Ask HN: As a skilled developer, how do you make pocket money with little time? - <AUTHOR> Hi, I'm a web developer and I search a way to get extra money, in a regular way if possible.
I tried to be a freelance, it is well paid but with my full-time job it's too time consuming and I'm not so ambitious.
I'm not here to make advertisement but to hear your experience. I'm considering security audit, consulting and things like that be it's the same as to be freelance: you need to search for prospects, etc.
Do you have some clue or experience? <comment><USER2> So I have experience working with Udacity (MOOCs for various coding related fields)

I work as a mentor for a few of their courses. You're connected to X number of students (you set x yourself). Then as they progress through the course they have the option to send you a message to ask a question or whatever. You also do a weekly check-in with them to see where they're at, if they have any blockers, what their goals are for the next week.

You then get paid (via PayPal) based on how your student interactions went on a per week basis. 0$ for every student who didn't message you, 5$ for 1-9 messages, 15$ for 10+ messages. You get bonuses for them completing major sections as well.

You interact via a mentor dashboard on web or via a mobile app. If you use mobile, you're basically being paid to text some students a few times a week. Pay will obviously vary depending on how many students you have and how good you are at interacting with them. (The better your mentor rating the more students you're allowed to take on). I had 40 students and made 1.4K a month. The work didn't feel stressful or anything. It's pretty easy to land (no formal interviews or anything), you just have to get involved in their slack and PM one of the Udacity staffers. Was pretty easy, plus I enjoy teaching/mentoring.

You can also be a project reviewer rather than a mentor, but not sure how that works.

<comment><USER3> Not being skeptic but genuinely curious, does the per message pay model drive less succinct answers that require clarification? I imagine that there is little discussion or choice within the student body to select a mentor

<comment><USER2> > "drive less succinct answers"

Not really, mainly because there's very clearly two kinds of students. The ones who don't talk to their mentors at all outside of the weekly check-in (a single message) and the ones who utilize the mentor to the fullest. So if someone is asking you a question you generally don't have to worry about getting to 10 messages with them because it'll just happen.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> We're working to solve this problem at [http://MoonlightWork.com](http://MoonlightWork.com). At my last startup, I had a lot of friends who wanted to help us out - but they had day jobs that they couldn't leave. So, I started hiring them part-time as contractors. It was great - we had top talent, and they could focus on interesting problems while making extra money.

Moonlight is still in its early stages but we are doing thousands of dollars per week in business. Our average hourly rate based on paid contracts so far has been $146.79. We're focusing on more specialized work rather than generic web development from scratch. Early projects have ranged from a custom algorithm for a hedge fund to some infrastructure work to support Tensorflow. The benefit to companies is that they have access to specialized engineers for focused projects, and they can get a match within 48 hours.

If you're interested in short-term projects, you can join at [https://MoonlightWork.com/apply](https://MoonlightWork.com/apply) \- we're working on increasing the number of projects, so sorry if it takes a couple weeks to get a first project match.

We're going though YC's Startup School MOOC, and we did live office hours with Sam Altman a few weeks ago. You can see the video here: [https://youtu.be/abtHadERzXU](https://youtu.be/abtHadERzXU)

<comment><USER5> Hey, Philip!

We're in a similar space and more companies like yours need to exist.

I'm one of the cofounders at [https://turtle.ai/](https://turtle.ai/)

Our average paid out hourly rates have been lower than yours, but we make it REALLY easy for both sides to work together. We've built our own task manager and chat app that makes customer and freelancer lives easier.

We have a lot of PhD students and full time developers doing 5-15 hours per week on Turtle.

Good luck and we'll be looking out for you! More "alternative work" options need to exist. The 40-hour, butt-in-seat life needs to go (or other options have to at least exist).

<comment><USER4> Cool - we've been taking a very manual approach to optimize our process so far, and are finally just starting on a web app! We have a lot more work to do in automating the process and creating a great user experience. We're users of our own product too - I'm working 10 hours a week through Moonlight to afford rent.

Our mission is to help engineers earn what they want, and for some people - that means working more time for more money, but for others that means working just a few hours per week.

I see that Turtle focuses more on web development. I think this is a good way to go about it - but for Moonlight specifically, I knew there was a problem when a friend of mine making $400K/year as a security researcher couldn't find a way to apply his skills in contract work. He wanted to travel and contract for a bit, and was having to look at webdev contracts at $50/hour. So, instead of focusing on building products for non-technical clients, we're focusing on more specialized tasks like dev-ops and algorithms for technical clients.

<comment><USER6> Hi philip1209, I just applied to your Moonlight site as a software developer. With that said, my experience has all been in web development, and have some personal experience writing native desktop apps. Would I have a problem finding work in your platform as a web developer? I also like the idea of working for more technical clients. I believe that finding high-rated clients is one of the bigger problems that freelancers have in using most common freelancing websites.

<comment><USER4> No, it should be fine. But the projects will be more pointed and for a more technical client. So, rather than "build me a thing", the projects should be more specific - like "build me a thing in Redux with this low-fidelity mockup."

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7>
       I tried to be a freelance, it is well paid but with my full-time job it's too time consuming and I'm not so ambitious.

That's your problem in a nutshell. If you don't have any time to spare, and you're not ambitious enough to find time, then there's not much you can do. However, unless you're putting in 60+ hours a week at your day job you most likely have a lot more time than you think. Even 1 hour a night can add up quick.

\- I've build a number of websites businesses on the side. Most the jobs come through word of mouth and recommendations.

\- A few of them have agreed to keep me on a retainer, they pay me $XXX a month and I'll host their sites and give them a couple hours of maintenance each month if needed.

\- I started a little API about 5 years ago and dropped an advertisement on the homepage. 3 years went by with next to no revenue from it, as time went on though it started to pick up. It runs on a $10/m VPS and at it's peak it made $1600/m in ad revenue. These days it hovers around $600-700/m and runs on a $20/m VPS. This takes about 0.5 hours a month of my time to keep up.

\- Another company wanted a web application but didn't have the budget to pay for it up front. Built out a proof of concept on my own time and presented it. They liked it, so instead of selling it outright I host/maintain it and sell them seats. They pay $X/m per employee. They're trailing it right now in a few stores but they're in talks to launch it nationally.

\- About to launch a small SaaS; one of those 'scratch your own itch' things. Whether there's a market for it or not remains to be seen.

All of those things have been accomplished over the last 5 years. I have a wife, 10 year old daughter, a full time job, and coach a soccer team. I know there are many people much busier than I am out there, but if I can find time to work on side projects, so can most people. You have to want it though, and your lack of ambition is most likely the prime culprit.

<comment><USER8> How do you find side gigs developing web applications for companies? I read about it a lot on HN, but never understood how these opportunities just fall into people's laps.

<comment><USER9> You would be surprised how many companies are severely lacking tools that could greatly increase worker efficiency. The first webdev gig that I ever got came while visiting a friend who worked in a pharmaceutical research lab. Upon finishing her report, she proceeded to print it out and append it to these massive binders. I asked her why not digitize it all and make it available on all the lab computers via an intranet to which her response was "I didn't know that was possible".

After seeing that, I created a quick demo in about 3 weeks as a proof of concept and asked my friend to bring it to her boss. She gladly accepted because it made her look good by going beyond her duties to help the company be more efficient. The boss loved it and set up a meeting with me where we ironed out their ideal use cases as well as settled on a price and release date. After drafting a contract, viola, I had my first side gig.

I guess the main takeaway is to keep an eye out for professional friends and acquaintances outside of the tech world who could benefit from automation or digitization in their daily jobs but are simply unaware it's possible.

<comment><USER10> Yep it all comes down to knowing people and beyond that getting to know their day to day responsibilities and problems. It doesnt fall into people's laps at all.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> I'm in a similar position, a web developer with a reasonable salary interested in side income, but not interested in onerous responsibilities of running a business. I've been had two projects I'm sort of happy with

1\. A shopify app that makes about 150/mo. I answer about 2 emails about it per month and otherwise don't work on it. It took about 150 hours to build so I haven't been paid well for it, but I enjoyed building it.

2\. A WordPress plugin I acquired for about 10k that makes 800/mo. I get a lot more emails about this but I think if I get it into a less buggy state then I can get that down to something more reasonable.

<comment><USER12> Do you mind if I ask how you found out about this plugin? Did you get lucky and buy from someone you knew or did you seek it out? Was it doing well before or did you grow it to this point.

Edit: spelling

<comment><USER11> Sure. I spent a ton of time finding something. Happy to answer any questions about the process.

I found the plugin on flippa.com. Flippa has a lot of crap. Maybe almost all crap. But there are some good things there if you just watch for it. There was a really high quality magento plugin and there I wanted to buy and I chatted with the dev a bunch but it didn't work out.

I was looking for something that was programming centric rather than sales/marketing centric, which is fairly limiting. And something that was <10k which means you have to filter through a lot of cruft. If I had more to spend then I would look on FEI which seems to have things that would be more interesting to programmers, but is a higher price point. Empire Flippers is another place I'd look. [https://www.sideprojectors.com/](https://www.sideprojectors.com/) didn't seem to have anything interesting to me, but I checked there a bunch too.

> Was it doing well before or did you grow it to this point.

It's been a bit volatile so it's hard to say how it's trending, but I don't think I've helped or hurt it much. If anything it's making a bit less. Haven't prioritized working on it so I can't expect much.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> I've recently been playing around with HackerOne. It's a great way to both benefit society (by finding, reporting, and eliminating security flaws in software that people rely on) and yourself (most companies on HackerOne give Bug Bounties out, anywhere from a couple hundred to thousands of dollars, depending on the bug). Specifically, I looked at shopify's mruby bug bounty ([https://hackerone.com/shopify-scripts](https://hackerone.com/shopify- scripts)) and used a fuzzer (AFL/honggfuzz) to find bugs in mruby, which I could then investigate and report. That specific bug bounty is a lot of C/low level security, but there are many bug bounties which are geared towards websites/web development (XSS/SQLi/etc).

<comment><AUTHOR> It's a good idea, on top of that I want train myself about security. Thanks!

</comment></comment><comment><USER14> Web dev? Affiliate links.

Consider a consumer item you are passionate about. Walk through the typical shopping process, either as a newb or as an enthusiast. Identify all the pain points, every bit of friction. Consider everything you've listed as an embarrassment that you will personally make right. Build the smoothest, fastest, most respectful experience possible. Compile lots of information too - your goal is to become the best resource on the internet. Put the user first at all times. And when appropriate add affiliate links. (In my case only 27% of URLs are affiliated.)

Why is respecting the user the #1 priority? Because you do not want to look like an affiliate content mill! Go read the blogs that teach you how to affiliate^W build dark patterns and do the opposite of what they suggest.

Of course even if you are unquestionably the best resource on the internet, some communities will still tar and feather you for having affiliate links. I was very lucky to find a great and supportive community.

<comment><USER15> I'm a moderator of one of the communities in which your site is relevant, [http://reddit.com/r/flashlight](http://reddit.com/r/flashlight)

We do see some bad affiliate behavior there, though most of it gets automatically filtered. When it doesn't, the community usually ruthlessly mocks people who post low-quality content that's obviously just intended to make money.

Almost every time somebody shows up asking for purchase advice, somebody links parametrek.com because it's so _useful_. You want a flashlight under 120mm long with integrated charging that has a removable, non-proprietary battery? Here are 34 of them.

Make something people want.

<comment><USER16> that site is neat. Would've never guessed there are so many options for a flashlight, of all things. I'm curious how these sites manage to keep the pricing up-to-date.

<comment><USER15> Those are just the major brands. There's a lot more only available from mildly sketchy Chinese sites, most of it bad but some of it excellent. There are exotic customs that cost hundreds and sometimes even thousands of dollars. There's a significant hobbyist/DIY community as well, even open-source driver designs and firmwares.

<comment><USER16> I guess this is a model that can be applied to a lot of products/services - even for things like Job Search, apartment search etc, as long as the data is reliable and is in machine readable format. I forget the name of the site - few years ago, Google bought a site that helped people look for laptops, but instead of saying 8GB RAM, it said "run photoshop fast" or something like that.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> We're working to solve this exact problem.

Check out [http://turtle.ai/](http://turtle.ai/)

We've focused on building software that makes it really easy for "plug and play" software development work. We think 40 hours isn't perfect for every kind of engineering job. We even have some software developers delivering customers value in just a few hours per month.

You do need to be able to clearly say "here's what I'm doing, and here's when to expect results", but we also recruit customers that buy into our vision. Also, our software makes it really easy for both sides to keep smiling :)

</comment><comment><USER17> I made a macOS app [1]. It was a lot of work and the outcome is always unknown beforehand, but I could do it at completely my own pace (which could be an answer to the "little time" problem).

[1] [https://easygit.me](https://easygit.me)

</comment><comment><USER18> I think there should be a service for that.

For example, if I say that in the following two weeks, I want to do X hours of programming work, and they know my skill level, they should be able to match me up. Like a job agency, but for short-term freelance work.

<comment><USER19> Wasn't this called elance? Until they renamed it and it got weird.

<comment><USER20> UpWork now I think. I was working there a lot but it in total was not income to live on. It helps to have near 100% rating. My rating dropped, I had some contracts that were open for a while (didn't bother to close them) that murdered my rating... I also wonder how easy it is to game that system ie. hire a friend to hire you, and offset your score.

Still... the overall experience of bidding on jobs and possibly getting 1/20 tries not a very pleasant experience. Also I'm not an expert so... sore loser I guess.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER21> Freelancing takes some degree of ambition and if you're just starting it can be time consuming.

What I'm hearing though is you want the benefits of freelancing without having to do the work of a freelancer? That's a huge fallacy. Freelancing requires some degrees of ambition and most importantly work.

Unless you've built a reputation for providing these services its going to be difficult obtaining customers.

What should you do? At the very least

      - build your profile and build your brand
      - "become" an "expert" in your field by blogging, tweeting, etc to drive engagement
      - get connected to other "experts" and start conversations
      - build a simple landing page (site) for each area you want to provide services for. A/B test the landing page using Google Ad Words, etc
      - sign up as an organization on freelancing sites and start doing jobs which can be done asynchronously
      - become a maintainer or contributor to security auditing software

Alternatively you could buy an existing business and improve it.

Again, all this requires ambition and work.

If you don't have time or interest in finding the time it's probably not for you.

<comment><USER22> Aren't these a bit of the cliches? Build your brand? Become a blogger?

Seems like quite putting yourself out there for getting some pocketmoney, or extra as the OP requests.

<comment><USER21> > Aren't these a bit of the cliches?

To an extent. The op doesn't have to do one or any of these. They are suggestions which can be leveraged.

As I mentioned in a previous comment I probably didn't quite understand quite what the op was asking.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER23> Hey, here is my idea for you to consider: stock trading, for me it is the ultimate lifestyle business with no customers, no employees and no investors...

You only need some python (and pandas) knowledge, a Linux server and some historical stock market data - please check my older posts for a source (I would love to post the source here, but there is a forum bully stalking all my posts – a failed day trader who will crap all over your post).

The barrier for entry is very low, you can program your trading strategies in your spare time and run the tests while sleeping without loosing a single cent and once you find what works for you can automate it and it'll run on autopilot...

Just my 2 cents, hope whatever you do works for you in the end, I was in a situation like yours and this is what is working for me...

<comment><USER24> Hey, just created an account and can't figure out how to PM. Can you give me bit more details about this please? a starting point / reference material / resource / blog.. anything helps. Thanks!

</comment></comment><comment><USER25> My best source of good income was doing code reviews for an agency, but after while they realised how lucrative it is and started to do them inhouse.

I also did some presales engineering work for another agency. Agencies are great for this kind of biz/senior dev roles: they dont always have enough skilled personel that could do this kind of work and might be open hiring somebody to do it. If this is something you might want to do, then try to look around for it.

<comment><USER26> Apologies. A bit late to the party here but can you point out where you found the agencies that hired for pre-sales work? I would like to do this but have not found any sites.

<comment><USER25> Well, all of those gigs were for agencies I used to work as a developer. I was not interested in taking another fulltime project anymore (I was migrating into farming) and those code reviews, pre-sales (and I also did tons of interviews) was offered as a compromise.

I don't know how you can get those kind of jobs, but I don't think they will outsource it to some person over internet without history of working together. Those gigs really affects the income of those agencies so they are probably very careful to hire for those roles.

I think you should ask around the people you are working with, companies you worked with and so on. I think most rapidly growing agency is in desperate need of people like this, especially if you work for them just for hours per week so you are not destroying their cash flow.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER22> Normally if your social circle knows you're a webdeveloper, you'll automatically get offers, or let's say: requests for sites. Most of them you want to skip (like your friend who want to start a bar and has no money but will pay you in beers), or anything that is not for an established and succesful business. But still there should be a few freelancer opportunities without really trying, just around you.

So perhaps that could be a first step, getting word out more in your closer circle.

I personally have too much work with this ever expanding social circle freelancing stuff, as sidebusiness, that I think of outsourcing it or am wondering when the point is of quitting my day job (which is well paid). That said, I'm using "social circles" for lack of better wording.

What I really would like to do is creating my own sideprojects like goldenbeet here addresses, that seem like fun or just interesting myself. I have a bunch of good project ideas, but the sideproject freelance work keeps on flowing steadily and I never get to it. If this sounds like a brag: it's not. I actually consider anything of (semi-)passive income much of a success then regular freelancer gigs.

<comment><USER27> If said bar friend were to offer me free drinks forever, I would make the shit out of that website

<comment><USER28> Ditto, or even a Massage Therapist... I'm okay w/ bartering things I need/want for coding... I can then host the site for them -- to ensure continued 'benefits' and the 'value' of hosting / upkeep keeps them happy.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER29> Hi Kmaschta,

I saw some folks mentioning Gigster so thought I'd add some notes. For reference I'm Christian Thurston and I've been working at Gigster from early on.

The benefits of our model is that we do fixed price, not hourly, so if you're able to work better and faster then your effective hourly goes up. Also, with us you don't have to interface with the client - you work with a PM who speaks tech and write code - that's it.

Our clients are both technical and non-technical but it's a lot less relevant because you'll always be working with that PM layer as a dev, not directly with the client.

Here's what the higher end of pay looks like as well: [https://www.forbes.com/sites/reneemorad/2016/10/24/the- skill...](https://www.forbes.com/sites/reneemorad/2016/10/24/the-skill-thats- paving-the-way-for-freelancers-to-make-500k-or-more/#7dda10fa13ae)

Good luck on your search and hope you find a good situation that fits your needs :).

</comment><comment><USER30> I've gone the side-gig-for-extra-cash route before. It was easy to make the money, but hard to sustain with a full-time job. It's a recipe for burnout.

If you're a skilled developer, you're much better of demanding a raise, switching jobs, or switching up your skillset to a higher paying job if your motivations are strictly cash.

</comment><comment><USER16> I don't know if it still works today, but Forbes says there are some people who make very serious money on fiverr, but they are mostly creative work though (voice over, writing etc). Not sure if it will work for software dev. Also the site is quite established now, so there is some stiff competition for low price.

[https://www.forbes.com/sites/laurashin/2016/05/31/how- these-...](https://www.forbes.com/sites/laurashin/2016/05/31/how- these-3-people-make-6-figures-a-year-on-fiverr/#2f39a7d31df2)

[https://www.forbes.com/sites/laurashin/2017/04/25/how-to- mak...](https://www.forbes.com/sites/laurashin/2017/04/25/how-to- make-1-million-on-fiverr-secrets-from-the-sites-top-earner/#25ba992031f8)

<comment><USER31> I signed up for voice over work. I felt kind of silly putting myself out there like that. There's a sea of voice actors on fiverr so I figured I would never get a gig. But after about a week someone bought $25 worth! (I charge $5 for 300 words)

It's funny, that little amount felt more like "real money" than my steady paycheck does.

<comment><USER16> Have you done voice over before? Also, is it okay to ask if you are a guy or a gal?

I find fiverr super interesting for coming up with creative ideas. Stumbled on this one randomly, which made me smile (even though I have no use for it) - [https://www.fiverr.com/irishguy1/create-a-silent-movie-of- yo...](https://www.fiverr.com/irishguy1/create-a-silent-movie-of-your-message)

<comment><USER31> Never have. I'm a guy. Midwestern American accent. But if you look at the buy requests, people are looking for anything but that! Big demand for British female and different languages and bilingual.

<comment><USER16> Yeah, that is why I asked. I am surprised you are able to sell male voice over, without experience. Kudos!

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER32> Have you considered asking for a raise? How about switching your full-time job elsewhere that pays you more?

</comment><comment><USER33> The easiest way to make more money, without devoting more time into working, is to ask for a raise. If that doesn't work, find a job that pays more.

All of these other ideas are good, but are not easy and require time commitments.

</comment><comment><USER34> check out some of the posts on indiehackers.com it lists side projects that are all cash flow positive to some degree. I use it to gain insight into how they got started. The IH community is also very cool.

oppsdaily.com is another great resource, it sends out a daily email with problems people are willing to pay to be solved.

</comment><comment><USER35> iPhone and Android apps, freemium or ad-supported</comment>


Decentraleyes – Local CDN Emulation - <AUTHOR> https://decentraleyes.org <comment><USER2> > To learn more, or to download and install the free browser extension:

Edit: After re-reading this multiple times, I don't think this wording is helpful. There should be a transparent description of what this extension offers before users navigate to download and install options.

<comment> phoe-krk You likely misread the sentence. It doesn't say "To learn more, download and install the free browser extension:" \- it says, "To learn more, or to download and install the free browser extension:" and then provides you with links to the stores that contain the description for the extension:

> _Websites have increasingly begun to rely much more on large third-parties > for content delivery. Canceling requests for ads or trackers is usually > without issue, however blocking actual content, not unexpectedly, breaks > pages. The aim of this add-on is to cut out the middleman by providing > lightning speed delivery of local (bundled) files to improve online > privacy._

I agree that it's a _very_ weird frontpage and means of describing an extension, but you don't need to run their code before reading what the extension does.

<comment><USER2> Thanks for clarifying for me. Updated my post.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER3> I like the idea of the extension, but the implementation in lacking. According to the project's gitlab[1], there's only a dozen or so libraries are actually being served. It doesn't seem to cache google web fonts, for instance. Some sibling comments mentioned LocalCDN, which has more libraries and also includes fontawesome, but still lacks google fonts.

[1] [https://git.synz.io/Synzvato/decentraleyes/-/tree/master/res...](https://git.synz.io/Synzvato/decentraleyes/-/tree/master/resources)

<comment><USER4> We should all be turning off web fonts anyway.

<comment><USER5> Citation needed?

<comment><USER6> Let's say 80% of websites load Google Fonts. Now Google knows 80% of your browsing history.

<comment><USER7> Google Fonts doesn't track the users, or associate the use with the user's account.

<comment><USER8> Says who? And why should i believe/trust that?

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> See also LocalCDN

[https://codeberg.org/nobody/LocalCDN](https://codeberg.org/nobody/LocalCDN)

Its a fork from decentraleyes with some more libraries included.

<comment><USER10> Interesting. However, not a part of the Recommended Extensions program. Decentraleyes is.

<comment><USER9> Very true, although I do like the addition of font awesome and preprepared ublock rules in the addon

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> It's a cool idea, even if just for performance reasons. So many things come from CDNs these days, we may as well start shopping the common ones ahead of time.

But recently I learned something unexpected. Lots of extensions are terrible with their resources. On a page targeting tech-savvy people, around 1% of requests has some extension content injected into the website which requests an external font file. (info comes from CSP reports) There's so much tracking opportunity exposed through them.

<comment><USER12> > "even if just for performance reasons"

I don't think it matters for performance because it's cached in the browser anyway... So the purpose of the extension is privacy.

<comment><USER13> I may be wrong, but I don't think the browser caches CDN requests, at least per site...

So this might be a performance gain too

[https://stackoverflow.com/questions/29704811/why-isnt-the- br...](https://stackoverflow.com/questions/29704811/why-isnt-the-browser- loading-cdn-file-from-cache)

<comment><USER14> The answer at that Stack Overflow question is seriously incomplete (and even it doesn't say there's no cache). Browsers today will, for the most part, cache CDN responses, not need to revalidate them, and share that cache across sites (though I think first-party isolation changes that to a per-site cache).

<comment><USER15> Stop. Go and look at the stack overflow. Then view source and look at the CDN links stack overflow uses.

<comment><USER14> Is your comment intended to be rude? Maybe more importantly: is intended to have a point?

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> This addon is also useful when traveling in China. Since everything Google is blocked by the Great Firewall, the Google CDN is, by extension, also blocked. This breaks a lot of sites that would otherwise be reachable. Since with Decentraleyes, no requests to CDNs need to be made, those sites will continue to work as expected.

</comment><comment><USER17> After clicking through several more times and ending up in a gitlab wiki, this seems to be how it works:

> It comes bundled with a fair amount of commonly used files, and serves them > locally whenever a site tries to fetch them from a delivery network.

The docs, both on the site that is linked to and on the wiki is __extremely __bare bones, but the gist of it is that a CDN can track you through the `referer` header of the request for (say) jquery, since even if the browser has jquery already cached it will send out a request to check if the resource might have been modified.

<comment><USER18> Would a simpler solution be to just drop referrers from CDN requests? It would probably require fewer updates to the package itself

<comment><USER6> Decentraleyes already does this.

> What does it do to protect me when it has no choice but to allow a request?

> Even if a resource is not locally available, Decentraleyes offers improved > protection by stripping optional headers from intercepted CDN-requests. This > keeps specific data, such as what page you are on, from reaching delivery > networks. Whitelisting a domain does not affect this measure.

[https://git.synz.io/Synzvato/decentraleyes/-/wikis/Frequentl...](https://git.synz.io/Synzvato/decentraleyes/-/wikis/Frequently- Asked-Questions#what-does-it-do-to-protect-me-when-it-has-no-choice-but-to- allow-a-request)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER19> I've used Decentraleyes for a while now and it works great. I would actually like to see it—or more specifically, the idea—integrated into browsers. It would improve privacy, (potentially) security, and speed at the cost of disk space.

<comment><USER20> Was Opera's "Turbo" mode not a similar feature? A feature launched in the early mobile/late dail-up days. Albeit the proxy CDN was provided by Opera. It would take proxy JPEGs, compress them more, serve them from an edge node. It don't think it was marketed as a privacy feature but mostly bandwidth/speed. But in theory if you trust Opera, you'd get more privacy?

<comment><USER21> Given that Mozilla now has a proxy (VPN) service, that could be a nice tie-in indeed.

<comment><USER22> You don't want your VPN provider also unwrapping TLS.

<comment><USER21> So proxies intercepting your traffic are fine but VPN intercepting your traffic is not?

Of course, this should be super explicit and opt-in, but Mozilla is in a position where a lot of people would trust them (you can agree or disagree whether that trust is misplaced) and if the goal is privacy and/or saving bandwidth on poor connections, this could be very useful.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment> apt-get Careful with performance if you're on an underpowered machine, as with all content injectors, it could provoke frequent freezes if you have a decent to large amount of tabs open.

[https://git.synz.io/Synzvato/decentraleyes/-/issues/323](https://git.synz.io/Synzvato/decentraleyes/-/issues/323)

</comment><comment><USER23> I kind of wonder how effective these extensions are for js libraries since dependencies are often bundled into a single file. I have been using decentraleyes for a while and when I have spot checked it on occasion it hasn't intercepted any requests on the page. I am assuming this is due to bundling.

From a security standpoint bundling is not an issue as no additional requests are made but from a speed and performance standpoint I don't think there is much extensions like this or browser caching can do. It kind of makes me wish bundling wasn't a thing now that we have QUIC/HTTP3 being adopted.

With all that said I am still glad to have this extension around.

</comment><comment><USER24> Note that Decentraleyes appears to break some sites due to CSP and SRI issues. I uninstalled it months/years ago, but forgot which sites broke. The bug tracker link is at [https://git.synz.io/Synzvato/decentraleyes/-/issues/16](https://git.synz.io/Synzvato/decentraleyes/-/issues/16) .

<comment><USER19> According to their whitelist[1], cdnjs.com, dropbox.com, glowing-bear.org, minigames.mail.ru, report-uri.io, scotthelme.co.uk, securityheaders.io, stefansundin.github.io, udacity.com, yadi.sk, and yourvotematters.co.uk are known to have issues. For as long as I can remeber, you can also whitelist sites yourself.

[1][https://git.synz.io/Synzvato/decentraleyes/blob/b3931febc234...](https://git.synz.io/Synzvato/decentraleyes/blob/b3931febc2343f73c8262f2f024e325e2ced4d0c/core/interceptor.js#L46)

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> Decentraleyes, HTTPS everywhere, and uBlock Origin are the three set-it-and- forget-it extensions that everyone should have to improve their privacy.

<comment><USER25> Somewhat noob here. Would you suggest LocalCDN instead of Decentraleyes?

</comment></comment><comment><USER26> The whole maintainers and forks thingy between Decentraleyes and LocalCDN seems so strange to me that I'm left with more suspicious about which should I use, if I ever should use any given their both behavior regarding the forks. I don't feel "safe" to use something so critical privacy-wise in that situation.

EDIT: refs

[https://codeberg.org/nobody/LocalCDN/issues/51](https://codeberg.org/nobody/LocalCDN/issues/51)

[https://gitlab.com/nobody42/localcdn/-/issues/5](https://gitlab.com/nobody42/localcdn/-/issues/5)

[https://git.synz.io/Synzvato/decentraleyes/-/issues/400](https://git.synz.io/Synzvato/decentraleyes/-/issues/400)

<comment><USER27> What's strange about it? Decentraleyes isn't being maintained very actively. The author of LocalCDN found the pace too slow and forked to update things for themselves. They are very civil about it.

</comment></comment><comment><USER28> Another of the million huge enhancements that could be built natively into browsers if browsers weren't intentionally stuck in the 90s by advertising/tracking companies.

I wonder when we'll see a real browser alternative that includes no-brainer features like bundling the most common libraries in local forever-cache by SRI hash.

</comment><comment><USER29> To summarize some of the limitations I've read in sibling comments:

– Recent trend appears to be bundling resources ( _e.g._ Webpack) instead of using CDNs.

– This trend is complemented by browsers moving to per-site caches that limit the benefit of CDNs.

– Content-Security-Policy and/or Subresource Integrity restrictions can break some websites.

– Only a limited set of resources are included with Decentraleyes.

All that said, this is a really cool idea from both privacy and performance standpoints. Would love to see ways to address those limitations in the future.

</comment><comment><USER30> Decentraleyes breaks sites that use subresource integrity, which is why I sadly needed to stop using it, until I find time to land a PR.

</comment><comment><USER31> Just chiming in to say I think the name is brilliant and perfectly matched to such a software project.

</comment><comment><USER32> I want this on a mobile browser too

<comment> noman-land If you use mobile Firefox, you can use any extensions you like.

<comment><USER32> So the banner on the plugin page saying it is for a different version is just a warning?

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER33> I find localcdn to be a better option, it's a fork of Decentraleyes.

Make sure to read the directions, though, to integrate properly with uBO/uMatrix.

[https://add0n.com/local-cdn.html](https://add0n.com/local-cdn.html)

</comment><comment><USER34> I've been using this for years and it works a charm, It has my endorsement for sure.

</comment><comment><USER35> Would be nice to see this published to the Microsoft Edge Addons store - [https://microsoftedge.microsoft.com/addons](https://microsoftedge.microsoft.com/addons)

</comment><comment><USER36> Does this addon have any security implications when used in combination with uBlock or NoScript? If the JS is being injected, does that induce any risks of JS being executed when it should be blocked?

<comment><USER37> Blocking a resource has precedence over redirecting a resource. If your blocker blocks a resource, Decentraleyes or any other extension won't be able to redirect it.

</comment></comment><comment><USER38> If it is taking third party resources and inlining them then this extension will be breaking the protections offered by the domain and JavaScript security model.

</comment><comment><USER39> isn't your browser already caching these resources for you.

<comment><USER12> Yes, and no:

[https://git.synz.io/Synzvato/decentraleyes/-/wikis/Frequentl...](https://git.synz.io/Synzvato/decentraleyes/-/wikis/Frequently- Asked-Questions#my-browser-caches-downloaded-cdn-libraries-doesnt-that- protect-my-privacy)</comment></comment>


LinkedIn Product Manager interview review - <AUTHOR> http://jsonk.posterous.com/linkedin-product-manager-interview-review <comment><USER2> Jason: Take this down. You will almost certainly not get the job if your interviewers find this, for almost any tech company of scale. Especially:

"If I am selected for more interviews, I will definitely write about them."

<comment><USER3> I really don't understand why Jason should take this down. I'd never look down on a candidate for blogging about the interview process with my company.

<comment><USER4> Compare the upside of writing about his experience with the potential downside.

I don't think many companies are going to say "hey that's great that he did that" and it will _help him_ land the job. But it is entirely likely that any number of companies that he might interview with would be turned off by it and it could cost him the job.

<comment><USER5> For the author, weeding out employers with that culture might be an upside. It depends what he's looking for.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> > After a brief greeting, the interviewer asked me what is the most > interesting product that's out there right now on web. I made my first > mistake here and answered, Facebook. I had prepared for interviewing about > LinkedIn product and set myself up to be interviewed about Facebook for next > 40 minutes.

That wasn't a mistake. The answer you think you should have given, "LinkedIn", would have been a mistake. That's probably the answer everybody else gave, and tells the interviewer "I'm here to say whatever I think will make you like me most, so let's start out with the improbable claim that your company is the most interesting thing on the web".

</comment><comment><USER7> "The interview wrapped up with him asking me to estimate the annual revenue of McDonalds."

Is stuff like this becoming the norm now? This looks a lot like the notorious "estimation" questions in consulting company interviews. Especially because it seems to be taken completely out of context and with very little relation to the actual job/company.

<comment><USER8> I interviewed for a pm position there a while back - my experience wasn't anything like the blog post. So it's not even the norm (probably) at linked in.

</comment></comment><comment><USER9> Interesting account, but:

I wouldn't write about this. I could see this being used against you.

<comment><USER5> Why work for a company that would "use" a dry, factual account of their interview process against you?

<comment><USER10> Why hire someone you can't trust to keep their mouth shut?

<comment><USER5> I don't know where you're getting that LinkedIn asked Jason to keep his mouth shut about anything.

<comment><USER11> I wouldn't go on a date with a woman who blogged a review of every date. At the same time, it'd be awkward if one had to ask their dates in advance not to publish a detailed account online.

<comment><USER5> It would also be awkward if an interviewee wanted to come back to my apartment for drinks. Interviewing and dating are two different social situations with different codes of etiquette.

<comment><USER10> Posting to a blog about a first round of interviews while you are still going through them can easily be viewed as premature, immature, and potentially dangerous for the company (but moreso for the reputation of the poster).

Now, if he had been hired, worked hard for a couple of years and was promoted from within the interview story could be considered relevant advice. However it is too early for anyone including himself to glene any pro/cons out of it, and instead the blog post looks like a kamikaze mission to the top of the hill to let his buddies know where the enemies are hiding.

<comment><USER12> _Posting to a blog about a first round of interviews while you are still going through them can easily be viewed as premature, immature, and potentially dangerous for the company_

I have read several version of this comment elsewhere in the story, is there any basis for this attitude besides paranoia? Have you ever seen something like this be "dangerous" for a company in real life, or is it completely imaginary? You use the word "easily," so I'm just wondering if it's so common that I just don't get out enough.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> Interesting... college seniors, recent grads, and grad students have enough experience to be Product Managers at LNKD? Where do their junior analysts come from?

</comment><comment><USER14> Yeah I am pretty sure you are not allowed to post this because you would probably have signed an NDA before your interview.

You have to respect the people at LinkedIn who put in a lot of effort to design this interview process by not leaking it out.

<comment><USER12> Does that really happen? I have never signed an NDA prior to a job interview.

</comment></comment><comment><USER15> Just a tip - How to answer the McD question:

McD are spread worldwide - so assume some figures for the leading consumer nations.

For ex - 70% of US population, 50% of Japanese population etc consume at least 1 McD burger/meal a day. Now compute the average price of a McD burger/meal. Multiply the two and you have average revenues per day.

Average price * no of burgers/meals sold per day = Average revenues.

Average revenues per day * 30 * 12 = annual revenues.

Follow the same formula for all product lines and add them up. Hope this helps.

</comment><comment><USER16> I am curious why would you blog about an interview. Most companies ask you to sign an NDA before the interview. Isn't posting a blog about the interview a violation of NDA?

</comment><comment><USER17> Lots of companies will put you under an NDA if you interview with them. Be careful talking about explicit questions.

</comment><comment><USER18> This link has a target="_blank" on it. Is this some new option submitters have?

<comment><USER18> Well, the downvotes got me to investigate further. It seems it was the Chrome extension JSON Inspector ( [https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/mfnjijpckfecpgchob...](https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/mfnjijpckfecpgchobgcfndicenjldoe) ) that was inserting the target="_blank" _only_ on this page for the article's link.</comment></comment>


Washington will be the first state to offer Facebook voter registration - <AUTHOR> http://venturebeat.com/2012/07/18/washington-will-be-the-first-state-to-offer-facebook-voter-registration/

<comment><USER2> Boss Tweed and James G. Blaine like this.

</comment><comment><USER3> Is registering to vote that damned hard? I can see the intense possibility of voter registration fraud. And, now Zuckerberg and Co will have access to voter registration information? Bad Idea.</comment>


When a child thinks life is unfair, use game theory - <AUTHOR> http://mobile.nytimes.com/blogs/well/2016/07/05/when-a-child-thinks-life-is-unfair-use-game-theory <comment><USER2> I was always told life wasn't fair and to get over it. Of course, that's probably why I"m the cynical shoelace that I am.

<comment><USER3> > Tit for Tat:When children are faced with the job of cleaning up a joint > mess, suggest "you pick up one, then he picks up one," said Mr. Raeburn. "We > had mixed results with Tit for Tat," he admits. His 9-year-old son was able > to manipulate his 6-year-old brother into doing more. "This probably works > better with children who are closer in age, or at least both over 7."

It's the exact opposite with my kids - neither of them want to tidy up, but the older one will get on with it, while the younger prefers to cry and sulk while her sister does the work

<comment><USER4> It's almost as though children aren't rational actors.</comment></comment></comment>


I created a bot that talks to recruiters for me (and it's sooo good) - <AUTHOR> https://dev.to/whokilledkevin/how-i-created-a-bot-that-talked-to-recruiters-for-me-54n5 <comment><USER2> Is this website's performance as bad for everyone else as it is for me? Scrolling is very jittery, and it seems to only be this page that's behaving so poorly.

<comment><USER3> Not to mention the obnoxious beating heart button. It's super distracting when I'm just trying calmly to read an article. First thing I did when landing on that page was use uBlock (Origin)'s eyedropper to permanently banish it.

<comment><USER4> There's also an animated Ninja Turtle gif in the fixed sidenav. I can't image how someone could think that this was a good idea (especially on a website where all the main content is text).

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> This was a lot more interesting for me than I expected. I usually don't talk to random recruiters. I have _very_ high expectations from a recruiter and usually try to keep in touch to a handful (less than 5) recruiters that I know are good. Generally, to grab my attention you have to show me you're better than them somehow.

However, the concept of _inviting_ recruiters to "apply" for my attention is fantastic. I'm not so sure about the bot idea... but a quick and dirty web page that says, "If you want to attract my attention, leave me relevant information here". I could even keep track of the applications and blacklist the worst offenders (who just spam people indiscriminately).</comment>


Developer hits back at Intel's Android fragmentation claims - <AUTHOR> http://www.eetimes.com/electronics-news/4231220/Developer-hits-back-at-Intel-s-Android-fragmentation-claims <comment><USER2> Intel is just upset because they wanted Android to work _only_ on Atom, and by that I mean they didn't want it to work on AMD chips nor on their high-end x86 chips (probably because they are still trying to preserve the "Wintel" leadership in that market).</comment>


Books That Shaped America - <AUTHOR> http://www.loc.gov/bookfest/books-that-shaped-america/ <comment><USER2> I'm fan of Thoreau and I live in Europe.

I don't understand how exactly he shaped America?

During the "Walden" period he lived simple, frugal life and invested his time into things he cared about (eg., measuring the depth of the Walden pond in winter). After his crops were ready for the harvest, he took them to the city and sold them with minimal effort, being fascinated by the fact that he didn't have to do almost anything, while he enjoyed all the luxuries of sensible, spiritual life.

He wasn't only author that did such things, but the society really never cared or cares.

Thoreau is forgotten, but for me, at least during his Walden period - he was a proper "hacker".

I'm quite sure that he would condemn the mark of being one of these who shaped the America (or world), because this is not what he wanted.

<comment><USER3> > I don't understand how exactly he shaped America?

You answered that right below. That way that he lived is something that a lot of Americans dream of (myself included), just to have a little plot of land all to yourself and be with nature for a while.

> Thoreau is forgotten

Maybe in Europe, but not here. Thoreau is seen as having outlined a very idyllic life, especially for modern times, of living semi-lazily "off the grid".

> I'm quite sure that he would condemn the mark of being one of these who > shaped the America (or world), because this is not what he wanted.

Such is the life of a reclusive artist :)

N.B. - Walden Pond is not some mystical place out in the middle of nowhere, it's just outside of Concord, NH[0], site of one of the first battles of the American Revolution just 70 years prior. So, while it was idyllic, it was not like Thoreau was _that_ far away from civilization. The middle of Concord is less than 1.5 miles (2.4km) away from the north shore where Thoreau lived.

[0] - [https://www.google.com/maps/place/Walden+Pond,+Concord,+MA+0...](https://www.google.com/maps/place/Walden+Pond,+Concord,+MA+01742)

<comment><USER2> I know that they maintain a nice museum over there. Thoreau's books were translated into most European languages and frankly, his writing influenced me a lot during my early twenties.

<comment><USER3> Me too :).

As I've gotten older (34 now), I keep moving further and further out, hoping to capture my own Walden experiences. So far, I've only had courage to get to the edge of the suburbs :(.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> I thought maybe the Book of Mormon would be on the list since it spawned one of the largest American-born religious movements and contributed to much of the settlement of the western US. I don't see any religious books on the list though.

<comment><USER5> Yeah, I was surprised to not see any religious books. That's a good one I hadn't thought of. I was thinking of Pilgrim's Progress by John Bunyan, one of the most popular books ever written by American and probably the most owned book in the country for an era.

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> A lot of these are in the public domain, would be a good candidate for a mass torrent of ebooks.

<comment><USER7> > in the public domain

... and for everything else, there's the library. :)

<comment><USER8> Bittorent County Library System.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> The Library of Congress put up this list of books that shaped America. I am an American of American descent since before the Revolution, and I have certainly read much less than half of these. The Library notes that this list is intended to spark discussion, so I'm glad that discussion has already begun here. My wild guess about the very most influential book is the King James ("Authorized") English-language translation of the Bible (not on the list, which apparently focuses on books published in America). I think Thomas Paine's _Common Sense_ (1776) (which I have read, and which relies heavily on the Bible for its argument) was also very influential.

<comment><USER10> There are definitely some odd choices on there. An obscure dime novel by Louisa May Alcott? How did that "shape America"? Her _Little Women_ deserves a place on the list, certainly, but I'm not sure about this one.

</comment></comment><comment><USER11> The title should be "American Books that shaped America". The Capital not being included in that list is akin to the Catholic church leaving the Luteran bible outside a list of influential works.

<comment><USER3> It took me a second to know what book you were referring to. I've never seen it called that. Every mention I've ever seen of it (and I live in the US), it's _Das Kapital_.

</comment></comment><comment><USER12> As expected my favourite book Atlas Shrugged is in this list.

It sad that her ideas is quite unpopular among general public. And as a consequence Europe and even US go towards socialism these days.

<comment><USER13> Ah, yes, the masses are stupid parasites and the elite few (of whom of course the reader fantasizes he belongs to) are responsible for all that's good in the world. I wonder why people have a problem with it.

<comment><USER14> Rand never indicates the American masses (your word, not hers) are stupid parasites, nothing even remotely of the sort in fact. She describes the masses as being devoured and harmed by the parasites, which are feeding off of them. This is true in Atlas Shrugged, Anthem, We The Living, and in her ~60 years of non-fiction writings. If you've read her books, it's impossible to have missed this, she's extraordinarily clear about it and goes to great lengths to spell it out for the reader step by step, both in terms of ideology and in real world effects.

<comment><USER15> You, who have actually read her work and given it an honest moment's thought, have been down voted by people who don't viciously know far more than you do about her work without the humdrum necessity of actually having read it.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> I don't agree with civilian's post, but I think that he is onto something. Once you get past Noah Webster and Benjamin Spock, the shaping effect is hard for me to see.

 _The Education of Henry Adams_ includes some interesting chapters, though it is not nearly Adams's best work: yet what in America has it shaped other than the occasional class reading list? Similarly there are fine and complex works of literature that few have read. Take a poll at the bus stop or the coffee shop and see how many people can quote you five lines out of _North of Boston_ , _Spring and All_ or _Howl_. (I can do maybe one from _Howl_ and almost certainly the number in it is wrong" "America, when will you become worthy of your two million Trotskyites?") _Moby Disk_ is a fine novel, but how many have read it through; no doubt _The Sound and the Fury_ is also, but it defeated me at an age when I read a lot of Faulkner, and I haven't been back.

</comment><comment><USER17> Where is "Slaughterhouse-Five"?

<comment><USER18> Seriously. I know lists like this are always subjective and there's some great (and awful literature, but mainly great) in this list. But omitting "Slaughterhouse-Five" not only for its content but the post modern aesthetic (which was a big deal at the time) it used, is confusing.

And although I wouldn't expect it, there should be some Bukowski on this list too. Also, Gravity's Rainbow?

</comment></comment><comment><USER19> How long until someone turns this into a facebook quiz? "Click to see how many of the books that shaped America you have read."

(12, for the record)

</comment><comment><USER20> _Earth Abides_ should be on this list.

</comment><comment><USER21> It's a pity the list contains only American authors - that makes the list only half useful.

<comment><USER3> How so? The list is only useful in the sense that it gives someone who wants to explore the progression of American culture(s) through the years a starting point.

</comment></comment><comment><USER22> No PIHKAL?

<comment><USER22> To those downvoting me. Are you denying that works of Leary and Shulgin shaped America as we know it today?

</comment></comment><comment><USER23> Do we really need another re-hashing of the books we were required to read in high school?

I'm just tired of hearing about these titles. I don't feel a strong heritage connection to them. It's stupid how they are repeatedly brought up, and how loving these worn-out books is seen as being 'literary'.

In the same way that generals are always fighting the last war, high school english is always sharing the profound books from the last cultural paradigm shift.

<comment><USER24> So instead of just saying "these books are stupid"...which of these books do you think has the least relevance to the contemporary mindset, and why?

</comment></comment><comment><USER25> No SICP?

</comment><comment><USER13> Atlas Shrugged shaped America?

<comment><USER26> Often cited as the second most influential book, after the Bible, by members of congress.

<comment><USER13> That's a new phenomena, and wven so it can hardly be said to have "shaped America". If you disagree, in what ways has it done so?

<comment><USER27> The "second most influential" claim originates from 1994, source: [http://www.noblesoul.com/orc/books/rand/atlas/faq.html#Q6.4](http://www.noblesoul.com/orc/books/rand/atlas/faq.html#Q6.4)

I think big companies have shaped American culture a lot. Here's something from 2002 about Rand's influence, but Googling around easily turns up more: [http://usatoday30.usatoday.com/money/companies/management/20...](http://usatoday30.usatoday.com/money/companies/management/2002-09-23-ayn- rand_x.htm)</comment></comment></comment></comment>


Predicting the Future and Exponential Growth - <AUTHOR> http://uday.io/2015/10/15/predicting-the-future-and-exponential-growth/ <comment><AUTHOR> Wanted to share my first proper post with the community here and see what people think.</comment>


433MHz ASK signal analysis – Wireless door bell adventure [pdf] - <AUTHOR> https://bytebucket.org/rootbsd/433mhz-ask-signal-analysis/raw/5f4937e4efb2198abcc375b8aefee41421941fca/pdf/433MHz_ASK_sginal_analysis-Wireless_door_bell_adventure-1.0.pdf

<comment> TD-Linux This same sort of transmitter is used on all sorts of cheap wireless remotes. Here's a cleaned-up capture I took from a Westinghouse wirelessly controlled power outlet: [http://a.pomf.se/aqdzgd.png](http://a.pomf.se/aqdzgd.png)

</comment><comment><USER2> My annoying neighbor has this exact same doorbell. Oh Hacker News, how you tempt me ;)</comment>


Effect of Wind on Stock Market Returns - <AUTHOR> http://improbable.com/2010/04/21/effect-of-wind-on-stock-market-returns/

<comment><USER2> I believe the stock market is a measure of human consciousness. It measures our expectations, our emotions, and our perception of reality. I once had a job in a finance department, before I knew anything about stocks, and I said, "I could build a computer program to do this..." The finance guys around me laughed.

Years later, when I had capital, I built that system. I found many correlations between words in the news and fluctuations in stock price. I developed algorithms to filter out future winners from over 8,000 stocks. Over the course of the two years I used this system, I looked at many stocks a day and even after two years, I had only examined about 1,600 stocks. The system I built tracked every time I viewed a stock and let me put notes in there, so I could remember why I looked at it the first time. It's almost impossible to rationally decide which among 8,000 companies to buy. Most of the great ones aren't even _looked_ at. How many great winners of today hid among the 6,400 I never even saw? Most of the ones we see are the ones someone _else_ wants us to see -- why?

When Katrina hit, I knew there'd be a lot of work on the coast and used the system to quickly find companies that would be employed to fix the mess. Over the next two years, these stocks beat the market substantially.

Point being, the weather, wind, words -- everything -- affects the stock market. Little of it is rational. Little of it is p/e, om, revenues... so I have little doubt that the wind has a big impact on share prices. Hurricanes _certainly_ do.

<comment><USER3> Insightful comment, I'd be very interested in hearing more elaboration on the subject (specifically about your or other algorithms and some of the correlations that they found). There is a major dearth of information about algorithms that can be so readily used to generate profits. Very proprietary and hush hush as I am sure you are well aware of.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> On a related note:

"Lunar Cycle Effects in Stock Returns" <http://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=281665>

Abstract: "We find strong lunar cycle effects in stock returns. Specifically, returns in the 15 days around new moon dates are about double the returns in the 15 days around full moon dates. This pattern of returns is pervasive; we find it for all major U.S. stock indexes over the last 100 years and for nearly all major stock indexes of 24 other countries over the last 30 years."

</comment><comment><USER5> Kind of related: a relative of mine started a teaching degree in the UK and they were taught to expect the students to be less behaved when it is windy. Go figure.

</comment><comment><USER6> I guess weather forecasting and stock forecasting are equally "hard" problems? ... Too many variables.</comment>


Ecommerce solutions? - <AUTHOR>

We have a magento site and after 3 different platforms and some less than ethical 'help' our server is full of junk.  We think we need to migrate to a new server and need some help to accomplish this goal.  We have even considered Spree as another platform but know next to zero about how a migration from magento might work, if at all.  We are extremely budget conscious as a small business.  Anyone have some ideas on how to find a person to manage such a project? or advise on the project itself?<p>We are aware that our current site is inadequate on many levels. <comment><USER2> My advice: Go to Shopify or Bigcommerce and save yourself on the cost and complexity of managing a website.(Magento and Spree require Technical people to manage and it sounds like your company doesn't have this). Shopify is as simple as it gets and you should be able to figure out how to run a store with minimal help. Shopify has a Magento importing tool with instructions to import your products. I don't know about customers and past orders. Also there is [http://www.shopping-cart-migration.com/](http://www.shopping-cart- migration.com/) If you choose one of shopify's templates(or purchase a $150 template) you should be able to get your store up and running with little help. Or you can reach out to their community of experts. Also if SEO is important you'll need to learn how to re-direct links. But do a google search and it shouldn't be hard.

Best of luck.

</comment><comment><AUTHOR> Thank you for your continued feedback. We did something similar to shopify, volusion and it was really unsatisfactory for many reasons. We are doing the volumes you speak of and magento, when it works, is very nice. We outsource the basic architecture and then manipulate in house when necessary. WE have had some luck in getting programmers that can do what we need and not program a 'programming annutiy' into the deal. Unfortunately, our server is cluttered with so much garbage we are almost certain it is cheaper to just set up new architecture and migrate the info rather than clean up the existing mess.

</comment><comment><AUTHOR> Thank you for your input. We do have some technical capabilities and have been managing the magento store in house for some time now. We know we can set this up so that we can do changes and additions. What we do need is a basic framework that works! If you have any ideas on how to source that kind of talent, let me know!

<comment><USER2> I understand what you're going through. I've seen others in the same position as you with Magento. I don't know how to choose a good Magento team, but some advice I was given is if you are not doing at least a $1 million in revenue on your website do not touch Magento. ---

Every Magento framework is custom, this is expensive. And you'll always be at the mercy of whoever is your latest talent that you hope can make it work. And you'll always be hoping that it will work. Magento is very complicated, it can do everything, but you don't need to do everything.----

If you want a basic framework that works you have great options in Shopify and Bicommerce (or volusion but I prefer the other two more and shopify the most). And you will save unbelievable amounts of money and stress. The important difference between Magento vs Shopify is you are basically outsourcing the expertise and cost of your framework onto Shopify. \--- But if your store is working and you can get by on it then you could just get along with what you have.</comment></comment>


Why Writers Will Own the Future - <AUTHOR> http://refer.ly/8-reasons-writers-will-own-the-future/c/ea89732e709511e2bfbf22000a1db8fa

<comment><USER2> Is there actually a coherent point here? This appears to be a barrage of links with no more connection than that they're all related somehow to writing.

</comment><comment><USER3> Native Advertising piece is sexy.</comment>


Interstellar Probe, a Mission Concept for NASA - <AUTHOR> https://www.washingtonpost.com/science/interstellar-probe-a-mission-concept-for-nasa-aims-to-travel-93-billion-miles-past-the-sun/2019/07/11/e9b92f5c-92a8-11e9-aadb-74e6b2b46f6a_story.html <comment><USER2> The proposal sounds technically interesting, but there seems to be growing skepticism of SLS even within NASA. Everyone from Blue Origin, Arianespace/ESA, China etc are working on reusable rockets while SLS is over budget, behind schedule and looks like it may be effectively obsolete before it's even launching payloads (much less by the time (2025?) NASA can actually procure new "RS-25E" engines rather than using its handful of shuttle leftovers)

The most exciting near-future space tech to me is SpaceX's goal to achieve in- orbit refueling with Starship. With their much cheaper reusable launches, you could plausibly put a Starship with payload in low orbit, launch 3-4 tankers to fully refuel it and then blast off to anywhere in or out of the solar system faster than anything now remotely conceivable. You could do a mission like this without the complex gravity assists.

SLS is a massive pork program and going to be hard to shut down, but as soon as "BFR"/New Glenn are operational I think it's time to start looking at getting NASA out of the rocket business and focused on cool space/science missions.

<comment><USER3> SpaceX has proven that the economics are finally there for private launching.

The government should put all the SLS money into the science and extreme boundary-pushing tech research NASA's doing that the economics aren't there for: protections/psych research for long-term space habitation, space farms, probes to the next set of targets (Europa, Titan, interesting asteroids), solar-system scale communications, and orbital manufacturing.

NASA laid the groundwork for a larger group of organizations to build on in the earth-to-orbit space. Now NASA should be laying the groundwork for a larger group of organizations to build on in the orbit-to-solar-system space.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> Summary: burn lots of fuel to go to periphery of solar system, dive back toward the sun and skim it very closely to maximize velocity and use a bunch of fuel next to the sun at max V (oberth maneuver) [https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Oberth_effect](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Oberth_effect) and then go hurtling out of solar system.. main challenge is solar shielding.. the deeper into the gravity well you can go the faster you can go due to the deltaV performed next to the sun..

<comment><USER5> With some more detail on the mechanics:

Here's a screenshot of an orbit in Kerbal Space Program, an excellent NASA- simulator game (you have a spaceport and make + fly rockets and do science): [https://wiki.kerbalspaceprogram.com/wiki/File:KerbalEccentri...](https://wiki.kerbalspaceprogram.com/wiki/File:KerbalEccentricity.jpg)

On the blue orbit, you can see Ap and Pe. Ap is the apogee; the place in the orbit where the spacecraft is closest to the earth. Pe is the perigee, the place where the spacecraft is farthest from the earth. Since the blue orbit is mostly circular, they are at about the same altitude.

If you look at the large white orbit, the apogee would be the leftmost point, close to the apogee of the blue orbit. The perigee would be all the way at the right of the image.

When your spacecraft is at position X, thrusting your engines will not meaningfully change your current position - the acceleration they generate is negligible to the speed at which you are moving. However, the maneuver will change your speed, which affects your orbit.

At the apogee, if you thrust in the direction you are moving, your perigee will increase - the orbit will become even more eccentric. Example: at the apogee you are moving at 100 miles per second. Thrusting the engines will not change your current position much; your current position is determined by your 100 miles per second speed and where you came from. But the maneuver will change your speed to 105 miles per second, which will cause your perigee to become much farther away from the earth. However your apogee will stay in the exact same position.

Why? Because in orbit you are basically flying sideways while gravity pulls you down. In a circular orbit this balances out into you flying around in a circle. But if you go faster, you're going more sideways while gravity pulls the same amount. So your orbit becomes more elongated.

You can thrust in the direction of movement at any point in orbit, and it will increase the altitude of the orbit on the opposite side of where you are at - if you thrust at apogee the perigee altitude increases, and in the white elongated orbit if you thrust between the apogee and perigee your orbit will become more circular and bigger. Similarly to make an eccentric orbit circular, you get to the apogee and then use the engines to slow down, which brings down the perigee.

Since thrusting changes your position on the opposite side of the orbit, the most efficient way to increase your perigee is to thrust while at the apogee.

The NASA thing is basically going into an elongated orbit between the Sun and Jupiter, coming back to the apogee near the Sun, and then thrusting. The difference in efficiency between thrusting at the apogee of an orbit and just thrusting in a straight line out into space is really huge. Though I'm not sure why the extra gravity of the Sun makes the maneuver more efficient.

If you're interested in this you should definitely play KSP. It's a great game and gives you a great intuitive sense of how these things work.

<comment><USER6> "At the apogee, if you thrust in the direction you are moving, your perigee will increase - the orbit will become even more eccentric."

I don't understand this. If your peri(something), which is by definition less than your apo(something), increases, then isn't your orbit becoming more circular and less eccentric?

<comment><USER5> It's the opposite - apogee is the point closest to the center of orbit, perigee is the farthest point.

<comment><USER7> Apogee is the point furthest away in an orbit from the center of mass in relation to the Earth, perigee is the closest point.

In the screenshot, the "active" blue orbit is nearly circular, so the Ap and Pe are similar and the eccentricity is small. Both grey orbits have a higher eccentricity with the periapsis being closest to the body (Kerbin) and the apoapsis being the most distant point, though neither are marked in the screenshot as they're not the actively selected orbit.

I find "apoapsis" easy to remember due to it's similarity to the Latin "apex" [0].

Apoapsis: The point of a body's elliptical orbit about the system's centre of mass where the distance between the body and the centre of mass is at its maximum. [1]

Periapsis: The point of a body's elliptical orbit about the system's centre of mass where the distance between the body and the centre of mass is at its minimum. [2]

[0] [https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/apex#Latin](https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/apex#Latin)

[1] [https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/apoapsis#Noun](https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/apoapsis#Noun)

[2] [https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/periapsis#Noun](https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/periapsis#Noun)

<comment><USER5> Ah, looks like I got that all backwards. Been a few years since I last played KSP :)

Too late to edit it now though...

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> Well, that ain't gettin built save for a random political blessing by a young dynasty.

Something going the very fastest you can go makes a poor platform for close study of planets, and going very far away negates the great advantage of heliophysics: the sun is _right there_.

You could get all their motivational science, except maybe the exoplanet calibration, done with a slower more modest project.

Frankly, if your space experiment has resorted to invoking "inspiring humanity to fight the climate crisis", you can just as well drop the science pretense and fish for money from the astrology community.

</comment><comment><USER9> "Interstellar Probe, a mission concept for NASA, aims to travel 93 billion miles past the sun"

Comparison to other astronomical distances:

* 93 BN miles = 1000 AU (AU = astronomical unit = distance from Sun to Earth)

* mean distances from Sun to Neptune and Pluto are roughly 30 AU and 40 AU

* current distance from Sun for Voyager 1 and 2: 146 AU and 121 AU (see [1] which is quite cool, these distances are updated real time)

* 1000 AU = 1.6% of a light year

* 1000 AU = 0.36% of the distance to the closest star Alpha Centauri

[1][https://voyager.jpl.nasa.gov/mission/status/](https://voyager.jpl.nasa.gov/mission/status/)

</comment><comment><USER10> It's great to see so much interest in space exploration. However, we should put more effort into exploring our own planet. We've literally only scratched the surface.

I bet that if we spent even half as much money as we spend on space programs, trying to get to Earth's core, we would advance science and technology a lot faster. Also, we would have a way better idea of how the magnetic field works and how to harness it - maybe we'd even figure out how to have global wireless communication and gps just with underground technology (no satellites needed).

It's as if we are traveling across the universe on this amazing organic spaceship (Earth), but we are on the outside. We should figure out what's inside and how to get there.

<comment><USER11> Space is pragmatic and cost-effective compared to traveling to the Earth's core.

<comment><USER10> Maybe now, but it wasn't when people first decided to do it.

Also, it might not be now. If we are able to reliably extract energy from lava/volcanoes, we would have enough energy to power the whole world cleanly, which could help immensely with our current climate crisis. Space is a huge expense of energy, which also contributes to the climate crisis.

Free/super-cheap global energy sounds like a huge return on investment.

<comment><USER12> Space is a negligible amount of energy. Absolutely tiny.

I'd wager that GPS alone has made space a net energy positive by saving energy with better routing.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> So if this probe is bound to venture into the distance range useful for a solar gravitational lensing telescope, why not use it to deploy one? That would really be a major breakthrough IMHO.

[https://arxiv.org/abs/1604.06351](https://arxiv.org/abs/1604.06351)

"The minimum distance for a solar lensing telescope is 547 astronomical units (AU). And in reality, proper positioning would likely require the telescope to be placed even farther out — perhaps as far as 2,000 AU or more."

</comment><comment><USER14> I always wonder what would be the fastest spacecraft we could build for a given mass budget.

NASA should host a competition for designs that could reach one light day/month/year in the shortest time under a given mass constraint using existing or reasonably extrapolated technology.

</comment><comment><USER15> I'm no astrophysicist, but I presume the photo would be of the past? Anyone good at math able to say how far in the past a photo would be?

<comment><USER16> Well, assuming the probe is even going to carry an imager of any sort. Not much to photograph at 1000 AU. Anyway, 1000 AU equals about 138 light-hours, or 5.7 light-days, so that's how long sunlight would have taken to reach the probe at that distance.</comment></comment>


How many external adware/metrics sites can one page hit? This one hit 38 - <AUTHOR> http://imgur.com/jipCRru <comment><AUTHOR> Is it getting this much worse just this week? Or do HN toppers get more attention?

(BTW, if you aren't familiar with the Ghostery tool, get it here:) [https://www.ghostery.com/our-solutions/ghostery-browser- exte...](https://www.ghostery.com/our-solutions/ghostery-browser-extention/)

AP.org: _44_ external adware hits: [http://bigstory.ap.org/article/7500da6eb1d94e1dbb7e5650d1c20...](http://bigstory.ap.org/article/7500da6eb1d94e1dbb7e5650d1c20bd6/ap- investigation-how-con-man-used-china-make-millions)

This Atlantic article hit 35-37, and I don't remember noticing the Atlantic before being this bad in this regard: [http://www.theatlantic.com/technology/archive/2016/03/what-i...](http://www.theatlantic.com/technology/archive/2016/03/what- is-a-human/473166/?single_page=true)

</comment><comment><AUTHOR> Note Ghostery's list of site hits, to the right.

original URL:

[http://sanfrancisco.cbslocal.com/2016/03/23/sfpd-cites- tour-...](http://sanfrancisco.cbslocal.com/2016/03/23/sfpd-cites-tour-bus- driver-in-horrific-union-square-crash/)</comment>


Scientist Behind Navy's "UFO Patents" Filed One for a Compact Fusion Reactor - <AUTHOR> https://www.thedrive.com/the-war-zone/30256/scientist-behind-the-navys-ufo-patents-has-now-filed-one-for-a-compact-fusion-reactor <comment><USER2> As someone with a fusion startup, and a recently issued fusion patent I read the actual patent to see what I could learn.

In my opinion, the patent does not describe anything useful. There are no descriptions of the shape of the magnetic field this device is intended to produce, and is about as useful as saying "Aim a bunch of magnets toward the center. It'll work, trust me."

<comment><USER3> This is an application, not a patent.

To your point, the examiner may object to the claims because the application fails the enablement requirement. Enablement means that the disclosure enables a person of ordinary skill in the art to make and use the invention without undue experimentation. Even if a patent does issue and you're sued for infringement, one of your arguments might be that the patent shouldn't have issued because it isn't enabling.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> Check out this dude's patents:

[https://patents.google.com/?inventor=salvatore+pais&oq=salva...](https://patents.google.com/?inventor=salvatore+pais&oq=salvatore+pais)

Laser augmented turbojet propulsion system

Craft Using an Inertial Mass Reduction Device

Electromagnetic field generator and method to generate an electromagnetic field

Plasma Compression Fusion Device

High frequency gravitational wave generator

Piezoelectricity-induced Room Temperature Superconductor

<comment><USER5> Just going off the titles, at least 1, 4 and 6 are possibly not bs.

Laser augmented combustion is a thing, compression fusion like general fusion or first light fusion is a thing and if you use piezoelectricity to induce pressure, then at very high pressures some materials become superconductors near room temperature

<comment><USER6> Patenting potentially workable ideas using vague nonsense solutions in hopes on profiting if/when someone else makes them workable is pretty BS.

<comment><USER7> IANAL and I know next to nothing about patents, but is that possible if the patents are assigned to the US Navy? I mean, I'm sure it's _possible_ , but is the Navy known for profit-driven patent trolling?

<comment><USER8> Could this be the weaponization of the Bullshit Asymmetry Principle [1]?

       "The amount of energy needed to refute bullshit is an order of magnitude bigger than to produce it."

It costs you nothing to put out some vague non-sense out there, but you force your adversaries to spend a disproportionate amount of intelligence resources to refute that.

[1] [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bullshit#Bullshit_asymmetry_pr...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bullshit#Bullshit_asymmetry_principle)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> Love the idea that if an opposing power developed force fields + compact fusion reactors, that the last line of defence would be patent law.

<comment><USER10> There's a book called Year Zero, by Rob Reid about our first contact with aliens.

It turns out that humans are the only species in the universe capable of creating good music and as soon as other races detected our radio waves, they started listening to and reproducing our music.

Eventually, the radio waves with our licensing information reach them and every alien race realizes they've been committing copyright infringement on an absolutely massive scale.

Chaos and hijinks ensue.

<comment><USER11> The only realistic scenario I can think of for "aliens can't make good music" is that they're so lame they value the importance of out-of-jurisdiction copyright laws.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> Once upon a time, you had to have a working example of an invention in order to be granted a patent . . .

<comment><USER13> Also wasn't there a rule if someone comes up with the same idea independently the patent was invalid?

We really need to rethink the patent system.

</comment></comment><comment><USER14> Last week Rogan had Capt Fravor who was one of the alleged witnesses to the "tictac" video that the pentagon confirmed the legitimacy of 2 years ago. Worth watching if you're into this kind of thing.

[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Eco2s3-0zsQ](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Eco2s3-0zsQ)

<comment><USER15> > Last week Rogan had Capt Fravor who was one of the alleged witnesses to the > "tictac" video that the pentagon confirmed the legitimacy of 2 years ago. > Worth watching if you're into this kind of thing.

On Rogan's forum, I posted an explanation of how these Navy "UFOs" work. I've included a history of their progress and citations:

[https://old.reddit.com/r/JoeRogan/comments/dfehjt/an_explana...](https://old.reddit.com/r/JoeRogan/comments/dfehjt/an_explanation_of_the_tic_tac_ufo/)

<comment><USER16> Did your post get deleted? Anyone have a screengrab?

<comment><USER17> You can always try Removeddit. Just replace reddit in the URL with removeddit, like so:

[https://removeddit.com/r/JoeRogan/comments/dfehjt/an_explana...](https://removeddit.com/r/JoeRogan/comments/dfehjt/an_explanation_of_the_tic_tac_ufo/)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER18> As a critical lay-person, I think these patents are baloney. It rings like sci-fi physics charlatan keyword salad and puts forth no plausible verification or discussion of implementation. That's boring. What's interesting is what the Navy is playing at with this. Are they thumbing their nose at Russia's nuclear rocketry program, implying "we might, like, have UFOs or something.. I can't say". Is that really a geopolitical move that the USA is executing?

</comment><comment><USER19> I have witnessed, firsthand at a major research university, a DoD-funded patent application get pulled back under a secrecy order. It was never made public and all subsequent filings were halted.

If the IP described here is legitimate in terms of having any practical use or viability, it wouldn't be published.

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Invention_Secrecy_Act?wprov=sf...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Invention_Secrecy_Act?wprov=sfti1)

</comment><comment><USER20> If someone has such super technology, why patent it so people can easily steal the idea with a google search? Why not keep it secret and use it to fuel a giddy ride to the top of the power hierarchy?

<comment><USER15> Exopolitics wrote the following, which I agree with:

 _" Given what we know about secret space programs developed by the US Navy and Air Force respectively, electromagnetic propulsion systems have been used for decades in several crafts that operate both in space and underwater. The reason why Dr. Pais chose not to mark the patent applications secret was that senior Navy officials have decided the time had come for the disclosure of advanced electromagnetic propulsion technologies that were already in operation, rather than merely innovative proposals for future development as suggested in the patent application."_

<comment><USER21> What secret space programs?

<comment><USER15> > What secret space programs?

Personally, I believe that the "UFO" seen by the Navy pilot Commander David Fravor was a Navy craft. I don't think it was extraterrestrial in origin.

Hence, "secret space programs."

<comment><USER21> That wasn't really in space, but ok. Do you think he knows what was going on during the sighting? Or do you think he is reporting the truth to the best of his capability?

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER22> When you are in an arms race, it is important to keep your adversary busy.

</comment><comment><USER23> What penalties does anyone at the Navy face if this isn't real?

<comment><USER24> None, zip, zilch, nada, zero.

If it were real, it'd be a national security secret of the sort people go to jail forever for revealing, not a patent.

<comment><USER23> I did some searching, and apparently lying about this is punishable with up to 5 years imprisonment: [https://www.uspto.gov/web/offices/pac/mpep/mpep-9015-appx-l....](https://www.uspto.gov/web/offices/pac/mpep/mpep-9015-appx-l.html#d0e307411)

<comment><USER24> [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Qualified_immunity](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Qualified_immunity)

Depressingly powerful. For example:

[https://reason.com/2019/09/20/court-rules-fresno-police- accu...](https://reason.com/2019/09/20/court-rules-fresno-police-accused-of- stealing-over-225000-protected-by-qualified-immunity-and-cant-be-sued-fourth- amendment/)

> The U.S. Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals has ruled that Fresno police > officers accused of stealing more than $225,000 while executing a search > warrant are protected by qualified immunity and thus cannot be sued over the > incident.

<comment><USER23> Hmm, that's important to consider! So I'll continue fence-sitting on this one. Maybe it's real, maybe it's not.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER25> "If it can be achieved, nuclear fusion would be a massive improvement over fission in that it produces much lower levels of radioactive waste and greenhouse gases, does not require enriched nuclear material that could be used to produce weapons"

thermonuclear weapons are fusion yield devices using fission to ignite a fusion fuel. a fusion bomb, or other such weapon is probably closer to production than fusion derived power generation generation.

<comment><USER26> I think it would be better to phrase this as:

Thermonuclear weapons are fusion yield devices using the energetic fission products to confine and compress a fusion fuel so that it can burn.

As soon as the radiation pressure drops below a critical threshold, the fusion reaction ceases immediately. The fusion reaction cannot sustain on its own without this incredible amount of force being applied to it continuously.

This is why we still have not produced commercially-viable pure-fusion power plants. It may still be possible, but if you consider the forces and energies required to create a single-shot weapon that burns its fuel only for fractions of a second, you might start to appreciate the challenge that engineers and scientists have undertaken with the objective of continuously providing fusion power.

<comment><USER25> have a look at nuclear isomers, the big direction is to create a device that may arbitrarily, [as in switchon/switch off] stimulate fusion and emit the yield in a unidirectional manner, multiple times before refueling. basically a high energy neutron flux beam weapon.

<comment><USER26> I do believe pulsed fusion energy is a much better approach to start with. We already have the ability to generate small amounts of pure fusion energy in highly-energetic laboratory experiments. If you could place a pulsed reactor in some thermal mediator (e.g. water), you could have a device that produces apparently continuous thermal energy.

A single 1 megaton thermonuclear weapon can produce the equivalent of around 1100 gigawatts of power for an entire hour. If we could find a way to capture even a fraction of this, you could power a LOT of things for quite some time. Now, obviously I am not advocating actually doing this with fission devices, but having some sort of "extremely temporary" reactor design could be viable considering the amount of energy each unit could produce, even if each only works 1 time.

<comment><USER25> this is where nuclear isomers are hoped to fit in. the big hope is that fusion can be switched on or off, like a flashlight.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER27> Do any of these patents explain how they're converting the fusion-generated heat into giga/terawatts of electricity?

Am I expected to believe there's a turbine propelled by steam conventionally generating that much electricity powering the alleged tic-tac craft?

Or do the patents describe a purely direct thermoelectric conversion method capable of sustaining such power levels in such a small space at fusion temperatures?

From where I'm sitting, at this moment, this all seems like an elaborate disinformation campaign to both prop up morale of the domestic masses believing the USA has magic China doesn't, while trying to instill FUD in the enemy.

<comment><USER28> >From where I'm sitting, at this moment, this all seems like an elaborate disinformation campaign to both prop up morale of the domestic masses believing the USA has magic China doesn't, while trying to instill FUD in the enemy.

Maybe... I could actually _buy_ that the military has some kind of top secret fusion technology, but this being a disinformation campaign doesn't make a lot of sense. This story doesn't really prop up domestic morale - the masses for the most part don't know about this, nor do they care (that notwithstanding the fraction who already believe the Area 51/UFO stuff anyway.) And I would expect China or any modern country to be capable of differentiating between a description of legitimate science and magical woo-woo nonsense.

My personal take on this is that there is legitimate, purely terrestrial but advanced technology at work here, but still nothing involving anti-gravity or anything ridiculous like that. I'm assuming people's pop-cultural bias towards UFO conspiracy theories are causing people to jump the gun.

But even then it's weird. It's weird any way you look at it, unless the whole thing is a hoax from top to bottom.

</comment></comment><comment><USER29> Wait, what, there are people with "fusion startups"? I was under the impression that nuclear fusion is not yet feasible.

<comment><USER30> Based on my limited understanding, fusion is possible. Just not fusion that generates more energy than it consumes.

<comment><USER29> A small caveat. /s

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER23> If _is_ real, I'm incredibly excited!

<comment><USER31> You just triggered some intense deja vu. I had the exact same response after Pons and Fleischman's press conference back in the day.

The lure of the magic-bullet/deus-ex-Machina, (that one device that will solve pretty much everything!), can be pretty intoxicating.

<comment><USER23> If it _isn 't_ real, I hope that the people that filed this spend some time in jail...

<comment><USER32> I don't know about the legalities of this, so my question is, why?

<comment><USER23> I'm a taxpayer.

If they've produced technology that can revolutionize our lives, they have a responsibility to tell us about it. (We paid for it, after all!)

And if they're hoaxing, they have no right to spend taxpayer money on hoaxes, or to file false patents. (And there's no active war going on that would give them the legal right to make stuff up to confuse an enemy state.)

<comment><USER32> Can a psyops campaign not be used as a deterrent? Does it require an active war to be legal?

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER33> Have a look on line at the Nazi Bell, which supposedly was the unsuccessful product of reverse engineering of alien technology. The operation principal is the same. The US may have obtained the bell at the close of WWII. This device is so advanced that it seems impossible to have come from current human technology.

<comment><USER34> Have a bit more critical look at the Nazi Bell. It is probably a hoax.

</comment></comment><comment><USER35> Immediately thinking of the recently declassified 'UFO' videos... prototypes?

</comment><comment><USER36> Patents are national. Is this also patented in the EU, or could EU use this supposed technology completely free?

(Of course, in all likelyhood this is all a lot of nothing.)</comment>


Great firewall of China is down. - <AUTHOR> http://www.chinaz.com/Webmaster/report/122Q51U42010.html

<comment><USER2> The title of this link is too sensational.

Before anybody up-voting this, please read the article, which says it only happens to one ISP (although the biggest one) in a limited regions and cities.

</comment><comment><USER3> You can talk to one of them here: [http://www.reddit.com/r/WTF/comments/esjzd/the_chinese_gfw_j...](http://www.reddit.com/r/WTF/comments/esjzd/the_chinese_gfw_just_collapsed_hi_there_people/)</comment>