Revealed: The guy behind IMDb - <AUTHOR> http://www.alexandrosmaragos.com/2010/12/guy-who-runs-imdb.html

<comment><USER2> 6 years as a hobby, and another two as a business. 8 years before he sold to Amazon. Remember that the next time you're complaining that you aren't making any money 30 days after launching a site.

<comment><USER3> IMDb didn't magically start making money when they sold to Amazon.

<comment><USER4> No, but Colin Needham did.

<comment><USER3> You seem to be forgetting pre-Amazon ad revenue.

<comment><USER5> There was no Google Adsense before 1998.

(Other ad players were there, but nothing as efficient and accessible to any website owner/publisher)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> Sources / Words / Images from the Daily Mail article[1]? Why not just submit the Mail article? Is this wholesale lifting of content even allowed?

[1]: [http://www.dailymail.co.uk/sciencetech/article-1342663/IMDb-...](http://www.dailymail.co.uk/sciencetech/article-1342663/IMDb- run-self-confessed-geek-Colin-Needham-house-Bristol.html)

<comment><AUTHOR> Oops. Somehow missed that link at the bottom.

<comment><USER7> Even sourcier: <http://www.imdb.com/help/show_leaf?history>

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> IMDB has become so ad and video ridden over the years that I've stopped using it for the most part. Their recent redesign of the detail pages has made it even less useful. There is a open project at <http://tmdb.org> which is more like what imdb used to be, and it has an API allowing you to integrate it into your own projects.

<comment><USER9> The official iPhone and iPad applications are nice though. My biggest use of IMDb is while I am watching TV or movies and it's more likely I'll have my phone or iPad than my laptop.

<http://thetvdb.com/> is another open project (the data is CC and the software is GPL) that's used by XBMC, Plex and others. It's aimed at software, not people, but it's good for episode listings.

<comment><USER10> Yes, and the iPhone version is better than the Android one. The search field is always there and it remembers your history. The Android app defaults to some adlike "BLOCKBUSTERS THIS WEEK" list that gives me that "I'm afraid to click on anything" feeling and you have to go to the menu in order to search, which is a button press and a screen tap minimum.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> I have to contrast IMDB with CDDB a.k.a. Gracenote. The CDDB guy is popularly held to have screwed over the contributions of thousands of dedicated users when they made their crowd-sourced database proprietary and commercial. Some people I know obsessively catalogued their entire collections, in the spirit of community knowledge, sharing. You have to at least consider that this was Steven Scherf's plan from the beginning, from when it was one of the first, if not the first, popular crowd-sourced sites.

<http://www.quora.com/How-did-CDDB-become-Gracenote>

<comment><USER12> I am that "CDDB guy" you refer to. Note that there were a number of us involved, and I can't tell you how far from our minds any of this was. Think what you like, but perhaps a little reading first:

<http://link.moonsoft.com/wired.html>

[http://www.wired.com/entertainment/music/commentary/listenin...](http://www.wired.com/entertainment/music/commentary/listeningpost/2006/11/72105?currentPage=all)

And yes, most lawyers are sociopaths :), but they are a necessary evil sometimes.

<comment><USER12> Sorry, that last line was for @zandorg.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> This is a classic case of where the guy followed his passion/dream. He wasn't in it for the money but wanted to create the best site (actually database at first) for movies and ultimately was rewarded by Amazon buying it. Shows how passionate he is that he's still there

<comment><USER14> It also shows that money is not needed for even the most amazing services or projects. (Yes, apart from running costs, though I am sure he paid for those out of his own pocket in the beginning because he felt like it.)

People sometimes get angry at others who live without wanting to pay for this and that. For example music. If people stop paying for money and that industry fails, so be it. Others make music in their free time because it is their hobby and passion.

</comment></comment><comment><USER15> [off-topic]

Seriously? _x-small_?! No matter how pretty you think your site looks if people can't read the fucking text it doesn't matter. On top of that the contrast is terrible making it even worse.

        font: x-small "Trebuchet MS", Trebuchet, Verdana, Sans-serif;
        font-size/* */:/**/small;
        font-size: /**/small;

Sorry for the tangent I'm just tired of having to bump up the font size 2-5 times on every damn site I visit. And now I feel old. Shit.

(If you reply mentioning readability I will punch you :p Readability is not a cure-all and messes up some pages)

<comment><USER16> I don't want to stand in the way of a good rant, but if you have to hold down on the plus key for on every site, perhaps you should increase your default font size? Or perhaps something is wrong with your DPI settings? Or perhaps a larger monitor? With the Linux and OSX setups I use, I have no trouble reading this particular site, and rarely find that I have to increase font sizes.

<comment><USER15> _(Excuse my ranting, could just be crankiness due to a lack of sleep caused by a 7am flight)_

My default font size is 16pt and that should be enough imo, but x-small applied to 16pt is still small. My display does have a relatively high DPI at ~130, but that's why I bump up my default font size. :/ I just bumped it to 18pt for good measure.

Despite the joke about feeling old I'm only 28 and have good enough vision w/ my contacts in.

Regardless of my DPI and/or default font size, there is absolutely no good reason to use x-small on a site whose sole purpose is to display articles for people to read. That is pure lunacy if you ask me.

<comment><USER10> Overconfigured for sure.

<comment><USER15> Because I changed my default font size? If you say so...

<comment><USER10> No, for using x-small for display text.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER17> Let me just say that as an indie filmmaker, dealing with IMDB sucks. The submission and update process is terribly confusing and the criteria for what films (and attributes) are acceptable makes Apples App Store rules seem clear and open.

I was very pleased to find several alternatives listed in this thread, thank- you!

</comment><comment><USER18> So it's one guy? Where does he get the data? What happens to all the IMDb Pro subscription money? Does he really run it all alone?

<comment><USER19> The answers to all of these questions are in the linked article.

But, just to save you the bother:

a) one guy started it, but it is not a one-man show, nor has it ever really been b) the data was sourced (Wikipedia-style, you might say) on Usenet, back in the pre-WWW days. Since then, the number of sources has multiplied. c) it goes to Amazon, who bought the IMDB back in '98. d) Of course not. He's a VP at Amazon. There is a staff (of unspecified size) working on IMDB.

<comment><USER20> You're forgetting the outcry there was for taking the USENET posts into a closed system. Similar to what happened with CDDB:

1\. get users to submit a bunch of content to you in an open system for free

2\. close the system and claim ownership of the database that your users helped create

3\. profit!</comment></comment></comment>


Human intelligence: have we reached the limit of knowledge? - <AUTHOR> https://phys.org/news/2019-10-human-intelligence-limit-knowledge.html <comment><USER2> A rather long article and yet no mention of basic related philosophical ideas such as The Problem of Induction, the limitations of Empiricism, or even a mention of Epistemology. I really wish more physicists (and scientists in general) would study the philosophy of science prior to asking philosophical questions about science.

[https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/induction- problem/](https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/induction-problem/)

[https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/scientific- realism/](https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/scientific-realism/)

</comment><comment><USER3> No. Next question.</comment>


The Netflix Website Gets a Major Upgrade - <AUTHOR> http://blog.netflix.com/2015/06/the-netflix-website-gets-major-upgrade.html <comment><USER4> What I don't understand is how Netflix seemingly ignores a user's incredibly valuable feedback regarding a given title. For example, you're browsing all the titles and you see some stupid animated movie you have no intention of ever seeing. You select it, to get the detail view, then click "Not interested" or if that doesn't appear (why I don't know), you click one star. You're telling Netflix basically, "I don't wanna see this, ever, so please don't recommend it to me."

But... Netflix keeps recommending it. Come back a day later, it's still there in the list while you're browsing titles. Spend an hour indicating "Not Interested" on all the crap and filler (there is a ton) of streaming content Netflix shows you, and it makes no difference. It's all there the next hour, the next day, the next week.

I reckon Netflix is afraid the truth would be revealed, that they have VERY little streaming content, if they honored a user's "Not interested" and hid those from the genre lists. Why, you might wind up with a handful of titles listed.

But would that be so bad? I would be perfectly fine if Netflix's lists were EMPTY today. I would still come back tomorrow to check to see what was new (gosh, imagine if Netflix sent me a notification of some sort listing out what's been added since last time I looked).

Today's "Major Upgrade" does not, so far as I know, include these kinds of improvements. I sure wish it did.

<comment><USER5> Wish I could whitelist the shows to watch in the kids section, most of it has little educational value.

<comment><USER6> I had to cancel my satellite TV subscription because of the Disney channels. All the main protagonists are self obsessed trouble makers that never get their comeuppance.

I would rather run the risk of my kids hearing a youtuber swearing about the latest minecraft addon than watch my kids grow up with Disney shows. At least the Youtubers are causing my children to want to create things and then showing them how.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> > When you hover your mouse over a title, you will now see a slideshow of > images from that movie or show. We hope this slideshow will give you a > better feel for what the show is about than reading the description alone.

Well, this is a standard feature of any average Joe's porn site for about 5 years now

<comment><USER8> Built this for our site (stream.me) in like a day and a half. Makes you feel good about your work when big companies with much bigger teams "announce" features you have already tackled :)

<comment><USER9> I would imagine it's much harder to roll out at scale.

Netflix's ui has been pretty terrible for a while, though, I wish they would have an alternative to the grid view. Sometimes I can't find the genre I'm looking for.

<comment><USER8> Front-end features have nothing to do with "scale". Does it work in the browsers? That is all that matters.

EDIT: FWIW, we also implemented this feature on our last site which was the #63 most visited site in the world at its height. So we have done it "at scale"

<comment><USER9> Well, you need to find those thumbnails somewhere. So that's an entire backend component right there.

Also, I seriously doubt you anywhere near approached the scale of netflix's data centers. #63 most visited site doesn't compete at all with porn or netflix in terms of sheer bytes.

Just pointing out it's easy to say you can roll something out in a day, but you can never implement a feature without context.

<comment><USER8> I am certainly not saying have had near the traffic of netflix. But we are a live stream site, so certainly have to deal with more load for generating the thumbnail sprites we use because we do them for every new stream, and every few minutes during the stream

The backend part of it is just ffmpeg, which can do pretty much all of this for you. The scaling is just a matter of throwing more servers at it, which is relatively trivial, expensive but simple. Admittedly my 1.5 days was not including generating the thumbnail sprites. But if you include that we had 2 programmers work on this for a total of less than a week.

<comment><USER9> > The backend part of it is just ffmpeg, which can do pretty much all of this > for you.

Really? it takes in a movie and spits your thumbnails, sans spoilers, sans family un-friendly content, into your data store, already indexed? Across multiple data centers?

Seems like you're making it out to be much more trivial than it is.

EDIT: To be clear, the feature itself has trivial components. But rolling out a new feature requires far, far more than just the frontend code and an ffmpeg script.

<comment><USER10> Those are goalpost-moving requirements. Netflix didn't say anything about spoilers, etc.

<comment><USER9> Well among other things, netflix DOES need to ensure that e.g. sex scenes don't pop up. This is not a legal requirement, but it will drive families that trusted their kids to not anymore. Additionally, you have to take into account things like "how to avoid getting terrible shots", which is something I'm sure porn sites have looked into.

These are goalpoast moving requirements, but I also wasn't the person making it out to be trivial.

<comment><USER10> They do? I imagine they already have a way to block shows with sex. So if you're past that and can see the show at all, it seems moot.

Also, all these things are "good ideas", but can you imagine going to your boss and saying. "I have three-9s of the cases covered, and for the vast majority we simply refuse to show slides and almost nobody notices ... But ... I need another six months of tweaking the facial detection to get to four-9s before we ship it. To make sure nobody seems a funny face when they pause the video."

Have you considered what the expected revenue differential between the two systems is (with and without funny-face detection) and have you compared that to the cost of the time spent in a meeting discussing it, let alone the work to implement it, and then to the opportunity cost of not doing other stuff?

These comments about potential difficulties are bike-shedding in action. Nobody has anything to add so they add nothing. I'm sure we could all imagine cases where there were complex restrictions, and that'd be totally cool if these was an article about rule-engines. But it's not.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> I'm excited to see they're trying new things, and it does look slick.

That said, I just wish they'd get rid of the stupid horizontal scrolling list of movies. It's just not efficient and it works poorly. They could have use these same effects in a vertical list or even 2D grid that has normal button/wheel-controlled scrolling, zooming in when you clicked on a specific movie. But the 1D horizontal list that you can't scroll normally is really limiting and makes me avoid the website.

<comment><USER12> Me, too.

Until then, under chrome/userContent.css in my Firefox profile folder, I will keep:

        @-moz-document domain(netflix.com) {

            .slider .agMovieSetSlider {
                position: relative !important;
                width: 100% !important;
            }

            .slider {
                overflow: auto !important;
                height: auto !important;
            }
        }

_Edit: It strikes me that this may break with the coming redesign. Oh well, that drawing board 's not such a rough thing to be dragged back to._

</comment></comment><comment><USER13> I kind of wish they wouldn't have changed it years ago...I feel like (as with just about all software 'updates' these days) they continue to remove useful features (like the ability to actually browse with a modicum of filter options) in favor of 'curating' results for 'you' and new graphics.

I'll continue to use InstantWatcher and other 3rd party resources when I want to find something / browse and then back to Netflix when I know exactly the search term I'm looking for.

<comment><USER14> Shameless self-plug: You might like our site at [https://justwatch.com](https://justwatch.com) \- all the filter options at your power and it doesn't make dizzy when scrolling :)

<comment><USER15> Netflix and Amazon Prime- nice! Any plans on integrating Rotten Tomatoes scores?

<comment><USER14> Ratings are on the way, less than a month. The non-optimal UX with the country switcher is due to a significant amount of VPNed users searching for other countries' content in case you were wondering. Still discussing how to improve on that.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> _Over the past four years, web browsers have changed a lot, becoming more sophisticated and allowing for richer visuals and animations._

I am used to this eye candy already from using it on the Playstation. but what I would really like is an ability to curate my own lists (instead of having just one), things on the stay on my list in the order they were added (pairs or occasional trilogies always end up 'drifting away' from each other for no special reason) and to see more information about who made a film than just 3 actors and a director. What if I want to search for films by a particular screenwriter?

Other missing features: request a film for streaming that's not currently available, so they have some way to gauge demand; a higher-priced streaming tier where you have access to the extra features that come on a disc, like interviews or director commentary; Scene search. Netflix has a massive incumbent advantage now, and a deservedly earned one, but user-side development has slowed to a crawl since they went into producing their own content, and the risk for investors is that the market cares more about user experience than the output of Netflix's TV studio (although I personally think their content division is outstanding).

Oh, and _please_ stop ejecting me from the credits of a film to show me what you think I want to want to watch next. There is nothing more annoying than to be sitting there in a reflective mood following a great film, thinking about what I watched as the credits rol and the music plays, only to get kicked out into a static advert for some other film usually wildly inappropriate/irrelevant. It's like being woken up when you're still dreaming, and every time it happens I want to throw something at the television.

<comment><USER17> > Other missing features: request a film for streaming that's not currently > available, so they have some way to gauge demand;

As a UK user, it'd also be nice to be able to somehow monitor when something that's only available in other territories (i.e. US) becomes available in the UK.

</comment></comment><comment><AUTHOR> It's built using ReactJS, NodeJS, and FalcorJS

Source: [https://twitter.com/NetflixUIE/status/610506318860783616](https://twitter.com/NetflixUIE/status/610506318860783616)

<comment><USER18> Was this redesign part of that one blog post from Netflix that criticized ExpressJS? Can't remember off the top of my head when that was posted.

<comment><USER19> Not really; they were done by different teams.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER20> I keep hearing praises of Netflix's recommendation engine. I wonder when they will roll that out! Because when I browse Netflix, I have 5 pages of categories, each with upto 75 shows. However, and this is the critical point, each of those categories contains about 60-75% the same shows, presented in different order. And with no respect to genre, to boot.

</comment><comment><USER21> > _Scrolling through rows is now much faster, with a mouse-click advancing a > full row at a time._

Jesus. Not only have other competitors had this (Amazon Prime, HBO)...Netflix itself had this nav "feature" before it moved to the tedious mouseover scroll it's had for the past couple of years. The slow-scroll was so infuriating that I thought it _had_ to be the result of some incredibly counter-intuitive A/B insight. But now that they're reverting, it just seems like a poorly conceived idea.

</comment><comment><USER22> fingers crossed this fixes the netflix recommending me things I've already rated before.

Heads up netflix: if I've rated something, I don't ever want it to be recommended again outside of "watch it again."

<comment><USER23> Another Netflix annoyance: if I watch the pilot episode of a series, then weeks and months pass, and I never watch another episode of that series, it's probably safe to infer that I didn't like it and you can stop recommending stuff to me based on my "interest" in that series. I feel like there's a few of these really common-sense things that Netflix doesn't pick up on and probably don't require some fancypants algorithm to detect.

<comment><USER24> Is it possible the fancypants algorithm knows you better than you do, knows you will like that series if you watched 3 episodes instead of just the pilot, and is hoping you'll change your mind and listen to it?

<comment><USER15> "I know the first couple episodes suck, but stick with it. You'll thank me come season 2."

AKA, the "Parks and Rec" effect.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER25> With the new site, will it be possible to:

      - deep link to a movie listing
      - deep link to a start time (like YouTube)

<comment><USER26> Deep link to listing: yes, as you open up the details view on a title, the URL updates to reflect that. You can use that URL to go straight to the title, for example here is Daredevil: [http://www.netflix.com/browse?jbv=80018294&jbp=2&jbr=1](http://www.netflix.com/browse?jbv=80018294&jbp=2&jbr=1)

<comment><USER25> The previous site allowed anonymous viewing of a movie listing, for recommending a movie to a non-subscriber.

The Daredevil movie listing link goes to a login page, is that expected?

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER27> Can't wait to see it in action. I didn't care much for the site as it was. My biggest pet peeve was the difference between dvd/streaming interfaces. The DVD version would let you click to advance but the streaming list would only advance while hovering.

Second biggest is they don't have, last I saw, an easy way to see if a movie is now available on streaming when it's on the dvd list.

Maybe I misunderstood how it worked (is there a better way!) but it scrolled too slow for me. I usually wait a month to see if anything is new because of how infrequently they get new movies[0].

[0] streaming seems to be almost all tv shows now and they have those getting on the 'new' list constantly.

On that front...how come FOX/WB/etc don't compete and take those views? Last time I checked FOX only had the last 5 episodes when I really needed the a full season to catch up. Making me go somewhere else for their own content just seems weird.

<comment><USER9> > On that front...how come FOX/WB/etc don't compete and take those views?

Because it's a lot of work running a dedicated streaming service. Personally, I wouldn't do that. A better model would be licensing + free views (as they already do).

</comment></comment><comment><USER28> And still no catalogue before purchase.. "We have something interesting, but will show it only after purchase" \- very cool.

<comment><USER29> Isn't the first month free anyway?

<comment><USER28> You should give them your payment card credentials first. I know they are big but it doesn't mean they can't be hacked. And when you submitted card credentials, only way to remove them is send email to email@example.com and wait for reply.

<comment><USER30> You could do what I do: keep an online-charges-only debit account that contains just enough cash to cover recurring services and gets on-demand cash deposits to cover one-off charges.

<comment><USER31> My bank (Swedbank/Sparbanken Nord) forces you to do it like that. They won't approve online payments on your regular card, instead you have to go to their website and create a temporary card number with a limited balance and an expiration date counted in months rather than years.

<comment><USER32> As a customer I prefer the US model: Give your card number to pretty much everyone, mark off the fraudulent/unwanted transactions on your account each month, carry on.

<comment><USER30> Frankly, I don't want the hassle -however small- of having to dispute recorded charges. I much rather prefer that fraudulent charges be declined for reasons of insufficient funds. [0]

It might surprise you to learn that I manually instruct my bank to send checks to my creditors each and every month. Maybe I'm nuts. _shrug_

[0] Yes, I recognize that there's a _potential_ race condition that might enable a fraudulent txn while denying me the ability to complete one of my own txns. Not much I can do about it with the tools that my otherwise wonderful bank gives me. :)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER33> I wish they would bring back plain text titles under each cover image. Hovering over each image isn't an adequate solution.

</comment><comment><USER34> What frontend framework was used? Any lessons learned? I hear Netflix uses Ember, Angular, and React for different applications. I imagine a wonderful eng blog post will be posted in the near future :)

</comment><comment><USER35> > With the new Netflix website, we've created a richer, more visual > experience, and a website that works more like an app and less like a series > of linked web pages. Information appears in-line and in context rather than > on a separate page, which makes exploring the catalog faster than ever > before.

Eww.

So now linking something to someone is broken, the back and forward may or may not work, middle click definitely won't work, and all for what? So they look a little cooler? Meh.

<comment><USER15> Have you actually tried this, or are you just speculating? I just did, and linking still works. Looks like they still have separate pages for movies/shows. But even for single-page sections, I'd assume they are updating the hash so linking works.

<comment><USER35> Hasn't rolled out to my account yet. Per Netflix's blog post they're doing it in blocks.

I was replying to what Netflix said. Which is all the information I have available to me until they deploy it to my account.

<comment><USER15> You're assuming they don't have updating URLs. That would be a massive oversight. Almost all popular SPAs that I use have linking implemented, so I don't know why you'd assume Netflix would fail to do this.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER36> Technically it might be completely rebuilt, but I guess that most people won't notice. They added more animations and a video element on top, both of which makes it slower.

As functionality and layout are the same as in the old version (which was pretty good already), I don't see how this one is "more like an app and less like a series of linked web pages".

</comment><comment><USER37> I'm a bit jaded but it looks like a really great change to focus on what you can watch versus reminding you that there used to be a movie in this space that you can no longer watch.

I love Netflix as an instant streaming service, and I really dislike the hoops that big media makes folks jump through, but after having yet another movie I recommended to a friend that I had streamed on NetFlix but had disappeared, I switched back to buying movies on disc that I want to have in my library.

</comment><comment><USER38> my question is, do i still have to google some arbitrary and arcane silverlight hotkey code in order to change video quality?

<comment><USER39> I don't understand why the console Netflix apps have the ability to show you exactly (ish) the quality you're currently streaming at (on PS3, hit 'select' button and it'll say "720p" or whatever it's at), but the PC browser client doesn't.

<comment><USER30> Press ctrl+alt+shift+d . The video resolution will appear, along with a bunch of other debugging info.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER40> I'm looking forward to a follow-up article from their development and/or ops team. Netflix tech articles are very interesting. I'm sure there is a good tech story behind this upgrade.

</comment><comment><USER41> The killer part of this redesign is the in-context, in-line information cards which makes shifting through the netflix's catalog a breeze.

</comment><comment><USER42> Does anyone know why you cannot filter by rating the same way you can by genre? Is it a hard problem to solve?

<comment><USER43> I honestly wonder if they try to direct users towards certain content because they might have different deals around the content that makes watching certain movies for them better than others. That's the only explanation I can come up with for why they would make finding something worth watching so hard.

</comment></comment><comment><USER44> Unless you're logged in the site is useless. I'm not a client so I can only comment as a prospective buyer. There isn't much to comment, though. It's a horrible experience. The help search is also useless. Tried the following search terms: pricing, plans, movies, guide; the results are always the same, the first result is always "Can I stream Netflix in Ultra HD?".

</comment><comment><USER45> No word on whether any of this will apply for those who use a game console.

<comment><USER46> Unless I'm mistaken, this update makes it in line with the consoles. I have an Xbox One, and it currently looks much like the site does now.

</comment></comment><comment><USER47> You know what would be better? Ditching Silverlight. Fucking thing crashes on me every few minutes. I've been trying to watch the last 6 minutes of an episode of HoC for about 30.

<comment><USER30> I've been using the Netflix "HTML5"[0] player for what seems like at least six months. Check your playback settings and flip the "Use HTML5 player" switch.

[0] It's actually the EME player, which uses a binary blob for video decryption. But, The Industry calls this DRM scheme HTML5 video decoding, so whatever.

<comment><USER48> They call it HTML5 player because it's using the HTML5 <video> tag and using native browser controls. Being decoded by an external module isn't determinant - in fact, Firefox uses the same infrastructure (GMP) for both encrypted and unencrypted videos.

<comment><USER30> Oh, I _know_ why it's called what it's called.

Lumping patent and copyright issues under the "Intellectual Property" umbrella harmed productive non-wonky discussion of the issues. I expect that lumping DRM'd and unencumbered video playback under the same umbrella will be similarly damaging to non-wonky discourse.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER49> I've sort of given up on Netflix but maybe I'll take a look. I mean, I still pay my monthly fee but I now watch all of my stuff through Plex. I just subscribe to a show and it appears in my Plex server, with a much better ui than netflix.

I'm overseas and at first I tried to use the Plex Netflix plugin and connect to Netflix through a VPN that I would have dynamically open whenever it went to a range of ip addresses, but Netflix's amazon range kept changing - <USER2> assume to stop people like me from accessing from overseas.

And so I gave up trying to do it 'proper' and now I just download their shows and watch them from my own server. I live in a country where it's legal to download - just not share, and I think what I do is completely reasonable.

But I at least still pay my monthly fee.

<comment><USER50> How do you use plex with your TV?

I set something up with a RPi a while ago, but performance was ridiculous. Chromecast support from mobile app was also buggy.

<comment> SG- PlexConnect with an AppleTV here, works pretty well:

[https://blog.plex.tv/2013/06/04/introducing-plexconnect- an-a...](https://blog.plex.tv/2013/06/04/introducing-plexconnect-an-appletv- client-which-thinks-different/)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER51> The Netflix website is a piece of shit. Their recommendation system is crap. I liked a Robert Redford movie, now even his crap ones show up as five stars. They have decent movies but it's impossible to find. Their search sucks. Their foreign category has everything and the kitchen sink. Their scroll gives about ten movies then is done, even though they have a hundred movies fitting the title. If they had a good system, you wouldnt need instantwatcher and whatdoiwatchonnetflix. It's good to know that the major upgrade involves - <USER3> I dont have to click anymore, how cool.</comment>


Ask HN: How do you take technical notes? - <AUTHOR> Say you are learning a technical subject (e.g. a new language, framework, technology etc.). How do you take notes?<p>Some things that come to mind are: * By hand on paper * In Markdown (Boostnote etc.) * Plain text * A different format such as Anki <comment><USER2> That is a personal knowledge base.

I am working on something like that to help me manage the (various) topics I am interest in. Most people rely on org-mode or wiki or github issues (I do all of them and it is a mess).

There is tools like zotero but they are more for academics + bibliographies.

What I need is something like [https://eccorem.com/apps/improved- history.html](https://eccorem.com/apps/improved-history.html) but more structured and with the ability to take notes, upload images, add links + code and data.

Stating the obivous, coding is really helpful to learn a new subject. Even if it looks like NIH and wheel-reinvention. Don't forget to share your findings.</comment>


Angel Office Hours Winners 2.1 (http://www.hackersandfounders.com/) - <AUTHOR> http://www.hackersandfounders.com/messages/boards/thread/10621909

<comment><USER2> Hadn't seen any of those before. "Love with Food" looks like something I'd want to be a customer of; cloudHQ looks like something I might want to work for... Each of them seems to be on to something.</comment>


Huginn – Know when the world changes - <AUTHOR> http://blog.andrewcantino.com/blog/2014/03/17/know-when-the-world-changes-with-huginn/

<comment><USER2> I have a number of search terms related to a startup I'm working on listed with Google Alerts. I haven't been impressed with the quality of the links. They seem taken almost randomly from blog posts; very few relevant links showing any kind of trend.

This looks much more useful for identifying upward bumps in news cycles.

Thanks for the link!</comment>


Man shoots computer in Colorado Springs - <AUTHOR> http://gazette.com/man-kills-computer-in-colorado-springs-alley-gets-revenge-he-wanted-and-a-citation/article/1550042

<comment><USER2> "A Child And His Lawnmower" [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=frgENbP1lYY](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=frgENbP1lYY)</comment>


Jetpants: a MySQL toolkit for managing billions of rows and hundreds of DBs - <AUTHOR> http://engineering.tumblr.com/post/24612921290/jetpants-a-toolkit-for-huge-mysql-topologies

<comment><USER2> Slightly OT, but Tumblr gave a great talk about their sharding architecture here: [http://engineering.tumblr.com/post/12652551894/slides- from-o...](http://engineering.tumblr.com/post/12652551894/slides-from-our- velocity-europe-talk-on-mysql-sharding).

It's really quite a good intro to the subject, I think.

</comment><comment><USER3> This is awesome! Also, I was at MySql event at Oracle two days ago and I overheard MySql guys talking with the pinterest folks about their sharding and how MySql team was going to announce something soon and wanted to get the pinterest's team feedback. MySql is doing their scripting on Python. So for a python shop, their release might be more interesting.

<comment><AUTHOR> Cool, looking forward to seeing that! I love Python too, and readily admit it's perhaps a more frequent choice for this type of automation.

That said, I really grew to love Ruby over the course of this project, which is actually my first in the language. Ruby's open classes allowed me to write a pretty flexible plugin/callback system with very little code. Jetpants allows you to hook arbitrary methods in before or after any method in any Jetpants class, and these callbacks "stack" (with support for different priorities) so multiple plugins can hook-in to the same place.

Because every large site seems to tackle sharding slightly differently, I figured a nice plugin system was pretty important in order for anyone else to be able to use this :)

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> This is excellent stuff; it fits a niggling problem I have (i.e. I'm a better programmer than sysadmin, so managing massive data shards is a pain)

It's an elegant implementation. From a ~30 minute read through I reckon I can use it to replace our current "hacked up" solution in just a few hours.

Kudos Tumblr.

</comment><comment><USER5> It looks interesting but one small thing. I looked into the transferring large files quickly link[1] and saw that they were using netcat and tar to transfer files. This is not necessarily optimal[2], and applying some compression can go a long way, although this will be dependent on the use case. Compression also has the added bonus of transferring less data across the network and (if you don't uncompress) less space at the other end.

SSH is also an option (a slow option, but an option) that provides certain things (encryption, authentication) that make it ideally suited for transfers across network boundaries.

[1] - [http://engineering.tumblr.com/post/7658008285/efficiently- co...](http://engineering.tumblr.com/post/7658008285/efficiently-copying- files-to-multiple-destinations)

[2] - [http://www.ndchost.com/wiki/server-administration/netcat- ove...](http://www.ndchost.com/wiki/server-administration/netcat-over-ssh)

<comment><USER6> They're using pigz on [1] so they are compressing?

I thought it wasn't a great idea. OK for an on-the-fly solution to the problem but bittorrent or multicast would seem better; the serial route between machines isn't very fault tolerant requiring a start-from-scratch on failure.

socat > nc BTW, and does multicast.

As for ssh, it's a shame the "no encryption" option was removed.

<comment><AUTHOR> re: fault tolerance, it's a fair point. Although in practice I've never had this fail part-way on me, and I've used it a couple hundred times with >600GB transfers.

We usually use this to copy to 2 or 3 machines at once; it's rare that we'd need to bring up 4+ slaves simultaneously, or split a shard into 4+ pieces. Most Linux distributions already have all the software needed except pigz, which is tiny and available in several packaging systems.

I'll definitely give socat a look though, thanks for the tip.

<comment><USER6> Oh, OK, I agree, for 2-3 machines reliability isn't an issue, I was thinking more dozens.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> It's so good to see companies open sourcing some of their technologies. They probably do so mostly to improve their image, but who cares, and I have to say... it works with me! Thanks tumblr.

<comment><USER8> No. They mostly do it to ensure that the software is actively maintained. When a home grown software reaches a certain level of maturity it makes sense to set a roadmap and release it in the public domain. More users + developers = profit for both the company and the public.

<comment><USER7> Yes, if you get there that's a win-win. I wonder though how many projects really get a community support after they are open sourced by a company.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> My quick reading of this is that its suited for databases that don't change much (or at all) once the data is inserted, and not as much for apps that need to keep strong ACID compliance with guaranteed referential integrity.

<comment><AUTHOR> We handle many thousands of write queries per second at Tumblr, and we use Jetpants to manage our entire MySQL topology, so trust me when I say the data changes quite often :) You can edit your existing posts on Tumblr, unlike on several other prominent social sites.

Definitely please let me know how you got that impression though -- I'm happy to improve confusing things in the docs.

As for ACID compliance: Jetpants is a toolkit for MySQL / InnoDB, and doesn't really impact the referential integrity guarantees of those systems any more or less than other partitioning schemes. MySQL is inherently not a distributed system, for better or worse.

<comment><USER9> I got the impression because I didn't see any discussion about the handling of bringing new slaves online (other than how to make it fast). Do you pause one of the slaves to get a consistent dump?

<comment><AUTHOR> Slave cloning is performed by shutting down mysqld on a standby slave and copying its raw data files. There's no dump involved. This is widely regarded to be the fastest possible way to clone a slave in MySQL.

This is explained in the deeper doc files -- didn't want to bog down the top- level README with implementation details.

Meanwhile, data exporting (for shard splits or table defragmentation) is done on a standby slave with replication stopped.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> Is there a mailing list for jetpants so we can ask questions? For example how should my application connect to mysql? Should it connect directly to mysql or to a jetpants server and how?

<comment><AUTHOR> Good call -- we'll definitely set one up if there's sufficient need. Until then, feel free to email me; my email address is in the gemspec. I'll write up an FAQ once I have enough questions answered.

re: your immediate question, you still connect to MySQL as normal. Jetpants isn't a server, middleware, framework, or ORM. Rather, it's a toolkit. Jetpants has a command suite that you can use to run its built-in functionality, but it's also a Ruby gem that you can integrate into custom scripts however you'd like.

The functionality is all geared towards managing large DBs (importing/exporting lots of data quickly, copying files quickly, etc) and managing large numbers of servers (promoting/demoting masters and slaves, adding new machines to a pool, rebalancing a shard).

<comment><USER10> Thanks!

Another question - we are using django so are considering Postgres since there is a python connection pool available. Could Jetpants be potentially used for Postgres? ie how much of the functionality is Mysql specific?

<comment><AUTHOR> The core functionality is currently very MySQL-specific. In theory a plugin could override a bunch of methods to target Postgres, and maybe even Redis or other persistent data stores with replication and import/export functionality. It would be a lot of work though.

I also made the mistake of putting "mysql" in the names of a few methods. At some point soon I'll change those to more generic names, and alias the old names to the new generic ones.

<comment><USER11> I'd love for this to do PgSql too.

Thanks very much Evan as well for our chats ages ago (Andrew here), was happy to see you release this tool!

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> Sounds quite useful. Was looking for some good tools for sharding and replicas for mysql.</comment>


Does Microsoft cheat in IE Test Drive? - <AUTHOR> http://wolframhempel.com/2012/11/20/mandelbrot-set-explorer/

<comment><USER2> Running the test on the latest firefox nightly results in a time of ~3 seconds, so if microsoft IS cheating by doing some browser sniffing they might want to widen the net somewhat, or end up looking bad (in 18 weeks...)

The other option, and still a little dodgy, is that they found operations that ran poorly in V8, optimized the hell out of them in chakra specifically to say "Look, we're faster then chrome!" while just letting the fact that spidermonkey is faster slide because mozilla is way less of a threat then google.

<comment><USER3> Everyone optimizes for their own benchmarks. You can say it's dodgy, but that's really just an argument in favor of real-world tests instead of microbenchmarks like this one. You don't have to 'rig' a microbenchmark to come out the winner; you just pick the right microbenchmark, because it's not a real world scenario.

Given the lack of evidence to support actual cheating you should probably just apply occam's razor here and assume it's actually faster. Or you could use the dark, hidden secrets of 'view source' to read the JS yourself. It has comments!

<comment><USER2> making a benchmark specifically to be slower on your competitors browser? Little dodgy.

From everything I've read IE10 apparently _is_ fast, and the numbers are believable from my experience doing similar things (web workers drawing fractal-like images on a canvas) but given that it's the only "pretty" benchmark in the lot, it just seems a little strange.

<comment><USER3> I think you misread my post. My point is that everyone optimizes their implementation so that their benchmarks run fast. Furthermore, people pick benchmarks that run fast on their implementation. Neither of these are a 'little dodgy': They are how benchmarks get used.

You might note that they make for bad science, but benchmarks tend not to get used in anything resembling a scientific comparison. Benchmarks get used for comparative testing (did we make thing X faster than it was before?) and to try and prove that your product is better than the competition (in which case much larger lies are going to get trotted out either way).

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> Googler here. There is no cheating in the benchmark. But we noticed this, and the V8 devs immediately diagnosed it as result of an optimizer failure (not exactly a bug, but a limitation of current stuff). There's already an in- progress patch that fixes this problem, so just wait for this to land: <https://chromiumcodereview.appspot.com/10837165>

</comment><comment><USER5> It doesn't matter how fast yours run. It's the comparison that matters.

</comment><comment><USER3> This article feels like it ends 10% of the way to actually answering the question it asks. "Hey, this thing is slow. I'll write something that might be equivalent, and see if it's not slow, and then I'll stop." If you're going to accuse someone of 'cheating' or otherwise rigging a benchmark, maybe you should at least do a proper benchmark yourself, or figure out how they cheated?

EDIT: Some basic digging reveals that this is using web workers, and V8's profiler does't record samples for web workers. It appears to be much slower in the current Release build of Chrome than it is in Canary, so whatever is causing it to be slow in V8 is actively being worked on by Chrome's developers.

Unfortunately Firefox's profiler only profiles the main thread as well. Furthermore the mandelbrot demo doesn't work right in Aurora or Nightly, so uh, yeah.

Given the use of workers, one guess would be that IE10 offers a much faster implementation of postMessage, making it cheaper to send the rendered pixel data back from the workers when it's done. Another obvious candidate would be a much faster implementation of putImageData for rendering the pixels to the canvas. A third candidate would be the use of something that IE10's JIT optimizes that V8 doesn't and Firefox struggles with slightly. Try/catch would be an obvious one; floats would be another.

The code for the demo is there, and it's got comments, so if you really think they're cheating, read it. It looks fine to me and it looks like something that V8 should be able to turn into highly performant assembly, so if it's not, the fault probably lies with V8, not Microsoft.

<comment><USER2> Firefox nightly 20.0a1 (released today) runs the test...very well, actually.

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> Chrome has a very good built-in performance profiler for JavaScript.

In the interest of scientific truth, someone (not me) should profile microsoft's fabricated example and show the world all the dirty browser- sniffing tricks.

<comment><USER3> You don't have to browser sniff to make something run slowly in V8. You can just write ordinary JavaScript and discover that it runs awful because you hit one of the hundreds of JavaScript edge cases that each JIT treats differently.</comment></comment>


Devuan Taken Down by "Gopher" Hackers - <AUTHOR> https://www.devuan.org/pwned.html <comment><AUTHOR> In case it's fixed by the time everyone sees this: [https://web.archive.org/web/20190331190030/https://www.devua...](https://web.archive.org/web/20190331190030/https://www.devuan.org/pwned.html)

</comment><comment><USER2> April's fools? (Although they're - technically - right re: the web)

<comment><USER3> It's gotta be an April fools joke. If it isn't then... Well that's embarrassing.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> convert 1554080659 from nix time, lads.</comment>


Ask HN: Sci-Fi with advanced morals and ethics, not just technology? - <AUTHOR> A lot of science fiction, even set thousands or millions of years in the future, depicts humans at the same moral and ethical level as today. Can anyone recommend a book that imagines not just a higher level of technological development, but ethical as well?
The closest I've found so far: "Voyage from Yesteryear", "Stranger in a Strange Land", and "Men Like Gods".
EDIT: To clarify what I mean by "advanced morals and ethics": perhaps something along these lines (lifted from a friend's cork board):
An increased tendency to let things happen rather than make them happen.
Frequent attacks of smiling.
Feelings of being connected with others and nature.
Frequent overwhelming episodes of appreciation.
A tendency to think and act spontaneously rather than from fears based on past experience.
An unmistakeable ability to enjoy each moment.
A loss of ability to worry.
A loss of interest in conflict.
A loss of interest in interpreting the actions of others.
A loss of interest in judging others.
A loss of interest in judging self.
Gaining the ability to love without expecting anything in return. <comment><USER2> I am not sure we agree on what "advanced morals and ethics" would mean, but the Hugo award winners are generally good ones to explore for discussion of ethics.

Foundation series is a famous one that comes to mind, but plenty of other examples in that set. Enjoy!

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks so much! Loved the first two _Foundation_ books, but did not find the humans really any more morally or ethically advanced than us today. What I must dug about the stories was the vast sense of scale they shared, and allowing things to happen naturally at the right time and place.

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> This is tangential, but a lot of your description of "moral advancement" seems to fit the description of just a clueless stoner being high (i.e. you can achieve it a lot of it right now, just get high all the time).

I see moral advancement quite differently - to me, it is embodied in the Christian's credo of "love others as much as you love yourself" (also covered in your last sentence, which is unlike the others). It does not make life easy, "connected", enjoyable or worry-free - quite the contrary, it's often hard and unpleasant. The moral improvement of humanity (and the highest ideal of Christianity and probably some other religions as well) would mean that we're willing to do it for others in spite of it not being at all comfortable. So far, I don't think we've made any progress towards this ideal, which probably means that it's just not in our nature...

</comment><comment><USER4> Star trek next generation?

At least it tries to question certain aspects of our (historical) societies

<comment><USER5> I'm at season 7 right now and I can confirm that star trek the next generation is a life changing experience.

<comment><USER4> Seems I got that whole reply thing wrong.. My bad

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> The Remembrance of Earth's Past trilogy explores some _changes_ to human moral and ethics. Whether they are "advancements" might be a different question.

There's a heavy Christian theme to them, but if you're okay with that, C.S. Lewis's Space Trilogy really dives into ethics and morals. The aliens we meet in the first book have no conflict, an interesting view of death and art and literature, and live in harmony with their planet. They are quite interesting books and give some of the most vivid, most alien characters and settings that I've ever experienced.

I'll second Star Trek The Next Generation as well.

</comment><comment><USER7> Forever War had an interesting time lapse of changing humanity, due to the main characters traveling close to the speed of light on their tours of duty.

Stanislav Lem's Return from the Stars comes to mind, though the pacifist society is alienating, seen through the eyes of the main character.

</comment><comment><USER8> I don't really know, hopefully someone has a few more suggestions! Tossing these in as interesting SciFi with morality.

Michael D. O'Brien, Voyage to Alpha Centauri: A Novel

Oxanna Hope, Lebenstunnel: Allégeance (French language)

</comment><comment><USER9> Seveneves

[https://www.gatesnotes.com/Books/Seveneves](https://www.gatesnotes.com/Books/Seveneves)

</comment><comment><USER10> The Left Hand of Darkness, by Ursula K. Le Guin

<comment><USER11> The Lathe of Heaven, too.

</comment></comment><comment><USER12> Dune?

<comment><USER6> Er... no?

I've only read the first Dune book, but the background premise is largely medieval Europe in space. Together with feudalism, prison colonies, and genocide.

I'm trying to figure out what might make it advanced or different. Their distrust of computers? The Fremen dedication to group survival rather than self? That might be close I guess.

<comment><USER13> The remaining Dune books are quite different from the first book as well as from each other. They explore lots of different ideas.</comment></comment></comment>


Show HN: Correct Horse Battery Staple password generator - <AUTHOR> https://correcthorse.pw/ <comment><USER2> I audit web-based password generators as a hobby, and this one does well.

What it does well on:

The source code is open source licensed. Passwords are generated in the client, not on the server. The generator is random. The generator is cryptographically secure. The generator is unbiased. Mobile devices are supported. There are no JavaScript trackers loaded on the page. The site is not calling out to external resources without SRI.

Unfortunately, by only choosing 4 random words, the security margin of the passphrase is 52 bits (13 bits per word). This is practical for a hobbyist password cracker to exhaust in an offline attack. The security would be better if 6 random words were chosen instead.

Audit: [https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1ucaqJ4U3X3nNEbAAa06i...](https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1ucaqJ4U3X3nNEbAAa06igbBkITHaA98blftOwT8u0I4/edit?usp=sharing)

<comment><AUTHOR> Thank you for the audit!

The default was chosen as 4 words due to usability concerns with longer passwords or more obscure words, but it is adjustable. The strength meter is yellow at 4 words to indicate the less-than-optimal entropy, but I felt it was better than turning a new user off by making it too hard to remember. But that's a decision I plan on revisiting.

If you are security conscious, you can save a more secure default for yourself (in local storage, nothing is ever transmitted to a server).

<comment><USER2> No problem. I dig the project. Very cool.

I would recommend the default be 6 words, and let people choose down to 4, but not lower. At last that way, users know what a "secure default" looks like. Granted, it breaks the four-word "correct horse battery staple" XKCD format, but Randall was in some error with that comic anyway.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER3> Can someone explain to me why 1password doesn't have something like this built in? You can use words, or random/symbols, but not both. Which fails miserably every time you're faced with some sort of silly password requirement to have a symbol and a number and a capital or whatever.

<comment><USER4> Passphrases are easy for people to remember, but if you have a password manager, you're better off getting it to generate a 50+ character random password (including uppercase, lowercase, numbers and symbols).

That should meet pretty much any password requirement, be virtually impossible to guess or brute force, and you won't have trouble remembering it (because you don't have to!).

<comment><USER5> > you're better off getting it to generate a 50+ character random password > (including uppercase, lowercase, numbers and symbols).

Lol I wish. Almost all of the important sites I use, like various bills and loans, use terrible password schemes. One even, until recently, enforced an 8 character limit! I think they raised it to 16 iirc. Oy.

Hell, even the company I work for frequently fails my password generator settings. The arbitrary character requirements of my ~20 character password would sometimes not be satisfied when I was creating accounts in our dev system/etc. Which is annoying as hell, but I can't convince management, because our users _(older)_ tend to use some of the worst passwords out there.. so I can understand where it's coming from.

Security & UX is hard.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> While I would love to use something like this, almost every site I can think of enforces worthless password rules like "Must include number, letter, special character" etc which effectively blocks these types of passwords.

<comment><USER7> Much like /u/hprotagonist above, I tend to use passwords like this for my pw manager, full disk encryption, PGP, etc. where I get to set the rules. Web sites or other uses outside my control get a randomly generated string of varying length.

It doesn't have to be all or nothing and is probably better if it isn't.

</comment></comment><comment><USER8> Problem with generators and this scheme, they allow regeneration. Most people not using the first version, they generate a new until they like it enough to stop, which is not that random anymore as they think.

<comment><USER9> So you're saying that generating a new password looses entropy?

<comment><USER10> _Choosing_ is the problem here -- it's now only as random as your preference

Eg the scheme doesn't do its job well if you don't know the word, so the dictionary can be reduced by that much

<comment><USER11> On the other hand, I'd wager that the set of words that you can recognize is vastly larger than the set of words that you're likely to come up with on the spot. Hence, using a generator would still result in higher entropy then trying to come up with a password yourself.

Random numbers picked by humans are notoriously biased. I'm guessing it's even worse when you ask them to come up with random words.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><AUTHOR> Background: I liked the xkcd-style password generation scheme as it was easy to remember, but existing generators online (that I could find, at least) all use Math.random() or other cryptographically insecure random number generators. While an actual attack on the RNG seems far-fetched, the very idea doesn't sit well with my crypto nerd side. So I decided to create my own that uses a CSPRNG that I can trust. This was a while ago.

Recently, I decided to package it up with a nice domain name and publish it in hopes that it would be useful to others.

<comment><USER12> What about [https://www.random.org/](https://www.random.org/)? Why even use a PRNG if you can have the real thing?

<comment><AUTHOR> Because instead of just trusting your system, you'd also have to trust an external service to remain honest. CSPRNG is widely deemed acceptable for use as key material (unlike standard PRNGs), so there is no reason to add an external dependency.

<comment><USER2> Further, sufficiently seeded cryptographically secure RNGs are indistinguishable from true random white noise, so from a practical perspective, there is no point to require "true random".

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> So we are really getting passwords from remote hosted websites? Are people really about to copy, paste and use these right out of the browser?

<comment><USER4> What is the risk exactly?

Even if the site knew for certain that you had used one of the passwords, they would have no idea where you used the password, and they wouldn't know your username or other credentials.

They might not even have any way of accessing the system you're putting the password into.

I'm sure a lot of people will use these sorts of sites to generate a whole bunch of passwords, and not even use any of them.

<comment><USER5> I'd imagine the risk is pretty great, for the same reason I wouldn't paste a password here that I use. Sure, you may not know who I am, but if you were the site itself you get a ton of information on me.. which is more than I'd like you to know if you _also_ know one of my passwords.

I agree, the risk is minimal. Nevertheless.. security, heh.

<comment><USER14> The site doesn't know the password, though-- it's generated clientside.

<comment><USER13> Will you be inspecting the code every single time it loads to ensure that has not changed? You are receiving this code from an untrusted 3rd party every time you visit. There is a big difference to trusting a known entity like lastpass, 1password, etc, all of whom are vulnerable to supply chain attacks. It is another thing entirely to trust a random website on hackernews.

Payload decoders and password generators are some of the biggest honeypots out there. Combining this with an attack taking advantage of hidden form autofill, you could gain quite a bit of information to go along with that password.

<comment><USER14> If I were to use it, I'd probably just pull my own copy off github.

If I were to recommend novices to use it-- I'd tell them to use a password manager locally, and something like that to generate a secure password to get into their own machine locally / get into their password manager-- which mitigates most of the risk if it turns rogue.

<comment><USER13> well then you wouldn't be using this or any other website, and this entire conversation would be moot :).

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> Nice work!

A passphrase, as opposed to a password, has spaces between each word.

If you added those it would be easier to read, especially for mobile, if you used a multiline textarea, because the generated content isn't fully readable at a glance. (Or don't use a form input field at all — just put the passphrase in a div so the word breaks flow normally.)

<comment> james-skemp Yup. With the ability to add a separator (like a space, -, .) I'd switch over to this.

Currently I use and recommend [https://preshing.com/20110811/xkcd-password- generator/](https://preshing.com/20110811/xkcd-password-generator/)

<comment><AUTHOR> Good idea, just added separators to the website.

<comment><USER9> You could(/should) add space and make it the default separator :)

<comment><AUTHOR> Space support is included. You can save it as the default option if you want.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> I have bookmarked this site for my own personal use. I also shared it with my co-workers in the IT dept.

I think your site works well on selling itself if you assume the audience is coming from HN. From what I have observed, your site does not market itself well to a typical corporate IT dept who are not all programmers.

I think if we want to promote wider adoption of this good password technique, we'll need a different approach.

This is not a criticism-- You've done a job I admire. I think I might fork it and make another version that is approachable to a wider audience. Thank you!

</comment><comment><USER17> Reminds me of the perl module `hsxkpasswd`[0] which has more configure options, and also powers the online generator at [https://xkpasswd.net/s/](https://xkpasswd.net/s/)

[0]: [https://github.com/bbusschots/hsxkpasswd](https://github.com/bbusschots/hsxkpasswd)

</comment><comment><USER18> For passwords I might have to enter by hand, such as WiFi passwords, I liked the pronounceable password option that 1Password used to have. The passwords were several single syllables string together by a separator. An example: neg- pen-nau-eng-fri-dot. There were options to change the separator, and to toss in digits and upper case if I remember correctly. Syllables were 2 to 4 letters long, I believe.

At some point 1Password dropped that, replacing it something similar to "correct horse battery staple". It's words (3-10) separated by hyphen, space, period, comma, or underscore. E.g., "plasma.haggis.arrange.stultify".

<comment><USER19> Me too. I actually built my "ideal" password generator because nothing else was really cutting it for me. And an online generator is a no go. Because of security, of course, but I also just want to pipe my password straight into my clipboard, for example.

[https://github.com/pkulak/pgen](https://github.com/pkulak/pgen)

</comment></comment><comment><USER20> I rely on the built in password generator of Passfindr [https://passfindr.com](https://passfindr.com) using the same random number generator as mentioned in correcthorse.pw. When using a Password Manager, and one should, different passwords for every internet account is straight forward.

</comment><comment><USER21> You forgot the translate to Finnish step

</comment><comment><USER22> You can achieve this with a one-liner:

shuf -n 4 /usr/share/dict/words

<comment> 1e-9 This may not be cryptographically secure. Shuf can default to using a small amount of entropy.[1,2,3] To be certain, you can add the --random-source option:

shuf --random-source=/dev/urandom -n 4 /usr/share/dict/words

[1] [https://www.gnu.org/software/coreutils/manual/html_node/Rand...](https://www.gnu.org/software/coreutils/manual/html_node/Random- sources.html)

[2] [https://github.com/coreutils/coreutils/blob/v8.5/gl/lib/rand...](https://github.com/coreutils/coreutils/blob/v8.5/gl/lib/randread.c)

[3] [https://github.com/coreutils/coreutils/blob/v8.32/gl/lib/ran...](https://github.com/coreutils/coreutils/blob/v8.32/gl/lib/randread.c)

Edit: As ThA0x2 points out in a reply, the latest version of shuf uses /dev/urandom to generate a default nonce, which vastly improves upon older versions. As long as your version of coreutils is at least 8.6 or later and your OS has /dev/urandom, the default should be fine. If you don't have /dev/urandom, even the latest version of shuf (version 8.32, as of June 15, 2020) will still default to an insecure nonce.

<comment><USER23> I'm curious how practical an RNG attack actually is here (which absolutely isn't meant to serve as criticism of your surfacing the issue!).

In any case, I expect it's much harder than a random "free password gen!" website saving results on the sly (... which is meant to be mild criticism of your framing, but not your recommendation :-p).

<comment><USER22> shuf uses randint(), which defaults to /dev/urandom as the nonce source:

[https://github.com/coreutils/coreutils/blob/v8.31/gl/lib/ran...](https://github.com/coreutils/coreutils/blob/v8.31/gl/lib/randread.c)

It's going to be as practical to attack as anything that uses /dev/urandom.

<comment><USER23> For sufficiently recent versions of shuf. It looks (... at a skim of the history, I could be confused) like older versions use pid, ppid, uid, gid, and time. In that case that's likely to be more practical than brute force if you've generated a password with notionally more than ~40 bits of entropy.

That said, I suspect most people are indeed on a platform with a sufficiently recent version of shuf.

(And a sufficiently old version may lack the random-source option.)

<comment><USER22> RHEL 6 will be EOLd this November. That's the last supported version of RHEL that has this issue. Ubuntu 13.04, RHEL 7 and later don't suffer from this issue.

I'd say almost everyone reading these comments is on a platform that does not suffer from this issue.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER24> lower, upper and numbers = 62 options | wordlist = 10 000 options:

        62^12     = 1e21
        10 000^5  = 1e20

The problem is you not using a word generator and instead relying in your invention, most of the people will use top 5000 words (5000^5 = 1e18), imagine you can even lock one of the words (a color maybe?).

So this way of thinking might be good if you know what you are doing and use uppers and lowers and symbols, if not, it is actually a bad advice.

</comment><comment><USER25> If I may egregiously misuse the famous quote, "those who do not understand Unix are condemned to reinvent it, poorly."

        $ shuf --random-source=/dev/urandom -n6 /usr/share/dict/cracklib-small | paste -sd-
        circulant-conjured-reigning-buzzed-awaiting-typifies

</comment><comment><USER26> See also [https://theworld.com/~reinhold/diceware.html](https://theworld.com/~reinhold/diceware.html) (the "original", as far as I know).

KeePassXC has a passphrase generator, although it doesn't use the Diceware list as far as I know. [https://keepassxc.org/images/screenshots/linux/screen_006.pn...](https://keepassxc.org/images/screenshots/linux/screen_006.png)

EDIT: Love the simplicity of [https://correcthorse.pw/](https://correcthorse.pw/), good work!

</comment><comment><USER27> I tend to rely on [https://www.rempe.us/diceware/#eff](https://www.rempe.us/diceware/#eff) for my typeable password needs.

80% of my passwords are just line noise, because they live in a keepass database. 20% (workstation account logins, etc) are diceware.

<comment><USER28> you type "glove blinks abruptly avatar salvaging marbled" every time you need to unlock your screen?

<comment><USER29> Mine's a more meaningful sentence, but about the same length, yes.

It doesn't take long to type a wholly-memorized sentence.

<comment><USER30> Based on the typically strict Corporate 5-minute auto-lock you find on work computers, that would get tiresome REALLY quickly :(

<comment><USER29> Honestly, it's not any worse than a more typical number and symbol stew. You'd be surprised how quickly you can type a 40 character sentence, especially one that you've developed a bit of muscle memory for. I think it's likely as fast, if not faster than the more "typical" 12-16 character special-symbol fest.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER31> Shout out to the open source Bitwarden project which includes this out of the box. Check out bitwarden_rs for a good sefhosted option.

</comment><comment><USER32> I know XKCD made a comic and everything, but isn't this type of password exactly why dictionary attacks exist?

<comment><USER33> In the original comic it is shown that entropy of these passwords is still higher than the method with random words and substitutions. That means more combinations even with full knowledge of used dictionary</comment></comment>


Scribes Gets An Ubuntu PPA - <AUTHOR> http://mystilleef.blogspot.com/2010/10/scribes-gets-ubuntu-ppa.html?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=feed&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+blogspot%2FvTtPw+%28Reason%29 <comment><USER2> If, like me, you'd never heard of this editor previously, here's a video demonstration of it in action:

<http://scribes.sourceforge.net/demo.htm>

Certainly looks interesting.

<comment><AUTHOR> Especially the snippet mechanism is designed very well. The author really invest a lot of time in the design of the editor-ui

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> I'm not sure you can call a text editor 'ultra minimalist' when it depends (on my system at least) on 353MB of other software.

<comment><AUTHOR> Ultra minimalist is regarding to the ui. But the great drawback is: no tabs - by purpose. The Author don't want to have tabs, otherwise it scribes could be the best oss editor.</comment></comment>


Apple Just Uploaded a U2 Album to Your iPhone and iPad – And Seriously, WTF - <AUTHOR> http://techcrunch.com/2014/09/10/wtf-is-a-u2/?utm_campaign=fb&ncid=fb <comment> grey-area I think people object to this not because they hate U2, but because this is a reminder that you don't really control your device, or even the content on it. Apple controls it, and will add or remove content as they see fit.

It reminds me of the incident where Amazon remotely deleted copies of a certain book about a future technological dystopia from kindles.

<comment><USER3> This.

I don't dislike U2.

I do dislike someone deciding whether or not I may or may not like U2 and adding it to my device/playlists.

I recently canned all of my Apple kit and went back to Windows after a number of issues over the years with controlling my devices[2]. It's the only viable platform for me[1] that is improving its reputation and putting the users first.

[1] I can't use *nix platforms for everything I do otherwise I would be using FreeBSD...

[2] Buying and selling iOS devices is a PITA due to the activation lock and getting data in and out of them is troublesome too.

<comment><USER4> It's only added to your device if you had "automatically download new purchases" selected.

It's not added to your playlists.

Do you also complain about the socks from your parents for Christmas?

<comment><USER5> > It's only added to your device if you had "automatically download new > purchases" selected.

Except I didnt purchase that music.It isnt a new purchase,it's just stuffing phones with promotional content.

And if you equate Apple forcing promotional content down to users with parents giving christmas gifts you are insulting (at least my) parents.

<comment><USER4> The album appeared in your iTunes account as a new purchase. There was not "forced down to users" about it.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> It's probably not wise for Apple to show how little control users have over iCloud stuff, considering the celebrity photo leaks of late.

<comment><USER7> Most of their users seem to be heavily invested, both financially and emotionally. And if you're not willing to walk away, they can do whatever they want. They have all the leverage.

<comment><USER8> brand erosion

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> Or: How Apple played favorites with a band that needed no promotion whatsoever.

I remember when Windows came with a copy of Edie Brickell and the New Bohemians 'good times'. That was at least a discovery of a nice song by someone I never heard of.

U2 is past it's 'best before' date anyway.

<comment><USER10> > Apple played favorites

I don't see that as the point of this article. I see the point of this article as that if you buy from this vendor then you have, in the final analysis, no control over the device you paid for, over your own property.

<comment><USER9> That's another angle, and it is at least as bad. But when you're in the business of playing middle man to a whole industry I really don't understand why you would play favourites at this level.

The fact that you have no control over your device is something that I wrote about the other day so I'm well aware of that. (And I had not even taken into account the eco system owners, just carriers versus public).

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> I don't see it on either my MacBook or my iPhone. Both of which do automatic downloads. The album is on my "purchased" list so I can download it if I want to, but it wasn't pushed to my phone/Mac. This seems fine to me.

</comment><comment><USER12> Actually Apple has just accomplished what privacy advocates around the world couldn't have done: Getting people concerned about the issue (by hitting them where it actually hurts: music taste). I think it's a great and mostly innocent example (the music is really, really shitty though) of the problems that 'the cloud' poses.

<comment><USER6> _I think it 's a great and mostly innocent example (the music is really, really shitty though) of the problems that 'the cloud' poses._

The naked-photos-of-celebrities the other day is a very non innocent way to show people the problems with the cloud.

</comment></comment><comment><USER13> "Bono, you've sold millions of albums, you should be happy. It's not like you can force your albums into the libraries of people who don't want them."

 _Bono slowly gets an evil grin, like the Grinch._ "Get Tim Cook on the phone!"

<comment><USER5> Well, I hope at least ,with that money he can reopen "the Kitchen" in Dublin,it was a nice place.

</comment></comment><comment><USER14> Three million copies! I thought it was well established in court that copying equates lost revenue!

Who's going to pay for this? U2 must have lost billions!

(Unless the music industry have come on this around lately. Surely they haven't?)

<comment><USER15> Apple paid for it. They said so during the iPhone launch presentation.

<comment><USER14> Oh. The joke is on me then.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> I suppose this looks like a great idea on the face of it. U2 is suddenly on millions of devices. However, wouldn't this mean that they've essentially made it impossible to make it onto the music charts which are based off sales?

<comment><USER17> I don't think U2 gives an awful lot about music charts (any more).

Personally I always liked U2 (grew up in the 80's, so...) but I also think this is an awkward move and maybe more importantly, unnecessary. It just feels out of place.

<comment><USER18> > I don't think U2 gives an awful lot about music charts (any more).

Well, in 2009 U2 complained a lot about the disappointing placement of "No Line On the Horizon" in the selling charts.

> "[We didn't] pull off the pop songs," Bono admitted. Bassist Adam Clayton > agreed. "The commercial challenges have to be confronted," he said,

[http://www.theguardian.com/music/2009/oct/26/u2-bono- disappo...](http://www.theguardian.com/music/2009/oct/26/u2-bono-disappointed- album-sales)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> While watching the keynote, I thought to myself, "I wonder how many people will complain about the free album?"

And here they are, not only looking the gift horse in the mouth, but questioning its pedigree, complaining that it's a clydesdale when they wanted an arabian, and complaining that their stable which is designed to accept new horses automatically, accepted a new horse automatically.

If you tick the box "automatically download new purchases" you've already "lost control of your phone" because you're accepting Apple's assistance in getting any new media that appears in your account onto your phone.

Do people complain like this about Kobo and Kindle readers automatically downloading new books?

<comment><USER19> > Do people complain like this about Kobo and Kindle readers automatically > downloading new books?

Kobo doesn't do anything like that, at least not mine. For one, I deactivated wifi to have better battery life. But also before, no books I didn't buy were pushed onto it, maybe apart from an example book I don't remember anymore.

<comment><USER4> Kobo and Kindle both sync promotional copies (typically a few sample chapters) of books you might be interested in.

<comment><USER20> My kindle only does that if I request a sample chapter. It's a nifty feature, but I need to explicitly choose that.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER21> So if I randomize my entire library now I'm getting songs I don't necessarily want?

<comment><USER22> Correct.

</comment></comment><comment><USER23> This advice from usvsth3m might help - [http://usvsth3m.com/post/97128521413/how-to-dismantle-an- app...](http://usvsth3m.com/post/97128521413/how-to-dismantle-an-apple-bono- bomb-heres-how-to-get)

</comment><comment><USER24> No they didn't.

Apple added an album to your "purchased" list, and if you happen to have the setting for automatically downloaded and syncing your purchases checked, then the service automatically downloaded and synced your purchase for you, AS YOU REQUESTED.

I'm not trying to pretend that they don't have control over my device, but let's not manufacture outrage over something that actually ISN'T an example of them using it.

<comment><USER25> Except you didn't purchase it. So it's not one of your purchases that should be synced to your devices.

Additionally, given how little space most of my iFriends have on their phones, that's also a part of the issue.

<comment><USER24> So it's a semantics argument about the difference between "purchased" and "own".

I guess they could have implemented a whole new category of item in their service (owned, but not purchased) or they could just set the effective price to 0.00, or they could add it to everyone's purchased list.

Net result is basically the same, except that they made a big deal about the whole "getting it in 5 seconds" thing as part of the keynote. I imagine it might have been a bit (more) underwhelming if the "one more thing" announcement was that they were making an album available for free for a bit when their wider point was supposed to be simultaneously demonstrating their delivery capability, reach, and - appreciated or not - largesse.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER26> A brazilian judge forbid the app Secret to be downloaded in brazilian app stores and also that the app stores should remove the app from the phones that had already dowloaded it.

This last part was dismissed a lot as a "take this picture out of internet" impossible decision by a judge who doesn't understand how internet works. Now I think it is more clear that things like that _is_ impossible.

</comment><comment><USER27> Slightly off topic: but why didn't Tim release it by tapping his watch? Or better yet, have Bono reveal he was wearing a watch and do it himself?

Seemed like the biggest slam dunk in history when I was watching it live. Couldn't believe it when they did the finger touch.

Giving people the option to download/claim their U2 album would probably have been a better option though.

</comment><comment><USER28> I haven't checked yet but what I know is that if the album was pushed onto my ipad, my bluetooth speaker will autoplay it everytime I turn it on. Anticipating edit : I know there might be parameters to avoid that wether on the ipad or on the speaker but keeping a clean itunes was the minimum hassle solution I adopted.

</comment><comment><USER29> Welcome to the audio equivalent of spam.

</comment><comment><USER30> The bigest bomb on Apple iOS security is here. My friend bypass the iCloud activation screen lock whit the hack tool from this page [http://bypassicloudactivationlock.blogspot.com/](http://bypassicloudactivationlock.blogspot.com/)

</comment><comment><USER31> Despite all the hate running around (and ethics aside), I actually had a listen to it and was pleasantly surprised. It's a pretty solid album. I wouldn't dismiss it out of hand anyway.

</comment><comment><USER15> Related: "Apple just increased my iCloud storage, issued a prorated refund for what I'd previously paid, and put money back into my bank account - <USER2> Seriously, WTF?"

</comment><comment><USER32> I am not a fan - at all - of the snooty, sophomoric and holier-than-thou phrase "first world problems", but I have to say that it does have a certain appeal when considering the vehemence with which a great many have protested how Apple has foisted this album off on them.

<comment><USER9> I think most of the vehemence came from the realization of 'lack of control', but at the same time I think that's mostly limited to the tech crowd. The rest won't even notice that a line was crossed.

<comment><USER32> If someone hasn't noticed, in the past 30 years, that Apple is _all about_ control, then I'm not sure what to say.

<comment><USER9> Sure. But just like there is a moment when the frog suddenly realizes that the water _really_ is getting hotter I suspect a lot of tech types see this as that moment.

Why they didn't notice before is a mystery to me too, it seemed pretty obvious. But the tone is definitely one of 'wow, I didn't see that one coming'.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER33> Can you manually remove the songs from your iTunes and phone?

</comment><comment><USER34> I guess Google could never do such a thing if they wanted...

Yeah right

<comment><USER35> _I guess Google could never do such a thing if they wanted..._

How does that make it any better? I don't care about a pissing match between people that have emotional attachments to their devices that pretend to be criticism of the products. I care about the products and services.

</comment></comment><comment><USER36> I'm extremely mad, iTunes has no right to just download random music on my phone and I really dislike U2 there nothing I want on my music how do I get it to go away?????</comment>


Dead could be brought 'back to life' in groundbreaking project - <AUTHOR> http://www.telegraph.co.uk/science/2016/05/03/dead-could-be-brought-back-to-life-in-groundbreaking-project/ <comment><USER2> The article made no mention of previous animal studies. Surely we have already tried this in chimps right? What was the result there?</comment>


The future is a decentralized internet - <AUTHOR> https://techcrunch.com/2017/01/08/the-future-is-a-decentralized-internet/ <comment><AUTHOR> While it is really exciting to be able to fund projects with token, it is an stretch to say that will be able to run Twitter or Facebook like apps. First because you lose a lot of capabilities descentralizing massive application (e.g. impossible to apply algorithms to the firehose in real time), and second, there are hard limitations in the Ethereum blocks. You can only allocate 8kb per block.</comment>


Are you a student in the US? Get a free Windows Phone - <AUTHOR> http://dennisdel.com/blog/are-you-a-student-in-the-us-get-a-free-windows-phone#.T4D19l1CJo0.hackernews <comment><USER2> All you have to do is write two Windows Phone apps in the next month! You can test them on real hardware _after_ you release!

<comment><USER3> You can write free versions of paid apps and release the paid version after you have hardware, or just release apps that would've been free anyway.

I think it's a good deal and I'll be taking advantage.

<comment><USER4> What part of the deal is good for you, the developer?

<comment><USER5> Uh, the part where you get a free $600 phone? I thought that was pretty explicit from the headline.

<comment><USER6> Assuming your time is free though...

How many hours will it take you to write "two high quality applications"? I'm guessing more than a couple hours depending on the strictness of the term.

<comment><USER5> If you're a student, "your time is (close to) free" is not an entirely unwarranted assumption. In fact, most students are _paying people huge sums of money_ to take up their time, so one could even argue that their time has negative value. Anyway, let's assume you are rather unambitious and go with an app that takes, oh, 24 hours to write. You would only have made $240 before tax in your job at Starbucks, so the contest is a win on a monetary level. And that's not even counting the fact that it gives you some rather marketable experience (which, again, is something students normally pay for).

<comment><USER6> Not sure who pays for someone "to take up their time", usually its an exchange of time for skills, or time for experience. Also, assuming students can only achieve unskilled minimum wage jobs is kind of silly. It's not _that_ hard to get a paid internship at $30+ an hour.

Not saying it's a terrible deal either, just saying that it's not a "you're missing out terribly if you don't do it" opportunity.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> Seriously?

      Basic Info

        Location: BTMLayout Bangalore, India 560076

      Contact Info

        Phone: 0000000000

Shouldn't this be at least a little Redmond-related?

<comment><USER8> There's a similar contest in India.

<http://www.microsoft.com/india/iunlockjoy/>

Perhaps it's being managed from India.

<comment><USER9> There are a number of possibilities. It could be a promotion that is outsourced to an Indian company. Microsoft could be hoping to hook developers in India.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> Well now I hate US only stuff even more. No this is not a trolling. I really am sick of the schemes that are limited to certain demographic. I understand there must be some reason behind this, some good reason mind you. But heck, it is not a pleasant experience seeing all this from out side.

</comment><comment><AUTHOR> OP here. Just to clarify - the contest is ran by the Microsoft student division. Yes, I am aware that it is Facebook only and there is no webpage. I have no control over that, so again - cannot do anything about it. The PDF rules are linked from the same Facebook promotion page, by the way, so if there is any suspicion about that - feel free to read them from the FB page instead of the post.

</comment><comment><USER11> That blog has some of the weirdest spam comments I think I've ever seen. I can understand posting links to "lowest cost shoes" or whatever the current spam fad is, but I can't recall ever seeing _that much_ lorem ipsum. I didn't check, so maybe there is a hyperlink hiding in the text somewhere.

<comment><USER12> (Personally) I don't consider troll comment to be a spam comment, but it's annoying all the same.

</comment></comment><comment><USER13> If you're in the Silicon Valley, the Hacker Dojo has Windows Phone hardware you can do testing on.

</comment><comment><USER14> There was a similar promotion in Singapore, although it was open to everyone who submitted 3 app ideas. Those who got accepted could pick up a Lumia 800, and if they finished and released the apps within 3 months, they got to keep the phone.

</comment><comment><USER15> Joy, but i'm not from US</comment>


Leaked Apple secrets lead to arrests - <AUTHOR> http://finance.yahoo.com/news/iPhone-secrets-among-tips-apf-2214513952.html?x=0

<comment><USER2> You know, I do the kind of consulting "not the inside trading part" they are speaking about in this article. It pays very well, I was once contacted by the company in question about doing some work and the numbers they where kicking around where way out of the norm for this kind of work. 3 to 4 times the standard hourly rate that most technologist charge for industry analysis. Fortunately for me, I never knew the specifics of the gig and it did not materialize. I can only assume that they targeted me due to my clientele list. You really have to watch yourself in this line of consulting, it is really easy to run afoul of some pretty serious crimes.

</comment><comment><USER3> I wonder how often this happens, and what the value of the information being provided to the hedge funds is. Anyone on HN got any information on the matter they can share?

<comment><USER2> It happens a good deal, it is probably better if I just leave it at the industry has a reputation for managers asking and consultants deciding if they want to bite or not. There are some very reputable groups like Primary Insight that work very hard to keep a legitimate consulting network, while others actively seek out inside trader consultants.

As to the value, the $400k they paid these guys is peanuts to what they make on this kind of info. If you have billions that you can move in the market and someone tells you "oh hey, Apple is building a tablet and it is going to drop this quarter, their internal market analysis looks like they will sell 3 million units in this quarter", you have basically just been given the keys to the mint. Because you are able to time you investment to the date range in which the tablet will drop. Meaning you don't need to tie that capital up speculating on when it will drop. The value is easily in the billions of dollars. I am surprised the "consultants" sold the secrets for so little actually.</comment></comment>


Tye: Cloud native development for .NET and Kubernetes - <AUTHOR> https://github.com/dotnet/tye <comment><USER2> Interesting. We handle most of this with makefiles, local kubernetes, Skaffold, and Kustomize (in CI).

I'm excited for some tooling around this from the .NET Foundation, but still not sure what the value-add of the project is.</comment>