An Innovator Leaving Japan - <AUTHOR> http://synaptify.com/?p=613728

<comment><USER2> I think the author does a good job of picking out what has caused Japan to fall behind - not moving away from manufacturing, but didn't pick out the why so much. Yes the DJP is stupidly risk averse despite coming into office on the message of change, yes Japan has been slow to take advantage of the value of their culture, but there are deeper reasons.

One that sticks out to me is the use of IT and software in daily life. When I was a student here in Japan back in 2004, I had to enrol by filling out a form using pen to paper. My Australian university was already doing everything online without a hitch. If I want to organise a monthly cash transfer to pay for a gym membership, I have to fill out a paper form and stamp it to allow for the gym to take money out of my account. Again, back in Australia I can set up a monthly payment using Internet banking, or just get them to charge my credit card. In other words, in the field of applying IT to everyday life, I believe Japan is lagging other countries badly - and I feel that the main reason for this is that PCs did not spread as widely here as they did in Australia. I would guess that most people here primarily access the Internet using their mobile phone.

<comment><USER3> I agree the bureaucracy overhead is significant. They love paperwork here.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> After two years in Japan, focusing almost exclusively on Japanese companies as a target market, and now also preparing to move back to the US (for different reasons), this report rings true.

Japan, by and large, does not reward innovation.

This quote sums it up:

 _"So what do you need to create an environment where innovation and thus knowledge/ creativity thrives? What do you need for a thriving post-industrial economy?

You need a culture that can deal with change. You need companies that are small and agile. You need incentive structures that reward ideas over performance. You need a government that is not stuck in bureaucracy. You need a thriving VC investment climate with Angel Investors that are willing to take risk. You need entrepreneurs that take risk. You need an education system that rocks. And guess what, Japan has none of that [12, 13]."_

I'll take exception to the one statement that Japan is not able to deal with change. If you look at the history of Japan, they are probably the only country in the history of the world to go from a medieval society closed off to foreign influence to a global power in less than 75 years. The reasons for this ability are complicated and may only work at the macro level, but it does demonstrate an enormous capability for change.

The article is right, however. If the other factors are not there, the outlook for Japan's entrepreneurial culture is not great in the coming decade.

<comment><USER5> Japan is often described as an earthquake society by historians. Change doesn't happen often, but when it does, it's big.

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> Looking at the article, I find myself agreeing with a lot of the points presented.

There is defiantly a problem of stagnation in the workplace in Japan, especially in dynamic tech-based companies.

Generally the larger the company, the more lumbering they become.

I feel that this is mostly due to the fairly rigid seniority system that's instilled in Japanese culture (especially work culture). Like Patio11 often says, it's almost like it's anathema to think that someone under the age of 30 can have a good idea.

Most people in positions of rank in a company get there not because they're particularly gifted, but because they've been at the company the longest. This is not always the case -- but it is a rare sight to see a manager who's younger than their subordinates.

And generally, this has worked well for Japan. The young people come in, work their butts off to bring new ideas and energy into the company, present ideas to the older managers who then sends the good ones up top.

The managers don't work as hard as the younguns because they got finished with that 10-20 years ago. The younguns work hard because they know that in 10 years they will be able to relax more when they become a manager.

The problem is that with the current problems with social security, companies not paying retirement funds like they used to, and general suckiness of the economy, many young people no longer have confidence that their hard work will be rewarded with job security or a decent retirement.

Thus, many young people are starting to balk at the traditional Japanese working system, and while it is a slow movement, there are now a lot of more agile tech companies started by the younger generation. (One such great company is Messa Liberty in Osaka, which recently interviewed Patio11 in English and Japanese <http://www.messaliberty.com/> )

I think that there is a chance that Japan will be able to spring back from this recession, and to be able to change their working style to more mesh with a technology-driven world.

If one thing I have learned in my many years here, it is that the Japanese are, if nothing else, incredibly adaptable.

Notes: For those who are wondering about the social security from companies, etc -- my father in law who worked at NTT (the phone company) for 40 years, and became a mid-level manager now receives more every month in retirement pay than I do working at my current job. However, that's a thing of times past, and my company (like many) have little to no retirement packages besides public social-security. And who knows where that'll be in 30 years when I need it.

</comment><comment><USER3> I live in japan now since a couple of years and can agree with the article to some extent but get the impression that this is not the full picture and there is a lot missing.

Recently, I also attended a presentation from a "The Economist Intelligence Unit [2]" which painted a similar picture. In a nutshell, japan has now a strong position but will decline economically if the current government doesn't take serious steps to reduce and avoid, e.g. bureaucracy overhead.

Some interesting points from my notes:

\- The case of Apple vs. Sony is for instance only a software issue not hardware. Sony doesn't encourage collaboration.

\- Apple iPod production is a very interesting case anyway in respect that it is partly made in japan [1]

\- Growth in regional differences (e.g. fukoaka prefecture has invested heavily in education and infrastructure. Has now strong ties with Busan area in Korea.) will be strong drivers for future markets.

\- Too many "big basket" companies in japan

\- Very competitive market (e.g. accepted ROI in japan is 4-5% while internationally it is more like 10-15%)

\- Privatisation in japan started in 2005 (!). It takes very long to get products into the market

\- Successful companies managed to roll their own efficient distribution chain (e.g. Uniqlo, Ikea, 7eleven)

\- It takes at least twice as long to get the ROI than anywhere else. International companies are too short sighted

\- Japanese consumers are very demanding and less forgiving. To get it right here is very difficult.

Startup wise there is also a growing environment, especially in seed funding for new ideas University wise. I attended another presentation from UTEC [3] where the growth rates they had were very impressive.

Current outlook for japan is not good, but that is mostly because they are too immobile and have too much bureaucracy. We are going back to 1840 standards where the global economy is dominated by China and India anyway.

Reference:

[1] [http://www.nytimes.com/2007/06/28/business/worldbusiness/28s...](http://www.nytimes.com/2007/06/28/business/worldbusiness/28scene.html)

[2] <http://www.eiu.com/>

[3] <http://www.ut-ec.co.jp>

EDIT: Formatting

</comment><comment><USER7> _To explain, for example, why Toyota has trouble with software in their cars and why an iPhone will outcompete any advanced Japanese phone._

What about making japanese apps? There's got to be some decent potential there for the service economy.

<comment><USER8> There is a huge, huge market in Japan for mobile devices and apps to run on them. We've got a number of App Store millionaires in my town.

So many and so prominent, in fact, that it took me 5 minutes to convince the tax office that I was not doing iPhone development. "No ma'am, I write web applications." "So iPhone stuff, right?" "No ma'am, web applications. They run over the Internet." "Like iPhone stuff, right?" "Similar in some ways, ma'am, except almost all of my customers use PCs rather than their cell phones to access the software." "... and people pay money for that?" "Yes ma'am, it is not uncommon to pay money for software (+), even before the App Store existed." "Wow... foreign countries are so strange."

(+) Japan does not have as prominent of a B2C software market as the US does, aside from video games and the aforementioned mobile applications. The largest electronics store in this town stocks less than 20 PC titles -- i.e. about a fourth as many as a WalMart, not counting their bargain bin.

<comment><USER9> Some Japanese iPhone apps do pretty well. But they still don't have international marketing skills. Most of the successful products are on the gaming markets, where there's no language and cultural barrier.

Relying too much on gaming and anime isn't sustainable. Japanese have good technical skills, but they don't survive for the next 50 years without strong international, multi-lingual marketing and sales skills.

The economy of lucky Japanese App Store millionaires will end soon. If the world doesn't come to Japan, Japan goes to the world.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> google's pdf viewer: [http://docs.google.com/gview?url=http://synaptify.com/wp- con...](http://docs.google.com/gview?url=http://synaptify.com/wp- content/uploads/2010/05/An-Innovator-leaving-Japan.pdf)

</comment><comment><USER11> The pdf link doesnt work for me, anyone else have a copy?

<comment><USER12> Maybe there was an edit before but I had no problem downloading the linked pdf. [1]

Pretty interesting read, I have no real knowledge of Japan and I have to say I would've fallen into the category of people that assumed everything was miles ahead in Japan.

I've noticed a few people from HN living in Japan, I'd love to hear what their thoughts are on this.

[1] [http://synaptify.com/wp-content/uploads/2010/05/An- Innovator...](http://synaptify.com/wp-content/uploads/2010/05/An-Innovator- leaving-Japan.pdf)

<comment><USER13> I'm in Tokyo, and I have lived here for 12 years. The paper is quite interesting, and I have no major disagreement, but of course it is not the full picture. As I see it, the main problem Japan has is that the education and work culture is good at iterative learning and refinement, but bad at picking up and acting upon ideas that are far from how things are currently done. This is a consensus society, and things have to be broadly agreed upon in the group/company to have a chance. If there is a risk of disagreement the idea will either be buried in endless meetings, or simply dropped without discussion. This makes decision making slow and unimaginative.

Software is a good example. Most software and home pages in Japan look like they have been designed by committee, where every person in the room has a pet feature that has to be on the front page. This leads to software that is cluttered and hard to use. There is also little innovation; most new software seems based on designs already in use.

However, there is one aspect where Japan shines. People care about visuals, and graphics and icons are often pleasing. This at least is an advantage in game software, where Japan is not lagging as badly as in business software.

<comment><USER14> The game visuals in Japanese games are very pretty and stylistic. However this is just the surface and the game mechanics itself is poor. I find the Japanese games are typically a grind, collect them all, or single path perfection.

The game software reflects back on the real world. Lots of style but no substance. Example, the typical Japanese offices have very shiny reception area but where the real work gets done is a cramped, uncomfortable place.

Indeed Japan feels like it's run by a committee. I worry that Japan is like General Motors. Some very interesting products, some very passionate capable people, but the culture doesn't allow innovative things to happen.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> It would be nice to see Patrick / patio11's thoughts on this...

<comment><USER8> I agree with parts and disagree with parts, as I'm sure many of the dozens of other HNers from Japan do.</comment></comment>


Ask HN: Which desk lamp do you use? - <AUTHOR>

My old desk lamp broke and I am on the market for the new one. I am thinking about buying an LED lamp with adjustable colour temperature and brightness level. Questions for the HNers burning midnight oil: what desk lamp (or lightning in general) do you use and recommend? <comment><USER2> I use the Philips Hue lighting system and as a migraine sufferer this has let me work longer.

I found when natural light mixed with artificial light, I would get headaches sooner. I first tried swapping to fluorescent bulbs with a cooler white tone, but even that wasn't enough.

I prefer cooler tones (blues, cool white, purples, greens) over warm colours (yellow, orange, red, warm white) and I know that is backward from most peoples preferences.

What I like about Hue is that I can always adjust my colour temperature, brightness, and even set them on schedules. I have an all-green scene come on at 11pm so if I'm still working that's my cue to stop. I turn my lights on in the morning before I wake up to help rouse me. I have my lights automatically shut off (if not already) at 9am and 12am so if I leave in the morning or fall asleep with my lights on, they will shut off automatically.

I have slowly been expanding my collection and I'm up to 6 bulbs now and it's been such a relief I'm planning to buy maybe 3-5 more over the next year to add to my collection.

I can't make use of that flux app because I'm a designer and need colour control, but if your job doesn't require accurate colours that can also make a WORLD of difference to eye strain and quality of sleep once the sun has gone down.

Best of luck on your path to clear and illuminated work and hobbies, and let us here in the thread know what you decide to try out! I'm always looking for better ways to help mitigate headaches :)

</comment><comment><USER3> A £3 one, seriously it a *%!#ing lamp whats there to discus just go out find one you like and buy it!

</comment><comment><USER4> Maybe it's silly, but I'm pretty happy with the $5 USB lamp I got from Amazon [1]. When I'm at my desk, it's plugged into the USB hub on my overhead shelf, illuminating my whole desk; when I'm at my workbench I plug it into a USB port on my 3D printer. I've debated getting a "real" desk lamp but I get so much use out of that stupid little thing that I can't justify it.

[1] [http://www.amazon.com/Super-Bright-Laptop-Light- Black/dp/B00...](http://www.amazon.com/Super-Bright-Laptop-Light- Black/dp/B005DEP2AG/ref=sr_1_2?ie=UTF8&qid=1399288999&sr=8-2&keywords=usb+light+mouse+base)

</comment><comment><USER5> Hue is great for lighting [http://meethue.com/en-us/](http://meethue.com/en- us/)

</comment><comment><USER6> I've been pretty happy with an IKEA lamp I got for $30. Has that classic look and easily adjustable.

[http://www.ikea.com/us/en/catalog/products/10255524/](http://www.ikea.com/us/en/catalog/products/10255524/)

<comment><USER7> I have this lamp too, and I love it! However my bulb went out a year ago and I haven't been able to find a bulb!

<comment><USER6> They switched to LED bulbs instead of the CFL's. You probably want this one. The smaller screw type: [http://www.ikea.com/us/en/catalog/products/20254091/](http://www.ikea.com/us/en/catalog/products/20254091/)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> Any cheap lamp with a suitable warm bulb. Right now, I'm using some $9 lamp from IKEA, along with a $6 stainless steel clamp-on light -- both using some sort of GE-branded CFL bulbs with a warm color temperature.

The Philips Hue system seems neat, but not $100-$200 neat.

</comment><comment><USER9> I use a humanscale horizon led lamp at work and a diffrient lamp at home. I prefer the horizon led but it's less adjustable. Check out Ylighting for some high quality options.</comment>


Traffic, Conversion Rate or Price? Find Your Focus With Projections - <AUTHOR> http://www.happybootstrapper.com/2013/traffic-conversion-rate-or-price-find-your-focus-with-projections/

<comment><USER2> I just used this spreadsheet to project the ad revenue from my content websites. I learned that generating more traffic is much more valuable to me than increasing ad clicks or even the price I charge for my ads. Nice tool!

</comment><comment><USER3> These spreadsheets are nice little tools. An increase in traffic vs. an increase in conversion rate vs. an increase in product price are not directly comparable, but when you convert them to revenue they sure are. Handy.

</comment><comment><USER4> Wow, this is awesome! Is it safe to use something like this for service related conversions vs info products?

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks! I have another sheet for SaaS. With SaaS, you'll want to compare MRR and/or Customer Life-Time Revenue instead of single price-point sales revenue.

But nothing is stopping you from using this for services too.

<comment><USER4> Until you release the SaaS version ;) I at least have a place to start making more intelligent decisions from. Greater than the wild guesses I was using before. :D</comment></comment></comment>


Fun Things in Elixir - <AUTHOR> https://dev.to/ryanflach/fun-things-in-elixir <comment><USER2> The bit about where you can add tests directly in documentation was new to me. I'll have to use that!</comment>


Please add this 1 line, make HN mobile friendly - <AUTHOR> <meta name="viewport" content="width=device-width, initial-scale=1"> <comment><USER2> I tried this for a few hours some time ago. It made the site less usable on most Android and iPhone devices with normal smartphone screen sizes. Text in a number of places ran together and comments shrunk to one character per line a few replies down.

So it's not that simple. Real changes to make the site truly responsive are larger and I can't promise they'll come soon.

<comment><USER3> It's already pretty bad, at least on Android - I have a hard time editing my text when there is a typo somewhere due to the bottom of the text field expanding and including the "reply" button, so I can't select the last line with my fingers.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> I saw a comment on HN sometime back and can't seem to find it now, but thought it had some merit. The gist of it was that enabling posts from mobile might lead to lower content quality as typing on phones is tougher and we tend to focus on a quick reply rather than a thought out discussion.

I personally use [http://hn.premii.com](http://hn.premii.com) on mobile & it has a good reading experience.

<comment><USER5> It's an orthogonal issue. I would like the official site to be vaguely readable on mobile. Whether they then choose to discourage posting from mobile is a different question.

(My personal view is that 'mobile' is very difficult to define. If I connect a bluetooth keyboard to a Galaxy Note then why the hell should I be discouraged from posting on the grounds I might post lower quality comments?)

<comment><USER6> Even on my 7-inch tablet, mobile sites are mostly just a pain in the neck. I'll almost always prefer to be served the desktop version served to me (exceptions for sites that expect me to hover my mouse over their content.) In my view mobile sites should mostly be "small display" sites, and they should be served to desktop people with small browser windows, too.

Worst of all are sites that don't provide a "Full site" link, and don't cooperate with my browser's "View desktop site" option. And don't get me started on "Try our mobile app"...

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> No, you cannot just add that to the top of a web page and have it magically transform into a mobile-friendly page. It may look fine on your particular device, but it will probably be completely hosed on everything else.

The viewport meta tag is essentially a switch which tells mobile browsers to _not_ provide a default page width of 980px, auto zoomed out, but to instead use the device's CSS pixel dimensions, with a zoom you define with initial- scale. Note that this is not _physical_ pixel dimensions. A mobile device's CSS pixels are the physical resolution divided by the device's devicePixelRatio, which currently can range from 1 to 3.

Examples:

On an iPhone 5s, which has a physical resolution of 1136x640 and a devicePixelRatio of 2, a viewport with "width=device-width" will create a page that only has 320px in portrait and 553px in landscape in CSS pixels.

On a HTC One, which has a physical resolution of 1920x1080 (1080p) and a devicePixelRatio of 3, the page will have only 360px in portrait and 640px in landscape.

On tablets, CSS pixel portrait width can range from 600px on a Nexus 7 and Kindle Fire HDX, to 768px on an iPad mini non-retina, to 800px on a Nexus 10 or Kindle Fire HDX 8.9".

Using a viewport meta tag _needs_ to be done in combination with CSS media queries (or a very flexible design that doesn't use px for sizes) to ensure that your web page design responds to the various screen sizes without breaking.

Hope that helps clarify things a bit - trust me, it's a common misunderstanding.

</comment><comment><USER8> I am not sure what this is meant to address. The worst thing for mobile users is the teeny tiny voting buttons. I believe that votes are important and are not used enough and part of the reason is fear of accidental downvote.

The other thing that could be fixed is when someone puts a very long unbroken string in a comment without putting it in a code block. This makes the page very wide, and creates an unpleasant experience.

<comment><USER9> I have 157 karma and I can't downvote anything. How exactly do you downvote on HN? I've never seen anyone explain that (and I can't really see it in the settings either).

<comment><USER10> I believe you have to have about 500 karma to downvote comments.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> HN needs more than that - enabling it:

[http://imgur.com/9fetcE9](http://imgur.com/9fetcE9)

Throw the template and CSS, and some sample data on GitHub. HN'd have a working version in 24 hours.

<comment><USER12> What's that emulation plugin you're using there?

<comment><USER13> Chrome's stock developer tools.

<comment><USER12> You're right, I never saw it's in there. Sometimes you use a piece of software a lot and yet it's still possible overlook obvious features, I guess :)

<comment><USER14> Especially since said software auto-updates and adds these features. :) I think the emulation feature is very recent.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> I have no idea as to the status of userscripts on mobile devices but at least on the desktop they are my go-to for personalizing my internet:

        ("news.ycombinator.com" === window.location.hostname) &&
        (function () {
            var meta = document.createElement("META");
            meta.name = "viewport";
            meta.content = "width=device-width, initial-scale=1";

            if (document.readyState === "complete") {
                document.head.appendChild(meta);
            } else {
                document.addEventListener("DOMContentLoaded", function () {
                    document.head.appendChild(meta);
                });
            }
        })();

</comment><comment><USER16> Agreed. Seems like a easy win for everyone. Are there any downsides?

</comment><comment><USER17> I use [http://ihackernews.com/](http://ihackernews.com/) all the time on mobile and it's working perfectly. Might want to give it a try!

<comment><USER18> Oh, I may start using this on my desktop if only for the collapsing comments!

</comment></comment><comment><USER19> I think we are all looking at the amount of work that would need to go into this, and not looking at the simple fact that maybe PG doesn't want to manage a mobile site.

If you don't understand what I mean by "manage", then consider yourself lucky as you have not worked in the digital agency world.

<comment><USER11> HN's relatively simple, eg it's already a single column layout. Relative widths would do 90% of the job.

<comment><USER19> I would hazard a guess that it's not how simple the site is or the changes would be, it's a matter of managing it.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> On other note -

Is there an extension/app for HN that categorizes the posts into topics (based on some text analysis) & enables the user to filter them out from the feed? Feature akin to what lobste.rs provides.

This will basically enable me to filter out fluff stories that manage to rise up.

</comment><comment><USER20> I think I saw them experiment with something like this briefly.

</comment><comment><USER21> [http://hckrnews.com](http://hckrnews.com) is rather mobile-friendly (and looks georgeous as well).

<comment><USER22> Gorgeous is a little bit of an exaggeration. It looks nice, but I think it fails to reach "gorgeous."

</comment></comment><comment><USER23> Or you know, make the front-end layer open source s owe can send in PR

<comment><USER24> It is. [http://arclanguage.org/install](http://arclanguage.org/install)

<comment><USER11> There's no revision control so you can't send a PR, and news.css isn't included in the archive.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER25> why not just use an app?

<comment><USER26> One of those crammed to the brim with "in-app analytics" and other goodness? Certainly, I'll take two of those.

<comment><USER27> Or use mine, zero analytics code at all, and stays out of your way when you're reading/contributing to HN:

[https://itunes.apple.com/us/app/news- yc/id592893508?mt=8](https://itunes.apple.com/us/app/news-yc/id592893508?mt=8)

Oh yeah, and it's entirely open sourced, including my libHN library for interacting with HN in your own app you make:

[https://github.com/bennyguitar/News-YC--- iPhone](https://github.com/bennyguitar/News-YC---iPhone)

[https://github.com/bennyguitar/libHN](https://github.com/bennyguitar/libHN)

<comment><USER28> Thanks for sharing. Just downloaded and am using it right now. Just the fact that I can comment once again is a huge improvement over my last daily. I was really beginning to miss my Android and its version of HN.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER29> What will it do?

A pair of before-and-after screenshots would be helpful.

</comment><comment><USER30> or just use [http://ihackernews.com](http://ihackernews.com)

</comment><comment><USER31> or use RSS and format it however you like?</comment>


$7.5k Google services mix-up (2018) - <AUTHOR> https://sites.google.com/site/testsitehacking/-7-5k-Google-services-mix-up <comment><USER2> I think any xoogler will agree [https://sites.google.com/site/testsitehacking/-36k-google- ap...](https://sites.google.com/site/testsitehacking/-36k-google-app-engine- rce) is far more impressive.

It seems fairly safe to assume someone has already snapped this guy up. I can't recall the last time I felt so impressed reading some security writeup

<comment><USER3> This one was good too, especially because the screenshot definitely gave many some heart palpitations.

[https://opnsec.com/2018/07/into-the-borg-ssrf-inside- google-...](https://opnsec.com/2018/07/into-the-borg-ssrf-inside-google- production-network/)

<comment><USER4> That's a _lot_ of internal information. I'm not sure I'd be comfortable publishing that, even if the company was friendly to security researchers.

<comment><USER3> I think if I were an outsider I would've probably gotten pretty shy just after discovering an internal SSRF at a big corp. However, that also probably explains why I am not a security researcher.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> I think the link should be here: [https://www.ezequiel.tech/2019/01/75k-google-cloud- platform-...](https://www.ezequiel.tech/2019/01/75k-google-cloud-platform- organization.html)

And the date should be (2019)

<comment><USER6> It was first posted at this URL in 2018-02:

[https://web.archive.org/web/20180215070105/https://sites.goo...](https://web.archive.org/web/20180215070105/https://sites.google.com/site/testsitehacking/-7-5k-Google- services-mix-up)

</comment></comment><comment><USER7> I wonder if they detected the exploit an hour after he did because of internal alarms he was setting off.

</comment><comment><USER4> Previous RCE by the author, which earned them a $36k bug bounty: [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17118326](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17118326)

</comment><comment><USER8> My guess is the "independant discovery 1 hour earlier" wasn't truly independent.

I'd guess that by messing with this stuff, it probably broke some internal systems that ended up firing alerts to engineers internally. Those engineers then 'discovered' the bug, and started fixing it.

Most systems at scale are designed to reject bad input, log it, but nobody takes any action.

A few systems have to process _every_ record in order. For example, the billing system might go through every entry in a database table and add them to bills. If just _one_ entry is malformed in some way and can't be added to the bill, it is retried. If there isn't success after a few retries, the whole process fails, and an engineer is paged to sort the problem.

I saw this kind of thing multiple times... You think you have fully sanitized every input, but someone always finds a way to add a 30 gigabyte surname to the addressbook, choose a profile image with negative dimensions, have a million devices share the same mac address, etc.

</comment><comment><USER9> Note the timeline says this occurred in early 2018. The $7.5k is the reward, the bug itself was with Google Cloud API management and could theoretically allow users to enable billable APIs without enabling billing, or to access private APIs or to disable APIs for third-party projects.

</comment><comment><USER10> > About me > I am 18-year-old student at the University of the Republic

So impressive! This is great work.

</comment><comment><USER11> Damn... One hour. It's like the patenting of the telephone all over again.</comment>


1,000 Years of Congruent Numbers - <AUTHOR> https://blogs.scientificamerican.com/roots-of-unity/1000-years-of-congruent-numbers/ <comment> dan-robertson I found this article a little annoying to follow. Congruence is already a bit of an overloaded term in mathematics and this didn't help. I've worked out some of the maths here.

An integer n is _congruent_ if it is the area of a right triangle with rational sides, ie n = ab/2 where a^2 + b^2 = c^2 and a,b,c are positive rational numbers.

The article then talks about another meaning of congruum: an arithmetic progression of square natural numbers, x^2,y^2,z^2. In such a case y is the hypotenuse of a right rational triangle. This is easy to prove:

      x^2 = y^2 - <USER2>
      z^2 = y^2 + k
      =>
      ((x+z)/2)^2 + ((z-x)/2)^2
      = x^2/2 + z^2/2
      = y^2

And the area of this triangle is:

      (x+z)(x-z)/8 = (x^2-z^2)/8 = k/4

\- - - -

There's a lot of order and theorems about congruent numbers but it is hard (or rather it is unknown whether it is hard) to determine if a number is congruent. I don't have much of a reason for there being lots of order other than that there is a lot of order in the integers and rational numbers. I think a reason for this problem being hard is the important word rational above. I think if it said integer then the problem is only how to do better than the trivial linear time solution of trying all sufficiently small right angle triangles. Rationals mean that one needs to try larger (integer) triangles as well as smaller ones as one can always divide by a rational squared.</comment>


Tesla's Autopilot: Too Much Autonomy Too Soon - <AUTHOR> http://www.consumerreports.org/tesla/tesla-autopilot-too-much-autonomy-too-soon/ <comment><USER2> So glad someone is telling Tesla like it is, that name has got to go. It can come back later but it is the one problem I have had with their systems since day one. The name has too strong of inherent abilities to be used with such a primitive system. Yes, primitive, this system cannot drive a car in other than ideal conditions which is pretty much the opposite of what most safety oriented technologies do which is assist people in the worst conditions</comment>


Origin of Quake3's Fast InvSqrt() - <AUTHOR> http://beyond3d.com/content/articles/8 <comment><USER2> The thrilling follow-up, in which the true author of the algorithm is revealed:

<http://beyond3d.com/content/articles/15>

<comment><USER3> Also interesting that the real author of the fast InvSqrt ( Greg Walsh) was working at Ardent when he invented it, which is the same company that Steve Blank has been blogging about recently.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> Personally, I think the origin of Quake3's fast InvSqrt is from a bubble in the space-time continuum resulting from posting articles about Quake3's fast InvSqrt routine to social news sites every week. Yeah, it's kind of self- referential, but that's exactly how these bubbles are formed...

</comment><comment><USER5> If, like me, you were left hoping for some explanation of the actual magic behind this code, try this: <http://www.lomont.org/Math/Papers/2003/InvSqrt.pdf>

</comment><comment><USER6> What I found confusing was the name. "InvSqrt" reads to me as "Inverse square root"... Well, the inverse function of the square root function is just to square the number!

Apparently, what they meant was "1/sqrt", so ideally the function should have been called "ReciprocalSqrt" or something like that.

In fact, this is so confusing that I would argue that's actually just an incorrect name for what the function does.

It's true that mathematicians write "sin^-1" to mean the "inverse sin" function, for example, but they _never_ mean 1/sin(x) when they do this, and they would never say "inverse sin" to mean "1/sin(x)".

</comment><comment><USER7> I developed this trick independently while working at MetaCreations in the late 1990's. I wrote it up in an article in 2001. I doubt this is where the Quake guys got it, because the magic number is slightly different, but it's the same basic idea.

<http://stereopsis.com/computermath101/>

-Ben

</comment><comment><USER8> I so enjoy the subtleties of xkcd...

</comment><comment><USER9> This post seems to come up a lot in hn: [http://www.google.co.uk/search?q=site%3Anews.ycombinator.com...](http://www.google.co.uk/search?q=site%3Anews.ycombinator.com+InvSqrt)</comment>


Companies stagnate when their leaders stagnate - <AUTHOR> https://leowid.com/flying/ <comment><USER2> Louis Rossmann just had a short video where he briefly mentioned fixing things under your control. (I think he phrased it as) cleanup the little area of the world you can, and let the effects ripple out.

I've also heard similar tones with self-help books on management I've read. "Are your actions inspiring a different behavior than what you're asking for?"

I wonder someone using the phrase "Do as I say not as I do" could best exemplify when this has become a major problem

</comment><comment><USER3> Kinda, but not really.

1\. Companies stagnate when their market isn't growing.

2\. Companies stagnate when competition is increasing in the market.

You can be a shitty leader and still succeed massively despite yourself.

<comment><USER4> I think this depends on the size, structure, and governance of the company.

Maybe the title needs a slightly weaker claim:

Companies CAN stagnate when their leaders stagnate.

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> This brings up a great question. Should business decisions be based on a record of achievement, or a record of ability to change and adapt? If you would like to think about it quantitatively, that is the summation vs the double differential.

<comment><USER6> The first as it implies a positive second derivative.

</comment></comment><comment><USER7> So maybe it's actually okay for CEOs and business leaders to be paid more (even significantly more) than other workers in the company.

</comment><comment><USER8> tl;dr you're the source of the problems in your life.</comment>


GM's dress code is only two words - <AUTHOR> https://work.qz.com/1242801/gms-dress-code-is-only-two-words/ <comment><USER2> "dress appropriately"</comment>


The Obsessively Complete Infocom Catalog - <AUTHOR> https://eblong.com/infocom/ <comment><USER2> People make good points about how digital media is ephemeral (many then go on to assure us that this will lead to the Fall of Civilization).

Then there's delightful efforts like this.

This example gives me faith that the important things will be copied and recopied as necessary, and the ephemeral things that are lost might not be all _that_ lost.

<comment><USER3> > People make good points about how digital media is ephemeral

I wonder what will happen to all of the digital-only movies and tv shows being made today. Netflix, Hulu, Amazon, and others are all making stuff that you can't buy on physical media and so if they decide that something shouldn't be available anymore, then it won't be.

<comment><USER4> > I wonder what will happen to all of the digital-only movies and tv shows > being made today

Why do you feel digital media can't be preserved?

There are DVD renditions of old media. Cassettes were popular at one time only to be supplanted by newer technologies and it will be the same for current media formats.

To cite an example, I used to listen to cassette music while growing up and was hugely fond of them (Walkman, anybody?) That was then supplanted by digital mp3 players, and now streaming over the internet.

If something is worth preserving, newer technology will make sure it is!

That is just my opinion for you.

<comment><USER5> _There are DVD renditions of old media. Cassettes were popular at one time only to be supplanted by newer technologies and it will be the same for current media formats._

There are thousands (at least) of movies that existed on VHS that never made it to DVD, or streaming. They have effectively been lost.

The same is true for audio. Lots of records never made the transition to cassettes. Lots of cassettes never made it to CD. Lots of CD's never made it to digital.

Just this morning I remembered a song I used to like a lot as a teen-ager. I looked for it on Amazon, iTunes, all of the streaming services, and it no longer exists. A general Googling shows there are plenty of re-makes by other artists years later. I managed to find one copy of the vinyl single on fleaBay, so I bought it. But effectively, this song no longer exists for the rest of the world.

These things will happen to digital, too, when we move on to whatever is next.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> There's a great podcast about infocom games which is very funny to listen to even if you don't know/play the games (that's my case)

[http://monsterfeet.com/grue/](http://monsterfeet.com/grue/)

Eaten By A Grue, the Infocom podcast

A podcast about Infocom games, text adventures, and interactive fiction Hosted by Kevin Savetz and Carrington Vanston.

</comment><comment><USER7> oh how wonderful... this led to another site:

[http://simh.trailing-edge.com/software.html](http://simh.trailing- edge.com/software.html)

which had the original vax/vms Dungeon (zork) that I played when young. It actually referenced MEMQ like I remember:

        <DEFINE FEEL-FREE (LOSER)
         <TELL "FEEL FREE, CHOMPER!">
         <MEMQ ......
        The rest is, alas, unintelligible (as were the implementers).

</comment><comment><USER8> It would be great if this was on github - individual sites like this disappear and the history is lost.

</comment><comment><USER9>
        curl https://eblong.com/infocom/ | grep href | grep -v http | cut -d '"' -f2 | awk '{print "curl -O https://eblong.com/infocom/" $0}' | bash -x

<comment><USER10> Will this overwrite files that have the same name but are in different directories?

<comment><USER9> I think it would overwrite, but it seems like all the names were unique

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> It's not obsessively complete until they have Cornerstone - the database software that the whole company was actually _meant_ to be about (weird, but true).

</comment><comment><USER12> > I believe that the historical value of these documents to the IF community > outweighs the rights of the legal owner.

I couldn't agree less.

<comment><USER12> downvotes? laughable. i guess it's also fine if texas steals copyright and can't be touched because "sovereign". it's the same justification here. don't worry about copyright because "history".

thievery plain and simple.</comment></comment>


It's easier and cheaper to use bank wires than Bitcoin - <AUTHOR> https://medium.com/@rogomonz/the-disaster-that-is-bitcoin-97f08f99a73e <comment><USER2> You can't separate the currency from the ecosystem for anything but academic purposes. The ecosystem is a mess. A commonly cited benefit of crypto- currencies is that they'll eliminate friction and fees in the system, and I think this is only because the systems don't exist. People want security, verifiability, and reversibility when dealing with money. There has to exist companies to do this whether they are Citibank or Coinbase, and they're going to charge money.

So you can take the Gov't control out of the equation, but I still have yet to hear a scenario that crypto-currrency itself makes better than fiat - it's always about the cost, complexity, and regulation of the services on top. Eventually, those will reappear because people and business want them.

<comment><USER3> This reminds me of Uber and Ryanair. They scrape out of sight properties and claim lower prices when it's just playing on words. Later when people realize they quite wanted the full thing, the magic disappear. A decade of memory loss disguised as innovation. Not even a new error.

<comment><USER4> I get what you're saying with Ryanair (a sub-standard product sold cheaply), but I don't see the link with Uber. It's cheaper than taxis, and is a much much much better product. I consider Uber/Lyft "the full thing" these days, and taxis are archaic. Unclear if Uber's pricing is long-term sustainable, but even at higher prices I'd choose it every time over a taxi.

<comment><USER3> Uber is selling unorganized, uninsured, unchecked drivers. I believe no legal taxi company can do that since they're liable would anything happen to you. If Uber had to form, insure, optimize, thus manage, they'd require additional workforce, time, costs, and wouldn't give it to you for free.

The customer interface is (was? I don't know if taxi companies competes on the app side) way above and that's the value here. Better information and information model, almost no idle time.

<comment><USER5> In Montreal there has recently been a giant upheaval of the taxi system as a result of Uber. The taxi industry here was incredibly broken and dysfunctional. They were n unchallenged monopoly, with not enough taxis to go around as the the population began growing again.

Uber came in and was very clearly illegal here, but they offered significantly better service and had more drivers available. A couple years on after fighting the government for a long time, Uber finally came to an agreement with the government and new regulation was passed. Rides sharing vehicles will now require nearly all the same regulations as a taxi, but the larger affect is more competition to traditional all taxis.

<comment><USER3> Pretty nice. Thanks, I didn't know the situation there.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> The new title is worse than the first.

Sure, it's easier and cheaper to wire USD to another country than it is to exchange USD for BTC, send BTC, and then exchange BTC to USD. Just like it's cheaper to wire USD to another country than it is to exchange USD for _literally anything_ , send that literally anything, and then exchange that literally anything to USD.

If you insist on using BTC as a transfer mechanism for USD, you're going to incur most of the fees and risk you would if you used GBP, CAD, AUD, Yen, or any other currency as a transfer mechanism for USD. I'm not sure why anyone would expect anything different.

However, if you compare apples to apples, transferring BTC which is denominated in BTC throughout the transaction is much easier and cheaper than transferring USD which started is denominated in USD throughout the transaction.

<comment><USER7> My question is why aren't there transfer companies that just use Bitcoin as an alternative to Swift? Like, you want to send $50 USD to me. You give person A $50, he sends person B $50 worth of Bitcoin, and person B gives me $50 worth of USD.

Why do _you_ even need to know about Bitcoin at all? Why isn't it just a cheap(ish) financial resolution layer?

<comment><USER8> AIUI, it's because the expensive part is not basically updating an internal database when money changes hands (no sending of BTC required), the expensive part is, to take WU as an example, operating half a million brick and mortar locations in 200+ countries.

<comment><USER7> Well what I'm saying is that it doesn't have to be the internal database. It can be a completely decentralised system. I send you $50 and you open an app and just walk up to the first money guy that you see on the street. Why do we need physical banks?

<comment><USER8> What do you mean by a "money guy" on the street?

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> He is missing 55 cents because WB21 appear to be miscalculating the fee. They add 1% to the transfer amount ($5500) to get a total ($5555), and then take 1% from that ($55.55) as their fee.

In other words, their fee is really 1.01%. If the author can be bothered he should explain this to them and ask for his 55 cents back.

<comment><USER10> Superman 3

</comment></comment><comment><USER11> I don't think USD -> Bitcoin -> USD is really the way to go on this. If you are trading in USD, why would you move it into bitcoin and back again? You already had it in USD.

If you need to buy some groceries in the US, you wouldn't trade your USD for CAD (Canada money), then bring CAD to a grocery store that also accepts USD. You would only bring CAD if you already had CAD.

<comment><USER12> The point of the article is really that using bitcoin means using a lot of wildly dysfunctional intermediaries. USD to bitcoin and back again is, almost certainly, the most liquid market there is. It's a scalding indictment of bitcoin when part of the promise of bitcoin was that it would be quick, easy and cheap to perform these kind of transactions

<comment><USER13> to be fair to bitcoin, the primary point of bitcoin is that it's a decentralized ledger not under the control of a government or bank. Ease-of- use was an afterthought.

(but then again, it ended up not being very decentralized, either)

<comment><USER14> > to be fair to bitcoin, the primary point of bitcoin is that it's a > decentralized ledger not under the control of a government or bank.

Which, as we can see, costs a lot of money and doesn't add much value for legal uses.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> Interesting article. But none of the problems described are actually with bitcoin. I see criticisms of CoinBase, WB21, TradeZero, Bitpay. All the problems were due to issues with exchanges & intermediaries and with handling USD. It seems the actual bitcoin part worked fine.

<comment><USER16> Interesting article. But none of the problems described are actually with fiat currency. I see criticisms of the Fed, Banks, Credit Card Companies, Credit Unions. All the problems were due to issues with exchanges and intermediaries and with handling USD. It seems the actual fiat currency part worked fine.

<comment><USER17> > It seems the actual fiat currency part worked fine.

I don't think Bitcoin is made _at will_ out of thin air like flat currency routinely is. You can still argue that this is not a problem with flat currency itself, but the problem is, unlike Bitcoin, the laws regarding printing and production of flat currency are not governed by hard-to-break math.

<comment><USER16> Unfortunately for Bitcoin all of the issues 99% people have with fiat currency today have literally nothing to do with how money is created. Yes, it's a difficult problem to solve. No, Bitcoin has not solved it. Piggybacking on the electrical grid to turn "fairness" into "how much electricity you can afford"... how is that fair?

<comment><USER17> I haven't said it's "fair", only that there's a proven algorithm behind it, which I'll trust more than the goodness of human nature alone.

<comment><USER16> I don't trust the goodness of human nature, I trust the legal and financial system that we've collectively built over the past millennia. Which actually does (at least attempts to) enforce some level of fairness. Why should I sign up to have the future of the financial system be controlled by an "algorithm" that is built on a technology (non-quantum crypto) that could be dead in less than 50 years?

<comment><USER18> > I don't trust the goodness of human nature, I trust the legal and financial > system that we've collectively built over the past millennia.

I don't like X, I _love_ X.

Your distrust of human nature has caused you to double-down on trusting human nature. Those elaborate systems to counter human nature are built on, get this, more human nature.

> the future of the financial system be controlled by an "algorithm" that is > built on a technology (non-quantum crypto) that could be dead in less than > 50 years?

Well, it's only one coin, with one algorithm, and people are pricing that into its value. But show me a better system. Not even the USD has a 50-year guarantee. Not only are your dollars likely worth 10% of their current value in fifty years, but there's an even chance that something has wiped their value out completely.

You're just irrationally afraid of crypto risk and irrationally accepting of human risk.

> Why should I sign up

Oh, I see your issue... Don't worry, nobody wants your permission any more than they do with USD. You don't need to, and can't, do anything.

<comment><USER19> Regarding the trustworthiness of social institutions, there are mechanisms for creating more trustworthy systems on top of less trustworthy parts. A simple example is TCP. It is a leaky abstraction at times, yes, but it is more trustworthy in the face of adversity than UDP is.

This is not to say that our current batch of social institutions are even as trustworthy as TCP, just that it is possible to build institutions that are, and that we have a lot more experience as a civilization with debugging social institutions than we do debugging software. Thus, I do not think it is paradoxical to lean on social institutions to reign in raw human nature.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER20> Sounds like someone hasn't tried to buy a pound of meth with a bank wire!

No seriously, though. Who knew that the libertarian cyberpunk dystopian future would be full of people trying to scam a nickel off you every couple of seconds...oh wait, everyone ever. That's the market, man. Don't taunt the market. Don't even look at it funny. It's sentient and can hear your insults.

</comment><comment><AUTHOR> I found this article after the author argued against my post _How to Pay Freelancers in Upwork with Bitcoin, Ethereum, or any other Altcoin_ [1]. The problem with his argument is that it is based on his very tiny vision of the world based on the country where he lives. This is not the "user experience" the rest of the world currently have and that's why cryptocurrencies offer an alternative, even with a lot of limitations.

[1] [https://email@example.com/how-to-pay- freelancer...](https://email@example.com/how-to-pay-freelancers- in-upwork-with-bitcoins-or-any-other-altcoin-8f5b39ca9745)

</comment><comment><USER21> The article illustrates a number of issues with services on bitcoin. One issue with doing things with any cryptocurrency is that it takes awhile for a transaction to occur. I had the preconcieved notion it would be as fast as sending an email but it really takes 30-40 minutes sometimes. Also, it seems the author is treating bitcoin as cash when its really more like you buying gold with cash and then transferring it back into cash to the other account that you want to transfer.

</comment><comment><USER22> $236 is small change compared to how much bitcoin I've personally lost in the various hacks - MtGox and others.

Even so, I still think bitcoin is a brilliant tech and valuable experiment.

It is wrong to think of bitcoin as a direct competitor to fiat.

Just like mp3 / bittorent did not destroy the music / movie industry, bitcoin isn't going to replace fiat currency. Not now and not in it's current form.

But it's going to be around as an alternative to the centralised banking system and as a very interesting social experiment and self-governance technology.

In time, both techs are going to merge - meaning that banks will implement all kinds of 'blockchain technologies', while virtual currencies will implement all kinds of services which the banks currently provide.

<comment><USER19> In order for it to be a legitimate alternative, as opposed to only being of interest to ideologues and academics, shouldn't it actually be competitive with existing technologies in areas like fees, user experience, or speed? If it was better at some and worse at others, it would provide a legitimate alternative with a different set of trade-offs, but for it to lose in every category doesn't really make it seem like it can be an alternative to the centralized banking system in a real and useful way.

<comment><USER23> As Satoshi's whitepaper harps on, and, in my opinion, the biggest difference between fiat and BTC is that BTC doesn't answer to a government. That may have a premium or a discount attached to it. But if that's not an attractive reason for someone to use BTC, then yeah, we need to look at fees like you are talking about.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER24> The things that will determine whether Bitcoin "wins" or not will not be the use cases where Bitcoin is supplementing existing infrastructure, but rather whether or not it can sustain and grow use cases where it replaces it. Even if those are fringe or even sketchy, that is what matters.

"Blockchain" initiatives at banks are just about implementing cryptography as part of solving larger technical challenges they have. Using Bitcoin as "rails" isn't there yet. Using Bitcoin in places where only Bitcoin makes sense will make it a cockroach, and open protocols that survive tend to become important.

</comment><comment><USER25> All this to open a day trading account in the Bahamas with a company so flaky that they can't offer accounts to US persons or even to Bahamas persons. It's one of those "trade offshore with high leverage" companies. "High leverage" means high interest charges, which means the return on investment drops. (Their site is vague about interest charges. Not a good sign.) For day trading, the "house edge" is improved. This racket is more commonly seen in foreign exchange and in "binary options" (which are a total scam).

<comment><USER26> FATCA means plenty of legitimate financial institutions want nothing to do with US persons.

<comment><USER25> That doesn't mean that financial institutions that won't deal with US persons are legitimate. They don't deal with Bahama persons either, even though they are licensed to do so. That might get them in trouble with local regulators.

<comment><USER26> Of course it doesn't mean they're legitimate, but it's also not even a hint that they're dodgy. Likewise a lot of tax havens treat companies that trade locally differently, which is why many refuse to do business with citizens of their domicile. So once again, they may be dodgy but this isn't any indication about that.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER27> While I agree that those fees are extravagant and the underlying process should have been much easier, it probably would have been prudent to investigate the process first, before starting it. I can't imagine being unaware of fees associated with using Coinbase before perusing their services.

<comment><USER28> His overall loss, including the drop in BTC price, is 4%. I wouldn't call that extravagant.

<comment><USER27> Specifically in the context of the usage (that is, transferring USD), the fees were about 6 times what they would have been if he were to use a bank account. In the big picture I do agree with you, though. 1% fees on individual services are not a lot, even when they stack across different services.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER29> It's falling apart even more than anyone cares to admit:

* Blocks are now so full that transactions have stopped flowing and there's no solutions that will address any of this without forcing any of the thousands of systems already built on top of Bitcoin to migrate = slow confirmations = massively higher fees

* Slow confirmations for every day payments = credit card use-case somewhat ruled out

* Double-spending is now a feature of Bitcoin = 0 confirms are now less secure (I understand the logic but its black and white. Instant payments should be possible but obviously zero confirms aren't the way to do it.)

* Horrible black and white thinking for seemingly everything in Bitcoin -- especially security -- whereby nobody can imagine a fail-safe system and the community blames anyone who loses their coins even though the Bitcoin protocol is inherently unsuitable for building fail-safe wallets.

* Terrible user-experience on the protocol, infrastructure, and application levels. So much so that Bitcoin will likely never experience mainstream adoption for this reason.

* Community has become a toxic circle jerk of investors who ignore any of Bitcoin's problems in favor of its myopic benefits in the hope that they can still ride the blockchain to the bank (somewhat literally.)

* A hostile dev community that is so utterly clueless when it comes to real world business that their choices have managed to cripple the entire system.

* Community is an echo chamber of ignorance that blindly believes that all advances outside of Bitcoin are traitorous, incorrect, and not worth knowing about; Outright hostile towards new users with an air of technology snobbery that makes the Linux community seem like a welcoming party at an Apple store.

* The technology is inherently unscalable -- in fact, the only currently good plans for scaling Bitcoin involve not using it (No, I'm really not joking, that's literally what "off-chain" means) But the real problem here is really the fact that the development team have refused to increase the block size even though this was always intended in the design of Bitcoin by Satoashi and even though there are plenty of resources to do it.

* Bitcoin is now more centralized than any dictatorship -- the development team have become controlled largely by a single corporation (meaning a single CEO -- we all know who) and mining pools have become so large that at any time the miners can collude to reverse recent transactions.

Bitcoin has failed at every goal that it set for itself and the biggest issue out of all of this is the fact that the system can be so easily controlled by standard social engineering. If a decentralized system can be circumvented through moronic human and political means then it loses any advantage that it might have had by being decentralized. So philosophically and practically – Bitcoin has failed as both a consensus system and as an idea.

In fact -- probably the biggest advance that Bitcoin made was in the use of smart contracts to enforce agreements which actually already existed prior to Bitcoin. So I think going forward banks will end up using Bitcoin-inspired technology but they will ignore its consensus system completely (which frankly sucks) and instead use what is now being referred to as "smart signatures" (or programmable signatures) as a way of enforcing complex agreements between institutions.

Tl; dr; Bitcoin was an experiment that proved that certain things could be done better but it failed at a lot of things. It turns out that Bitcoin probably won't be the next Internet but it did make for quite an interesting ARPANET ...

<comment><USER18> > The technology is inherently unscalable -- in fact, the only currently good > plans for scaling Bitcoin involve not using it (No, I'm really not joking, > that's literally what "off-chain" means)

You understand that there's more data in the world than is practical for all of us to store... The solution is to pick and choose which pieces need to be globally visible (ie, on-chain) and which do not. When I play poker I don't wire-transfer the result of each hand, that's what the chips are for.

> Blocks are now so full that transactions have stopped flowing

You mean, near-zero fee transactions... Because blocks are being published, and they're full of transactions.

Nobody ever said it was going to be free, it's just been small enough to tolerate the odd free-rider. That phase is coming to an end.

> But the real problem here is really the fact that the development team have > refused to increase the block size even though this was always intended in > the design of Bitcoin by Satoashi and even though there are plenty of > resources to do it.

If transactions were _free_ why wouldn't I backup my photos into the blockchain?

If we expand the blocks now we'll just end up with the same amount of waste and the same whining. If we let the fee rise first, _then_ expand the blocks to balance both fee and network cost, we'll end up with something stable.

Also, Satoshi was wrong about some things. Why are you trying to treat "him" like a god?

> A hostile dev community that is so utterly clueless when it comes to real > world business that their choices have managed to cripple the entire system.

No, that's exactly backwards. Bitcoin is an open system, not a startup incubator. It's not bitcoin's responsibility to support your business, it's your business' responsibility to function on the infrastructure available. Going to large blocks would benefit some companies who don't like paying for infrastructure. It'd keep their free-ride going longer, but at the cost of all the other players.

> Community is an echo chamber of ignorance that blindly believes that all > advances outside of Bitcoin are traitorous, incorrect, and not worth knowing > about; Outright hostile towards new users with an air of technology snobbery > that makes the Linux community seem like a welcoming party at an Apple > store.

Well, if you're judging by the response you've gotten, there may be confounding factors your analysis has missed... What reaction should an anti- vaxxer receive at a medical-policy conference when they stand up and declare that science has failed, etc?

</comment></comment><comment><USER10> I'm interested in seeing a step-by-step explanation of how he _should_ have done it.

<comment><USER30> If he's trying to deposit USD into an account, he should have just wired it rather than converting USD -> BTC -> USD.

If, on the other hand, he already had $5-6k worth of Bitcoin somewhere, he could have eliminated one of those conversions and it would have cost about the same. Alternatively, he may have been able to find an exchange that accepts Bitcoin directly rather than through some intermediary with a conversion fee, in which case his total deposit fee would have been < $1.

<comment><USER10> Which one? I don't know what these service providers do.

I have a GNU/Linux server. Which service providers can I eliminate?

Using my own server, suppose my neighbor has a bunch of BTC and I have a bunch of cash. If I want to buy BTC from her (by physically handing over the cash), what service providers do we need to use? Suppose my neighbor uses the same providers (or some subset) the author of this article uses.

<comment><USER30> > If I want to buy BTC from her (by physically handing over the cash), what > service providers do we need to use?

This is the easiest to answer so I'll start here. You don't need any service providers beyond:

1) Any one of the many free bitcoin clients out there to

      a) create a wallet for you, and

      b) send the bitcoin to that wallet

In the article, the author wanted to trade stocks on TradeZero and he wanted to send TradeZero $5-6k to open a new account. TradeZero provided two options to send that cash:

1) Wire it from the bank

2) Convert your dollars to bitcoin, send that bitcoin to BitPay, which will send it to WB1, which will send it to TradeZero. Oh, and everyone will take a fee out in the process.

My suggested alternative, is that if the author _already has_ bitcoin, is to find a stock-trading company that will just let him fund the account with bitcoin. Then the options would be:

1) Wire cash from the bank

2) Send some bitcoin to the company's bitcoin wallet

In that case, the fees incurred from 1 would be $25-50, and the fees incurred from 2 would be approximately 5 cents.

Given all that, I have no idea if there exists even a single stock brokerage that just accepts bitcoin directly, so that likely isn't a real option.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER31> Bitcoin was never intended to reduce the cost of Banks, but rather supply an alternative.

<comment><USER32> Banks are an excellent piece of infrastructure, as it stands. If you don't need to use Bitcoin, or you actually care about what happens to your money, just use a bank.

<comment><USER33> > "Banks are an excellent piece of infrastructure, as it stands."

Not very excellent if you ever need to get money to/from the States and a foreign country.

<comment><USER32> ...which is where you use Bitcoin, as these crooks figured out.

[https://krebsonsecurity.com/2016/09/money-mule-gangs-turn- to...](https://krebsonsecurity.com/2016/09/money-mule-gangs-turn-to-bitcoin- atms/)

Again, Bitcoin is a great alternative to banks where banks fail. Just, you know, I wouldn't advise using it as your first choice.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER34> Bitcoin is useful when you already have it. There's no point to go and buy it solely for purpose of transferring it (via some weird wb21). Neither you nor tradezero use it properly.

</comment><comment><USER35> > $85 + $95 +$55 +$0.55 +$0.45 (still in WB21) = $236 in fees

Bitcoin has been around for 8 years, and general awareness has really only kicked in over the last 4. These Bitcoin companies are the first generation. I think it's reasonable that in the next 10 years the tasks you performed will be more seamlessly orchestrated, and greater competition will drive the price down. It would take an order-of-magnitude improvement to undercut the wire fee ($35) which may well happen.

</comment><comment><USER36> I used TransferWise last time I had to move some money internationally, and had a good experience. Significantly faster and cheaper than wiring the money.

<comment><USER37> +1 for TransferWise, a simple solution for wires and it worked quite well for me

</comment></comment><comment><USER38> On one hand there is a global focus is on reducing energy waste. On the other we have hundreds of thousands of people merrily wasting electricity mining bitcoin and other assorted crypto currencies. This is a bit of a dissonance.

To make matters worse crypto currencies like bitcoin appear to incentivize early adopters to act in bad faith like a pyramid scheme. That they are open to monopolization by those who have disproportionate access to cheap electricty and resources can't help build trust.

So the early adopters have every incentive to spin it and on cue they talk it up deceptively on decentralization, anonymity and control as if the protocol develops itself and is not under the control of an inner cotorie.

Aren't governments and financial systems supposed to work for us and if they aren't is the solution to make sure they do, or a flawed technology workaround that benefits early adopters and concentrates power and influence in the hands of a few? The cure seems worse than the disease.

</comment><comment><USER39> Bitpay and other payment processors exist to buy and hold Bitcoin in the event of mainstream adoption and price explosion; that is their entire investment thesis. They also happen to spend a little time performing activities that purport to make Bitcoin useful and appear like they are building a real product and business.

</comment><comment><USER40> With a title like "The Disaster that is Bitcoin" we really shouldn't feed the trolls. It's true bitcoin doesn't compete with traditional fiat for many purposes. Calling bitcoin a disaster for it is trolling people who see potential in the technology. The disaster that is clickbait.

<comment><USER41> What you are doing isn't much better. You calling them trolls (in other words asking that people completely discount their opinions and views because they weren't made "seriously") and I suspect you're largely doing because you disagree with the message.

</comment></comment><comment><USER42> The only people really interested in BitCoin are only interested in the "untraceability" of it.

Consequently, nobody really cares about the fees as it's all about the ability to move your money around while avoiding government scrutiny. And these fees are what they are willing to pay to accomplish that.

<comment><USER43> People in places without functioning banking systems may also appreciate it.

<comment><USER42> Okay, that's a fair point that I hadn't considered.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER44> > Look, it's the whole ecosystem that is fucked. All these fees, complicated > steps — it just doesn't work for the normal Joe.

Yeah, cooperative/reversible financial fund transfer systems that interoperate with bitcoin are at enormous risk during these transactions, so they charge large fees and create red tape to avoid/mitigate fraud. It's probably been bitcoin's biggest stumbling point since forever. I don't think that it's a disaster though.

> The Bitpay invoice has a 15 minute timer. So I wait and wait ... last few > minutes on that timer so I start to get a bit nervous.

This problem could've actually been one to blame on bitcoin. It might be due to bitcoin's low transaction throughput. I haven't followed the blocksize debate but IIRC there have been lots of talk about slow transactions.

</comment><comment><USER45> Transferring bitcoin when all relevant parties are using bitcoin is more efficient than transferring USD when all relevant parties are using USD. If people are presenting bitcoin as a good alternative to wire transfers then they are being misleading.

<comment><USER46> If bitcoins can't compete with wire transfers, then how will bitcoin ever become mainstream? The world isn't going to switch to bitcoin overnight, so there will be a period of time in which bitcoin will need to be converted to other currency at one or both ends.

<comment><USER30> > how will bitcoin ever become mainstream?

I doubt it ever will become mainstream, but one path to "mainstream" is when merchants, banks, companies, and payment providers just accept Bitcoin rather than:

1) Pretend to accept bitcoin 2) Pay a sub-par service with high fees to convert any received BTC into USD immediately 3) Encourage customers that don't already hold BTC to pay in BTC, adding another conversion step from USD -> BTC

If 90% of the people I give money to just accept Bitcoin as payment, then it makes sense for me to have a "Bitcoin account", as payment fees could be lower.

<comment><USER46> > when merchants, banks, companies, and payment providers just accept > Bitcoin..

That's not a path to becoming mainstream, that _is_ mainstream.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER47> Using Bitcoin strictly as an intermediate to transfer between two US dollar accounts is not the most typical usecase. The fees and waiting times are due to the US dollar transfers and the companies involved.

There is however, valid criticism of the various middlemen that have propped up to take advantage of the hype surrounding Bitcoin.

</comment><comment> alex-yo Or rather "The Disaster That Is Bitcoin Services Around Bitcoin". I'm wondering if there would be the same kind of article that dollars is very bad, because bank wants some money for wireing them e.g. to Europe, and the exchange rate between dollar and euro could change overnight.

<comment><USER48> It's right there in the same article. He mentions bank transfers are bad so he went with Bitcoin - only to find Bitcoin was even worse.

</comment></comment><comment><USER49> Bitcoin transactions are not easy enough for general consumption.

I think in the Bitcoin lifecycle a number of these early services exist at the pleasure of serving pioneering Bitcoin users / miners who have a lot of digital currency already.

</comment><comment><USER50> "Look, it's the whole ecosystem that is fucked." Should have been the title. This post actually makes me replan a bit of my investment plans. The future is now but it is expensive.

</comment><comment><USER51> Comparing with Bitcoin is easy. I'd want to see a comparison between FIAT and an advanced cryptocurrency, something like Monero, DASH or Ethereum.

</comment><comment><USER52> I am quite sure that if you want to buy and so stuff with currencies other than the one you usually use, you are going to pay some conversion fees.

</comment><comment><USER53> Some countries have real time transfers for free.

</comment><comment><USER54> Astonished by the amount of downvotes of many comments itt. Some people are really passionate here

</comment><comment><USER55> Turning anything to cash is an expensive proposition. Try selling a house.

<comment><USER56> > Turning anything to cash is an expensive proposition.

It costs me $7 to change my stocks into cash and vice versa. Frankly, turning BTC -> USD -> BTC is harder than turning Apple stock -> USD -> Apple stock.

</comment></comment><comment><USER57> Misleading title. Its easier and cheaper to use bank wires when sending USD. What he did just seems foolish to me.

I have had people from across the globe send me BTC in minutes with a few button clicks and no additional parties involved.

</comment><comment><USER54> Easy money transfer is not bitcoin's value proposition though

</comment><comment><USER58> Duh.

</comment><comment><USER59> Excuse me, but how much is it a Bitcoin problem as opposed to being a Bitcoin ecosystem problem? You can't blame Bitcoin for every problem with each exchange.

<comment><USER60> What good is Bitcoin if the ecosystem is bad?

<comment><USER15> If everybody used bitcoin for everything, then there would be no need for exchanges, payment gateways and the like. This stuff is added cruft.

<comment><USER61> If my granny had wheels, she'd be a bicycle.

<comment><USER15> You could add some ham and it would be a sort of British carbonara.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER62> This article doesn't have any real discussion of Bitcoin itself, only the services that currently exist around it.

<comment><USER16> This article doesn't have any real discussion of Banks itself, only the services that currently exist around it.

</comment></comment><comment><USER63> This article should be titled "The Disaster That Ensued When I Forgot to Look Up Fee Schedules." And this is from a self-professed day trader?

I'm guessing this also makes me a "Bitcoin defender."

</comment><comment><USER64> What an ignorant article. It's unrealistic to expect cryptocurrencies to behave as flawlessly as wire transfers. The technologies need to mature. But for those with patience, they're pretty awesome.

<comment><USER56> > It's unrealistic to expect cryptocurrencies to behave as flawlessly as wire > transfers.

Wire transfers are $35.

You'd think that BTC would be able to be cheaper than that.

<comment><USER65> To be fair, BTC transfers cost a couple cents at most. If we're going to compare apples to apples.

If you do an international wire and change currencies you'll pay much more than $35.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER66> There seems to be a trend in articles claiming some technology is bad/a disaster/dead when really it's just someone uneducated in the platform trying to use it incorrectly or with misinformed assumptions.

Bitcoin is still an emerging technology. You can do things with it you can do with _anything_ else. You can create 100 wallets _right now_ and start receiving bitcoin to them. Please show me how to do that without interacting with anyone with traditional bank accounts.

Bitcoin is here to stay and we're going to continue to discover interesting use cases for it. Sorry this guy is bailing before he learns what it's all about.

</comment><comment><USER67> Incidentally, if you're like me, and know nothing about stocks, but still want to get rich off companies you believe will succeed, I highly recommend Robinhood. It's like stock trading for chimpanzees. Install an app, fill out a brief profile, click a big shiny button to deposit money, select your stock, and click another big shiny button to buy.

I don't have any affiliation with them. I just always thought trading stocks was schleppily difficult, and was delighted to discover it was not so. I believe some company will do well; I'm not interested in understanding spreadsheets or hiring anyone; here's my money; how do I buy shares? What is the Uber-like, magic-button product here? Robinhood, it turns out.

[https://www.robinhood.com/](https://www.robinhood.com/)

<comment><USER68> And if you love the simplicity and lack of informed investment Robinhood represents, you'll love slot machines too. Put money in, pull lever, boom.

If you don't know enough to stock pick, buy the index.

<comment><USER69> > If you don't know enough to stock pick, buy the index.

While I am in general agreement with your position, I see statements like this frequently when stock trading comes up. References to _the_ market or _the_ index. There isn't one, monolithic tradable "market". Rather there are dozens of different index views of the broader market, some of which are better than others. If you know so little about stock trading that you think a service like Robinhood is a good idea you probably don't know enough to choose a good index either.

<comment><USER68> Yes, that was an oversimplification. I had typed it as 'buy indices' but decided that would require explaining which indices, and I didn't want to get into that rabbit hole. And I didn't want to look like a shill for some particular vendor's fund. In any case, some concrete examples are VTI, VXUS, and BND/VTEB.</comment></comment></comment></comment>