in context, IT in Japan is about a decade behind the West.

<comment><USER12> This is a gross generalization.

Sure, plenty of companies are behind. But quite a few are too in the US... [http://www.pcworld.com/article/249951/if_it_aint_broke_dont_...](http://www.pcworld.com/article/249951/if_it_aint_broke_dont_fix_it_ancient_computers_in_use_today.html)

I'm also not sure that "new" means more secure in this kind of context either. LinkedIn ain't exactly ancient and had a similar breach last year.

<comment><USER6> I would characterize the comment as more like "Attitudes towards development practices are a decade behind" (rather that the tech itself necessarily) which sounds pretty accurate[1] for most Japanese companies that are not part of the newer "Gree" wave.

[1] Anecdotal data etc etc.</comment></comment></comment></comment>


How to make music on Android - <AUTHOR> https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=G1pG7pYzCYQ <comment><USER2> I find Caustic highly recommendable. It has most features I'd expect from a sequencer and they keep adding new instruments and effects with free updates. At the latest a vocoder was added that allows for recording and mixing autotune effects. I would wish for only few things to add [0].

[http://www.singlecellsoftware.com/caustic](http://www.singlecellsoftware.com/caustic)

Naturally, particularly fine editing doesn't lend itself too well to a 5 inch display, and therefore the interface is intentionally limited (I would try a tablet) but well adapted. It's perfect to sketch ideas on the go or for quick entertaining beatmaker sessions. Each channel has two effect slots, 4*16 patterns and a piano roll with automation controls, midi interface. The computations are very taxing on the battery.

The demo has full capability modulo saving, but a persistive quicksave and export to mp3 etc. I used to simply rename the quicksave to save, but payed to support the devs and was rewarded with updates from versions 1 to v3 so far.

I wish a likewise intuitive application existed for linux. I stopped synthesizer programming for a while after switching from windows because hydrogen was the best I could find and the experience couldn't keep up with FL Studio. Caustic 3 is like the old Fruity Loops, a real treat.

[0] right now I could think of a drum pad</comment>


Why the "Secret Law" of the Patriot Act Is Probably About Location Tracking - <AUTHOR> http://www.cato.org/blog/atlas-bugged-why-secret-law-patriot-act-probably-about-location-tracking

<comment><AUTHOR> Reads various tea leaves to make a case that the NSA is blanket recording location data, which is necessary for a particular highly desirable use case, specifically:

You have suspect A on your radar and he only communicates with B, C, and D face to face. Phone call metadata won't likely help, certainly not directly. Location data will only help you if you can match it against a very large data set including B, C and D's movements.</comment>


Schneier on Security: Technology Shouldn't Give Big Brother a Head Start - <AUTHOR> http://www.schneier.com/essay-281.html <comment><USER2> I'm pretty sure the Green Dam is still withdrawn: [http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp- dyn/content/article/2009/08...](http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp- dyn/content/article/2009/08/16/AR2009081601697.html)

And apparently it was stolen technology from a US firm: [http://www.tgdaily.com/business-and-law-features/45303-us- fi...](http://www.tgdaily.com/business-and-law-features/45303-us-firm-sues- china-over-green-dam-code)

And of course said firm was cyber-attacked afterwards.

</comment><comment><USER3> strange this old article is on the front page; people might be also interested in <http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1072995> which takes this idea in a slightly different direction (ie big brother helps crooks) which was news to me (see my comment there).</comment>


When is a nation not a nation? Somaliland's dream of independence (2018) - <AUTHOR> https://www.theguardian.com/news/2018/jul/20/when-is-a-nation-not-a-nation-somalilands-dream-of-independence <comment><USER2> found on marginal revolution: [https://www.nytimes.com/2008/07/31/opinion/31iht- edmyers.1.1...](https://www.nytimes.com/2008/07/31/opinion/31iht- edmyers.1.14914273.html)

an opinion piece by Pete Butigieg on Somaliland from 2008. Gives you an interesting perspective on his past experiences and foreign policy stance. (Also is a bit shorter than the guardian article but still gets the point across about Somaliland)

My take on the situation: when you're a small country you're just a pawn for the bigger countries around you, including the world powers.

<comment><USER3> From the article : >"Every member of Parliament in Mogadishu gets a salary paid mostly by U.S. and EU funds," one Somaliland official told us. "And every one of them is a killer. If you kill enough people, you are called a warlord and you get invited to conferences. Meanwhile, I was elected by thousands of votes in a free election, but the international community does not consider us a country. They should be rewarding democracy, not killing."

That's sadly the truth in some of our African states.

<comment><USER4> What possible benefit does the US and EU get from paying these people's salaries? I understand the real Politik aspect - they're now "owned", to be perhaps a little crude, by the powers paying them - but what does the arrangement get the US and EU? Asked a different way, what would happen if we stopped paying them?

<comment><USER5> We pay them money so they stay in power and don't get usurped by other killers, namely the Islamic groups that want to kill Americans. Right now the warlords just kill other Africans, which the U.S. government considers a win, sadly. Its a foreign policy based on the idea if we didn't support these warlords, other groups that kill Africans AND Europeans will take power.

<comment><USER6> > _...namely the Islamic groups that want to kill Americans. Right now the > warlords just kill other Africans, which the U.S. government considers a > win..._

The Islamic killers kill more Africans too. Boko Haram are killing far more Somalis than they are Americans or Europeans. It is cynical, but it's probably not (on balance) morally wrong to support the opposition, god knows BH and friends get plenty of foreign support from our favourite Islamic customer in the middle east and others, so it's not as though the Americans are the only ones corrupting the failed state there.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> I know from personal experience, being from a small country created by the war in the early 1990s, that the international community is very slow in this kind of thing. And if you're not making a lot of concessions in the state-making process, you simply remain unrecognized. Even if you have no natural resources, the situation is worse.

</comment><comment><USER8> Somaliland should rebrand. Without renaming themselves they will forever fight an uphill battle to distinguish themselves as something other than (at best) a Somali provincial region.

Other than that, a great example is to follow the modern Taiwanese strategy to be a liberal democracy and a beacon of human rights, and develop powerful allies needed to maintain territorial integrity. Honestly, I would highly recommend hosting military bases for the US and other NATO allies. This is (part) of the strategy of the neighboring nation of Djibouti. The Gulf of Aden is geopolitically fraught and teaming with pirates, so there's room for plenty more military bases.

<comment><USER9> You mean like South Sudan did?

I shouldn't need to point out why such renaming would be difficult and controversial.

</comment></comment><comment><USER10> For those planning a trip there, Wikivoyage has good information, as usual:

[https://en.wikivoyage.org/wiki/Somaliland](https://en.wikivoyage.org/wiki/Somaliland)

<comment><USER11> > Imprisonment and/or execution is the punishment for homosexuality here. So > if you are gay and decide to visit, keep your sexual orientation secret.

yikes</comment></comment>


Making Computers Sing - <AUTHOR> https://www.safaribooksonline.com/blog/2014/11/07/making-computers-sing/ <comment><USER2> I thought this was an interesting article, but it was missing the one thing that made me click on the link; there was no mention of using software to produce vocal performances. Years ago there was a program called "Chant", that was used to produce something like Gregorian chant. Software can do amazing things when generating graphics nowadays, but the synthesis of vocals, either spoken or sung, is nowhere as advanced.

<comment><AUTHOR> Sorry to see you down. For an approximation of the CHANT software by IRCAM, see the FOF opcode in Csound:

[http://www.csounds.com/manual/html/fof.html](http://www.csounds.com/manual/html/fof.html)</comment></comment>


Can you use a magnifying glass and moonlight to light a fire? - <AUTHOR> http://what-if.xkcd.com/145/ <comment><USER2> Does the explanation assume the moon is absorbing sunlight energy and than re- emitting it like a black body? Which it is, but it's also reflecting some of the sunlight directly. Is that reflected light enough to light a fire.

If you replaced the moon with a moon-diameter flat mirror and pointed it at the earth, it would light up a spot a little bigger than the moon. From the middle of that spot you could look up at the mirror and see something that looked just like the sun slightly farther away than the normal sun. Hot and bright and capable of starting a fire.

Is this a valid reasoning?

If so, then it seems you could always start a fire with reflected sunlight. You could put a small mirror on the moon, point it at a large lens on earth (and keep it pointed at that one spot), and start a fire.

Even a smooth mirrored moon-ball should work. But I'm not sure if a diffuse reflector like the real moon is enough.

</comment><comment><USER3> Of course, the obvious method to start a fire by moonlight is to build a nice big array of silicon mooncells, and then plug my barbecue lighter into the power converter outlet.

</comment><comment><USER2> This also explains why you could start a fire in the middle of a moonless night with the light from a single star.

<comment><AUTHOR> By back-of-the envelope calculation I get the diameter of the magnifying glass required is the same as diameter of Earth, within an order of magnitude.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> Excellent. My first toss would be to say that lens are increasingly difficult to manufacture below a certain aperture like f/0.5.

</comment><comment><USER5> Couldn't grazing incidence optics be used to concentrate enough photons in a small area?</comment>


BankSimple moves to Portland - <AUTHOR> http://banksimple.com/blog/BankSimple/were-moving-to-portland/ <comment><USER2> Portland is one of my favorite American cities. But if you're freely choosing somewhere to relocate to, I would think Seattle would be a tough competitor. It's nearby, has a bigger tech community, and has Washington's zero state income tax versus Oregon with the highest state income tax in the country at 11% for the top bracket.

<comment><USER3> When I was out in California, my company closed up our Santa Cruz office very suddenly.

A large contingent of people working there decided to move to just outside of Portland (Vancouver Washington) mainly because of the fact that by living in Washington you wouldn't pay any income tax, and by adjoining Portland, you could do all your shopping and avoid paying sales tax.

I opted not to relocate there with everyone else (it seemed silly to move somewhere just for tax reasons), but I imagine there are at least a fair number of people who use that scenario.

<comment><USER4> With average traffic/distance and ~25mpg, it takes about $6 for a round trip from Vancouver, WA to Portland, OR. Which would save you ~$4 on a $100 item.

However, for some reason, lots of people in general were fleeing CA at the peak of housing bubble.

<comment><USER2> That was a "~" too far for HN. It's a 19.8 mile round trip, and gas was $3.71 yesterday in Vancouver, Washington, so making the trip in your 25 mpg vehicle would cost $2.94 in gas.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> The Pearl District in Portland is nice and all but I'll never understand why you would want an office there, especially if you aren't a business that requires a trendy, hip image. A web-based business with no front door is going to pay a TON per square foot just to be downtown.

Is it the address they are after? The need to impress investors? It's already expensive enough to run a business, why burden yourself and your employees with a completely irrelevant location?

I do live and work here and love the city, I just don't get the appeal of working downtown. The company I currently work for left downtown before I joined and I'm glad they did. Not many people live downtown and getting to and from work every day would take longer for me (and many others) than it does now. Not to mention an added cost of parking or taking mass transit.

<comment><USER4> Many people live in Goose Hollow (87% of them are renters) and the Fareless zone covers most of the transit distance.

I find that many people who live in downtown simply do not own a car, which seems almost impossible to function in this day and age.

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> Portland seems to be attracting a lot of hackers lately, so it will be interesting to see if the startup scene and investment money follow.

<comment><USER7> It's already here. Our company (AppFog) was founded in Portland and we just secured our Series B. We have offices in the same building as JanRain and yet another co-working space. In Old Town or the Pearl District, there are startups on every other block.

Interestingly, our biggest challenge right now is recruiting. If you're considering moving to Portland, we could use you.

<http://blog.phpfog.com/2011/06/10/we-are-hiring/>

<comment><USER8> OT, and completely uninformed question: how's the scene in recruiting straight from Portland State University?

(I ask out of idle curiosity, because I once had the opportunity to do an MS in CS there a while (6 years) back, and I passed up because I couldn't take on the financial burden - please drop me an email if you feel this might threadjack the discussion here.)

<comment><USER7> We haven't tried recruiting from PSU ourselves, but we probably should. Galois (<http://corp.galois.com/>) recruits students from PSU's CS program. My colleagues from PSU's mathematics dept have also been a pleasure to work with.

<comment><USER9> Yup, Galois is the most obvious direct recruiter from PSU, but there are others, to be sure, but not enough. I've got a few friends in the MS and PHd programs at PSU and they certainly don't have people beating down their doors, I'm sorry to say. It would certainly be good to see more direct recruiting and internship opportunities opening up.

<comment><USER10> We (Puppet Labs) take interns from PSU and have hired pro services engineers from there.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> I really love Portland, and I'm sure it's a great new home for BankSimple, but I am a little shocked that a company would move to a city where literally everyone in the company would have to be relocated. I've seen companies move to SF or NY before because of VC raised, but this is almost the opposite!

<comment><USER12> There are clues there:

1) they wanted everyone to be in once place 2) they're hiring a lot of people, especially customer service.

Customer service in NYC or SF would be prohibitively expensive, so if they want to be all in one place, they would have to move anyway. This is no different than Zappos being in Las Vegas or Groupon being in Chicago (I think Zappos relocated). Personnel costs when you have 50 employees per hacker become a big deal.

Portland has a ton of skilled, educated people and high unemployment, so they're going to get a lot of bank for their buck.

<comment><USER13> You got it.

<comment><USER14> Probably worth putting who you are in your profile, at least one of your other answers has been killed, possibly because it wasn't obvious you were answering for the company and it's a one worder:

<http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2921563>

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> From anecdotal experience, it does seem like Portland is drawing a lot of talented folks. It is definitely a "bike to work, complain at city hall and drink obscure beer" crowd, but is that such a bad thing?

<comment><USER16> "bike to work, complain at city hall and drink obscure beer"

Sounds great to _me_.

<comment><USER15> Indeed. It appeals to the hacker ethic. And the Green ethic. But not to the SUV and Strip Mall ethic. Or the Zenga (sp?) tie ethic.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER17> Still waiting on that invite I signed up for what seems like a year ago.

Can't leave Fifth Third soon enough.

<comment><USER18> BankSimple isn't a bank!

What I don't understand is the fact that all of BankSimple's customers (banks) are in...New York...

<comment><USER13> We're not a bank, but we view our customers as being the people who would use traditional banks. We partner with banks, and those banks are located around the country.

That said, our processing technology partner, TxVia, is located in NYC, as are several of our investors.

<comment><USER18> I don't know your plans, but if banks (or Fiserv or FIS) are the ones paying you for a license to your front-end, then they are your customers. End users are the banks' customers, and in whatever contractual agreements you end up signing, based on my experience, the banks and their regulators will make absolutely sure you know that.

Also, you should change your name now before the regulators make you. Consumers think that financial companies with "bank" in their names are banks.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER19> Does this have anything at all to do with the new California money transmission laws?

<comment><USER13> Nope.

</comment></comment><comment><USER20> The dream of the 90's is alive in portland: [http://www.hulu.com/watch/205428/portlandia-i-dream-of- the-9...](http://www.hulu.com/watch/205428/portlandia-i-dream-of-the-90s)

</comment><comment><USER21> As someone from Portland, Maine, I always get a little miffed when people don't specify that this is Portland, Oregon.

Yeah, Portland, Oregon's metro area is about 4x the size of that of Maine's largest city, but it's not like it's an order of magnitude or anything.

Maybe I'm just jealous that there's more going on there than here. :(

<comment><USER22> It's like somebody in Moscow, Idaho getting upset that people don't refer to it as Moscow, Russia.

Face it, Portland, Oregon is the real Portland.

<comment><USER16> Woah, someone actually knows Moscow, Idaho exists. +1, sir.

<comment><USER22> I've been there, haha.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER23> Can this be related to the fact that Oregon has no Sales Tax?

[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sales_taxes_in_the_United_State...](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sales_taxes_in_the_United_States#Oregon)

<comment><USER24> Probably not.

It's actually a very exit-unfriendly state from a tax standpoint. Very high state income-tax rate and capital gains are taxed at your state income level as well.

However, it's pretty sweet to pay the price listed at stores and restaurants.

</comment></comment><comment><USER25> Portland is basically where San Francisco was at 20 years ago.

In terms of a tech hub, the only thing missing is a stronger university presence.

<comment><USER26> This is not true. There is a history of technology entrepreneurship in Silicon Valley going back (at least) 60 years. There are a great many pieces of human infrastructure that exist in SF that do not exist in Portland from the largest collection of technology VCs & Angels in the world, to lawyers that understand corporate structure and stock options, to bankers that understand IPOs, and of course thousands and thousands of engineers.

A 20 year difference if a vast understatement.

<comment><USER13> Even though I guess I'm supposed to be the one sticking up for Portland in these comments, I have to agree with this. I don't think Portland or any other city is likely to be the next Silicon Valley. I also don't think that's a bad thing for some types of businesses.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER27> Portland is a great town.... but seriously gastro-pubs are silly, get some real restaurants people.

<comment><USER13> I'm kind of a foodie, and our project manager is _definitely_ a foodie. He runs this site that lists some great places to eat and drink if you're only in a city for a couple days. Here are his picks for Portland: <http://noms.in/portland>

I've seen very few places here that categorize themselves as gastropubs. There are a lot of breweries in Portland, and some of them have their own restaurants/pubs. But's that's a relatively small percentage of the diverse dining options here.

<comment><USER28> As a fellow foodie, but in Boston, tell your project manager his site is right on for the area. All really great suggestions.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER29> Portland? WTF? Why? It's a hipster dump. Rains 9 months a year, has 12% perpetual unemployment, plus the USA's largest resident homeless population, which isn't terribly shocking given the awful job market. But, if you can actually get a job the salary will be circa 1994 and yet the property and rent prices are in fantasy land stuck in the 2006 housing bubble. Oh, plus the city has one of the highest suicide rates in the nation. Great place to live if you like being wet, underemployed, and depressed.

Glad I got out of that dump, if you want to have a future you need to be in Boston, NYC, or The Valley.

<comment><USER30> LoL, like Boston, NYC, or the Valley are any less of a joke.

All of America is same sprawling hollow suburbia.

<comment><USER31> Visit Pittsburgh someday. We have some hollow suburbia but we don't have the typical endless suburban sprawl. We do have a fair amount of hipsters though, just a warning.

<comment><USER32> Hipsters are in every city, its not 2007 anymore.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER33> BankSimple == Duke Nukem Forever

<comment><USER20> Duke Nukem Forever, you mean that established product with nearly half a million customers?

<comment><USER34> Just downrate the unfair comparison and move on.

There is no way to positively spin a comparison to Duke Nukem Forever. Don't even try.</comment></comment></comment>


The Hippocratic License - <AUTHOR> https://firstdonoharm.dev/ <comment><USER2> > The software may not be used by individuals, corporations, governments, or > other groups for systems or activities that actively and knowingly endanger, > harm, or otherwise threaten the physical, mental, economic, or general well- > being of underprivileged individuals or groups.

who defines "underprivileged?" How is this any better than MIT + "Unless I dont like you; then fuck off" ... in fact, how is it different?

</comment><comment><USER3> Allow me to explain the many faults of this license, using the original Greek Hippocratic oath as an example:

> I will use treatment to help the sick according to my ability and judgment, > but never with a view to injury and wrong-doing. Neither will I administer a > poison to anybody when asked to do so, nor will I suggest such a course. > Similarly I will not give to a woman a pessary to cause abortion.

The original Hippocratic oath, even if it's not in vogue today, explicitly defined physician assisted suicide and abortion as "harm". I'm going to take a flying leap here that Ehmke is probably pro-choice rather than pro-life (not sure about Ehmke's stance on physician assisted suicide, but the general read one has of progressives is they're generally in favor).

> The software may not be used by individuals, corporations, governments, or > other groups for systems or activities that actively and knowingly endanger, > harm, or otherwise threaten the physical, mental, economic, or general well- > being of underprivileged individuals or groups.

Under certain people's definitions (certainly Hippocrates', or at least whoever was responsible for the text of his oath), using software with this license in any activity related to furnishing abortions or physician-assisted suicide would be a violation of this license.

In other words, great, you don't want bad people to harm vulnerable people with your software.

Now please define "bad", "vulnerable", and most crucially, "harm."

</comment><comment><USER4> Hm why is the domain "first"? This is definitively not a first, seems to be more or less a copy-paste of previous "no-harm" efforts. This is the first time I've seen one with a link to patreon attached to it however which is... interesting.

> * The software may not be used by individuals, corporations, governments, or > other groups for systems or activities that actively and knowingly endanger, > harm, or otherwise threaten the physical, mental, economic, or general well- > being of underprivileged individuals or groups.

This is basically a fuck-off clause that's not well defined, I doubt it's even remotely enforceable.

For example, one can argue with pretty solid references to studies that Facebook, Twitter, Instagram and other social media platforms are knowingly endangering and harming the mental well-being of all it's users, and they do it for profit.

</comment><comment><AUTHOR> I remember a Douglas Crockford (the "JS: the good parts" author) talk where he had added a similar clause to the license for jslint. It said it couldn't be used for evil. And then IBM asked for an exemption.

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Douglas_Crockford#%22Good,_not...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Douglas_Crockford#%22Good,_not_Evil%22)</comment>


Fear of a Black President - <AUTHOR> http://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2012/09/fear-of-a-black-president/309064/

<comment><USER2> What is this garbage doing on Hacker News?</comment>


Bruce Eckel announces he's going to write Atomic Python - <AUTHOR> http://bruceeckel.github.io/2015/08/29/what-i-do/

<comment><USER2> I've admired Bruce's work since Thinking in Java. I've also enjoyed a merry- go-round of languages in my own career. I too was interested in Scala and read Odersky's book - and improved a lot as a programmer because of it, despite not using Scala for any "real" project. I can't say I've ever found Python that compelling. Rust and Go don't do much for me. The 2 languages I'm excited about right now are Elm and Nim.

Nim empowers the programmer to do just about anything, use GC or switch to manual MM, target any computing platform that supports C (i.e. everything), reinvent the language with macros, while packaging it up very elegantly indeed.

Elm promises almost the exact opposite. I mean it's elegant, but it's also limited - purely functional, immutable, no nulls, no unchecked list access. And that's the kind of limitation that addresses the problem that Bruce has with other languages - dealing with all the complexity of how something's working. The promise of Elm is that if your code compiles, it works, leaving you to focus on getting the important stuff right - information flow and business logic - instead of tracking down another silly invalidity that never should have made it to runtime.

They're both young, but I wish Andreas Rumpf (Nim) and Evan Czaplicki (Elm) and their teams all the best in taking on the "big boys" with these plucky languages, and would encourage Bruce Eckel to consider skipping ahead of the curve and writing for these alternatives.

<comment><USER3> > Nim empowers the programmer to do just about anything, use GC or switch to > manual MM, target any computing platform that supports C (i.e. everything), > reinvent the language with macros, while packaging it up very elegantly > indeed.

This is a very brilliant way to describe exactly what makes Nim excellent. I hope you don't mind if I quote you on this :)

<comment><USER2> You're very welcome.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> What is simple and clear about Python? Overloading, decorators, coroutines, dynamic typing, strong reliance on exception handling for control flow, a boatload of basic types, deep class hierarchies, eval, massive standard library, schism between 2 and 3, eggs vs wheels, pip vs setup vs easy install... it's really a pretty complex language with a deep ecosystem.

<comment><USER5> * Overloading: Is this a reference to default values for arguments? Or PEP 3124? If the former, then I think that this is itself a great example of simplicity and clarity in python.

* Decorators: I grant that they're hard on a debugger; I wish that there were a slightly more sane way for the control flow to play out. However, syntactically they're super clear.

* Coroutines: What's the problem here? I prefer Twisted's deferred model, but I have no problem with coroutines.

* Dynamic typing: I mean, if this is a religious issue, then I don't want to offend, but seriously: especially for newcomers, the type system in Python is simple. And clear.

* Exceptions as part of control flow: And why not? Exceptions are a part of ordinary human logic. Why do you regard them as unclear or complex?

* Boatload of basic types: I can do with a few fewer exposures of "low level concepts" in types (ie, int, float, double, decimal), but it's not _that_ bad.

* Deep class hierarchies: I'm not even sure what to say to this. It seems like an objection to OOP generally.

* eval: I think we all agree that eval introduces opacity and complexity, but do you prefer it be removed?

* Massive standard library: Compared to other languages of a similar age, Python does an awfully good job at providing One Obvious Way to use the standard library to do what (and only what) you want.

* schism between 2 and 3: Hear hear.

* Eggs vs wheels: Yeah. Fuck.

* pip vs setup vs easy_install: Yeah we get it. Packaging is a problem.

Overall, I think Python is simple and clear. If I had to pick an objection, none of the ones you raised makes my list. I'll probably go with the syntax for the "type hints" system. And the GIL. And the varying definitions of "is" across implementations.

But all in all, it's pretty darn simple and clear.

<comment><USER6> Overloading means that + does this: [1,2] + [3,4] == [1,2,3,4] and this: 1 + 2 == 3

<comment><USER7> What is the problem with that? Number + Number = number list + list = list str + str = str

<comment><USER8> It's a bit of cognitive load. It's not clear whether or not [1,2] + [3,4] should equal [1,2,3,4] or [4,6].

Keeping track of that, (oh wait, this is a numpy array, not a python list...) and things like that expand the amount of the language that a programmer must keep in her head at any one time, and are the definition of complexity.

There's no known silver bullet for the complexity / power tradeoff, which is why we get so many cool languages!

<comment><USER9> Is there some language where [4,6] is the output? That strikes me as serving some use case that I've never come across. Whereas having two lists and wanting to end up with one list with all the elements is a very common need.

<comment><USER10> I believe it would be in Matlab, as [1, 2] + [3, 4] would be considered matrix addition, in which one adds elements in corresponding places. Numpy (as mentioned in the GP) probably does similar.

<comment><USER9> Ah, ok, thanks. Right, matrix math is is the use case I was looking for.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> From the title, I assumed this was going to be yet another attempt at making Python multithreaded. Apparently that's way off. What's the significance of "Atomic" in the title?

<comment><USER12> Small chapters that cover a small amount of content each so that you feel like you're making progress through the book with a series of easy wins. The theory is you're more likely to keep going that way.

<comment><USER11> Thanks! That makes a lot of sense.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> I don't really understand why people think Python is a simple language. It's not. It draws too many distinctions that shouldn't exist. Functions, decorators, descriptors, classes, meta-classes, generators, iterators, properties, static methods, class methods, multiple inheritance, and probably a few more things I'm forgetting.

Ruby on the other hand is simple. There are objects and there are messages, that's it.

<comment><USER14> I agree. Python is much more complex that Java (even Java 8), and as an additional twist, everything bites you at runtime.

</comment></comment><comment><USER15> The most interesting thing in this article was his mention of Elm: elm- lang.org

I'd never heard of it before but it looks pretty cool.

</comment><comment><USER9> How do folks with Scala experience react to his thoughts on Scala and its cliffs? I've only built some modest stuff in it and I've certainly felt that way, but I put that down to inexperience. But if he's done 2 years of work in Scala and has written a book on it, it sounds like experience won't help me as much as I hoped.

<comment><USER16> Going by Paul Phillips's (largest contributor to the scala compiler) YouTube rant, [https://m.youtube.com/?#/watch?v=4jh94gowim0](https://m.youtube.com/?#/watch?v=4jh94gowim0), nobody ever gets over the cliffs.

His rant is great, for more than just scala.

<comment><USER9> Wow. Just starting to watch, but my first thought is: thank goodness he got to give this talk when he did; otherwise he might have exploded.

The link that works for me on a desktop browser: [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4jh94gowim0](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4jh94gowim0)

<comment><USER9> And here are the slides: [http://www.slideshare.net/extempore/a-scala- corrections-libr...](http://www.slideshare.net/extempore/a-scala-corrections- library)

Wow, this is a brutal talk.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER17> Following Bruce the last 15 years or so.

He hypes a language and makes money.

He bashes that language and makes money.

He hypes a language and makes money.

...

<comment><USER18> Sounds like an evolution of the general community view of a new language :)

If we take the systems design view that new languages rise as solutions to existing problems, initially they are greeted as making thing X easier. But, since they work differently in places than previous language, they expose new emergent dynamics of software development, some of which will be pathological.

Once the strengths of the language are understood, improving on the usage of that language is then based on understanding the systemic pathologies that language induces and how to work around them.

</comment></comment><comment><USER19> He should have take a look at F# or OCaml. After reading his post it felt like that would be the best fit for his description of the language.

</comment><comment><USER20> Always found his writing pretty accessible.

</comment><comment><USER21> Suggest adding "book" to the end of the HN subject, to clarify what he is writing

</comment><comment><USER22> I find this guy pretty arrogant and a bit of a grand-stander, but maybe I get the wrong impression. He did have a good idea once, namely to release his textbooks free in the internet before that became fashionable. That is still a good idea today. The textbooks are not the best of breed by a long stretch but we shouldn't diminish the fact that he released them.

If you think you can do it, do it, release it. Bask in the glory.

Prediction: he can't. But good luck anyway.

<comment><USER23> I really enjoyed his first C++ book. The only one I've seen that assumes proficiency in C and dives into the new stuff immediately. Bruce is a good writer but I think the ship has sailed on writing new Python books that can stand out from the crowd. Atomic Rust would be more commercially viable.</comment></comment>


20 years of weird Game Boy variations, offshoots, add-ons, and tributes. - <AUTHOR> http://technologizer.com/2009/04/13/game-boy-oddities/

<comment><USER2> Non-technical. 14 pages, 1 photo/device/oddity per page, and a topic structure manufactured to produce popularity on social news sites. What is it doing here?

It would be different if there were technical details about the add-ons themselves, or some insight into the thought process that brought them along. It has neither.

This article, along with the recent rash of articles on religion and politics, are starting to get annoying. I can't imagine I'm the only one who feels so.</comment>


Teensy 3.1 bare metal: Writing a USB driver (2014) - <AUTHOR> http://kevincuzner.com/2014/12/12/teensy-3-1-bare-metal-writing-a-usb-driver/ <comment><USER2> For anyone that might be interested, there were some efforts some time back to get Rust running on the Teensy[1][2][3][4], and although there have been no recent updates, the code is available to use and should still be relevant although there have been changes[5][6][7] in the meantime.

[1]: [https://github.com/jamesmunns/teensy3-rs](https://github.com/jamesmunns/teensy3-rs)

[2]: [https://branan.github.io/teensy/](https://branan.github.io/teensy/)

[3]: [https://disconnected.systems/blog/bare-metal-rust-on-the- tee...](https://disconnected.systems/blog/bare-metal-rust-on-the-teensy-3.1/)

[4]: [https://github.com/SimonSapin/teensy- clock](https://github.com/SimonSapin/teensy-clock)

[5]: [https://rust-embedded.github.io/book/](https://rust- embedded.github.io/book/)

[6]: [https://josh.robsonchase.com/embedded- bootstrapping/](https://josh.robsonchase.com/embedded-bootstrapping/)

[7]: [https://github.com/rust-embedded/wg/issues/40](https://github.com/rust- embedded/wg/issues/40)

<comment><USER3> Hey,

Author of the first link above. The Teensy3 crate was some of my first embedded work, I was working with SimonSapin (author of the 4th link) at RustFest to get something working. That library wraps some of the Teensyduino code using bindgen, which gives you the ability to write application code using Rust.

Overall, the Teensy 3.1/3.2 family wasn't great for developing Rust, as they don't have debugger (SWD, similar to JTAG) lines available, meaning you have to use the serial bootloader, and rely on a serial port for all debugging. I believe the newer version of the board expose SWD lines now, so it's not a problem.

Let me know if you have any questions :)

Definitely check out the embedded WG[1], and the new Rust homepage[2]

[1]: [https://github.com/rust-embedded/wg](https://github.com/rust- embedded/wg) [2]: [http://beta.rust-lang.org/what/embedded](http://beta.rust- lang.org/what/embedded)

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> Slightly off topic: I highly recommend this micro controller for projects big and small. It packs quite a punch in terms of ram/cpu per dollar, lots of pins, great community and Paul was really cool online and at maker's faire. Thank you Paul, Robin, and the rest of the community for a great product!

Off-off topic, as a web developer I love their super functional site. It even has an about page with pictures of Paul windsurfing haha.

<comment><USER5> It doesn't seem terribly good value for money. You can get a Nucleo-32 or Nucleo-64 for $10-15. For $23 you can get a Nucleo-144.

<comment><USER4> I guess I am comparing them more to arduino / adafruit replacements, rather than more direct manufacturer prices. I have no experience with Nucleo boards but many other boards I tried out just hadn't no community or body of libraries to draw from, whereas the teensy is pretty popular in the makers community. In my case I happened to need to drive 1,000's of LEDs in real-time for an art piece and not only is there good software support, there is even dedicated hardware made for the teensy for this in the Octo Ws2812 board. I was so impressed with the quality and the size that I generally just use a teensy LC even when a $3 trinket would probably work. YMMV

<comment><USER6> I hear you. Check out the EPS32 [1][2]. It's faster, has more mem and has built in wifi, so you can access a webpage[3] on it via an ip and your browser and remote control it via your phone. FastLed runs on it, and there are level shifters similar to the Octo for it [4]. You can actually run 16 channels I believe (vs 8 on the Octo). It uses the same level shifter (x2) as the Octo. There is also an 8 channel available if you check the other products on Jason's store on that Tindie site[4]. It's arduino compat- so you probably wouldn't have to rewrite much at all.

[1] [https://wiki.wemos.cc/products:d32:d32](https://wiki.wemos.cc/products:d32:d32)

[2] [https://www.adafruit.com/product/3405](https://www.adafruit.com/product/3405)

[3] [https://github.com/jasoncoon/esp32-fastled- webserver](https://github.com/jasoncoon/esp32-fastled-webserver)

[4] [https://www.tindie.com/products/jasoncoon/16-output- wemos-d3...](https://www.tindie.com/products/jasoncoon/16-output- wemos-d32-wifi-ble-led-controller/)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> The article links to a web site that has excellent information on the low- level electrical and bit details of the USB protocol: [http://www.usbmadesimple.co.uk/](http://www.usbmadesimple.co.uk/)

</comment><comment><USER8> Here's a mirror for anyone interested:

[https://web.archive.org/web/20180824210333/http://kevincuzne...](https://web.archive.org/web/20180824210333/http://kevincuzner.com/2014/12/12/teensy-3-1-bare- metal-writing-a-usb-driver/)

<comment> jonah-archive Thanks for using us as a mirror! In case anyone who runs a CMS (HN admins?) is wondering, we would be happy for people to hit our Save Page Now functionality at the time of link submission, so a copy _as it was when posted_ is archived. This is good for both having a copy of the page in case traffic takes it offline (though in general, I think the link should go to the original since then people get their traffic), but also in case the endpoint changes their page or content after it's posted.

You can cause us to save a page by hitting [https://](https://) web.archive.org/save/your-url-here with a GET request, and there are more details about the ways to use the interface with browser plugins/etc here: [https://blog.archive.org/2017/01/25/see-something-save- somet...](https://blog.archive.org/2017/01/25/see-something-save-something/)

</comment></comment><comment><USER9> Looks like HN hug of death - perhaps the server is running on a Teensy?

<comment><USER6> Maybe an ESP8266 with built in wifi ;)</comment></comment>


Introduction to Decentralisation - <AUTHOR> https://www.ledgerpath.com/blog/2019/07/introduction-to-decentralisation <comment><USER2> I love how most blockchain related articles I read pass from "baby-talk description of decentralization and distribution" to "PoW, permissionless, PoS, miners and mining" in a single swipe.

If I could understand those terms why did you bother to explain such basic concepts to me in the first place?

If I need to be guided throught those ideas, do you really think I can comprehend what are you talking about with Proof of Work? (Which is never spelled in its full words in the article)

<insert face palm emoji>

<comment><USER3> I have seen this phenomenon so often in explanations/tutorials of different things. People seem to not have a concrete target audience in mind. They simply write of cuff.

<comment><USER4> I'll go one step further: for many slightly-obscure technical topics, the intermediate writing between beginner and advanced is rare or simply doesn't exist. I struggled with this when I was trying to learn functional programming --writing on the subject is mostly linked-lists/lambda/map/reduce/filter, or όλα είναι ελληνικά για μένα. This goes even for better writers who _do_ have an audience in mind: their audience is either complete beginners, or people with advanced academic degrees in the field. It took me years to find writings that bridge that gap.

<comment><USER5> What material did you find? I too have noticed this gap and been searching.

<comment><USER4> I found a lot of the stuff on Matt Might's blog helpful. He writes a bit about compiling Scheme to C, which allows me to see what each piece of Scheme is doing in a language I know.[1] Following this approach, I found LISP In Small Pieces[2], Compiling With Continuations[3], etc. There's more but I have to dig it up.

[1] [http://matt.might.net/articles/programming-with- continuation...](http://matt.might.net/articles/programming-with-continuations --exceptions-backtracking-search-threads-generators-coroutines/)

[2] [https://pages.lip6.fr/Christian.Queinnec/WWW/LiSP.html](https://pages.lip6.fr/Christian.Queinnec/WWW/LiSP.html)

[3] [https://www.cambridge.org/core/books/compiling-with- continua...](https://www.cambridge.org/core/books/compiling-with- continuations/7CA9C36DCE78AD82218E745F43A4E740)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> >> \- Architectural decentralisation: how many physical computers the system is made up of? What's the topology of the network and its geographical presence?

>> \- Political decentralisation: how many people or entities are in control of the network?

>> \- Logical decentralisation: does the whole system behave like a single entity?

>> The take away from Vitalik article, is that all blockchains combines these three dimensions into one system.

Actually, Vitalik states in his article that individual blockchains are logically centralized: [https://medium.com/@VitalikButerin/the-meaning-of- decentrali...](https://medium.com/@VitalikButerin/the-meaning-of- decentralization-a0c92b76a274). It depends on whether we're talking about a specific blockchain or the set of all blockchains. That's why I don't agree with the position of Bitcoin maximalists; their vision is not fully decentralized. When you factor in the centralization of mining power, BTC is only architecturally decentralized. Bitcoin is not so different from a centralized system which has replicas in multiple data centers.

<comment><USER7> It is the architecturally decentralized nature of bitcoin that you mentions, that can make it become more and more decentralized over time.

You say it is not so different from a centralized system that has replicas in multiple data centers.

\- if we speak about bitcoin nodes: don't forget that centralized systems can be shut off very quickly by governements

\- if we speak about miners: new mining pool software is just being developed (and some of if finalized), that takes away power from pools, and gives it to the many small miners:

[https://medium.com/hackernoon/betterhash-decentralizing- bitc...](https://medium.com/hackernoon/betterhash-decentralizing-bitcoin- mining-with-new-hashing-protocols-291de178e3e0)

and

[https://www.reddit.com/r/Bitcoin/comments/ci2daj/making_mini...](https://www.reddit.com/r/Bitcoin/comments/ci2daj/making_mining_more_decentralized_new_mining_stack/)

<comment><USER4> I think the point cryptica is making is that there is only one, central blockchain (logical centralization). This has a few centralizing effects on _political centralization_ which is what most users probably care about:

1\. Governments need only to track one blockchain to track every BTC transaction. Attempts to deal with this mainly entail coin tumbling, which involves giving your coins to a centralized trusted entity. Larger tumblers are more effective, creating an incentive for further centralization.

2\. The central blockchain is a performance bottleneck to event throughput. Attempts to deal with this mostly have to do with federation, i.e. forcing people to transact through another entity (usually a company you pay fees to) if they want faster transactions. Federation is much closer to centralized on the centralized/decentralized spectrum. Usually companies respect regulation from centralized government (meaning a government could force them to not process your transactions) increasing centralization further. And historically, federation happens unevenly, i.e. a large number of email users federating under GMail, which creates further centralization.

3\. Mining competition has a very high entry cost because the minimum investment for entry is very high. The solution to this is pools under a centralized pool manager who typically collects fees and may or may not collect data on pool members.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> Blockchains have a single centralized view of data and this view is distributed worldwide with everyone keeping each other in check. Blockchains are centralized but distributed in this way.

Federation protocols have different, decentralized views of data and these views are selectively distributed with peers and distributed in ad hoc ways, and sometimes peers keep each other in check. Federated protocols are decentralized and distributed in this way.

</comment><comment><USER9> >"hypothetically"

Second word of the article and i almost stopped reading. Is this a sarcastic hypothetical, where what follows is obviously true?

>This is an impossible structure for an organisation to function

So... Why is this "hypothetical" instead of hypothetical?

I suppose im being unreasonable, but i find this extremely offputting and intrepet as a very unprofessional writing.

</comment><comment><USER10> It's weird that decentralized architectures are becoming what the racoons and quants are now flocking to via means of block chain via means of cryptocurrency. Seems like they are getting pulled down the buzz word rabbit hole and we are the only ones the wiser

</comment><comment><USER11> I call writing "code for the human compiler". That code should address the knowledge level of reader. No general purpose article can get that right

</comment><comment><USER12> Oh, it was blockchain again. I tought it would be about the political practice.

<comment><USER13> ... or about a myriad other technologies.

It's sad that cryptocurrency speculation and hype sucked all the air out of the room vs other decentralized tech.

In the end its leading to a condition where decentralized equals Ponzi finance scheme in the minds of many people.</comment></comment>


To Stay Relevant in a Career, Workers Train Nonstop (2012) - <AUTHOR> http://www.nytimes.com/2012/09/22/business/to-stay-relevant-in-a-career-workers-train-nonstop.html <comment><USER2> > To prepare, Mr. Hallock, 29, spends an hour or two a day at his business, > TopFloorStudio in Asheville, N.C., tracking venture capitalists and start-up > news,

s/.*/He reads Hacker News/</comment>


Your Chrome browser might not be using HTTP anymore - <AUTHOR> http://www.igvita.com/2011/04/07/life-beyond-http-11-googles-spdy <comment><USER2> The transparency with which Chrome did this was actually a problem for me. Google Docs/GMail did not work for months on my school's ethernet connection until I read about SPDY being implemented; sure enough, launching Chrome with SPDY disabled fixed the issue, and that requires a command line option. I wish Chrome were less transparent about this and added a few Preferences options, at least.

<comment><USER3> I don't mean to be pedantic, but the word "transparent", in this context, means "easily perceived or detected". I believe you're using it to mean the opposite.

<comment><USER4>
      > the word "transparent", in this context, means "easily perceived or detected"

This definition doesn't make much sense to me. Transparent objects are less easily perceived/detected than opaque objects. In technology, transparent proxies/compression/encryption are designed to have little/no impact on their contained data.

<comment><USER5> I think this word uses the assumption that between you and them is an object. If the object is transparent, you can see what they are doing. If it is not, and it is a cloak of some sort, you cannot see what they are doing.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> You can peek into your Chrome'ss current SPDY connections (and other interesting internals) in their internal pages:

chrome://net-internals/#events&q=type:SPDY_SESSION%20is:active

</comment><comment><USER7> Really annoying that they didn't just use SCTP. One commenter on the page points out that it works on top of TCP, which is supported by most routers. This, however, is an entirely artificial limitation. It is a sad fact that this type of artificial restrictions are imposed, and i say that we should fight against them. Having all inet services running over port 80 and TCP does not make the net any safer or better. We as hackers should fight for making people aware of and remove such restrictions, not accept and worsen the crippled situation by working around the problem. This is one of the key problems in the digital world today, too few actually makes an effort to fix the underlying problems. Here Google could play a crucial role, and I must say that I am dissapointed by their choice.

<comment><USER8> I'm afraid I don't understand this. SCTP is a transaction-level protocol, whilst SPDY works at the application layer, does it not? These choices are orthogonal, not mutually-exclusive, as near as I can tell.

<comment><USER9> HTTP over SCTP would bring many of the same advantages as HTTP over SPDY over TCP.

<comment><USER8> Right, that was the part I did understand :-) What I didn't get was why the parent comment was disappointed that Google didn't choose SCTP over SPDY, since no either-or choice is required here. Couldn't SPDY be run over SCTP as well (leaving aside the problems with SCTP that you brought up in your previous comment), albeit with some redundant functionality?

<comment><USER9> If SPDY were designed to run (only) over SCTP, presumably the redundant functionality wouldn't have been designed in the first place, saving Google's time and yielding a more elegant protocol. At least that's my interpretation.

<comment><USER10> Network protocols are fractal. Similar but not-quite-identical problems appear at each layer of the stack and wind up being solved in not-quite-identical ways.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> If you want to see your SPDY sessions and an abundance of other related information, browse to _about:net-internals_ from a new Chrome tab.

</comment><comment><USER12> For those interested in playing with SPDY, ruby parser and generator: <https://github.com/igrigorik/spdy>

<comment><USER13> An SPDY implementation was recently added to the development version of Go's standard library.

(Not surprising given that agl is also part of the Go team at Google.)

</comment></comment><comment><USER14> It's a good improvement over HTTP 1.1 and it's nice how they did it in a completely transparent way. Now it's time for the other browsers to support it and to implement way to hint the usage of spdy (maybe a <link rel="" in the first HTTP request, or an extra header in the HTTP request).

<comment><USER15> Now it's time for the other browsers to support it

Nope, that time would be when there is an RFC

<comment><USER16> No, now is the time to make it an option, not ram it down our throats.

As developers, we need to be able to see things exactly as the people we're developing for who do not always have the luxury of using the latest and greatest browsers.

<comment><USER17> This is the piss poor attitude that kept us stuck on IE6 for 10 years...

<comment><USER18> This is the piss poor attitude that makes HN a better place. Not that the other comment was the most clever thing I ever read, but please.

<comment><USER17> Your comment makes little sense; if my piss poor attitude makes HN a better place than why the downvote and snide remark? What is so clever about yours?

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER19> <http://google.com/search?q=site%3Aycombinator.com+spdy>

</comment><comment><USER20> Does Apache support SPDY?

<comment><USER9> <http://code.google.com/p/mod-spdy/></comment></comment>


How the CPSC Is (Inadvertently) Behind the Largest DDoS Attacks - <AUTHOR> https://blog.cloudflare.com/how-the-consumer-product-safety-commission-is-inadvertently-behind-the-internets-largest-ddos-attacks/ <comment><USER2> All of those optimizations seem fine and worth doing, but it makes me wonder why they (and others) wouldn't just switch over to TCP and call it good. Obviously that would incur a little more latency on a cache miss, but then your zone can be as nasty as you need/want and it just doesn't matter.

Also, I loved that their mail servers are named after chili brands.</comment>


Managing heterogeneous environments with ManageIQ - <AUTHOR> https://lwn.net/SubscriberLink/680060/c0650cff2e612670/ <comment><USER2> I hate to say this but I think we need solid abstraction of the cloud providers otherwise you'll end up locked into one, and that probably won't be much fun in the long term.

<comment><USER3> Ultimately you need to make the choice about whether you're going to write applications in a way that make use of elements (like language frameworks) that are portable across providers along with the fairly standard software defined services.

Today, there is abstraction across a number of those standard services but, if you look at AWS for example, there's a _lot_ of AWS-specific services that you're going to have to reimplement--largely from scratch--if you move off AWS. That may be a rational bet for some companies to make if one or more of those services provide a lot of value. But I'd hope it's a bet that they make deliberately rather than falling into it and waking up one day to discover that they have no practical way to move providers.

<comment><USER4> My view/hope is that at least for basic application level services, that the abstraction is going to be provided by containers and their orchestration platforms (e.g. Docker/Kube). It can credibly give you scaling, data persistence, network isolation, service discovery, load balancing, and with some work, a database (when packaged in a container with a persistent volume). An app using only these basic services basically has zero cloud lock-in.

On top of this there are many additional useful services that AWS, GCP and Azure provide. Using those does indeed give you some level of lock in, but only when these services are not available as a generic TCP/IP services (or not performant when accessed from a different cloud). This is where application designers need to make a trade off.

<comment><USER3> Agree 100%. In addition to language frameworks, as you say, you also have orchestration, application definition, failover, storage persistence, etc. services that can be made largely portable between providers. Containers, while probably not necessary, likely help by letting you decompose things and package them up in a way that you can move them between providers.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment> awinter-py [http://manageiq.org/pdf/ManageIQ-0-Lifecycle_and_Automation_...](http://manageiq.org/pdf/ManageIQ-0-Lifecycle_and_Automation_Guide- en-US.pdf)

you know you're getting real value when the docs explain pull-quote conventions and PXE provisioning before listing the product's features.

What does this actually do?</comment>


China's claim it has 'quantum' radar may leave $17B F-35 naked - <AUTHOR> http://www.news.com.au/technology/innovation/inventions/chinas-claim-it-has-quantum-radar-may-leave-17-billion-f35-naked/news-story/207ac01ff3107d21a9f36e54b6f0fbab <comment><USER2> TLDR: Generate pairs of entangled photons. Split the pairs, send one photon to the sky. Look at the photon at home to see what happened to the one in the sky and what it run into.

<comment><USER3> Ah - don't think that'll work.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> Stealth is not boolean.

Supercomputers with huge antenna arrays will not fit into aircraft. Aircraft radar will not fit into the small-diameter head of an air-to-air missile.

Becoming aware of a target is not the same as tracking a target.

Occasional detection is not the same as reliable detection.

China being able to do something against stealth does not mean that every other country can do the same thing.

BTW, there are motives to both hide and exaggerate military capability. Perhaps several countries have what China claims to have, but China itself doesn't have it.

</comment><comment><USER5> The article has a small skeptical part at the bottom, but this is nonsense. To be more clear, I call bullshit.

> _Quantum radar would send out bursts of photons while retaining their > 'pairs'. The changes in behaviour of the retained photon would then reveal > what's happening to the photon in the beam._

There is not visible change in the retained photons. You can't make any experiment that determine if they are entangled or not, and what happened with the other photon. The only options are:

1) Measure something (probably polarization) in the radar and measure something in the plane. Each measurement alone is boring, you only will get random data. It's only interesting if you synchronize and compare both measurements, because they will be correlated. This requires the cooperation from the plane, so it's not very probable.

2) Get the bounced photons, pair them with the photons in the radar, and make some measurement in both photons simultaneously. Sorting out which photon is the pair of which photon is unbelievable difficult, so this is even more impossible than the other options.

(This is possible in a tabletop experiment with lasers. LIGO does something somewhat similar to this. But the care to align and keep the mirror still is overwhelming. Anyway, you loose the quantum magic that makes it impossible to fake because you are using a lot of photons instead of one.)

3) Get the bounced photons, make some measurement in the stream of bounced photons and do a similar measurement in the stream of the photons that didn't fly. Now you can compare both and try to synchronize them. This has a extremely tiny probability of veracity.

It's possible to do this in a tabletop experiment, with a very dark background, with carefully aligned optic to avoid the synchronization problem, with a lot of damping and very still optic support for the same reason. And very fast electronic to detect the coincidences.

You can use that splitting crystal can create two very synchronized stream of photons, and keep one and bounce the other against the plane and hopefully try to guess the delay necessary to resynchronize them. It may work in a very good conditions like a tabletop experiment. Using it in the wild is almost impossible, because the bounced photons will be mixed with a lot of other photons from the ambient, and the signal will twinkle like a star due to alignment, temperature changes, ...

And that will not use the quantum entanglement part of the signal, it will be only be only a classical synchronization of two signal. You can try to measure the polarization of the bounced photons and the original photons to try to measure the entanglement, but keeping the polarization after traveling and bouncing and whatever looks almost impossible.

</comment><comment><USER6> I might end up doing the following --

[https://blogs.scientificamerican.com/critical- opalescence/ho...](https://blogs.scientificamerican.com/critical- opalescence/how-to-build-your-own-quantum-entanglement-experiment- part-1-of-2/)</comment>


"ONLY code when you can't think of ANY other way to validate your hypothesis" - <AUTHOR> https://twitter.com/Bill_Gross/status/332340265266323456

<comment><USER2> That's not really good advice. I would change it to "Only code when you can't think of any _faster_ way to (in)validate your hypothesis".

<comment><AUTHOR> I definitely like the addition of _faster_.

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> I think that Paul Buchheit disagree: [http://paulbuchheit.blogspot.com.ar/2009/01/communicating- wi...](http://paulbuchheit.blogspot.com.ar/2009/01/communicating-with- code.html)

</comment><comment><USER4> Nah. Hard to believe, but some people think in code. They should continue to work the way that works best for them.</comment>


Americans buying more legal pot than Oreos,Girl Scout cookies, Pringles combined - <AUTHOR> http://www.vox.com/2016/3/30/11327344/marijuana-girl-scouts-cookies?utm_campaign=vox&utm_content=chorus&utm_medium=social&utm_source=twitter <comment><USER2> Clickbait article. Pot is more expensive than pringles so of course pot sales will be higher.

<comment><USER3> Similarly, Americans buy more shoes than movie tickets. Sometimes it surprises you.</comment></comment>


Eeek! The Web without JavaScript -- Do you design sites for the JS-impaired? - <AUTHOR> http://advice.cio.com/esther_schindler/eeek_the_web_without_javascript?source=nlt_cioinsider <comment><USER2> This, to me, feels similar to the outdated practice of including all JS in HTML comments for 'older browsers'. Crockford has a good paragraph on this in one of his articles.

"The use of HTML comments in scripts dates further back to a transitional problem between Netscape Navigator and Netscape Navigator 2. The latter introduced the <script> tag. However, users of the former would see the script as text because of the HTML convention that unrecognized markup is ignored. The <!-- comment hack stopped being necessary by the time Netscape Navigator 3 came out. It certainly is not needed now. It is ugly and a waste of space."

People use to turn off JavaScript because the web was new and people were using it improperly. Based on the proliferation of everything JS these days, it feels like we've overcome this barrier, just like we've overcome Netscape 2.

I also feel like the analogy the author makes between 'designing for accessibility' to 'using JavaScript' is improper. I think if the article criticized the usage of Flash, it'd be a different story -- Flash used to be completely inaccessible and it (still) requires someone to download a plugin for it to work. Even so, youtube and the myspace music player (both Flash) are still incredibly popular on the web -- despite that barrier to entry. Something to think about -- maybe prompting to turn on JavaScript solves the problem, just like saying you need to install flash solves the flash problem.

</comment><comment><USER3> Interesting topic, but 40% seems like a high number of "buyers" with JS turned off. I wonder if they counted all web hits as "people who buy" and 39% of their hits came from bots.

<comment><AUTHOR> No. It was actual purchases. This was looking at the e-commerce sales, not the site traffic overall.

There's another bit that I didn't include in the blog post because it was irrelevant to the point... which was that the people running without JavaScript had a high degree of (there's probably a more diplomatic word but what the heck) stupidity. Stuff like adding a "special instruction" to "make sure the book is signed" when the book _description_ says this is a signed copy (and it's priced accordingly).

\--Esther

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> What I plan to do for my first site is to to first load the page (javascript included) as if Javascript was disabled, and then have the JS rearrange the page (optimize it for javascript) if the code runs.

Any problems with that approach? It seems the most robust to me.

<comment><USER5> The question is: Is it worth it? Your time is a premium and users with javascript off will properly not see any ads, so they will make no money.

This ofcause assumes that you are working at a typical web startup. YMMW

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> Does anyone have any statistics about users and JavaScript?

</comment><comment><USER7> Do you design sites for people without a mouse?

Do you design sites for people without a keyboard?

Do you design sites for people without a monitor?

Do you design sites for people without <you get the idea>?</comment>


Apple to iPhone Developers: Don't Compete With Us - <AUTHOR> http://technologizer.com/2008/09/13/apple-to-iphone-developers-dont-compete-with-us/ <comment><USER2> The question that keeps on hitting me when I see posts along those lines is whether or not these highly publicized instances are remotely representative of the way apps submitted to the app store get treated.

Could someone clarify this? If this is just a corner that keeps on getting highly publicized, well the app store hasn't really been around that long as yet, so is it really that unreasonable?

<comment><USER3> It isn't so much about how often it happens as it is about the fact that it happens at all. No, 90% of apps aren't being turned away for competing with the iPhone's built-in apps, but if any application is turned away not because it sucks, but because it's _too good,_ that's a problem and it will discourage innovation.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> "I'm sorry Dave, I'm afraid I can't do that..."

The 5 real reasons to avoid iPhone 3G:

        * iPhone completely blocks free software. Developers must pay a tax to Apple, who becomes the sole authority over what can and can't be on everyone's phones.
        * iPhone endorses and supports Digital Restrictions Management (DRM) technology.
        * iPhone exposes your whereabouts and provides ways for others to track you without your knowledge.
        * iPhone won't play patent- and DRM-free formats like Ogg Vorbis and Theora.
        * iPhone is not the only option. There are better alternatives on the horizon that respect your freedom, don't spy on you, play free media formats, and let you use free software -- like the FreeRunner.

[http://www.fsf.org/blogs/community/why-free-software-and- app...](http://www.fsf.org/blogs/community/why-free-software-and-apples- iphone-dont-mix)

<comment><USER5> The sad reality is that Windows Mobile is the most open readily-available phone platform right now.

OpenMoko is nice (and I own a Neo), but for some reason they decided to write all the applications in C. This makes developing for it a real pain in the ass. Do I really want to set up a cross compiler and emulator just to change a few lines of code? No, and that's why I haven't. :)

Maybe I will write a CL-based "desktop" for mobile phones some time in the future.

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> Someone proposed to start something like "iphone developer's trade union" for collective bargaining.

Locked-down APIs are one thing, but if Apple keeps up with their app-removal policies, NDAs and lack of communication on important issues, it will come to unionization and they will not be happy.

<comment><USER7> Has collective bargaining ever, ever, ever succeeded in the computer industry?

<comment><USER8> Not that I can remember, but _class action lawsuits_ have.

<comment><USER6> That would require some sort of law being broken, or some sort of right to be violated. I'm pretty sure all rights have been signed over to Apple in SDK agreement so that one wouldn't go very far. The only law I can think of would be anti-trust, but there are couple of problems with that:

1\. Apple is not a monopoly in any traditional sense of the word

2\. Anti-trust is moving very very slow. Look at Microsoft.

If majority of app developers pulled their apps for a week from the app store, that could get Apple's attention. Until the non-members jump in and start filling in the void... yeah, well I guess this idea won't work - you can't really prevent the strikebreakers from moving in.</comment></comment></comment></comment>


Bitcoin Payment Buttons and Pages. Secure, Safe, Private - <AUTHOR> http://blog.coinkite.com/post/122796324311/bitcoin-payment-buttons-pages-secure-safe-private

<comment><USER2> I know this pay button seems like simple stuff, but I like to think we've done it next-level style:

\- Crypto only but you can price in fiat (USD, etc) \- Super private: our payment flow (hate that word) works over Tor with Javascript and Cookies disabled (Tor browser's highest setting). [although you can't collect email/refund addresses in that mode]</comment>


Google Open Sources Its Secret Weapon in Cloud Computing - <AUTHOR> http://www.wired.com/2014/06/google-kubernetes/

<comment><USER2> Writers at Wired must have some kind of ridiculous policy about titles. An open source "secret weapon", Docker is the "next big thing" in cloud computing. Every single wired title that makes it HN makes me cringe. Everyone of them. The titles are silly, dishonest, upworthy, linkbait. I'm going to write an HN extension for chrome that just auto removes wired.com submissions when I load HN, it bothers me that much.

I wrote a little chrome extension that removes Wired, the content script is:

      var hn_blacklist = [
        "wired.com"
      ];

      $(document).ready(function () {
        $(".comhead").each(function (i, e) {
          var $e, tr;
          $e = $(e);
          hn_blacklist.forEach(function (domain) {
            if ($e.text().indexOf(domain) !== -1) {
              tr = $e.closest("tr");
              tr.next().remove();
              tr.remove();
            }
          });
        });
      });

You can add your own domains to it. I created a manifest.json to make this a chrome extension, included jQuery and now it works.

<comment><USER3> Agreed. Another thing that pisses me off is the editorial style: "I met Mike in a soon-to-be fashionable dive bar in the lesser known South part of town, where Pearl Jam's former masseuse mixed us a cocktail containing african dung beetle livers and wolfsbane."

Ever since Po Bronson was covering the dot-com boom with stories of weed growers from Michigan launching dot-com empires in his graphic you-want-to-be- this-guy style, they haven't shifted away from it.

The style has been locked down ever since Conde Nast bought the magazine at Providence Equity's yard sale in 98.

Reading Wired in public is modern leprosy - thankfully neither are too contagious.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> Wow, Wired likes to hide the real details in vague hyperlinks.

Here's the Kubernetes github repo: [https://github.com/GoogleCloudPlatform/kubernetes](https://github.com/GoogleCloudPlatform/kubernetes)

And here's a Google Cloud Platform blog post that announces Docker support in App Enginer, Kubernetes and cAdvisor: [http://googlecloudplatform.blogspot.com/2014/06/an-update- on...](http://googlecloudplatform.blogspot.com/2014/06/an-update-on-container- support-on-google-cloud-platform.html)

</comment><comment><USER5> With Mesosphere getting a major investment the other day, docker gaining traction incredibly fast and now this this space will be really interesting to watch the coming years. The basic offering of AWS is being comoditized, but they still have their hosted services and the big community of stuff hosted on AWS as differentiators. But maybe it isn't too crazy to speculate that some of those services could be packaged up somehow and deployed on any cloud.</comment>


Spark of genius: Zapping the brain improves creativity? - <AUTHOR> https://www.economist.com/science-and-technology/2019/06/15/zapping-the-brain-improves-creativity <comment><USER2> Google "tDcs" or "transcranial direct current stimulation" for more information. The US DoD used it to reduce the time needed to train snipers.

</comment><comment><USER3> I've heard a myth that engineers tend to have an experience of getting a shock in their younger age.

I don't know whether children who get a shock go for engineering career, OR children who has curiosity on engineering has high probability of getting a shock because they usually play with power socket.

</comment><comment><USER4> The fact that electricity or head trauma (i.e. blunt instruments) have improved creative output in some individuals suggests to me that many of us may be unwittingly _inhibiting_ our creativity. If so, how and why?

<comment><USER5> Creativity as in non-incremental, real new creativity, is about connecting things that are not connected. You connect a boulder going down a hill with a Piece of wood a friend carpenters into a table- and you got a wheel.

Now the brain is ruthlessly efficient when it comes to not do things that are not rewarded. Beeing creative means having tons of such connections missfire- and if you do not reward that process over time, by following some of the more plausible misfires- your brain will reduce that behaviour.

Conciously rewarding these missfirings, and not supress them by filtering out "irrelevant nonsense because we already have a ideal procedure" is a way to train for more creativity.

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> Can't wait for this to catch on as the next big "biohack" amongst silicon valley tech bros. The apotheosis of which will be a ketogenic, microdosing, intermittent fasting, pranayama breathing, Zen yogi brain zapper.

<comment><USER7> Add cold water showers too. :)

<comment><USER8> I presume this equates to doing the same in the Arctic Sea. That cold shock you get when you hit the water. A true awakening.</comment></comment></comment>


Lossless decompression and the generation of random samples - <AUTHOR> http://blog.sigfpe.com/2012/01/lossless-decompression-and-generation.html <comment><USER2> > _Huffman coding tries to compress text one letter at a time on the > assumption that each letter comes from some fixed and known probability > distribution. If the algorithm is successful then we 'd expect the > compressed text to look like a uniformly distributed sequence of bits. If it > didn't then there'd be patterns that could be used for further compression._

This can be gently confusing when you're using different compression systems, (bits vs bytes)

([https://groups.google.com/d/topic/lz4c/DcN5SgFywwk/discussio...](https://groups.google.com/d/topic/lz4c/DcN5SgFywwk/discussion))

Someone is compressing very large log files. They then compressed the output, and got further reductions in size.

> _The fundamental reason is that these highly repetitive byte sequences, with > very small and regular differences, produce repetitive compressed sequences, > which can therefore be compressed further._ \- Yann Collet

</comment><comment><USER3> The same is true of arithmetic coding, which separates the probability model from the encoding process. Feed an arithmetic coder a stream of random bits and it will efficiently sample from your model. See section 6.3: [http://www.inference.phy.cam.ac.uk/mackay/itprnn/ps/105.124....](http://www.inference.phy.cam.ac.uk/mackay/itprnn/ps/105.124.pdf)

</comment><comment><USER4> I simply don't understand this, I don't think I have the right background. Any good starting places for finding more about this topic?

<comment><USER5> I'd suggest diving into discrete probability for a few hours. That should be enough to understand this post. Huffman coding is a little advanced but you can understand the algorithm (not the theory) with just the probability.</comment></comment>


Mandatory course load limits for undergraduate students? - <AUTHOR> http://pgbovine.net/undergrad-course-limits.htm

<comment> at-fates-hands This is incredibly important and something all universities should look at.

When I was in the school of architecture at a Midwest university, if you took under 18 credits, you were considered part-time. Without being full-time, you'd lose your scholarships and a ton of other benefits full-time students received like free health care.

At the end of every semester I was completely burned out. My architecture classes and studio time consumed 85% of my time. My other classes were easy to shrug off and I ended up not trying very hard. As a result, my GPA suffered and my sleep habitats were horrible. Nearly every holiday my parents would tell me how lethargic and underweight I was compared to when I was in high school playing varsity hockey.

Students torture themselves every year because they have to. I just wish this type of thinking were around in the late 90's, I could've used it and probably would've stuck with architecture instead of changing majors to keep my academic scholarships.</comment>


Reddit Co-Founder Coming To Brooklyn, Wants To Invest In Your Startup - <AUTHOR> http://www.businessinsider.com/reddit-co-founder-coming-to-brooklyn-2010-8 <comment><USER2> He's a cool guy with a great personality but Reddit was his first startup and it had a tiny exit, certainly not enough for angel investing. I don't see angel investing as the next logical step for him.

I'd like to see him pull off another startup and grow it to be as big as Reddit is, then everyone would know it wasn't just luck and would have much more confidence in him.

As an angel investor, what is he bringing to the table? He has some experience with startups but not a whole lot. He was a non-technical co-founder and spent most of his time using Reddit like any other user. He didn't do any coding, scaling, or sysadmin work. Reddit isn't even profitable.

He did draw the Reddit alien though...

<comment><USER3> As a recipient of angel funding from several investors including Alexis, I can tell you he's one of the very best you could hope for.

Sure, he's not a hacker and he doesn't pretend to be. An angel doesn't need to be.

But his insights into cultivating and maintaining a highly engaged online community, developed over four years both before and after Reddit's acquisition, could be trumped by very few people in the world if any.

Alexis has already made small, early-stage investments in about 10-15 companies. He invests in companies where he is excited by the concept and the founders, and he goes far beyond the norm in offering advice, moral support, and of course mascot design.

I'd strongly recommend him to any startup that was lucky enough to rouse his interest.</comment></comment>


Tahoe: A Secure Distributed Filesystem - <AUTHOR> http://allmydata.org/~warner/pycon-tahoe.html

<comment><USER2> Yes, Brian presented at PyCon a couple weeks ago. Tahoe is the open-source project that we are working on together along with a few other guys. We also are involved in the commercial entity Allmydata.com which uses Tahoe as a back-end. We sell a managed storage service on top of a grid of servers that we maintain.

Oh, I should add that we are having a HackFest at our office tonight! I know it's short notice, but every month or so we order pizza and beer and have a couple loose presentations, usually about distributed systems. Anybody is free to come, consume, present, or just sit in a corner and program. Logistics are below: [http://allmydata.org/pipermail/tahoe- dev/2008-March/000462.h...](http://allmydata.org/pipermail/tahoe- dev/2008-March/000462.html)

</comment><comment><AUTHOR> Found this via a twisted article & remembered that <http://news.ycombinator.com/user?id=secorp> is working on this as well ~ <http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=108139>

</comment><comment><USER3> What's the use, when you can get terabyte USB drives these days? It's impressive engineering don't get me wrong, but..

<comment><USER4> I can think of several reasons: 1) How often do you remember to plug your USB drive into your laptop to do your backups 2) What if your machine and your USB drive are caught in a fire, burglary etc

I could go on, but whats the point :)

<comment><USER5> From my perspective the ideal solution involves a network attached 1TB+ of storage which all my machines can back up to (similar to Time Capsule). This drive in turn should rsync to one or more off-site locations.

You have some cool technology, don't get me wrong. But from a user perspective I don't care how my data is stored as long as I know I have n copies, where n depends on my paranoia level (one local and one remote copies probably works for most people).

<comment><USER4> Agreed. I have a time capsule here (works very well) but we're also looking at this technology to provide that added backup level. As we all know, its only after a disaster that many people put solutions in place

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> what's the latency like? there's no way these things can feel like local filesystems.

<comment><USER7> It's for backup; the latency is mostly irrelevant. Tahoe sounds cool, but I think it's a stretch to call it a filesystem.</comment></comment>