Ask HN: Why are some people sharing links to 'blocked' sites? - <AUTHOR> I've noticed a couple of nytimes/ft.com and other sites being shared as "things to read" on HN, yet some of these sites have a paywall now running.<p>Although it's easy to bypass some of these 'paywalls', it would be kind of unfair to these companies. Perhaps we could have some way to address this problem without 'flagging', unless flagging isn't as taboo on HN as it would be on other sites. <comment><USER2> Some of those sites have a limited number of free views (I think WSJ and NYT fall in this category). So only people who frequently go there have to worry about the paywall.

</comment><comment><USER3> Most people can access these stories, even if it sometimes takes an extra moment of effort. They're often the first or best source for the story.

So I don't see a problem with such submissions, and there's no need to flag them or even remark about the paywalls. It's just a fact of the present-day web.

<comment><USER4> Where do you get "most people" from? I'm not saying you're wrong, but for example I don't even try to scam paywall sites by trying to get in, it is an imprisonable crime[1] to do so in most jurisdictions, I just close the window.

[1] [http://www.wipo.int/treaties/en/text.jsp?file_id=295166](http://www.wipo.int/treaties/en/text.jsp?file_id=295166) Article 11, [http://www.wipo.int/treaties/en/ShowResults.jsp?lang=en&trea...](http://www.wipo.int/treaties/en/ShowResults.jsp?lang=en&treaty_id=16) The signing parties.

<comment><USER3> The words "crime" or "prison" don't appear in your links, so they don't support your fanciful claim without a whole bunch of extra legal reasoning that's neither yet provided nor obvious.

Are you a lawyer who's defended such cases, or a prosecutor who's charged them? Then I might trust you. I would also as credible evidence accept a reputable media report of a person imprisoned for circumventing a cookie- enforced paywall.

It's good practice to clear your cookies and switch browsers occasionally. Do so without fear of imprisonment whenever you wish.

(Also, most people here can afford the relevant site subscriptions, so that's another avenue through which they can access such submissions, when they are the best source for a story.)

<comment><USER4> The TRIPS agreement requires criminal penalties for willful copyright infringement, art. 61 (and circumvention of technical measures is in all cases I have seen implemented as being a form of copyright infringement) when it occurs on a certain not well defined scale. TRIPS is implemented everywhere except a few muslim countries in Africa and Asia.

There almost never is a minimum scale defined in actual implementations.

There have been several attempts to sue people in my country, usually settled before any final judgment, for being instrumental in copyright infringement, even if that and the actual infringement occured on limited, loss-incuring scale.

I live in the EU, so every web page I visit is required to be logged by ISPs for 6-24 months. Clearing cookies does nothing.

I'm more than willing to bet that your law says too that circumventing technical measures is illegal and when done on purpose a criminal act. Admitting to using the privacy mode of your browser to circumvent the paywall is admitting to a crime in many jurisdictions. Sometimes with optional prison terms, otherwise fines that will eventually turn into prison time if they're not paid on time, so prison is certainly an option for using the privacy mode to access NYT. Not likely to be prosecuted, but a crime nonetheless.

<comment><USER5> "I live in the EU, so every web page I visit is required to be logged by ISPs for 6-24 months. Clearing cookies does nothing."

That would be cool! NYT using the ISP logs to control the paywall :)

Maybe an addition to http could enable the sending of relevant log data with each request?

The future is here.. soon

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> Both of the sites mentioned in the question allow you to view a certain number of articles every month for free, so it's pretty soft as far as paywalls go.

Also, not to sound flip, but another option is paying for the content. If you're regularly reading more than 10 NYTimes articles a month, maybe that's not such a crazy idea.

</comment><comment><USER7> I use this Chrome extension to always open NYT links in porn mode:

[https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/ghost- incognito/ge...](https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/ghost- incognito/gedeaafllmnkkgbinfnleblcglamgebg)

</comment><comment><USER8> I used to be bugged by this too, but since I've gotten used to opening NYT links using "open link in Incognito Window", I'm a happy camper.

<comment><USER9> The question specifically says:

"Although it's easy to bypass some of these 'paywalls', it would be kind of unfair to these companies."

<comment><USER8> I saw that, actually. It is precisely the vague wording used in that phrase that prompted my comment. Saying it is "easy" in the context of HN could make it seem like you can write a script to do it from the command line or a bookmarklet or something. I figured I would share this trivial "hack" I learned about recently...

Though you raise an interesting point about "fairness." These people are trying to make paywalls for content work. It's the business model that everyone is wondering about... It's interesting to watch the news companies' experiments. I wonder what their figures are... Does the nagware-popover technique work or will the average Internet user figure out how to circumvent this technology?

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> There is nothing wrong with some people having access and some people not. If you choose not to have access, or can't afford it ... that's OK, you'll be fine not reading the article.</comment>


Proxy (YC S16) Is Digitizing Your Presence - <AUTHOR> http://themacro.com/articles/2016/08/proxy/ <comment><USER2> Very excited to get this off the ground - we've got some big ideas where this can go - ultimately we want to support many use cases, but before we get there we need to battle test it in the market - would love any feedback, and if you want to get involved reach out to me denis at proxy dot co

<comment><USER3> Do you encrypt the Bluetooth signal at all or it is all out there? That is the only thing that scared me, you obscure user information with a unique-id-key, but if I'm close to your office I can just get your key and get in the building.

<comment><USER4> We use a one-time token for each interaction. We don't use Bluetooth encryption, but the tokens are signed and cannot be replayed/transferred, so intercepting one is near-useless.

<comment><USER5> Would this not still be vulnerable to a kind of man-in-the-middle attack though? I don't know much about the workings of bluetooth, so maybe this just isn't possible, but I was envisioning a kind of relay device that could capture an incoming signal, forward it to another device, from which it would then be rebroadcast.

The idea being you have an attacker standing in front of the door, relaying the bluetooth transmissions to an associate, who in turn rebroadcasts those transmissions to an employee who he has followed out to lunch. That employee's phone then responds exactly as if he were standing in front of the door.

I can't see why this wouldn't work, but I'm sure I must be missing something.

Obviously if the user is forced to confirm an ID request before continuing with the transaction this wouldn't be a problem, but I got the impression from the article that that wasn't necessarily required.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> Really neat idea! In the office building use case - what happens when you approach the door? Is the door unlocked automatically or is the user prompted for some action? Basically what happens if your phone is stolen?

<comment><USER4> Can do either - hands-free, or require a second factor like screen unlock and manual tap. If your phone is stolen, the first thing you'd want to do is revoke your account authorization (via web or another device), just as you would to protect your email accounts and anything else sensitive. If you are more paranoid, remote wipe - many companies have that as a policy already.

We don't store credentials on the phone, and the tokens we issue for each interaction are short-lived.

</comment></comment><comment><USER7> If the receptionist has this, and they sit within 10ft of the door, is the door perpetually unlocked? Or is there an algorithm to prevent this very behavior?

<comment><USER4> You can set the detection range for your setup, or disable auto-unlock.

</comment></comment><comment><USER8> > Wouldn't it be great if you could just walk up to any cafe, the monitor > senses you and knows exactly what you want, and you just push one button and > wait for your coffee?

No.</comment>


Doing a short JavaScript training for colleagues. What should I teach them? - <AUTHOR> I am going to do a two hour training for my colleagues in JavaScript and the surrounding ecosystem.
They are developers with 2-8 years of experience mostly doing SharePoint projects and websites. Their technology is stuck in 2009, with bare HTML+jQuery. They can do a bit of nodejs too.
My plan is to talk about three things:
- cool features of ES6/7 like async-await. - webpack basics - vue.js basics
What else should I teach them? <comment><USER2> > Their technology is stuck in 2009

If it ain't broke, why fix it?

Do you really need tens of files for a hello world? No. No you do not.

</comment><comment><USER3> you should share katas daily. codewars.com is really cool for this. you can filter by ease & topics.</comment>


Optimize your JS with IRHydra 2 for V8 - <AUTHOR> http://alpha.irhydra.googlecode.com/git/build/index.html

<comment><USER2> So, I think this is pretty cool, and I've been looking at things like this but for PHP (opcodes). I'm really curious about taking the "compile-to-x" transpilers, and instead of compiling to another high-level language, targeting the IR of these various VMs instead. Basically, a poor-man's JVM or CLR, if you will. I wonder how feasible it actually is when you're dealing with dynamic language VMs, like V8, Zend, etc.? I have a feeling that to get the speeds V8 has, a lot of implementation details from the source lang would probably leak into the IR? Anyone have experience trying these sorts of things?

<comment><USER3> Unfortunately, many of these VMs don't offer a peak under the hood at runtime. For instance, V8 doesn't have any bytecode or IR you can compile to and run. JavaScript, and asm.js is the lowest you can go.

If you want to target an IR language, you can try LLVM. Although it's not a VM, you can definitely implement your own language on-top of it. It'd be pretty low-level.

Other alternatives are Ruby VMs, such as Rubinius, which actually uses the LLVM JIT compiler. Rubinius is pretty fast (I have never used it myself) and it has it's own bytecode format, so you can easily compile your own language to it.

Fancy ([https://github.com/bakkdoor/fancy](https://github.com/bakkdoor/fancy)) is a great example of this. It compiles to Rubinius bytecode and executes it within the virtual machine.

<comment><USER2> Yeah, that's the issue I've run into (with PHP at least). Isn't that what this tool here is supposed to allow you to do, though? Give you a peek under the hood to V8? That's why I thought it was really interesting :) Of course, I'm likely reading it wrong, and just because it gives you access to the IR doesn't mean it lets you interface with said IR directly, which is the issue!

Yeah I've been fiddling with LLVM lately, it's really quite nice. Fancy looks awesome, cheers for that!

<comment><USER3> Yeah, V8 has a lot of stuff under the hood that you can access for profiling and what not, but nothing more than that. V8 has two JIT compilers. One that's quick at starting up, but doesn't produce very good cpu instructions, and an optimizing JIT-compiler that takes a lot longer to spin up, but the code is heavily optimized.

You can ask V8 to give you IR dumps and other meta information about the runtime of your program.

But, unfortunately, that's all you can get. You can't use V8 to implement a new language, or compile your language down, unless you transpile it to JavaScript, which isn't as fun.

Yeah, LLVM is pretty awesome of compilers. I know it used to be somewhat bad for JIT compilers, but I haven't tried or benchmarked it since then. There's also LibJit that's written in C, and it's only goal is to JIT compile ([http://eli.thegreenplace.net/2013/10/17/getting-started- with...](http://eli.thegreenplace.net/2013/10/17/getting-started-with-libjit- part-1/)). A downside to LibJit is the lack of IR. It just emits x86(-64?) instructions. LLVM offers it's super awesome IR which makes debugging a ton easier.

Julia is another smaller VM that makes use of LLVM as a JIT compiler. I don't know if it has a bytecode you can compile to, or not.

Then you can always go towards an interpreted virtual machine, written in C or even Rust; if the current VMs don't work out.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> Finally! It used to be incredibly complicated to get any information on how V8 compiles/optimizes JS - and there was basically zero documentation. This should be super useful for performance tuning, and it makes a nice counterpart to Mozilla's JIT Inspector and SPS profiler.

<comment><USER5> I wish I could integrate it "in-process" like Chrome Dev Tools are integrated. You still have to generate files and feed them in. With all scalability issues that follow from that.

If you have any suggestions, requests, etc, please file a bug at irhydra.googlecode.com.</comment></comment>


Ask HN: Search use cases no longer / poorly supported by search engines? - <AUTHOR> Hi HN,
I've been ruminating on the sad state of the Web's search infrastructure over the holidays. I'd love to hear which of your search use cases is no longer and/or poorly supported by the surviving search engines.
I'm aware of:
- searching for academic papers is getting increasingly difficult on Google
- Bing seems to be the only search engine left with an API, and it isn't cheap
- few fine-grained search operations are still supported by Google
- Google's widget to provide search for your own site looks increasingly like an inconvenient afterthought <comment><USER2> Searching for exact/minimum image size in Google Image Search.

<comment><AUTHOR> I hadn't even gotten around to thinking about the verticals. I wonder what power users find missing from all the travel, shopping et. al. that's been added on top of classic text search.</comment></comment>


Apply HN: RoomEase – Ease and organise flat sharing - <AUTHOR> Problem : Until now flatmates end up using different apps for communication, shopping lists, task organisation, social planning, house finances, reminders and house service delivery. That's too many apps!
Solution : We are building a product that consists of two parts: [A] a platform for flatmate collaboration, organisation and socialising that [B] integrates with an online marketplace of tasks and services towards that goal.
Features :
[A] Users can organise everyday house duties and shopping, communicate with their flatmates (in-app messaging), plan house gatherings (socialising), manage house expenses and billing
[B] In addition, we will integrate a marketplace that allows users to ask people (neighbours, professionals) to provide their services for house duties or other tasks and an admin platform, where landlords can manage issues raised in each house.
In the future we are planning to embed an intelligent house assistant that will be accessed through a conversational UI.
Demo :
In the following link you can see a small demo of our (not complete yet) mvp (1.43) https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rDub9dNanlc
We would be really happy to hear what people are thinking of RoomEase, and answer any questions! <comment><USER3> Based on the list of features, it's not clear who the core users will be. How will the competing interests of flat mates, service providers, neighbors, and land lords be reflected in the information flow?

For example, there are categories of information that land lords and neighbors might find attractive to know about flat mates but that flat mates are not keen on sharing. Likewise, local vendors may wish to message flat mates in ways that flat mates find annoying or that land lords find at odds with their interests.

Good luck.

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks for your question. That gives me the chance to clear thing up. It's going to be a long answer, but seems that my initial description caused some misunderstanding.

We are building a platform that targets people who are living in a shared property. So tenants will be our core users. Once signing up, a user will either create a new group or join an existing one (invitation only - <USER2> won't be able to discover other groups). The group represents the house and inside that group only the tenants can interact, chat, do social planning, etc. It is a private place, where all the interaction between the users will remain private and they can't be reached by people outside the group. That's the core part of our app.

Now the second part is the marketplace of tasks and services, where people that have some skills or can offer some services and want to get paid for that, can list themselves. You can think of it as something similar to TaskRabbit.

Why are we building that? Because while interacting with their flatmates, people may notice that need some help on house duties or other tasks. For example you may want a professional cleaner to take care of the house cleaning, or you may realise that you don't have time to do the shopping and want to find someone locally that can buy what's on your shopping list. In that case, you go to the marketplace and 'book' a person that will accomplish your task.

Finally the landlord will also not have any access to tenants' activity. However we want to make it easy for flatmates not only to communicate with him, but also to raise any issues occurred in the house, such as damages, so that the landlord can take care (or even him can go the marketplace and search for a handyman that will do the fixes). We haven't done any work on the landlord's side, yet. These are just some ideas.

So that's all! Please let me know if you have any further questions.

<comment><USER3> Thanks. That makes sense.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> I think your problem doesn't actually exist. I've had roommates for years and have always been fine with direct in-person communication, texting, or post-it notes. How many people have you pitched this to that validated your assumption? Is there a different market you can target?

<comment><AUTHOR> Appreciate your feedback. Having shared for several years a house with other people (some of them friends, others people that I was meeting for the first time), we faced problems which were not related to communication only (that can easily be solved with a chat app and sticky notes).Here are a few examples:

\- Forget/delay to pay the bills

\- Couldn't arrange to do the house cleaning in a time convenient for everyone due to different schedules. In the end half the people would skip that task.

\- When I was sharing a house with people that I was meeting for the first time, there was a need to socialise and plan to do some stuff together. We found out that using an app for social planning was very helpful and we could also get some ideas on what to do.

\- Often I would get back late from work, when the supermarket was closed, so I needed someone to do the shopping for me. To solve this problem I was sending screenshots of my shopping list to the house group on whatsapp and I would ask my flatmates whether they could buy me that stuff.

And these are just a few. From my experience when you are out of the house most of the day it is difficult to solve these problems only with a chat app and sticky notes. Often we would use a different app for each problem. So me and my partner decided to build RoomEase.

Before we start developing this app, we pitched it to potential users. So far we have feedback from around 100 potential users and ~90% was very positive (some of them are friends, so we didn't expect negative feedback on those cases). This gave us enough confidence to move on.

Regarding your last question, you probably mean different target audience. The market we are targeting is the market of house tasks and services, which is a validated one. Once we get our web app online, if we don't see much growth on the number of users, we will reconsider the idea and who our core users are.

I understand that the demo is probably not very representative of what I am mentioning on the examples, but it is just an mvp. Again appreciate your feedback, it is good to know what people are thinking of this app.</comment></comment>


Takes the bottle. Drinks it down. The whole bottle, all in one shot. Done - <AUTHOR> https://twitter.com/llewellynjobs/status/1282654893426085888 <comment><USER2> I have to search what the #60sscoops was [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sixties_Scoop](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sixties_Scoop)</comment>


PHP.net new design - <AUTHOR> http://php.net/?beta=1

<comment><AUTHOR> I wish they could use the same (or similar) font than github for code snippets, I really don't like the one they use, but overall it's a good improvement!

</comment><comment><USER2> Nice - needs help on iOS (iPhone) - header is broken

</comment><comment><USER3> oh snap ... moving on up to the east side .... I think it more amazing because it is long overdue</comment>


Myths of the 1 Percent: What's Putting People at the Top - <AUTHOR> https://www.nytimes.com/2017/11/17/upshot/income-inequality-united-states.html <comment><USER2> It's interesting what words are not in the article. Words like heir, inheritance, profit, interest, rentier. The word rent is there, but assumed as a tenant, not landlord.

I assume the Forbes 400 richest are in the 1%. How did the Koch brothers get their $100 billion? Where did the Waltons get their $140 billion? Where did the Mars family get their $75 billion? The article makes it sound like these people became rich when they decided whether or not to go to law school.

It's important to note how in the US how FIRE (Finance, Insurance, Real Estate) and health care affect the economy. But a lot of what puts people at the top is at which hospital they took their first breath.

<comment><USER3> There are millions of people in the 1%. The 400 people at the very top aren't going to come into it much.

<comment><USER4> But even within the 1%, the income distribution is highly skewed, i.e. those 400 people are responsible for a very sizable total of the overall wealth within the 1%.

<comment><USER5> i'd be curious to know around what portion the 400 people are responsible for

<comment><USER6> "With a combined worth of $2.34 trillion, the Forbes 400 own more wealth than the bottom 61 percent of the country combined, a staggering 194 million people. The median American family has a net worth of $81,000. The Forbes 400 own more wealth than 36 million of these typical American families."

[http://www.ips-dc.org/billionaire-bonanza/](http://www.ips- dc.org/billionaire-bonanza/)

<comment><USER7> That is the favorite to parrot around. It's not that impressive considering the large percentage of the world's population has a negative net worth.

[http://blogs.reuters.com/felix-salmon/2014/04/04/stop- adding...](http://blogs.reuters.com/felix-salmon/2014/04/04/stop-adding-up- the-wealth-of-the-poor/)

<comment><USER4> That quote also included the comparison to the _median_ family net worth.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> Funny to see you people discussing petty caviar-allowance inequality so fervently within your own arbitrary Western borders yet never giving much mindshare to the rampant "developing" country exploitation that is the very source of your general prosperity.

I'm a citizen of third-world country that is being sucked dry by the West for its resources and getting its people shackled to the ground by direct support for the ruling dictatorial regime.

I don't even know why I'm writing this..

<comment><USER9> I see what you mean and it is bad. Until we have nations merge however, there's nothing we can do even when the system is working at it's theoretical perfection. Our people live in demarcated areas with separate rule sets.

When it comes to the rich vs poor in Western society we are ostensibly equal and many people are upset because reality doesn't reflect that. When it comes to the US vs say Burkino Faso, what would the correct course of action be? There's exploitative actions being taken by individuals and companies against developing nations that could stop, but then what happens? I don't think sweatshops are good but no western company is going to source goods from them if they aren't cheap as the quality isn't the same. We could try to help other nations get to the same quality of life, but many have made it explicitly clear that they don't want interference from foreign powers.

Do we act paternalistic and do what we think is right for other people which removes their autonomy? Do we avoid that and avoid exploiting them, but leave them in the dust because they have nothing we want or need if they are using regulation and price arbitrage to gain business? Do we continue as we currently do which sends money into these countries which should help them develop, but tends to be spread unevenly and causes a lot of human despair?

I can't tell what the right answer is, I can't tell if there even is a right answer

<comment><USER8> 1\. Exploitative actions taken by individuals and companies are nothing compared to the ones taken by your governments. Europe is running cheap education improvement programs here as we speak, and other such show-tell crap, but they also sign exploitative deals and house corrupt blood money of my dictator in your banking systems - giving him free-pass to do as he likes, as long as the deals are signed and people are silenced. It's realpolitik all the way down.

2\. We do want interference, interference against your current interference.

3\. Just let us establish our own instutitions, stop helping and making deals with criminals, stop putting on the mask of being humanitarian and then exploiting the living shit out of us.

4\. Work visas - please make them available for the skilled and offer us some channel for escape. We are majorly landlocked because our passports don't even grant us a tourist visas to anywhere other than bumhole Somalia or Afghanistan.

I could go on for ages but you people have so vastly different view on these issues I don't even feel like it would be worth my time.

<comment><USER10> Regarding 4, I'm curious why it's in this list with the others. It certainly makes life better for the individual, but doesn't losing all its top talent to foreign countries hurt developing countries?

<comment><USER8> As I said, vastly different views, to the point of being annoying.

We, as a country, are not in the business of "country-building" but rather survival and that of avoiding pain. Our government doesn't need talented individuals - they just need brainwashed populace and stability for their power. Thinkers are direct infraction to the system and usually are not tolareted.

Also, what do you expect disarray of talented individuals with no power to concentrate power to do alone in a society that doesn't recognize nor like them?

<comment><USER11> So you solution (highlighted in point 4) is to move to a Western country and become part of the problem?

<comment><USER12> I think the "casual game theory" of (4) is, if you want to improve those places, let them have work visas. There are people in certain countries who can be empowered through work visas to pursue their calling (pastors in churches, teaching mathematics in universities, sizing contact lenses of the rich and idle or whatever). Those who choose not to apply for the visas will maybe try something at home, knowing they can get that work visa if what they try doesn't work. And maybe in the trying they will find a different calling than they thought. In succeeding at the things they try at home they might lower the need for work visas.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> Is inequality a feature or a bug of capitalism? Seems like the general thinking is that its a feature in-so-much as it encourages innovation, entrepreneurship, etc. It seems like it becomes a bug when it reaches a level in which it creates a positive feedback loop of more inequality.

As with anything, i've noticed the discussion is really about how much, not should it exist at all. Almost every debate in American politics is painted as black and white, whereas the actual debate is where we fall on a spectrum. It seems like everyone disagrees so much, but really I think we are haggling over a slight deviation to the right or to the left and because we have to talk about everything in such black and white terms, the real discussion gets lost. We all agree on much more than we disagree on.

<comment><USER14> "Human beings are born with different capacities. If they are free, they are not equal. And if they are equal, they are not free." \-- Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn

<comment><USER15> "Alike and equal are not the same thing at all."

― Madeleine L'Engle, A Wrinkle in Time

<comment><USER15> It's crazy to me how _both_ capitalist authoritarians and state communist authoritarians will argue that "equal" means "the same". Communists argue this in order to convince you that in order to be equal you have to be equally subservient to the state. Capitalists will argue this to convince you that you can never expect equality since that would mean state communism.

<comment><USER14> Most are drawing a distinction for equality - it's about equal opportunity, not equal outcome.

<comment><USER16> Except all (positive) outcomes are opportunities in another context. It's a continuous process.

The most obvious place to see this is looking at parents' economic outcomes versus their kids' development opportunities, but it doesn't even have to be generational.

If you have a sack of money (outcome), you automatically have many more options (opportunity) for creating a larger stack of money. Imagine a fair and random gambling game: Insolvent players are removed from the game, so the player with the deepest pockets at the beginning has the best opportunity of winning everything.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER17> _In the United States, the richest 1 percent have seen their share of national income roughly double since 1980, to 20 percent in 2014 from 11 percent._

Not true. The _highest income_ 1% have seen their share of national income roughly double. But the _highest income_ 1% is not the _richest_ 1%.

<comment><USER18> It's normal for articles like this to conflate income and wealth whenever it's convenient to whatever point they're trying to make.

For example, one might see an article complaining that some percentage of wealthy people didn't pay income tax last year. But an income tax is a tax on income, not wealth, and it's commonplace for wealthy people to have a bad year and lose money.

</comment></comment><comment><USER19> I'm surprised the words "capital gains" are not mentioned at all in the article. It's already well known that the richest of the 1% did not get there purely through a high wage/salary.

Some might blame loose monetary policy for providing easy money for the 1% in the USA (if you can borrow money and speculate for free, why not, after all), but if that's the case Japan really stands out; they've been QE'ing since their '80s bubble popped and they've managed to keep a relatively good Gini coefficient relative to the rest of the developed world (they're more egalitarian than their East Asian peers). You'd think that having two lost decades with your economy stuck in neutral, the Japanese 1% would just leave their country in the dust.

<comment><USER20> > It's already well known that the richest of the 1% did not get there purely > through a high wage/salary.

This talks about the 1%, not the few super rich, which is less than 1 out of 100.

It's confusing because often when people say "the 1%" they actually mean multi-millionaires; which is less than 1%.

Most 1%'ers are elite professionals. And this articles argues they make more money because of regulation that creates barriers to competition.

The super rich multi-millionaires and billionaires is a different story.

<comment><USER21> The threshold of the top 1% by wealth is $8.4 million in the US.

[https://mobile.nytimes.com/blogs/economix/2012/01/17/measuri...](https://mobile.nytimes.com/blogs/economix/2012/01/17/measuring- the-top-1-by-wealth-not-income/)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER22> Whatever the reason was, that a family or people where able to accumulate that much wealth: I believe, there should be an upper limit.

It is not okay for people like Bill Gates (i do think he is a good person) or Mark Zuckerberg to have that much power on such a small planet.

It is awesome that someone like Bill Gates spends tons of money for research etc. but he should not be able to make such huge decisions in a modern democratic society.

There is a good reason to allow people to accumulate wealth. Why shouldn't someone be allowed to not spend all his/her money for alcohol, party and cars or whatever and instead put the money into real estate for there children. But something like 5-10 Million per Child is still super reasonable.

Perhaps that leads the way to a more fair feature where it is not necessary for anyone anymore to horde money for the familiy heritage.

<comment><USER23> Is that a real problem?

Seems like 5 richest US citizens own less than 0,5% of all US assets.

I'd be lot more worried about organizations. JP Morgan chase and General Electric are not exactly democratic either. Both are way richer than Gates. And while church of latter day saints is not quite in the same league, it's incredibly wealthy and not at all democratic.

If you assume that Gates foundation gets 5% profits and distributes that, then it can share about 2,1 billion/year. American Red Cross gets to distribute 2,7 billion/year. Who does their homework better, Bill gates or the average guy who donates to Red Cross? And yet Red Cross is still not exactly democratic.

It doesn't seem very straight forward how you should count assets or income and deduct the monetary power from there.

<comment><USER24> I think at the end of the day it approaches dystopian levels of "what can we do?" against these people if they were to behave in ways that the majority of society deems irresponsible.

If Gate's wanted to he could cause immense harm in the country.

It can be argued that some like the Koch's and Mercer's are doing that harm: depending on your political views.

What could be done? These people are literally untouchable. I think the Mercer's would be untouchable even by the US government, if they played their hands in a smart way.

...Unless we'd want to send the army after them, they could just hide on their yachts :)

Anyway, there's no realistic revolution you can have against these people, is my point. If that fear doesn't exist, well, they can do what they want, yes?

I know that what keeps my worst urges "in check" is because it is not healthy for me to act on those actions.

I'm talking about stuff like "pissing off my prior employer" and "saying fuck you to my boss."

I do not know what kind of impulses the .01% have ... I am afraid what I may say or do to that old employer's company if I didn't have to worry about repercussions!

What should I fear from them?

<comment><USER23> Yeah, but what should you fear from organizations? It's easy to scrutinize an individual. It's lot more difficult to scrutinize an organization. It's actually difficult to even stay interested in them.

I'd claim that if Gates would have wanted to cause maximum harm, he would not have earned millions of dollars first. Just found an organization and go evil. It's more straight forward, less suspicious and more effective. Just look at Scientology.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER25> "Workers at the 90th percentile of the income distribution for professionals make 3.5 times the earnings of the typical (median) worker in all occupations in the United States. Only Mexico and Israel, which have very high inequality, compensate professionals so disproportionately. In Switzerland, the Netherlands, Finland and Denmark, the ratio is about 2 to 1."

It's hard to find comparable numbers, but aren't the median wages higher in all those countries?

The article vaguely makes it sound like it's just a matter of paying highly- paid professionals less, but would that lift the bottom or just concentrate the money to an even thinner slice of the population?

<comment><USER20> > It's hard to find comparable numbers, but aren't the median wages higher in > all those countries?

Last I looked no; the bottom 30% is where Denmark does better than the US. The median wages are similar, maybe slightly higher in the US.

> The article vaguely makes it sound like it's just a matter of paying highly- > paid professionals less, but would that lift the bottom or just concentrate > the money to an even thinner slice of the population?

Good question. Probably you have to hit the super rich 0.001% with massive taxes, or an aggressive estate tax (preventing wealth from accumulating across generations).

But even with that, good regulation that facilitates competition is probably necessary. I wouldn't be surprised if that makes a bigger splash than the top 0.001%.

Note: there is good and bad regulation. Denmark is heavily regulated, but a lot of it is efficient and fosters competition.

</comment></comment><comment><USER26> >Almost all of the growth in top American earners has come from just three economic sectors: professional services, finance and insurance, and health care, groups that tend to benefit from regulatory barriers that shelter them from competition.

>The groups that have contributed the most people to the 1 percent since 1980 are: physicians; executives, managers, sales supervisors, and analysts working in the financial sectors; and professional and legal service industry executives, managers, lawyers, consultants and sales representatives.

Not a surprising result at all when you consider that the bottom of the top 1% has an income of high 6 figures to somewhat above $1M. That number is something very achievable for the most successful "professionals" \-- doctors, lawyers, bankers (not HF managers), traders, and there are _a lot_ of these people out there!

It's a natural consequence that if you look for a large number of people earning $1M, you'll end up with highly successful "professionals" rather than outlier level wealth from business ownership, which is much more rare.

<comment><USER27> Im very confident the author knew this and thought this little shell game would make his calls for deregulation look convincing.

</comment></comment><comment><USER28> >the political causes of the 1 percent's rise are directly under the control of citizens.

Patently false. The political causes are directly under the control of the US state and federal legislatures, which are populated by whom?

</comment><comment><USER29> What I find interesting is that it is in the 'professions'.

I would have thought it was massively wealthy equity owners/holders, hedge fund managers etc..

But yes - if we are paying doctors $1M/year then this will happen.

At a nearby hospital in Canada, technology improvements have allowed doctors to diagnose using x-rays a lot faster ... but the Unions have kept pay scale the same. The doctor at the Orangevill hospital earns over a million dollars a year, and he works from home. Swipe, swipe, swipe, swipe - done.

Faster tech = more money for the doctor. Savings not passed on to taxpayers.

Innovators thought they were improving healthcare, but they really were throwing more surpluses onto the value chain, to be captured by those with the most power: doctors, possibly drug companies.

One would think a private system would be more efficient ... but it's probably just as bad in the US.

<comment><USER30> _> One would think a private system would be more efficient ... but it's probably just as bad in the US._

The US health care system is not a "private system". It's a mishmash of private and public which combines the worst features of both. The reason we have it in the US is that during WW II, the government controlled wages, so businesses trying to compete for employees had to offer something else as an incentive, and they mainly picked health care benefits. Then, when the war was over and the government stopped controlling wages, instead of going back to competing on wages and dropping employer-provided health benefits, the system of employer-provided health benefits kept on growing. Which now meant it had to be regulated by the government, and so on, and so on...

<comment><USER31> Let's not forget that health care is a great point of leverage for employers, too. Because often, your spouse is also insured on that same plan, and leaving a job is not palatable if either one is dealing with significant illness.

If you wanted to create a legal equivalent of indentured servitude, company healthcare plus high healthcare cost would be a great solution. I don't think that was the _plan_ , but it sure works out that way.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER32> TLDR: the public secret is that if you take away the top 0.01% who started businesses like Amazon, Microsoft, Google, etc, the big driver of inequality is not capitalism/economy/...

The big driver of inequality ( 0.01% to 1% ) is ... government regulation. Directly, as in the government hires tens of thousands of highly paid people. And, more offensive at least to me, government regulation giving massive advantages to specific businesses (most recent "wtf" example I think would be equifax, with the government rallying behind them _and_ (worst of all) effectively forcing large banks to buy from them). Businesses pushed like this by governments include Boeing, Oil companies, Tesla, SpaceX, ... But this is only the very upper layer. There is a huge "second" layer that includes large parts of the legal space, the health care space, the education space, where hundreds of thousands of people make $400k+ per year because ... well because the government says so.

Which of course very much opposes most of the viewpoints taken on this site. Given that this is what gives over half of the 1% owes their wealth directly or indirectly to taxes (or in the case of things like equifax "hidden taxes". Taxes, as in government forces you to pay, but you pay in your mortgage bill, you pay in charges on your bank account, etc ...) ... there is a strong case to be made that more taxes ... will increase inequality. At least as long as the government doesn't slim down a LOT.

</comment><comment><USER33> Few things are sadder than seeing Britain and China post equal "gains" for the 1 percent.

</comment><comment><USER34> This is such an interesting article, attempting to answer one of the biggest questions of the 21st century in one fell swoop. However, I'm not sure all of the reasoning and analysis holds up. For example, software engineers with salaries over 390K are far from rare in the US, and Switzerland has both large numbers of bankers per capita and private doctors with incredibly high incomes.

<comment><USER21> In terms of income, anyone with an income greater than $390,000 per year is pretty rare. Roughly 99% of the population make less, in fact.</comment></comment>


Some Economics of Abundance - <AUTHOR> https://musingmind.org/essays/economics-of-abundance <comment><USER2> I love these arguments.

"Abundance is the process through which more and more citizens gain unconditional access to the material resources for survival and participation in society. Abundance is not receiving an income high enough to afford all you need, because income is conditional upon labor, which retains scarcity, or the conditional access to resources, as the organizing and motivating principle of one's time use.

Rather, abundance has more to do with wealth: unconditional access, or ownership, to all the material resources one requires."

In other words, with the current workforce, the GDP pie is real big. So we're going to take the pie, and cut it so that people have a high standard of living _without having to work_. The wonderful thing is that, _like magic_ , the pie stays big! Even as the workforce plummets as people retire and young adults fail to enter the workforce.

<comment><AUTHOR> I don't think anybody's arguing that we can just redistribute wealth to the degree that there's enough for everyone to do absolutely nothing and still enjoy high living standards (though folks like Buckminster Fuller make a case that this will grow increasingly possible, and the proverbial 15-hour, or less, workweek should be feasible while maintaining the same, even higher, output). But Andrew MCafee's (research scientist at MIT) recent book "More From Less" is a contemporary take on this idea.

The traditional GDP would shrink in the long-term, but the idea (drawing from Charles Eisenstein, Paul Mason, etc) is that gift economies and communities would grow to replace the goods & services we currently rely upon traditionally economic transactions for.

And you're right that policies trying to democratize abundance (unconditional affordances like UBI, healthcare, etc) would restructure the labor force. But David Graeber's 'Bullshit Jobs' is a strong case that the labor force needs restructuring anyway.

And it grows increasingly difficult to earnestly frame these abundance arguments as fanciful, wishful thinking, when some of the most reputable economists who've ever lived argued the same. Thinking of John Maynard Keynes, JK Galbraith, and so on. There's a serious economic discourse, and potentiality, around the idea of lessening the amount of necessary labor to negligible amounts in order to secure access to all one needs, leaving production and 'participation in the workforce' to be an increasingly voluntary decision, taken on because one wants to make something, rather than one needing the paycheck to continue living their lives.

What do you think? The idea of abundance doesn't seem like a hippie discourse anymore, especially in light of folks like Mcafee's work. Why do these ideas continue striking folks as wishful thinking?

<comment><USER2> The author of the article is advocating exactly that, though. I quoted him saying just that.

The move toward a shorter work week seems like a good idea, but this would reduce GDP and the tax base, and would necessarily be counterproductive to the author's goal of redistributing more wealth to the poorest.

Why would we expect gift economies to increase as total output decreases and gift dollars are more dear?

I haven't read 'Bullshit Jobs', but based on a quick Google, he uses the meaninglessness of some jobs as an argument for UBI. His first premise may have merit (it has probably applied since the industrial revolution) but his prescription of UBI as a cure is odd. I would be interested to see a comparison of the mental states of people with "bullshit jobs" vs people who live off the file. And anyway, a Libertarian may make a decent case that taxation is theft, but that doesn't magically make the Libertarian ideal of a voluntary society a realistic proposition.

Your reference to Keynes and Galbraith seemed to argue for a general endorsement of a vague notion of progressive tinkering-- what exactly did they endorse in this regard? In any event, there is nothing wrong with tweaking the economy in considered and careful ways. UBI is neither considered nor careful, which is why it does not deserve serious consideration. Big ideas (like actual socialism, communism, and UBI) that require a massive top-down rework of the global economic system are doomed to fail. And that makes them dangerous. Careful, considered action over long periods of time aren't sexy, but they're safe(r), responsible and more easily refersable.</comment></comment></comment>


Amazon's Ring Is Putting Suspected Petty Thieves in Its Advertisements - <AUTHOR> https://www.vice.com/en_us/article/pajm5z/amazon-home-surveillance-company-ring-law-enforcement-advertisements <comment><USER2> On the Ring Neighbors app, you see all sorts of videos where the posters are making criminal accusations all the time. (usually it's a guy selling electricity door to door, but his skin tone is wrong, so they assume he's there to rob the house)

<comment><USER3> What is "selling electricity doir-to-door?" Is that offering solar on roof services? Cuz I can't imagine actually selling electricity door to door.

<comment><USER4> In some states (including NY and CA) electricity is partially deregulated so you can choose from different providers, even though it all goes through the same grid. There are actually sales people who go door to door or set up booths to encourage people to switch, usually pitching it as cleaner energy and/or cost-saving.

<comment><USER5> These guys are a big part of why I rarely answer my door anymore.

<comment><USER6> I never open the door unless it is for someone I am expecting, no exceptions whatsoever. It is a textbook case of something that has marginal upside and unlimited downside.

<comment><USER7> I mean, having someone die on your doorstep because you didn't help them seems like a large downside to me.

<comment><USER8> Multiply that by the probability of it happening to get the risk, though.

<comment><USER7> You could make the same argument about helping someone change their tire on the side of the road. Or helping a blind person cross the road. Life is full of risks but constantly worrying about them isn't worth it, especially if it comes at the expense of actually helping someone who is in danger.

If you see someone getting abused or needs help, I think you should do the right thing and try and help them, because everyone helping each other reduces risk for everyone and makes a better society.

<comment><USER8> Ok, also factor in the probability that the person at your door isn't dying or in desperate need of help, but is actually out to take advantage of you (or, at least waste your time).

<comment><USER7> Well, fortunately, doors have peepholes.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9>
      In the video, the woman's face is clearly visible and there
      is no obvious criminal activity taking place. The Facebook
      post shows her passing between two cars. She pulls the door
      handle of one of the cars, but it is locked.

Yeah that's pretty clearly attempting to steal vehicles / contents of vehicles, that's 100% what that looks like.

<comment><USER10> For a few years my only vehicle was an old, beat up Volvo station wagon. The door locks were damaged and would only lock ~50% of the time. Since I parked the car on the street I would always check to ensure that the doors were locked by pulling on a door handle.

One time I did this as a car passed by and a number of people started yelling out of the car at me accusing me of breaking into my own car and even threatening me if I continued.

Just because a small, cut down clip "looks like" attempted robbery does not mean that it is.

<comment><USER11> Well the Ring ad on facebook says "this woman was caught on camera breaking into a vehicle". So I don't think it could be a false report of attempted robbery, unless Ring is lying.

<comment><USER12> We don't live in a world where you can presume truth in a Facebook advertisement.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> Can we talk about the fact that in the US you are granted no right to privacy in public spaces? I don't think this is universally good. Companies have used this fact to build databases of license plate locations and much more. Our anger shouldn't primarily be directed at Amazon, but rather at the acceptance of public surveillance.

Hopefully, events like this help bring more light to this kind of blanket acceptance.

</comment><comment><USER14> from linked tweet:

> is it legal for ring/amazon to use faces of people, suspected BY THEIR > CUSTOMERS to have done crimes, in an advertisement? especially given they > haven't consented or been convicted or anything. seems uhhh not right

This really comes down to the consequences.

"A calculated risk betting that the people shown allegedly committing crimes won't risk identifying themselves to sue"

or a paid actor.

generally a win for everyone

</comment><comment><USER15> >Amazon purchased Ring in 2018. The company sells surveillance camera systems, and recently filed two patent applications for facial recognition technology in its cameras that would automatically alert law enforcement to "suspicious" people.

next version will feature a drone quietly deployed to follow the "suspicious" person and to tazer the person upon the "suspiciousness" crossing the pre- determined threshold (established by the neighborhood).

</comment><comment><USER16> What's Amazon Ring selling? Fear? No thanks, I'll pass.

<comment><USER17> That's what pretty much all security products sell.

Except of course, the Magnavolt Car Security System from Robocop: [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uRNVxHPJ0hM](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uRNVxHPJ0hM)

</comment></comment><comment><USER18> The app itself is entertaining, but a lot of false alarms. My favorite so far was a county worker who tripped my camera with his...i want to say water collection tool...from off camera before hanging a doorknob sign warning of mosquitoes. I took a screen capture while at work and zoomed in on his shirt to see the familiar county symbol.

Most of the crimes are petty...the older generation doesn't always lock their cars..., although one guy shot up a barbershop a mile or two away, killing several barbers. Good to know. Also, I know why that police chopper is circling or what caused that fire in the distance. My neighbors are pretty good at being on the DL, but this is a lot faster. Not as good as a scanner, but my local PD refuses to be on the internet scanner apps anyway.

Not to say that even the police reports get it right. Shoplifting and armed robbery aren't the same.

</comment><comment><USER19> Aren't we at the stage where we can generate faces? Like the This Person Does Not Exist website?

</comment><comment><USER20> If only there were a way for her to not be put in this situation in the first place.

<comment><USER21> Which woman?

The one on the picture might have, but what about anyone who to overzealous neighbours looks like the person on a rather crappy picture?

What should _they_ do to avoid being accosted on the street, or worse?

</comment></comment><comment><USER22> I honestly can't see a problem with this so long as police posted a BOLO before ring.

</comment><comment><USER23> I smell a lawsuit coming. How can Amazon think it's ok to use people's faces in an advertisement when those people haven't been convicted of a crime?

The case of Ring is particularly disturbing. When its inventor appeared on Shark Tank, he said he wanted to create a way to hear his doorbell from the garage. Since Amazon bought the company for $1B, it's pivoted to a surveillance tool that's being offered to police as a way to freely record and review neighborhood camera views.

It's sad to see that unicorn companies today believe that surveillance capitalism is the way forward. Personally, I long for a return to old- fashioned values in business, namely making a product or service that people care about and want to pay for rather than pandering to fear and courting easy money from our soon-to-be robot overlords.

<comment><USER24> As an attorney (this is not legal advice), I would like to know what law might be violated by publishing these videos. They're owned by the person who recorded the video; and presumably they gave Ring a license to use them for such purposes. The subject of the video, as far as I can tell, has no rights that might be recognized in law. There's no privacy right, as there's no reasonable expectation of privacy under such circumstances. There's no right of publicity being violated AFAICT, as there's no "brand goodwill" in the person's likeness to misappropriate.

So what, then?

<comment><USER25> Former attorney here. I'd guess it would be a claim like defamation or false light. These laws aren't typically used in this way, but I could see them being applied here.

For defamation, for example, the claim would be that by including someone's face in an advertisement about home security videos, Amazon is implying that the person pictured is someone whom you would not want snooping around your house because he's a criminal. This would tend to hurt that person's reputation, which is the legal test for defamation.

<comment><USER24> If others similarly situated could prevail on similar theories, TV shows like "COPS" and the like wouldn't be possible. The fact that they've been successfully running for over 20 years suggests that this is not the case.

Second, there's no "false light" if the recording shows the plaintiff plainly performing a criminal act.

Finally, a disclaimer of innocence until proven guilty would likely tend to negate such a defamation claim.

<comment><USER26> > Second, there's no "false light" if the recording shows the plaintiff > plainly performing a criminal act.

While pulling on the handle of a locked car door and then moving on is certainly shady, I expect it's not a criminal act, right?

<comment><USER24> Attempted burglary is a criminal act.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER27> I don't see a problem. The police department posted the same video.

<comment><USER28> The police department stated that she was a suspect; Amazon identified her as a thief, breaking the presumption of innocence that is a bedrock of American society.

If the video is fine, the post wording still isn't.

<comment><USER29> Even if one claims the video is fine (and I'd disagree), it's still a very very very bad idea for Amazon, or any large company, to be enforcing the law and conducting mass shaming via advertising.

That's practically a Black Mirror episode, and I would hope that everyone can see this, but judging from this comment thread, that's clearly not the case. Disturbing.

<comment><USER24> What's the practical difference between a TV show like "COPS" (or any of its various descendants), which features police recordings of its interactions in public with possibly-innocent suspects, and what's happening here? Is it merely the association with a commercial product?

<comment><USER30> COPS like any TV show blurs people's faces unless they sign a release.

<comment><USER24> This is out of an abundance of caution, not necessarily because the law requires it. This explains it: [https://www.quora.com/Does-the-Cops-TV-show- need-to-get-sign...](https://www.quora.com/Does-the-Cops-TV-show-need-to-get- signed-releases-from-arrestees)

<comment><USER31> As an atty I am sure you are aware folks can sue and typically he with the most money wins, regardless of law (see:OJ)

<comment><USER32> What does OJ have to do with a lawsuit and money?

OJ was tried criminally and was found not guilty (I assure you the state of California has more money than OJ, yet he prevailed).

OJ was then sued civilly for wrongful death by the Goldman's (OJ probably had more money than the Goldman's) and yet the Goldman's prevailed in the civil suit.

<comment><USER27> The standard for winning a civil case (preponderance of evidence) is lower than the standard for winning a criminal case (beyond a reasonable doubt), so the two are not comparable.

<comment><USER32> What does that have anything to do with the point being made of the OJ Simpson case as an example of money winning cases? In both the civil and criminal case the parties with more money/resources lost respectively.

<comment><USER27> The party with less money had the easier side in both cases. GGGP's point is that even though the party with less money had the easier case in the OJ trial, they had enough money to win what somebody with less money would have certainly lost. Though the state has more money, it could not afford OJ's lawyers. Similarly, at the time of the civil trial, OJ could not afford the lawyers he had in the criminal trial.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER33> Innocent until proven guilty.*

*or until public ads by Amazon sway the jury with video editing and accusations.

</comment><comment><USER34> Posted this yesterday with same source, same headline: [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20117905](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20117905)

<comment><USER35> Reposts are fine on HN if a story hasn't had significant attention yet. There's a lot of randomness in what gets traction, and allowing reposts is a way to mitigate that.

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

<comment><USER34> Oh I see. Did not know that. All good.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER36> Somehow this reminds me of the "Running Man" movie. There was a comercial playing that said something like: "Citizen, denounce your neighbor, and get some extra dollars"...

There should have been more positive visions of the future. These idiot companies took the shit from the 80s as script it seems.</comment>


Show HN: Search HN Users By Interest - <AUTHOR> https://findhn.firebaseapp.com

<comment><AUTHOR> Hi HN, OP here. This was a small side-project I built recently with the intention of fostering more collaboration across HN. Hopefully this can help connect people with similar interests.

I'm pretty green so I would appreciate any feedback. My primary goal with this is to build something that can actually be useful to people - is there anything I can do to better achieve that goal? I'm also planning to add features over time so if there are any requests please let me know.

<comment><USER2> Hm, well, I can't figure out what it is. There's no explanation on how to use it. I tried entering "tptacek" for an HN user name, saw that it turned green, tried pressing enter, and nothing happened. Maybe some kind of helptext would be good?

<comment><AUTHOR> I guess I have to work on my UX design :)

The first step is to enter in your username. If the username exists, you'll be able to add interests to that username by clicking on the plus button next to the interest field. Once you do that, you will immediately become searchable and should see the search results updated. You can modify interests by simply editing the input fields and delete an interest by removing all of the text in that input field.

I'm taking the site down until I have time to add a proper authentication system though. I realize now that is probably an essential feature, even in an mvp. I will also make sure that the next iteration of this is a lot more clear.

I really appreciate your feedback!

EDIT: I want to apologize to users of the site. In my excitement to release something, I underestimated the likelihood of people trolling and importance of a proper authentication system. Not to mention, my lack of clarity probably led to well-intentioned users interacting with the site in ways I did not intend. I promise a better experience in the next iteration.

EDIT 2: I decided to leave the site up (so anyone that ends up reading this has context) but have disabled it until I can fix.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER3> Please let us know when it is back up.

<comment><AUTHOR> Will do, likely by the end of this weekend!</comment></comment>


Ask HN: How's this for a launch page/viral loop? - <AUTHOR>

Background info: I'm launching an image sharing site (http://lolstack.com) this coming Tuesday and I'd like to get some momentum coming out of the gate. In a nutshell, lolstack is cool because it encourages quality content through duplicate detection, community voting, and virtual currency (lolbucks).
I'd like some feedback on the launch page before I go on an all out media blitz submitting to TechCrunch et al.
I've heeded the advice of several articles on launch pages and implemented the following:
- Custom welcome messages depending on the traffic source. ex: http://lolstack.com/?ad=r1
- Incentive for referrals. If you sign up, you'll see a screen offering you 50 lolbucks for referring two friends. It looks like this: http://i.imgur.com/DA0Wl.jpg There's also a "tweet this" button encouraging users to mention lolstack.
My latest development snapshot of the actual site is available on the subdomain "dev" of lolstack.com. Feel free to poke around in there. I would love some actionable criticism. <comment><USER2> My first thought was that the name didn't make sense. When I think of "stack" I think of a software stack (LAMP, etc). I'm not even sure what a non-hacker would think of. Stack of pancakes maybe.

Also without diving into the application, the front page seems a bit long. On my 20" widescreen monitors I didn't even see the countdown timer until I scrolled. I think you could widen it, move stuff up.

I like the orange username idea. Makes me wanted to sign up (didn't have time to right now - at work). Also showing how many slots are left may backfire in this case. It looks as if you started off with 10,000 slots and only have registered a few users. You could try padding that number to give us the feeling that slots are flying off the shelves.

Good luck!

<comment><AUTHOR> I'll fudge the remaining slots and see what happens if I reduce the size of the title logo. Thanks!

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> Nick, the lack of a consolidated design ethic is difficult to overlook. The essential layout of the site is fine, however there are a few things you should take a look at:

\- The fonts are inconsistent, especially look at fixing your sizing.

\- The image resizing you've employed is ruining the quality of the posts. Try filling your pages with real images (like you use on the launch page) and you'll see how it feels.

\- The voting buttons aren't working at all for me - can you smooth those guys out?

There is nothing wrong with the minimalist route (like HN for example), but you have to be consistent if you choose that direction.

Best of luck with the site.

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks, Justin. Design is a challenging area for me. I'll try and massage the consistency into something more appealing in the coming days. The vote button trouble is concerning. What browser are you using?

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> What am I supposed to do with lolbucks?

<comment><AUTHOR> I'm planning to implement the following as possible purchases in a section of the site called the lolstore:

-any color username

-avatar image

-more powerful upvotes (2x)

-raffle tickets to win real life items

The idea is to reward users for submitting quality content. For example, if you submit an image that gets >100 upvotes, that's worth 100 lolbucks.</comment></comment>


We need to start drinking recycled wastewater - <AUTHOR> http://www.bbc.com/future/story/20160105-why-we-will-all-one-day-drink-recycled-wastewater <comment><USER2> > finding that while 49% were willing to try recycled wastewater, 13% refused, > and the rest weren't sure.

This is the end result of an education system that has not prepared people for the modern world, if we engineer a solution that produces water of a purity greater than water from a reservoir and and half of people are still not sure it is safe to drink then we have a massive problem.

For the record: I've no issue with grey water recovery systems, every drop of water I've ever drank has been through at least a few fish in it's time.

<comment><USER3> The same effect is noticed with GMO foods. They're better in all regards, yet there are people who are afraid of them because "not natural".

I don't think this has to do with the education system. My friend's father has a terminal illness, and in his attempt to understand and rationalize it, he thought that he did it to himself by leading an "unnatural" lifestyle. The man has a masters in mathematics and owned a software company, he's quite intelligent.

I think people just try to rationalize their situation, sometimes they rest on the idea that natural is better.

<comment><USER4> One of the issues with GMO foods is that we don't actually _know_ for a fact exactly how the changes we make in them work, or what effect they may have in the human body over long periods of time. We just don't know.

<comment><USER5> As opposed to "naturally" cross-breeding strains and selecting for traits without genetic sequencing?

Changes are changes, whether random or induced mutation. I feel better if there's at least one brain inspecting the changes vs throwing dice.

<comment><USER6> Cross breeding does not induce mutations. Cross breeding mixes genetic code that already exist on the original plants.

Random or induced mutation like they do in GMO has lots of unintended consequences(for example radiating it). It is like a program that has not been debugged, only that a crash could be people dying or getting ill in the thousands or millions.

Also mixing genes from species that have nothing to do with each other like creatures that live in deep ocean that emit light with those that live on the surface will also have unintended consequences.

Human beings could be cocky and arrogant. I have a river near my house. Someone had the brilliant idea of introducing an alien small fish to help native fish as food. The unintended consequence was that the new small fish ate the eggs of native fish and made them disappear completely from the river.

<comment><USER5> _> Cross breeding does not induce mutations. Cross breeding mixes genetic code that already exist on the original plants._

And why do you think that genetic code within the same species is different in the first place...?

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> I went to the BBC story kindly submitted here to read it. At the BBC story that opens this thread, I see a linked BBC story "Solving a Space Station's Toilet-Shaped Problem"[1] describing how difficult it has been to do water recycling on the International Space Station, where the extreme cost of transporting more water up into near earth orbit would provide a powerful incentive to develop technology to recycle water. Being in free fall in the limited space (and isolation from earth's ecosystem) of the space station provides its own tough engineering challenges, but evidently even rocket scientists haven't completely figured out how to do toilet-to-tap water recycling in all needed cases.

[1] [http://www.bbc.com/future/story/20150527-solving-a-space- sta...](http://www.bbc.com/future/story/20150527-solving-a-space-stations- toilet-shaped-problem)

<comment><USER8> What do rocket scientists have to do with designing water purification systems?

<comment><USER7> _What do rocket scientists have to do with designing water purification systems?_

On the assumption that you may not be a native speaker of English, I'll mention that here in the United States, at least, the term "rocket scientist" (which some people who work on the International Space Station project literally are) is a synonym for "very smart person." In other words, my statement is that even though the International Space Station presumably has enough prestige and budget as a project to hire very capable engineers, those engineers have not found it easy to design a toilet-to-tap water treatment system (as the linked article in my first comment reports). Yes, designing a system to work in free fall while confined to the space station is itself a difficult engineering problem, but even here on earth in normal-g conditions, it looks like there is a lot of engineering work still to do on the problem of potable water recycling.

<comment><USER9> It's really more of an issue of space / weight, it's pretty easy to setup a water recycling system on earth just by using the right soils, plants, etc.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> In a way I do. I drink water that comes from a lake that about 1 million people poops into... On the other hand, it's a big lake.

I'm lucky in one way to live in Sweden where there is virtually unlimited fresh water (except in a few places). On the other hand, it doesn't stop people from trying to save water, for no particular reason at all, other than some general climate angst. Water is really cheap - somwhere around 1 EUR per m3, and there are no big lawns that needs water. (And if they do, and it's large, you probably have a lake or a stream within pumping distance nearby.)

It's a bit counterproductive. Old sewer pipes are clogging up because of modern toilets that use very little water, and dishwashers and washing machines should probably be set up to use ten times more water in cold pre- cycles and while rinsing, to be able to save a bit on the warm cycles.

I can add that we probably have one of the best waste treatment facilities in world, so the total volume through the system is more or less irrelevant, except some marginal costs for chemicals and pumping.

But no. EU mandates that saving water is important...

The utility companies are now forced to increase the water rates- typically the fixed component, since the total used volume- and their budget- is shrinking.

</comment><comment><USER3> Sounds like this needs a brand change. "Recycled" kind of implies that there is still something "left behind".

Why not call it BluWater or something simple and marketing-like? Follow up with some blah text like "BluWater is the freshest and cleanest water humanity has ever drank! You can get it straight from the taps!"

<comment><USER11> Disturbingly, your extremely condescending idea is probably exactly the kind of thing that would actually work.

<comment><USER12> A condescending idea would have been to call it Brawndo. "It has electrolytes..."

<comment><USER13> Hey! That's got what I crave!

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> Wouldn't most tap water in the US fit under this definition? My father used to work at a waste water treatment facility. At one end of the plant was all of the raw sewage that came in from the city, at the other end, it had been cleaned and purified to the point you could swim in it and probably be OK drinking from it. I know that from there they didn't just dump the water back into the local rivers and ponds, it went back to the water treatment facility not too far away where it found its way back into homes.

<comment><USER14> Very few cities _don 't_ 'just dump the water back' \- that's actually the way it works outside of a very very small handful of places. The reason for these treatment plants is so that the water that gets dumped into the environment is clean. Well, pretty clean - there are still things that aren't removed today with even the most advanced treatments, such as hormones/contraceptives...

<comment><USER15> My family owns a civil engineering company that deals with wastewater management.

A lot of it is treated with bacterial vats, chemicals, and UV, and then run back into local tributaries, because while it's safe for the environment, it isn't quite safe for human consumption.

A glass or two won't hurt you, but I wouldn't want to drink it regularly, mostly due to the cocktail of pharmaceuticals that can't be filtered.

A lot of that water is also used to irrigate large tracks of land not used for food. Many golf courses use this method, and sometime big pipes just run through forests spraying treated water onto drought-prone areas.

Once you get past the "ick" factor, waste water management is actually pretty cool.

<comment><USER16> Don't you risk building up pharmaceuticals in the soil around the forest pipes?

What a weird world.

<comment><USER5> I'd imagine (guessing) most pharmaceuticals are fairly short-lived vs biological processes? Otherwise, you'd either only need one pill or it would build up in your body.

I suppose it's possible that they're only broken down by human biological processes, but that seems unlikely given the diversity of microbial life in the environment (and inside us!).

<comment><USER17> Some drugs are not metabolized to a great extent before they exit the body.

For instance, an arctic shaman would eat poisonous mushrooms, taking the hit for the dangerous toxins in the fungus, then other people would drink the shaman's urine, which still contained the active hallucinogenic chemical, and go on a much safer trip. The hallucinogen would persist in this fashion through multiple kidneys before it was no longer worth drinking someone else's piss.

Now imagine that instead of pissing into a cup, you're pissing into a creek, and someone downstream will be taking a lower dose of something that was prescribed to you. That's one of the current problems with just running the wastewater output to the water treatment input. The treatment systems can sterilize and flocculate, but that makes it _biologically_ sterile, not _chemically_ sterile.

It's similar to the difference between _distilled_ water, _deionized_ water, and _pure_ water. There will be some things that your specific purification process does not remove. If you have no outflows, your water system will become like a salt lake, where soluble chemicals enter via the tributaries and are left behind when the water evaporates, thus making the lake saltier and saltier the longer it exists, until it is so salty that otherwise soluble salts precipitate out in certain weather conditions.

Essentially, you would need a desalinator plant between your wastewater plant and the water treatment plant, and those are somewhat more expensive than just diluting your more problematic waste into the whole ocean.

<comment><USER5> I understand the principle (though upvote for the example!), but my question was after leaving a human body whether or not natural processes (e.g. UV) + microbes in the environment would break those chemicals down in a reasonable timescale or if they persist? From s_q_b, it sounds like they do get broken down, albeit with an effect on the flora and fauna.

<comment><USER17> It depends on the chemical.

Protein-based drugs, such as oxytocin or insulin, are likely to be consumed and recycled into component amino acids.

 _Most_ molecules left out in the environment will _eventually_ be oxidized, have an important bond cleaved by UV light with enough energy, or undergo thermal decomposition.

As sunlight, dissolved oxygen concentration, and temperature can vary wildly just by moving a few meters away, and the chemicals themselves have different stability, it is very difficult to predict how long a pill that was flushed down the toilet will persist in the environment.

Generally speaking, certain drugs are only useful _because_ they take longer to degrade inside the body. It wouldn't do you much good to get an injection of a drug if your body's proteases chop it up to uselessness in the first ten minutes, or if it zooms right to the liver and gets methylated, or whatever it is the body does to clear foreign chemicals. In those cases, microbes will also have a hard time turning them into something else.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER18> Most tap water in Germany is "recycled" water. I think this goes for most of Europe? Drinking tap water and adding your on carbonate is even a thing here (German use the word as synonym for carbonated water). "If anything, recycled wastewater is relatively sweet" \- Said no tap water drinker ever There are still worlds between the US and Europe..

<comment><USER14> Not true - ground water accounts for 80% of Germany's drinking water, with reservoirs accounting for the rest. Germany has a very strong set of waste water treatment laws, but that treated water is either used commercially, for irrigation, or dumped into rivers and lakes, just like it is here in the US.

Before you get all high and mighty with your anti-americanism, check your facts.

<comment><USER19> Not sure what -he- meant with "There are still worlds between the US and Europe", but there are worlds between Germany and the parts of the US (large cities West and East coast) where I've been.

A lot of water has such a heavy chlorine smell and taste, I can't drink it - same goes for US soft drinks that are created with tap water, can't drink. There is practically no smell or taste in German tap water [0].

[0] I might be biased and not taste it any longer because of growing up here

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER20> There would be no shortage of water if it was priced correctly. Instead, nonsensical "water rights" contribute to less-than-optimal uses (like growing rice in the California desert, or water-hogging almond trees) and shortages for those who need it.

<comment><USER21> Lets not forget the huge amount of water wasted on growing feed for livestock. Its ridiculous how much less water farmers would need if they grew crops from human consumption rather than cows (and yes, some cows craze on open land for food, but that has plenty of other issues associated with it).

</comment></comment><comment><USER22> Weird article.

It talks about why toilet-to-tap is technically feasible, but not (specifically) why we "need" to adopt it, let alone whether it's inevitable. In Perth, or anywhere else. (Yes, it mentions general factors. But at no point does it make a logical case to support what it says in its headline).

BTW, a prediction: in the same way that corporations have strenuously (and in some cases, successfully) lobbied for prohibitions on labeling GMO-derived foods as such, or rGBH-derived milk as such -- one day we'll equal if not more energy put into efforts against against labeling toilet-derived drinking water as... exactly what it is.

And I'm sure one day, these efforts will ultimately succeed, also.

</comment><comment><USER23> The article mentions mass desalination, but it doesn't actually go into how impractical it is compared to recycling wastewater.

[http://www.nytimes.com/2010/07/11/world/asia/11water.html](http://www.nytimes.com/2010/07/11/world/asia/11water.html)

</comment><comment><USER24> I genuinely do not understand the aversion to drinking recycled water. It's all recycled water!

<comment><USER25> Tell that to the homoeopaths /s

<comment><USER26> If drinking waste water makes you sick, drinking highly diluted waste water will cure you.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER27> Well cities have a somewhat captive market - if they pump it to your house, you'll either use it or pay extra for bottles, and at the least you won't shower or flush your toilet with bottled water.

</comment><comment><USER28> It is pouring with rain outside; as it often does in every part of the UK where the BBC are based. It may be that in some parts of the world people do need to start drinking each others urine; but unless the climate changes here; I think we can probably stick with the stuff that falls out of the sky.

</comment><comment><USER29> Singapore has invested a lot of tech into this as the Malaysia keeps fucking with their water supply. [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/NEWater](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/NEWater)

</comment><comment><USER30> All of my drinking water is recycled. Pull it out of the well, put it back in the septic system in the ground where it came from.

</comment><comment><USER31> Everyone who lives downstream of a water treatment plant is already drinking (diluted) recycled wastewater. Most of the liquid water on the planet has already passed through a human body countless times. It's all recycled. This is not news.

</comment><comment><USER32> Hm, how about reversing "toilet-to-tap" into "tap-to-toilet"? I guess its too complicated to flush toilet with water from shower or dishes.

<comment><USER33> Those "Tiny" houses do it already. We have the technology.

<comment><USER32> It was pretty common in soviet Czechoslovakia. Another "high tech" communist trick is to put flush reservoir to ceiling, higher pressure requires about 30% less water.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER34> I'll be honest; I always assumed this was already standard practice in places where it made sense. Is this untrue?

</comment><comment><USER35> I was fine until I read this:

"If anything, recycled wastewater is relatively sweet,"

<comment><USER36> Well, diabetes _is_ becoming more prevalent.

</comment></comment><comment><USER37> lovely</comment>


Amazon Launches Snowball, a Storage Appliance for Importing Data to AWS by FedEx - <AUTHOR> http://techcrunch.com/2015/10/07/amazon-launches-snowball-a-rugged-storage-appliance-for-importing-data-to-aws-by-fedex/ <comment><AUTHOR> Which all companies would need this service?</comment>


Show HN: Personal Site, and the Static Site Generator I Wrote to Build It - <AUTHOR> Hi HN,
This one's a twofer.
First, I'm showing off my personal site and blog, garrettgoss.com [1]. I'm looking to make a career change — from biomedical engineering/biomedical research, to research and development engineering in the consumer product development/additive manufacturing space — and felt that my prior work experience inadequately reflected my true interests and skills, which are better exemplified by my side projects. I put this together for myself, to better document my own work, for the broader internet, to share some of the projects I've developed to those who might be interested, and for potential employers, to help demonstrate that I am more than what my resume might suggest. I'm interested to hear your thoughts on how I did with the latter two goals, as well as any suggestions you might have for doing better.
Second, I'm showing off the static site generator I made to build it, which I wrote about in a blog post here [2], and is available on GitHub here [3]. I know that these are a dime-a-dozen around here, but I didn't love any of the others (and wanted greater configurability), so I made my own. After writing a new post (or making edits to an existing one, or making changes to any of the templates), I regenerate the above site with a single line `python3 sitegen.py`, preview it locally (handled automatically), and sync the changes to Amazon S3 (again with a single line) via their command line interface. I still aim to move some things around a little bit in the code (which is why I bulk import everything in `__init__.py`), but it's functional and (IMO) reasonably well documented. If you happen to take a look, I'd love to hear your comments about it as well.
Thanks!
[1] https://garrettgoss.com
[2] https://garrettgoss.com/blog/2019/05/sitegen.html
[3] https://github.com/ggoss/sitegen <comment><USER2> Can you expand more on why none of the existing static site generator solutions were adequate?

> _Write posts using Markdown with YAML metadata_

[1] Hexo does exactly this...

Writing your own static site generator would be a great learning experience though

[1] [https://github.com/hexojs/hexo](https://github.com/hexojs/hexo)

<comment><AUTHOR> You aren't wrong — indeed, many static site generators are capable of doing exactly that — but I wouldn't go so far as to say that no other existing solutions were adequate.

As for Hexo, it looks like a great option, but it's written in Javascript — a language and ecosystem that I'm not terribly familiar with. While I could certainly learn it, doing so specifically to use Hexo (which I'd then need to configure, and possibly extend to my liking) adds an extra yak I'd need to shave to get started. I'm sure I could use it without learning Javascript, but troubleshooting or extending it would be more difficult, and I'd still need to adapt to the workflow it was designed around.

I was looking for a static site generator with all of the features I knew I wanted (like table of contents generation and seamless image compression/scaling), and all of the features I didn't yet know I wanted (like specified/fixed table column widths), so it needed to be easily extendable. I also wanted to get off the ground quickly, so it needed to written in a language that I was already comfortable with. Lastly, and most subjectively of all, the workflow needed to feel right.

Ultimately, it came down to the choice of (a) spending my time learning how to adapt to someone else's ideal solution, or (b) spending my time creating my own (or something like it). I chose the latter, and like you said, it was a great learning experience.

Thanks for taking the time to have a look.

<comment><USER2> Thanks for the detailed reply! I understand now. There's a huge overhead to learning a new framework/language/ecosystem and it might not even meet the requirements you need.

Even if there's something that's good enough, I still like that people go through the process of making their own system. Completely fresh approaches are great way to learn and appreciate the time that goes into a framework and how hard it is to achieve; extensibility, performance, flexibility, security...etc

I had a quick look at the Github and it's great to see how concise and easy to follow the framework is, that's a lot harder with older Frameworks like hexo.

Anyway hope you keep developing it further!

<comment><AUTHOR> Many thanks! I'll definitely keep working on it, albeit a bit more slowly now that the blog is up and running.

Next, I'd like to make improvements to navigation and article discoverability on the site; I'm not yet sure what changes I'll make to the generator to accomplish this, but I'm sure there will be some (if you have any suggestions, I'd be glad to hear them). After that, we'll see!

Thanks again for having a look!

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER3> I am also building one link[1] but for processing jupyter notebooks to responsive html primarily. You can also refer to this blog[2] to generate html from ipynb file.

1\. [https://github.com/hemanta212/blogger- cli/tree/add_templatin...](https://github.com/hemanta212/blogger- cli/tree/add_templating)

2\. [https://nipunbatra.github.io/blog/2017/Jupyter-powered- blog....](https://nipunbatra.github.io/blog/2017/Jupyter-powered-blog.html)

My site. [https://hemanta212.github.io/blog/](https://hemanta212.github.io/blog/)

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks for the note. Looks good!

Blog post generation from Jupyter Notebooks is definitely something that I plan to add to mine. Hopefully `nbconvert` and my Jinja2 templates get me 90% of the way there; having yours as a reference will be useful if anything really trips me up.

Taking a look at your blog post, don't forget that Bootstrap has a lot of classes built in that make prettifying things like tables really easy [1]. In Sitegen, I apply a few Bootstrap classes to all tables in the BeautifulSoup object like so:

      for table in soup_body.find_all('table'):
          table['class'] = 'table table-striped table-sm table-hover'
      return soup_body

Refer to the `add_table_tags` function here [2] to see what I did directly.

[1] [https://getbootstrap.com/docs/4.3/content/tables/](https://getbootstrap.com/docs/4.3/content/tables/)

[2] [https://github.com/ggoss/sitegen/blob/master/sitegen/md_proc...](https://github.com/ggoss/sitegen/blob/master/sitegen/md_processing.py)

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> I can attest to how rewarding this can feel. I wrote a static site generator for my site as well[1] and it looks like both of us have a lot of common goals. I agree with you in that a lot of the existing SSGs are bloated out of the box and do not really focus on optimising the end output to site visitors. Gatsby is the only exemption to this but writing my blog in JSX isn't too appealing.

[1] [https://github.com/astronomersiva/lego](https://github.com/astronomersiva/lego)

<comment><AUTHOR> Great work! I like your site quite a bit - both in appearance and content. I'll have to take a closer look when I get the chance.

It's pretty cool that, despite using different languages and implementations, we converged on fairly similar outputs. That said, I may need to borrow some ideas from yours!

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> This looks great! I'm a big fan of the 3d printer (off tpic, I know) but building my own custom 3D printer has been one of my most technically rewarding experiences.

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks, glad to hear!</comment></comment>


Saving old software from extinction in the age of cloud computing - <AUTHOR> http://arstechnica.com/gadgets/2014/06/saving-old-software-from-extinction-in-the-age-of-cloud-computing/

<comment><USER2> Moving our usage totally to the cloud is not a great idea, it seems. Yes, we get convenience, but at the same time lose autonomy, control, and freedom over our computing.

RMS has a good (albeit slightly extreme) view on this: [https://www.gnu.org/philosophy/who-does-that-server- really-s...](https://www.gnu.org/philosophy/who-does-that-server-really- serve.html)

This view has people discussing the issues e.g. [http://arstechnica.com/information-technology/2008/09/why- st...](http://arstechnica.com/information-technology/2008/09/why-stallman-is- wrong-when-he-calls-cloud-computing-stupid/)

All in all, if we as users demand web apps that respect our freedom, and employ non-proprietary file formats, then this would be a non-issue. There are a number of ways this could be implemented... one would be to provide a software package (with source code), available to be downloaded and run locally on one's machine, if the product changes or gets trashed. Of course, complete access to your online data is necessary (i.e. ability to download your data as when you please).

<comment><USER3> That's why everybody needs Sandstorm: [https://blog.sandstorm.io/news/2014-07-21-open-source-web- ap...](https://blog.sandstorm.io/news/2014-07-21-open-source-web-apps-require- federated-hosting.html)

<comment><USER2> That's actually pretty cool!... and it's licensed under the Apache v2 license, which makes it free software ;)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> An interesting though, especially the view on MMORPGs.

I wonder that he did not name Second Life as a prime example of how cloud based content could rot. First mainy normal products are no longer available, because the creator stopped playing and selling them. I still get weekly PMs about old products, even if I do not play SL for about 4 years. Often about products that are not mine, but where I only contributed, e.g. in megaprims or scripts, and that somewhere show my name. People hope that I have a full permission copy, and could sell them under the hand. Sometimes for extreme prices!

An other example are simulators that go away. Main income for Linden labs is land tax and content just poofs away, when a player decides that paying land tax no longer makes sense. Linden labs will restore the island from backup and run it on own costs, in very few cases like Svarga, if massive player demand it. But I can only name this one case. e.g. 6 years ago more then 3 dozen dance clubs showed my DMX based light and dancefloor system. Today its only one club left. I dont know if my Laser sailing boats are still rezzed some beaches, even if there was a fleet of a few hundred racing regular. And I can think about a good dozen of my products where I'm sure, there they are nowhere displayed anymore.

Last we have classical dependency rot. Second Life allows scripting, and scripts can communicate with other scripts on same and remote simulators, can act as web clients or web servers, xml-rpc clients and servers and mail clients and servers. Some products require a backend to work, so the product will stop working, if the player leaves the game, and stops paying the hosting cost of the server backend.

 _well_ there is is OpenSim, OpenGrid and other SL server grid clones. Its nice to run your own grid at home, just for backup of own designs. But you can not import designs from the maingrid, you can not talk to people on maingrid, you basically created a single player massive online game backup.

</comment><comment><USER5> This article isn't really about old software, it's about software that's current, built on current webapp technology, that will eventually become old. Meanwhile, real "old" software, in use by ten's of thousands of enterprises worldwide, will still be struggling on, nurtured carfully through the developer renaissance, to fit on infrastructure that was never designed to host it's like.

</comment><comment><USER6> My recent trip to the Computer History Museum ([http://www.recursion.org/2014/10/16/a-night-with-the- ibm-140...](http://www.recursion.org/2014/10/16/a-night-with-the-ibm-1401)) had me thinking about this.

I was struck by how _physical_ the exhibits are. For the most part, the exhibits are old hardware. In some cases, they have the hardware running software that you can use.

Software from the PC era can be preserved with emulators (assuming its copy protection can be defeated), but what about internet software? The museum has a _photo_ of Google's first server, but not much about Google's software. Should we be preserving screenshots of Google results so we'll know what they used to look like?

</comment><comment><USER7> After Google Reader and delicious both died on me, I now try to store all data on my pc.</comment>


Show HN: Kapten – Simple containerized development environments - <AUTHOR> https://github.com/fabianlindfors/kapten/ <comment><USER2> nice! how did you pick/create each environment? (e.g. what node.js version is going to be used, and is express.js installed out of the box, if I select the "node" container?)

<comment><AUTHOR> Thank you! Currently Kapten uses Docker images with the "latest" tag which normally is the latest stable version. For example the official node image is currently at 7.9.</comment></comment>


Where To Buy An SSL Certificate - <AUTHOR>

So I'm moving away from using GoDaddy as a provider (thats another discussion why).... so where should I start purchasing SSL Certificates.  I can not use self signed certificates. <comment><USER2> [http://www.startssl.com/](http://www.startssl.com/) allows for free Class 1 certs

</comment><comment><USER3> I've really enjoyed using Gandi.net recently for both domain names and SSL certs!

</comment><comment><USER4> [http://dnsimple.com/](http://dnsimple.com/)

</comment><comment><USER5> I would highly recommend GetSSL.</comment>