China Plans to Strip Mine the Moon for Rare Helium-3 - <AUTHOR> http://www.immortal.org/4376/china-plans-strip-mine-moon-rare-helium-3/ <comment><USER2> Interesting, but...

China's "plans" really means the chief scientist of the Chinese Lunar Exploration Program said Helium-3 could be a potential energy source. There's no real evidence of any formal "plans" in this article.

As far as I know, the only economically viable business model that makes use of Lunar Helium-3 is as fuel for fusion reactors. According to Wikipedia[1] this means _second generation_ fusion reactors. But nobody even has a workable first generation fusion reactor yet.

Original source is the Daily Mail.

[1][http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Helium-3](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Helium-3)

<comment><USER3> Indeed, although it needs to be pointed out that in theory, it's very possible 1st generation fusion reactors will be economically unviable, since the neutrons they produce will steadily transmute them, that is, turn their atoms into different and generally radioactive elements, decaying and then destroying their ability to function, leaving piles of radioactive junk.

The interest in Helium-3 is due to the fact that it can be anutronically fused (although I've read there's doubts about being able to effectively extract energy from such a reactor). So Helium-3, _and strip mining the moon!!!_ has been thought about for a _long_ time.

Heck, it's part of the background for one of the major anime franchises that started in 1979, _Mobile Suit Gundam_. In that, through magic physics, they have "refrigerator sized" fusion reactors, but they must be fueled by Helium-3 because the magic physics isn't neutron proof (little is). So the "Jupiter Energy Fleet" plays a role modeled on the Arabs/OPEC of the '70s, pulling the strings behind most of the conflicts of the Universal Century timeline. (Paptimus Scirocco is an Arab as viewed by a group of Japanese animators in 1985, his hair style is much less crazy if you know that.)

I mention this to point out how long it's been generally known we're likely to need a lot of Helium-3 for fusion reactors, i.e. entering popular culture three decades ago.

<comment><AUTHOR> Can't we produce enough Helium-3 to build and test reactors like this?

<comment><USER4> If Wikipedia is to be believed, we would need a substantial amount of Helium-3 to make a working reactor. At the moment, the US produces a mere 8kg of Helium-3 per year(and that's 60,000 litres!).

Apparently a litre can sell for as much as $2000, so even if the Chinese brought it back from the moon (I really wonder how, if 8KG take 60,000 litres of space, are they planning to bring back 20 tonnes??) they would still make profit.

<comment><USER5> It is extremely unlikely they could profit, because if they raise supply price would drop like a rock. I doubt there's much demand for Helium-3 predicated on prices lower by even two orders of magnitude to support a raise in supply, and that's probably being pretty generous in terms of how cheaply it could be supplied. Unless Helium-3 can actually be used to perform real fusion in the real world, in which case the seller would have an opportunity to capture the suddenly _immensely_ greater value of Helium-3, there's no reason to go get until the fusion systems are running in the real world.

<comment><USER4> From what I understand, there is enough demand even without using it for fusion - in medical scanners and such. But yeah, I am not completely convinced you could make money by mining it from the moon.

<comment><USER5> There's _huge_ demand for liquid Helium... but that's Helium-4. It has its own supply issues coming in the future, but at the moment is relatively plentiful, and even when we run out we probably won't be willing to go to the Moon to get the tons upon tons of Helium we use. See the graph here: [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Helium#Applications](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Helium#Applications) showing the breakdown of the 47 million cubic meters of Helium used in the US in 2013. Helium-3 demand is much smaller, since, well, it has to be.

It's not _quite_ on topic, but whynot... here's my analysis of what it would take to create all the helium we use via fusion: [http://www.jerf.org/iri/post/2922](http://www.jerf.org/iri/post/2922)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> Wasn't this the basic plot of Iron Sky? [http://www.imdb.com/title/tt1034314/](http://www.imdb.com/title/tt1034314/)

<comment><USER7> Also Moon. [http://www.imdb.com/title/tt1182345/](http://www.imdb.com/title/tt1182345/)

<comment><USER8> Completely off-topic, but if you haven't seen Moon, do it.

It's an amazing movie.

<comment><USER9> It is a very good movie, but also a total downer.

<comment><USER10> it's also extremely slow-paced, so be aware of that.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> This seems a little crazy given that if you can do He3 fusion, you can also do D-D fusion, which makes He3 (half the time directly, otherwise it makes tritium which decays to He3). Fusion startup Helion is aiming to do it that way, saying only 6% of the energy would be released as neutron radiation.

Also of course, plain old fission reactors can produce He3, probably much more cheaply than attempting to harvest it from the moon.

<comment><USER12> Unless you put the reactor on the moon! :)

</comment></comment><comment><USER13> This isn't happening anytime soon. China's next mission is Chang'e 5 which plans to launch in 2017. Its a robotic sample return mission and probably a validation/verification mission to make sure and confirm the Helium 3 is in quantities that can turn a profit before even seriously considering a mining mission. Even after that mission, the Chang'e 6 mission will follow after that, building upon the success of the Chang'e 5.

</comment><comment><USER14> Just like the US "Plans To" go to Mars in 30 years.

Before Helium-3 fusion works, first we need to get D-T fusion working.

<comment><USER15> Or... any kind of fusion to be practically net-energy positive. As in, not only are we getting more energy out than is needed to fuse, but also being able to capture enough of it to power the reactor continuously. I think we are a long ways off from that.

I'd like to see an expansion of research into Thorium reactors and other more intrinsically safe fission designs.

</comment></comment><comment><USER16> Frankly I would be excited to see a relief for our energy crisis fuel exploration of "the next frontier." It really is the future of humanity to perfect (or at least improve upon) space travel, even if only for industrial purposes, and having a (sort of) realistic goal that will return profits could very well be the spark we need to get support behind it from budget writers.

</comment><comment><USER17> > _But it also included a substance that the report indicated could be of > "even greater user" to our civilization, a substance which could > revolutionize energy production._

They put this typo in quotes just to shame the (likely non-native English speaking) author? This kind of shit in pop-sci articles is getting pretty tired.

</comment><comment><USER18> I'd bet on us needing He3 for all the helium dilution refrigerators keeping our quantum computers cool before betting on it as an energy source.

[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dilution_refrigerator](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dilution_refrigerator)

</comment><comment><USER19> This made me remember an old game called Dark Colony.

</comment><comment><USER20> wow…so interstellar wars/conflicts for resources is really not that far off…time to start playing starcraft to train for the future :)

</comment><comment><USER21> Isn't there some sort of treaty that prevents stuff like this? China probably wouldn't even follow it however.

</comment><comment><USER22> Is that birthday grade?

<comment><USER23> Yeah, wondering the same thing...

And how will they bring it DOWN from space? Won't they need to attach heavy weights to it to get it to fall through the atmosphere?!

\-- (just kidding...)

<comment><USER24> Not at all, that's just the first phase of their plan. The second phase is to use it in place to lift exploratory space vessels off the surface of the moon, and beyond the bounds of the solar system.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER25> How do the Moon Nazis feel about it?

Seriously, the article is about as factual as Iron Sky.

<comment><USER26> Hilarious movie though. The person who played Sarah Palin as US president was hilarious, each country's space ships, the iPod that ran the space ship, the albino-ized black guy... One of my favourite comedies of the year for sure, though I haven't found a trailer that does the movie justice yet.</comment></comment>


How GitHub Works: Hours are Bullshit - <AUTHOR> http://zachholman.com/posts/how-github-works-hours/ <comment><USER2> This was the norm for every startup I worked at.

However, in practice it meant I could come in sometime between 10am and 1pm and then work late into the night. It did not mean I could start at 6am and then leave at 2pm. Anyone leaving before 6pm would get suspicious looks, no matter when they came in. Thus, it made no sense to ever show up before 10. It would be interesting to learn when the 7am workers mentioned in the article leave.

<comment><USER3> That is certainly not the case at GitHub. We don't care where or when you work as long as the work gets done. If you're being guilted into staying later, then the hours aren't actually flexible.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> Great post. Hours are bullshit because "measuring hours" is a proxy for results, and a bad one at that.

At Highgroove, we're a ROWE -- a Results Only Work Environment. We have no hours, and our vacation policy is two words: "Be Reasonable."

This is actually a lot harder than having hours, because we have to define what the results are, together (and top-down for some). For githubbers, those results might be tangible things like: "Release 3 new Features a Week." or "Blog once a day."

Without those tangible results (instead of just tracking hours), you risk the sludge from others who are able to get more work done in less time -- and alleviate the worry that even good workers have: "Am I working hard enough?"

Good stuff! I'd be curious to hear how those "managers" you allude to are handling the "flexibility" you guys have in your next articles.

</comment><comment><USER5> I don't think this is black and white.

If you hire a contractor, you're paying for the accomplishment of a task. If you hire someone full-time, you're paying for... what? Not X hours, maybe, but not "whatever you feel like doing," either. Something more like "your best efforts in a reasonable work week."

If you hire a contractor to accomplish X task for $Y, you don't care if it takes them 2 hours or 50, as long as they meet their deadline.

If you hire a full-time developer and that person accomplishes in 3 hours a week what others do in 40, you'd be impressed. But you'd probably also be frustrated. Imagine what they could be doing for you if they worked the rest of the week!

Even if you're not a stickler about hours, you want people to be giving you their best effort. If they say they can do that in 5 intense, randomly- scheduled hours a day, and they deliver, great. But if they work 5 hours a week, it's unlikely they're giving you their best.

<comment><USER6> Flip side - If you were paying them 13 times as much you would be paying them what the market would bear in terms of work output. If you are paying them just what you are paying everyone else its unlikely you are giving them your best.

<comment><USER5> That's true, but imagine your employees started working only as many hours as they __felt __they were being paid for.

If the employee feels underpaid, they should renegotiate or, failing that, leave.

<comment><USER7> > That's true, but imagine your employees started working only as many hours > as they felt they were being paid for.

Why would that be a problem, as long as what they feel they're being paid for matches their actual productive output?

> If the employee feels underpaid, they should renegotiate or, failing that, > leave.

The situation you talk about does not necessarily mean they're underpaid. If they do the job they're paid for in half a week, why could they not have all their afternoons with their children, or working at the gym, or going to the beach? Or have 4.5 days weekends? Working 60, 70 or 80 hours a week is not a goal in and of itself, and money is not necessarily the main sticking point and the only valuable result of a job, and if you feel they don't work enough you should renegotiate.

<comment><USER5> "Why would that be a problem, as long as what they feel they're being paid for matches their actual productive output?"

My point is not "it is not OK for someone to work 5 hours a week." If both employer and employee __agree __to that, it's fine.

The point is, if you hire someone full-time for $X, you probably expect something like 40 hours a week out of them. If they just stop showing up 4 days of the week without talking to you, it's the same as if they somehow managed to withdraw 5 times their salary from your bank account without talking to you.

<comment><USER7> > The point is, if you hire someone full-time for $X, you probably expect > something like 40 hours a week out of them.

Then you'll get 40 hours of physical presence instead. I'm sure that'll go well.

> If they just stop showing up 4 days of the week without talking to you, it's > the same as if they somehow managed to withdraw 5 times their salary from > your bank account without talking to you.

No it's not, as long as they're doing the job they're supposed to do in full. That's like saying the guy who runs a 100m in 8s is a thief, and should run the whole 10s. It's retarded.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> Many people have the joy of flexible hours. Many people can have the luxury of working from home. It sounds awesome but it seems like for many this is just not an option. The only way out would be to quit the job and start your own company or move to the areas where jobs are like this: in ships like mine, this can be quite infeasible. This is more an office politics issue but I'd probably be laughed out of the door if I said I wanted to work x - y.

In terms of productivity, hours are indeed bullshit. Hours don't mean productivity or anything like that. Some days I can get stuff done in one hour which could take two in my low days.

I will tell you that hours are not meaningless though. In some instances, they're not bullshit. The hours I work, for example, often determines the hours I sleep at night. This isn't because I'm actively reducing the amount hours I sleep but because I just can't sleep knowing that I face any work not completed during the day plus another pile of work tomorrow.

This isn't a rant against my job, I love my job, but it just isn't practical to just work when I feel like I'm good enough to work. I have an employer who'll strictly forbid such things and, in all honesty, I can see where he's coming from: I share an office with other employees who require a rigid structure and definite times - waltzing in at 3pm would be quite unfair in their eyes and would cause undue headache.

<comment><USER9> Sounds like you need to be paid tons more than that guy, or he needs to be replaced.

</comment></comment><comment><USER10> I agree that hours are bullshit, but I have always found a morning standup to coordinate goals and objectives to be exceedingly useful. But i often run into opposition by the "free and easy" types. Thoughts?

<comment><USER11> Solution: have standup meetings before lunch. Everyone wants to go to lunch, so by doing a standup meeting beforehand, you'll be sure to keep it short and to the point. Plus it can be extended into lunch if needed.

</comment></comment><comment><USER12> If you're an entrepreneur or founder and involved in meeting with customers, vendors, partners, employees, etc., it's even worse than for a startup employee or purely engineering person.

I can only count on 0500-0800 or so and weekends as productive time every day. Given that I foolishly am living in Oakland for the summer, and working mainly in MV and SF, I've got an hour commute, and lots of customer, partner, investor, etc. things from ~0900 to ~2130 on various days. If you prefer working in 3-4h unbroken blocks, good luck! Most days there is another block sometime during the day, but it's really easy to have a day where there are meetings or other events every couple hours, so you can spend an entire day working on this kind of stuff.

Hence, why it is really useful for a startup to have multiple founders.

</comment><comment><USER13> How does this work honor system handle abuse? Does peer pressure mostly prevent it? Are people fired faster or for less wrongdoing? I know GitHub tries to only hire "the best", but it just seems like an eventuality before someone slips through and throws a wrench in the works.

<comment><USER14> It boils down to judgement of character. The standard fare of working 9-to-5 is open to abuse as well if HN or the like is not blocked.

</comment></comment><comment><USER15> This looks all great and all, but this

        Ultimately it should lead to more hours of work, with
        those hours being even more productive. Working weekends
        blur into working nights into working weekdays, since
        none of the work feels like work.

give the feeling that the company really wants to own the employees, make sure that whatever the employee is doing it will benefits the company. How as an employee can I ever build a healthy life balance? I know my contradictory would feel pretty pissed having that nagging voice over my shoulder telling me "You are happy now, it is for the greater good of the Company."

/paranoid-rant

</comment><comment><USER16> I wonder how many people who paraphrase Taylor's "Principles of Scientific Management" have carefully read it. Taylor exposes several insights that are antithetical to the commonly paraphrased version "Faster is better. More hours are better."

At least in the context of moving pig iron slabs, he observed that highly- qualified (for the job) and better-paid workers produced better results working fewer hours than less qualified workers working longer hours.

This point is perhaps better paraphrased as "better management, better workers, fewer hours, and higher pay produce measurable improvements in output."

<comment><AUTHOR> I have. :) I was more using Taylorism as an example of the notion that he came at it from a physical standpoint: if someone goes to work at the metal factory, their mood has less impact on their productivity than we do at a small startup, because they can still leverage their physical training and muscle memory (if we're talking an extremely routine process). Certainly an over-simplification of his work, of course, but a decent enough allusion for a short introductory paragraph. :)

<comment><USER17> I find it hard to believe that you have read it, I have too. A common tactic of his was to reduce hours to increase total output - you are agreeing with him.

A great example of this is where he employed a foreman for the sole purpose of enforcing rest periods. Forcing the workers to rest for 56% of the day - resulting in a 4x increase of output.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER18> I'm old enough that I want to say stuff like: well some people have families and such, essentially "get off my lawn", but everything in this blog rings true to me.

When I was young, I essentially had 2 jobs at one place. There were the billing hours that kept us in business and the after-hours stuff were I really learned stuff. I was single and I spent many hours arguing/practicing/learning from my peers. This was not like the situation described at github. If I consider the billing hours and the other stuff, I generally worked more than 40 hours. But the "other stuff" was fun, it was me geeking out. When I was not on assignment I did more of the "other stuff."

Right now I have a bit of flexibility. I don't force myself to work at a particular time, I find I do much better work if I do so when I feel like doing it. I still have several jobs. I have my full-time job, where I have to work hours. While I'm compensated like I'm full time, I am not 100% scheduled. This gives me time to write, work on the side, watch topgear.

That is an interesting challenge. How can a consulting company that bills by the hour not force a schedule? It turns out if you are a body shop, you've unnecessarily coupled your organization to the implementation of the customer. While that may be common, that doesn't make the "right" or "best", it's just the shit companies do.

I hope you guys manage to find the right size that lets you keep this culture. If you just try to do good stuff and enjoy yourself that's great. If someone wants to sell the company or make lots of $$, woe be it to the employee.

Congratulations on having a great environment.

</comment><comment><USER19> On another note entirely: doesn't this tend to imply that cultural differences can correlate pretty strongly with code quality? If you're in a place that treats people as interchangeable parts that can get stamped into usable shape with a little training and total direction from above, does it really matter how talented an individual is?

He (and we're almost always talking about 'he' in this culture) will never have the <i>chance</i> to shine; innovation can't fit into a structure as tight as the one he has to operate within. And since there are often (read "always, barring the occasional miracle") communication issues that impede shared understanding, even the non-innovative work generally has to be done several times before it's usable.

But since those tend to be the places where labour costs are lowest, they get more work than they can handle from the guys like an ex-boss of mine, whose desk sign read "We will pay any price to cut costs." Ultimately, the price his company paid is called "bankruptcy".

</comment><comment><USER20> I first read about the Results Only Work Environment (ROWE) in the book "Why Work Sucks and How to Fix It" by Cali Ressler and Jody Thompson. The central shorthand for breaking through to talking about results rather than attendance as a measure of work is:

TIME + PHYSICAL PRESENCE != RESULTS

And yes, they do in fact agree with masklinn's comment that if someone can finish their job in a few hours instead of 40, that the person is perfectly free to take the rest of the time to do other (non-work) things. The job of management is to come up with tasks that are important to the business, and that justify the person's continuing to work there (aka results).

As for the "sucking", they go into it in detail in the book, but I also like Paul Graham's "You Weren't Meant to Have a Boss".

<http://www.paulgraham.com/boss.html>

Hmm. That probably seems like a suck-up, I just realized I am posting on HN. :)

</comment><comment><USER21> I also agree that hours are bullshit. That being said, I wonder what are the measures for results? Do some people actually end up less productive because they feel the need to come up with something more tangible than say 'I helped a co-worker learn a new programming language' or something of the ilk?

<comment><USER22> GitHub has erred on the side of hiring people who don't need measurement—we all work hard regardless of who's watching.

Also, everyone is smart. No one is assuming number of commits is a correlation to productivity. Some days sitting at home thinking about a problem is productive.

I personally work more productive hours in a week at GitHub than I ever did at a company where I was in the office 10 hours a day. But no one is counting them.

</comment></comment><comment><USER23> My current job is similar to this, which I am glad because it shows that they trust the developers to get their shit done.

Now, it is easy to abuse, but everyone knows who is abusing it because the results of that person are not much. When not being in the office, it compounds that impression even more because others are working hard and notice when Bob is not around for a whole week and comes back with no commits.

I have also found out that I am more productive when working from home and in the very early morning (3am - 8am). Combining the two increases my productivity even more.

</comment><comment><USER24> Part I agree and part I don't. chat with someone is never the same as sitting face-to-face. When you talk with 3 or 4 people, chatting simply lose something on the way. It start from simple response time that are much larger in chat and go into much more. Measure hours as sign of productivity is never good, but ignoring hours is bad as well. Estimate how long it will take you to accomplish something is the hardest and very important quality of everyone including developers

</comment><comment><USER25> Sounds like a dream but it's not for everyone. There are people who like to have someon else setting up the rules/environment for them to feel comfortable.

And how do you motivate collaboration?

<comment><USER26> Exactly. I imagine this breaks down when you have a designer that prefers to work starting at 3pm, and a developer who's in at 7am. Do you allow the deadline to slip, or ask the designer to come in earlier (or the developer to stay later)?

I'm much more a fan of "core hours": i.e. a company that says everyone should plan to be available between, say, 12 - 2pm either in person or online. Then everyone can set their own hours around that.

<comment><USER27> The designer and developer are both professionals; they both have a mutual problem to solve one of which it to make sure they're both on the same page of logistics and design.

If they can't figure out that they have to meet together at some point early in the process, then I'd say you have a bigger issue.

The need to define core hours feels like a band-aid to a bigger issue.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER28> Hm, startup programmers have no family? Wasting AM hours to sleep, when the kids are in school/daycare, does not work for me.

</comment><comment><USER29> This presentation has been around for a bit and points to actual research: [http://www.lostgarden.com/2008/09/rules-of-productivity- pres...](http://www.lostgarden.com/2008/09/rules-of-productivity- presentation.html)

</comment><comment><USER30> Where did you read Frederick Taylor say "More hours are better"? He advocated getting the most done in the shortest time possible actually. This goes against what he preached.

<comment><USER19> +1 for that. I think if more people read Taylor and fewer read, say, Jack Welch, then work would be a happier place. Because implicit in Taylor is that you need to create the conditions that let your people get the most done in the shortest time possible. That does NOT mean "tyrannical PHB cracking the whip". The existence of a PHB in an organisation is a declaration that HIS boss hasn't taken Taylor (or the boss' own self-interest) sufficiently to heart.

</comment></comment><comment><USER31> I like the idea, but I don't know how it could be applied to people working part-time; say students or folks busy with their PhD.

</comment><comment><USER32> I look forward to parts two and three.

</comment><comment><USER33> the whole confusion would arise of thinking developers as an Engineer or Craftsman</comment>


Safari 10.0 - <AUTHOR> https://developer.apple.com/library/prerelease/content/releasenotes/General/WhatsNewInSafari/Articles/Safari_10_0.html <comment><USER2> I'm the most excited the Selenium WebDriver support. Apple was the last major vendor hold-out. We really thought Microsoft was going to go last! The Selenium project's "secret" world domination plan was to stop doing all the work and instead, get the browser vendors to do the heavy lifting. It worked!

<comment><AUTHOR> Hopefully it works with iOS Safari as well.

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> Finally! Inline videos in iOS Safari! This is a really needed change. Specially for all those GIFs!

</comment><comment><AUTHOR> Full ES6 and I18n APIs! Nice!!

</comment><comment><USER4> Still no service worker</comment>


Ask HN: What are your favorite poems? - <AUTHOR> <comment><USER3> If - Rudyard Kipling [https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poems/46473/if---](https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poems/46473/if---)

Stopping by Woods on a Snowy Evening - Robert Frost, [https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poems/42891/stopping-by- woo...](https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poems/42891/stopping-by-woods-on-a- snowy-evening)

Emily Dickinson!

Here is one

 _I'm Nobody! Who are you?_

I'm Nobody! Who are you?

Are you – Nobody – too?

Then there's a pair of us!

Don't tell! they'd advertise – you know!

How dreary – to be – Somebody!

How public – like a Frog –

To tell one's name – the livelong June –

To an admiring Bog!

</comment><comment><USER4> I don't really "get" poetry. I consider myself to be reasonably intelligent and well-read, but I've just had a hard time wrapping my head around poetry as a medium.

That said, I do enjoy Robert Frost (cliche, I know). The only poem I can recite in totality is "Annabel Lee" by Edgar Allen Poe, and part of why I really liked that one is that it tells a short story, and a vivid one at that.

Beyond that, I'm not sure. I'd be interested in a "Understanding Poetry's Awesomeness for Dummies" course, though...

<comment><USER5> Poetry is like visual art or music, sometimes there is nothing to "get". Of course there are ways to approach analytically, but I don't believe that's where the awesomeness can be found.

To me its about connecting to a particular phrase, image, perspective, or description. Once you feel that connection to a certain poem its a lot easier to feel like you understand it.

The poem I always go back to when people say they don't get poetry is: " so much depends upon

a red wheel barrow

glazed with rain water

beside the white chickens. " \- William Carlos Williams

It's simple and effective. A single image, a specific point in time and place, are being described with only a few lines and yet you can almost reach onto the page and touch it. You can try to see it as an extended metaphor, or take it completely at face value. Either way - it's beautiful.

<comment><USER6> I love William Carlos Williams. I'm not an avid poetry reader, but I always loved going through his work. Another favorite is Alfred Tennyson.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> I'm Brazilian, so my poem favorite poem is in portuguese, its called A Máquina do Mundo (The World's Machine).

Wikipedia as an assert about it: _The most prominent of these later metaphysical poems is A Máquina do Mundo (The World 's Machine). The poem deals with an anti-Faust referred to in the first person, who receives the visit of the aforementioned Machine, which stands for all possible knowledge, and the sum of the answers for all the questions which afflict men; in highly dramatic and baroque versification the poem develops only for the anonymous subject to decline the offer of endless knowledge and proceed his gloomy path in the solitary road. It takes the renaissance allegory of the Machine of the World from Portugal's most esteemed poet, Luís de Camões, more precisely, from a canto at the end of his epic masterpiece Os Lusíadas.[0]_

[0] Wikipedia about Drummond, [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Carlos_Drummond_de_Andrade](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Carlos_Drummond_de_Andrade)

</comment><comment><USER8> The Frog and the Nightingale (Vikram Seth) - [https://www.poemhunter.com/poem/the-frog-and-the- nightingale...](https://www.poemhunter.com/poem/the-frog-and-the-nightingale/)

Stopping by Woods on a Snowy Evening - Robert Frost [https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poems/42891/stopping-by- woo...](https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poems/42891/stopping-by-woods-on-a- snowy-evening)

Mending Wall - Robert Frost [https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poems/44266/mending- wall](https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poems/44266/mending-wall)

The Second Coming - W.B.Yeats [http://www.potw.org/archive/potw351.html](http://www.potw.org/archive/potw351.html)

The Mountain and the Squirrel - <USER2> [https://sites.google.com/site/rainydaypoems/poems-for- kids/c...](https://sites.google.com/site/rainydaypoems/poems-for-kids/classic- poems-for-kids/the-mountain-and-the-squirrel-by-ralph-waldo-emerson)

</comment><comment><USER9>
       pity this busy monster, manunkind,

       not. Progress is a comfortable disease:
       your victim (death and life safely beyond)

       plays with the bigness of his littleness
       --- electrons deify one razorblade
       into a mountainrange; lenses extend
       unwish through curving wherewhen till unwish
       returns on its unself.
                                  A world of made
       is not a world of born --- pity poor flesh

       and trees, poor stars and stones, but never this
       fine specimen of hypermagical

       ultraomnipotence. We doctors know

       a hopeless case if --- listen: there's a hell
       of a good universe next door; let's go.

E. E. Cummings

</comment><comment><USER10> There are the rushing waves mountains of molecules each stupidly minding its own business trillions apart yet forming white surf in unison

Ages on ages before any eyes could see year after year thunderously pounding the shore as now. For whom, for what? On a dead planet with no life to entertain.

Never at rest tortured by energy wasted prodigiously by the Sun poured into space. A mite makes the sea roar.

Deep in the sea all molecules repeat the patterns of one another till complex new ones are formed. They make others like themselves and a new dance starts. Growing in size and complexity living things masses of atoms DNA, protein dancing a pattern ever more intricate.

Out of the cradle onto dry land here it is standing: atoms with consciousness; matter with curiosity.

Stands at the sea, wonders at wondering: I a universe of atoms an atom in the Universe.

Feynman

<comment><USER11> Out of the cradle endlessly rocking,

Out of the mocking-bird's throat, the musical shuttle,

Out of the Ninth-month midnight,

Over the sterile sands and the fields beyond, where the child leaving his bed wander'd alone, bareheaded, barefoot,

Down from the shower'd halo,

Up from the mystic play of shadows twining and twisting as if they were alive,

Out from the patches of briers and blackberries,

From the memories of the bird that chanted to me,

From your memories sad brother, from the fitful risings and fallings I heard,

From under that yellow half-moon late-risen and swollen as if with tears,

From those beginning notes of yearning and love there in the mist,

From the thousand responses of my heart never to cease,

From the myriad thence-arous'd words,

From the word stronger and more delicious than any,

From such as now they start the scene revisiting,

As a flock, twittering, rising, or overhead passing,

Borne hither, ere all eludes me, hurriedly,

A man, yet by these tears a little boy again,

Throwing myself on the sand, confronting the waves,

I, chanter of pains and joys, uniter of here and hereafter,

Taking all hints to use them, but swiftly leaping beyond them,

A reminiscence sing.

(First verse of Whitman's _Out of the Cradle Endlessly Rocking_ )

</comment></comment><comment><USER12>
        They fuck you up, your mum and dad.

            They may not mean to, but they do.

        They fill you with the faults they had

            And add some extra, just for you.

        But they were fucked up in their turn

            By fools in old-style hats and coats,

        Who half the time were soppy-stern

            And half at one another's throats.

        Man hands on misery to man.

            It deepens like a coastal shelf.

        Get out as early as you can,

            And don't have any kids yourself.

</comment><comment><USER13> I like this guy

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Charles_Bukowski#Poetry_collec...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Charles_Bukowski#Poetry_collections)

"War all the time" is a good place to start.

</comment><comment><USER14> Lost

by Carl Sandburg

Desolate and lone

All night long on the lake

Where fog trails and mist creeps,

The whistle of a boat

Calls and cries unendingly,

Like some lost child

In tears and trouble

Hunting the harbor's breast

And the harbor's eyes.

</comment><comment><USER15> Anything by Shel Silverstein, it's all gold.

</comment><comment><USER16> Pathedy of Manners - Ellen Kay

Curiosity - Alistair Reid

</comment><comment> wu-ikkyu The long night;

The sound of the water

Says what I think.

-Gochiku

</comment><comment><USER17> "Cynthia" -Jonah Hill</comment>


Walmart Announces 100,000 Jobs for Veterans Over 5 Years - <AUTHOR> http://corporate.walmart.com/global-responsibility/veterans-military-families

<comment><USER2> This comes at an opportune time with the downsizing of the forces. The younger service members are the ones more likely to be pushed out in their mid to late 20's. It's a solid job for those who go back to school and need something part-time.

</comment><comment><USER3> They don't announce 100,000 jobs for veterans rather they expect to hire over 100k veterans.

</comment><comment><USER4> The _average_ pay for a full-time Walmart worker is $12.40 an hour. That's just under $26,000 for a year of full-time work, which is below the median wage for an individual. Most Walmart workers are part-time and, so, do not earn that much. [http://www.dailykos.com/story/2012/11/21/1163555/-The- truth-...](http://www.dailykos.com/story/2012/11/21/1163555/-The-truth-about- Walmart-wages)

Working at Walmart is not a job that will put you solidly in the middle class.

</comment><comment><USER5> I'd hope we could do better than Walmart for veterans. Unless it's to pick up a little cash while they go to school.

<comment><USER6> A pretty cool thing for Walmart to offer though. "Hey, you want a job? You got it"

<comment><USER5> Agreed.</comment></comment></comment>


CSS Digital Clock Animation - <AUTHOR> https://dev.to/gscode/10-css-digital-clock-animation-1763 <comment><USER2> This is your 4th submission of this in six days!</comment>


Ozone - A Framework For Composing Light-Weight Widgets - <AUTHOR> https://www.owfgoss.org/ <comment><AUTHOR> [http://www.functionn.in/2012/12/ozone-framework-for- composin...](http://www.functionn.in/2012/12/ozone-framework-for-composing- light.html)

It's a web app which need Java + Tomcat to deploy. You run it in the browser and it allows you to create widgets.

Look like a mature project. Would have loved to see some demo though.</comment>


Happy 9/10/11 - <AUTHOR>

Happy 9/10/11 <comment><USER2> It's 2011/09/10 here 8-)

Actually, that makes me think. I lived and worked through the Y2K time, and I was involved in helping convert/examine some code to make sure it was Y2K compatible.

Many of the programmers I see today weren't programming at that time, and at least one was found to be saved dates as a 2 digit string. He honestly couldn't see what the fuss was - the code won't be running in the year 2999 - why should he care?

I wonder how much of that type of thinking will creep back into the industry, and whether it really will matter. I, for one, think that computers and programming will have evolved into something completely different by 2999.

The problem(s) that surface will be different, but probably only in detail.

</comment><comment><USER3> oh, it's 10/9/11 here ...</comment>


The VC Branding Problem - <AUTHOR> http://thestartupdigest.com/2010/05/30/the-vc-branding-problem/

<comment><USER2> I'm not sure if it matters, but it seems to me the author is comparing early stage VC's with seed/incubator funds.

The VC's are playing a bit of a different market, funding the more mature, post-development companies, where the incubators are working in the idea-to- market area.

The more conservative and below the radar branding may be an effort in attracting more capital for investment than in getting the start-ups excited about the VC specifically.

Just looking at Vantage Point, they report 4.5 BILLION 'committed capital since 1996'. Trinity Ventures recently participated in a 4.2 million dollar round (so assume it's fair to say they put in a few million).

Compare that to YC's recent announcement of 8.5 Million fund. I don't know how much YC has raised since inception, but I suspect they may be sub 50 Million.

Not so say that YC or any of the seeds should be aiming for the 100's of millions in management. That isn't their market. They are very good at picking VERY early start-up entrepreneurs, giving them a very small bit of capital, and actively guiding them through the process of building a valuable business.

Basically, I think the marketing fits the market.

<comment><USER3> I think the problem lies when these later stage VC firms pitch themselves as the "early stage/seed fund" to founders selling the dream that they will be the first money in.

I've met a few partners at those above larger firms who said exactly this and taking the time to meet with entrepreneurs who are just at the idea stage/first product and taking advantage of the situation.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> I greatly support this idea. And if you mean by branding, it also does have to do with how they present their logos (big difference between the old school venture firms and the seed fund firms)</comment>


TheirTube – How do the recommended videos look on their Youtube home page? - <AUTHOR> http://www.their.tube <comment><USER2> This is very insightful. I have considered another, somewhat related idea: to sample a news / media site, over the course of time. The idea would be to illustrate how news bubble up and down in priority. It would for example be interesting to follow how a somewhat big but also controversial piece of news would be bumped down in priority as other news are added on top. As I understand, the news home pages changes very frequently to attract people to come back soon to see "what is new". This can have the effect that you miss out on something significant because it is already bumped down.

In the old days, when news was printed on paper, you would have one front page per day. I have no idea how many front pages there are per day now but probably dozens if not hundreds of variants, where only after some hours the biggest news is no longer the biggest.

<comment><USER3> With all our media resources and technology, it's crazy that there is no easy way to answer questions like "what happened politically in France in the last month?", "what were the economic developments in Africa in the last quarter?" or "what were the biggest battery technology advances in the last year?".

With the barrage of news it is very easy to miss a lot, especially if you want to keep up with multiple domains and geographical regions.

I would love some hierarchical listing that shows the most important news items for different time periods (week, month, quarter, year), and filterable by domain (eg business, economy, politics, science, technology, ...).

One should be able to continuously drill down. Eg start with all news world wide. Then show only Europe, then only eg Sweden, then the economy of Sweden. Same thing with topics. With each entry linking multiple articles from quality sources, across the political spectrum.

I would happily pay 25+/month for such an aggregator with the appropriate quality. Which probably would mean hand-curated lists (opening up all sorts of of bias problems, but still).

Edit: I wonder if this could be crowd-sourced via a dedicated platform.

<comment><USER2> The Economist paper edition has a spread with summarized news for the past week. I have been thinking of isolating myself from the news cycle and keeping myself up-to-date with a one week latency, using the Economist's summaries. The problem is, I have not found a suitable replacement for national (in my case Swedish) and also local news. Would also pay for a similar aggregator.

<comment><USER4> If you can stomach Hakelius then Fokus was some good quality journalism when I was a subscriber.

<comment><USER2> Good suggestion. I can stomach Hakelius, certainly. He is one of the best writers in the editorial space in Sweden today.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> I got tired of all the clickbait and recommendation spam on my YouTube homepage so I made some filters in uBlock Origin.

My filters also block out recommended videos on the righthand side of the video you are watching.

Here's what it looks like: [https://imgur.com/a/uxpQE1J](https://imgur.com/a/uxpQE1J)

If you'd like the same, enter this into your uBlock Filters. [https://pastebin.com/PK1hdeEn](https://pastebin.com/PK1hdeEn)

(Feedback and additions Welcome! This is something I hope to share with others to make YouTube a little less insufferable)

<comment><USER6> You might be interested in Invidious. It's a lightweight youtube frontend that runs in the browser.

[https://invidio.us/](https://invidio.us/)

[https://github.com/iv-org/invidious](https://github.com/iv-org/invidious)

You can host it yourself or use one of the many public installations: [https://github.com/iv-org/invidious/wiki/Invidious- Instances](https://github.com/iv-org/invidious/wiki/Invidious-Instances)

<comment><USER7> I use a FF addon[0] that redirects YT links to Invidious

[0][https://github.com/metiis/invidious- redirect](https://github.com/metiis/invidious-redirect)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> Flat Earther is not one of the options available from what I can tell. I suppose it falls under conspiracist although that is a pretty broad category.

Fruitarian, Prepper, Liberal, Conservative, Conspiracist, Climate Denier

The web design is really good! And it's funded by Mozilla which is cool

<comment><USER9> What's a fruitarian?

<comment><USER10> A stricter form of veganism, where you only eat raw fruit. Steve Jobs and Gandhi was fruitarian too; usually such people practice indian spiritualism in some form too (e.g. yoga)

<comment><USER11> Not quite. Veganism is a belief system, whereas fruitarianism is a diet. The latter is compatible with veganism since the diet contains no animal products, but you can be a fruitarian who exploits animals in a non-dietary fashion (e.g. wearing leather, buying products tested on animals, etc.).

Also, my understanding is that at least some fruitarians allow for some amount of nuts/seeds and leafy greens, but I don't know if that's universally accepted.

<comment><USER12> The wiki page of veganism disambiguates between dietary vegans and ethical vegans.

<comment><USER11> It does, but that page was likely written by non-vegans, who in general have a hard time seeing past the dietary aspect of veganism, since it's the biggest obstacle to becoming a vegan for most people.

As I point out in another comment[1], the origins of veganism are very much rooted in animal rights. I grew up vegetarian, but I would never refer to myself as a "dietary Hindu." There's a lot more to it than just the diet!

Typically, a vegan would refer to someone following a vegan diet as a "plant- based dieter" in order to distinguish between the groups.

FWIW, I became a vegetarian at age seven (22 years ago) and became vegan a little over three years ago, and never in my life have I heard or seen the terms "dietary vegan" or "moral vegetarian" which are both mentioned in the Wikipedia article.

[1] [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23992110](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23992110)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> I would be described as a "climate denier" by many people here, but my YouTube recommendations have _zero_ overlap with the fictional recommendations. This is because I do not feel any need to prop up my opinions with endless wacky video propaganda.

Look, I'm sure there are plenty of people who get sucked into bubbles of YouTube nonsense, and sadly these recommendations may accurately represent the recommendations for typical users. But just deciding that someone is a "liberal" or a "conspiracy theorist" does not in fact mean that you can assume _anything_ about what they are seeing on YouTube, which is what the title seems to claim. Please keep that in mind.

<comment><USER14> I actually find the exercise on this TheirTube thing to be utterly useless. It has a real world validity on par with lie detectors and homeopathy.

A person, or group of people, set up this site and built YouTube profiles on what they think people in these categories are like. Then they use those profiles to show "what these people see". The problem is few actual, real individuals match these caricatures. The people that built this site aren't "them", except within a limited one of the presented profiles or two. My only hope is that nobody tries to build an argument around the outcomes of this exercise.

I think if anything is to be learned, it's the biases and preconceptions of the people that built the site moreso than anything about how YouTube builds recommendations... re-enforcing or otherwise (and I'm no fan of YouTube recommendations, either).

Esse quam videri

<comment> mikael-gramont That's not what they did though.

"Each of these TheirTube personas is informed by interviews with real YouTube users who experienced similar recommendation bubbles"

"These accounts subscribe to the channels that the interviewees followed, and watches videos from these channels to reproduce a similar viewing history and a recommendation bubble"

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> Cool idea, I've always wanted to do this but instead of using political lines, I've always wanted to know what the recommendations of the peoples of Indian reservations, the black belt, other ethnic enclaves in and outside of America etc. This app seems to exist more for social media activism than for building insight into the lives of different peoples (which is absolutely okay and needs to be said, but still). Are there other websites like this out there?

<comment><USER16> Try to push your youtube bubble around. It takes days to weeks.

Unfortunately you'll need to already know a number of entry searches to "seed" the movement. After that you can try to just move around by surfing from the seeds.

I think it's easier if your target bubble uses a different script, or at least a different language.

<comment><USER15> I was thinking of building a website that simply asks people permission to share a snapshot of their YouTube or other social media recommendations to keep the feed authentic. It would seem to be easy enough to collect and categorize different people's feeds, if I could somehow convince the right people to open up that part of their lives.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER17> This is why I browse incognito, clear my cookies, use a VPN, and don't participate in the phenomenon of recommended content. I don't want some algorithm telling me what I should want.

<comment><USER18> You realise that the Hacker News front page is an algorithm that predicts what you should want?

<comment><USER2> Does it? Is it personal?

<comment><USER19> Yes, by self-selection of visitors.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER20> I was watching some motorcycle videos overseas, and of course liked (button click) them. This then had my entire channel filled with languages i dont understand.

The fix is to remove all liked videos, problem, I had over 15,000 liked videos over decades(s?) of use. I finally found a howto, a script to run in chrome to remove all my likes.

Also I have an addon that lets me put channels into categories, addon called PocketTube. It lets me see unfiltered access to my channel choices, and youtube hates its direct access and if I open a video in a new tab, it prompts me for a captcha. I've ended up watching youtube in a VM with a VPN so I can change locations due to youtube's heavy handed behavior. I also will just copy the URL and watch on my desktop.

Really, youtube content is vast and un-navigable, they filter results, show in the wrong default order, wont remember settings of order, removed language choice filter.

The 80/20 rule, or top 10%, Pareto principle, whatever you want to call the cream on the top problem. The problem is small popular percentage of content. Youtube is pushing popular videos, and you miss out on all the lower popular videos, hiding 80% of the content, many new creators go unnoticed and unviewed.

There is a demand for a front end portal, that runs unfiltered but allows search controls, skip popular, view ascending order of all content, view by category only, be able to exclude content, exact search phrase allow, no shadow banned or hidden content rules, no white list rules (by default).

I cant be the only one tired of facebook/google/twitter showing me what they think I want, i didnt ask them to be my parser of content, just because I use their service, as its the only game in town, I still dont want spoon fed content.

Same problem with podcasts, a search function vs a browse directory. There are so many podcasts, and most places give you the top 10 podcasts per search.

I think a unfiltered directory of content providers (any platform), tired with advertising, crowd funding, etc would re-open the internet of new content, and take back the controlling behavior of mega corps.

</comment><comment><USER21> Previously discussed 13 days ago - 160 comments: [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23859548](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23859548)

</comment><comment><USER22> I checked out the prepper channel and I actually like the videos that were on there. I know the gag here is that these are fringe topics, but this is a fun way to explore other topics.

<comment><USER23> I always like the general DIY stuff, the problem ends up being that if I watch one or two fun "how to can goods for the end of the world" videos or whatever YouTube inevitably starts recommending people talking about how they're going to start a race war and live in their bunker and kill all the immigrants and black people or something horrible along those lines. I used to live in an area with a lot of prepers and this was their prevailing thought. I'm not sure if it's a minority of the community or not, but it's what YouTube likes to recommend anyways.

<comment><USER24> I don't believe you Re: the extremist YouTube recommendations. They remove videos and ban channels for far less.

<comment><USER23> Does that stop them being recommended in the mean time? I normally just report this sort of thing, but I never go back to specifically see if it gets removed (hopefully it does). It's what always seems to happen. Of course, it could be from something else I'm watching too, is there a way to see why their algorithm recommends particular things? I mean, it's not like it happens every day, right now my feed is entirely full of mountain bike content, which seems to generate much more friendly and welcoming recommendations.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER25> Despite how drastically different the recommendations are for each persona, there seem to be some videos which are inexplicably nearly universally recommended. It's practically a meme - the top comment on many older videos is something along the lines of "See you all again in 5 years when Youtube decides to recommend this again" or "I didn't search for this. Neither did you."

</comment><comment><USER26> I notice the "liberal" link has "leftist" in the URL. Is YouTube so basic, it cannot distinguish the two?

<comment><USER27> We might as well stop using the term liberal, it means so many things to different people now.

<comment><USER28> We might as well stop using the term logic, it means so many things to different people now.

Liberal is well defined in virtually all models of classification used in political science and political philosophy, which a project such as this should probably defer to.

<comment><USER12> People absolutely do not agree on what "a liberal" would believe in. Hell, to some people, it's nothing more than a slur.

Also, the reductive "then we should toss out the word 'logic' then!" kinda comes off as a tantrum, to me. I don't really get the point. Why not focus and possibly disagree with the suggestion that nobody agrees on what "a liberal" means?

If you try to switch the argument to your analogy, then you're going to spend more time defending and explaining your (nonsensical) analogy than you would just explaining where you disagree. For example, you'd have to start explaining why you think people disagree about the word "logic", something I've never encountered.

Not a very effective strategy.

<comment><USER28> People absolutely do not agree on what "logic" is. Just ask people. Hell, to some people, it's nothing more than "I'm right."

>I don't really get the point.

The point is that it doesn't matter if people in general don't know that the word means, which is why I didn't refer to "people" but classification systems designed by and for people trying to understand political ideologies and orientations. The term "liberal" has definite specific meanings that correspond relatively narrowly.

> something I've never encountered.

Then you've never asked regular people what logic is or haven't noticed that their answers differ widely and hardly correspond to what philosophers and mathematicians mean. Nevertheless, the laity's ignorance does not dilute the meaning of the term.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER29> Seems like, relative to its own system, YouTube has a decent grasp of where I lie on the political axis. (pretty close to the center)

</comment><comment><USER30> Something I genuinely do not understand is the relation between conspiracy themed content and left/right politics.

Is there a correlation between YT's recommendation algorithm clearly seems to think there is as there are videos that I would describe as more tangentially political than topical on both the Climate Denier and Conspiracist pages.

</comment><comment><USER31> What does everyone think of Shellenbergers apology for climate alarmism? (Apocalypse Never) It showed up in that category.

</comment><comment><USER32> This is a very cool idea. I'd love to see similar versions for sites like Facebook and Twitter.

</comment><comment><USER33> Although the generated personas are caricatures by design, this is a great example of persona development and user segment branching.

Great website with excellent design that provides a thoughtful exploration of the youtube's online "echo chambers".

</comment><comment><USER34> I setup an RSS / ytdownloader script a year or two back for my subscriptions. It just mirrors the latest videos to my private CDN overnight, and sends me an email first thing in the morning with a digest. Much nicer way to watch YouTube

</comment><comment><USER35> It's really sad how youtube is becoming a selective news service where it's always doom and gloom and impending fear and anxieties.

That's why I just use it for music.

<comment><USER36> I like the idea of PipeWire where you can create your own feed without logging in. If I like someone I will send them a donation directly. I don't want want them to be telling me to like and subscribe every 5 seconds and then telling me what products to by because they are secretly sponsored by them.

</comment></comment><comment><USER37> I wish there was a way to turn the recommendation algorithms to their inverse setting. Watch a right wing video? Get recommended something from the left. Watch a debunking video? Get recommendations on topics in the paranormal and the fringe.

This strikes me more as actual "red pilling."

<comment><USER19> There really is no "other side" to many of these. You won't find a community of lunatics making 340min-videos about "round earth", except maybe NASA. And the opposite of a far-right racist isn't a far-left anything, but a regular person that just happens not to be racist.

<comment><USER38> Great point, I guess the opposite of a prepper video is just an hour long video about someone showing you their regular pantry with average amounts of food and explaining where they want to go on vacation for the next several years.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER39> Yikes, the name of the website is right there. How did this post title get so screwed up. @dang can you fix the "There" in the title?

<comment><USER40> Seems to have been fixed.

</comment></comment><comment><USER41> Clicking on the back arrow lets you check out recommendations for previous dates.

<comment><USER42> neat, I missed that when I saw the website earlier

</comment></comment><comment><USER43> Neat website. Wish we didn't have this dishonest clickbait title though.

</comment><comment><USER44> What is the YouTube homepage even for? Why does anyone ever see it?

<comment><USER12> Same reason you see Netflix's homepage.

When logged in, Youtube.com shows you a mix of new videos from creators you watch and related/recommended videos in the effort to provide you something you will probably want to watch. So I go there when I'm in the mood to watch something, perhaps while eating dinner.

And it works. If you want to see how ineffective it would be just looking at a list of popular videos, view the horror that is the trending tab.

[https://www.youtube.com/feed/trending](https://www.youtube.com/feed/trending)

<comment><USER44> I guess I just don't ever use YouTube that way. People embed videos in their blogs or on Twitter, and that's where I see them.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER45> Great idea, someone should do this for FB too.

</comment><comment><USER46> Their liberal persona is actually fairly mainstream, probably to the right of the average Bernie Sanders supporter.

<comment><USER47> The project has ties to the Mozilla Foundation, and the author also works on a project funded by the European Commission. It's either bias blindness, propaganda, a deliberate way to secure funding, or some combination thereof.

</comment></comment><comment><USER48> Not to be that guy but: s/there/their

The title is "ThereTube" \-- today I was that guy...

<comment><USER49> Fixed now.

</comment></comment><comment><USER50> Great stuff, bad AI recommendations at least for the climate denier part. (maybe you should change it to climate catastrophism skeptic which would be more precise from the results I see) very few people denies there is a climate I take it :)</comment>


Tesla may call warranty repairs goodwill due to lemon laundering - <AUTHOR> https://insideevs.com/news/433383/tesla-warranty-repairs-goodwill-lemon-laundering/ <comment><USER2> I'm having a really tough time following this article. what are they actually alleging here? What is a "goodwill repair"?

<comment><USER3> A "goodwill repair" is a repair where Tesla asserts that it is an issue caused by the user and not a warranty case. That Tesla is covering the costs of fixing it is merely a matter of goodwill instead.

The article alleges that Tesla wrongly handles most warranty cases as goodwill repairs. This hits a lot of possible legal issues.

* They can avoid legislation dealing with chronic defects in cars.

* They can sidestep reporting requirements for road safety issues.

* They can fudge the books when they report repair costs.

* They can avoid labeling cars they had to buy back appropriately.

<comment><USER4> I think the intent behind the goodwill repair is important. If Tesla is doing this intentionally as a legal loophole, then there's a problem.

But electric cars are new, we're still understanding some of the problems with them, and we're still understanding how people are using them. It's not unreasonable for Tesla to have a high rate for these repairs given how unique their product is.

<comment><USER5> The first sentence makes to a of sense but the second one seems unrelated to any of the discussion.

Let's say the rate is high because of how unique their product is, how does that change anything? The repairs should still be recorded correctly (not goodwill) and laws followed accordingly?

<comment><USER4> The lemon laws were written for the combustion engine days, where hundreds of mechanical components can reasonably add up to an unfixable lemon.

A defunct battery can be swapped. A bad electric motor can be swapped. Sensors can be changed. These are trivial to do on an electric car.

There's an incredible labour cost to do this kind of swapping on a combusting engine. An engine swap? That takes a highly experienced mechanic for an ICU. Transmission issues are also write offs.

The bar for an electric lemon is much higher.

<comment><USER6> I really don't understand the logic here. If EVs are so easily repaired, wouldn't that mean that no EV customer or maker would ever be concerned with the concept of a lemon car? No manufacturer would need to do any dancing around the law -- no NDAs, no "goodwill" repairs of warrantied defects, etc.

Personally, I think lemon laws are overall very good for car manufacturers: they give people a sense of comfort regarding the worst-case scenario in purchasing a new car. And that's especially important for cars based on new technologies. But I'd love to see whether there's any empirical support for this.

<comment><USER5> Agreed, and it may be that swapping out a battery or engine is easy but I don't want my brand new car in the shop 3-4x a year because my car just stopped working at the grocery store. Especially when wait times for servicing can be protracted. It doesn't matter if the car runs on hopes and dreams, it needs to be reliable.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> Only experience I had with a goodwill repair was way out of warranty for a non-safety item(stuck exterior door handle) so they definitely aren't limited to warranty or lemon issues.

<comment><USER8> staying with the theme of the article, by doing this repair as goodwill, it changes how they have to report it (if at all). So if there really would need to be a recall to fix a fault/safety issue with the exterior door handle, the data wouldn't be there for regulators to make it mandatory. Warranty doesn't apply in these cases. If a recall defect is discovered 5 years after warranties expire, the manufacturer is _still_ required to fix it on all cars impacted. One of my vehicles had a seat belt recall 10 years after. So your "goodwill" could be just them trying to avoid a costly recall.

Note: this was just staying with the theme of the article and not that I agree with the accusations.

<comment><USER9> Additionally goodwill repairs can be used to cover up engineering defects that only manifest themselves in limited circumstances to avoid a full recall.

I took an out of warranty Honda Accord in for service at a Dealership and they discovered a cracked engine block. They performed a goodwill repair under the auspices that "that shouldn't happen".

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> > That doesn't mean Tesla is entitled to follow a similar path just because > legacy automakers have.

Isn't it sorta weird that companies other than tesla are called "legacy"? I know that term is almost uniquely bad within software, but considering the site I'd think they know what connotation it carries for many people.

<comment><USER11> In college admissions, it is certainly positive.

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Legacy_preferences](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Legacy_preferences)

<comment><USER10> Yeah, in almost everything except software it's a positive word. That's why I included the bit about the software connotation there.

There's a whole separate discussion to be had why the word has so different meanings too.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> The notion of a lemon is a car that was made on a bad day, so there are lots of defects that show up over time. The laws vary but generally say that if a car needs several major repairs in its first year you can demand a buyback.

The underlying assumption that justifies a category of "lemon" is that needing N repairs is evidence that it is more likely than other cars of its model year to need an N+1st repair because failures are not independent.

This may have been true of earlier technology, but it doesn't match the way modern cars are made. Mainly, the granularity of subassemblies is much higher, so for example in a Tesla they replace the entire rear powertrain or entire battery pack as a warranty item.

Lemon laws should have required some periodic statistical adjustment to determine whether lemoniness actually exists in a given brand or not.

<comment><USER13> What if manufacturing isn't the source of end-user lemoniness?

These cars go through QC - maybe some QC folks are more slipshod than others, and the main source of lemons are the ones who were inspected by terrible QC inspectors?

Or maybe the lemons are perfectly fine cars that were damaged in shipment and were repaired badly?

Regardless, the lemon laws still protect the consumer.

<comment><USER9> Wouldn't sloppy QC also be a signof manufacturing issues?

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> When you look at Consumer's Reports owner satisfaction scores for Tesla vehicles they are surprisingly high. In which case there can't be vary many getting the goodwill lemon treatment, possibly none.

<comment><USER15> NHTSA data is a better indicator. Many owners are 100% satisfied with a dangerous or buggy car if A) it hasn't killed them yet, and/or B) the manufacturer makes it easy to replace the lemon.

</comment></comment><comment><USER16> Another good article about Tesla warranty accounting: [https://cleantechnica.com/2020/07/10/tesla-tsla-has-a- warran...](https://cleantechnica.com/2020/07/10/tesla-tsla-has-a-warranty- accounting-mystery/)

<comment><USER17> That entire article is an appeal to authority and doesn't address classifying warranty repairs as goodwill. If the author wasn't claiming to be working directly with a warranty accounting expert it would have nothing to say.

<comment><USER16> The article contains a large number of assertions and numbers derived from public records. Instead of a middle-brow dismissal, how about you attack something specific?

The author talked to an expert about a subject that few people understand, and this is portrayed as a bad thing? I guess it's better to speculate out of thin air?

Maybe you were an expert on warranty accounting before reading the article so you didn't learn anything. But I doubt it because if you were you would have had more concrete criticisms of the article. But even warranty accounting experts would probably appreciate the author working out the claims capacity ratios for almost a dozen different companies.

The article is obviously days of work from the author. It may be worthy of criticism. If so, please do so substantively.

Just a few of things I learned from the article:

\- what warranty accounting is

\- what warranty margins Tesla keeps

\- how that compares to others in the industry

\- what will happen to Tesla's financial statements in the future if Tesla adjusts their warranty margins closer to their industry peers

P.S. There's lots of good discussion about goodwill in the comments to the article.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER18> Can someone point me to the spot in the article where they actually allege that Tesla has resold a lemon buyback on which goodwill repairs were done?

There's a ton of text here, but the actual allegation seems to be completely unsubstantiated.

<comment><USER19> Did you read the article in its entirety?

> _" Tesla provides express warranties. Under state lemon laws and the federal > Magnuson-Moss Act and other provisions of state and federal laws, they are > required to ensure that they comply with the warranties, or provide a > refund. It appears they are attempting to evade state lemon laws by claiming > their so-called 'goodwill' repairs don't count toward the criteria for > buying back lemons. In addition, Tesla has been requiring lemon owners to > sign onerous settlement agreements that silence them and make it easier for > Tesla to engage in lemon laundering: the illegal resale of defective lemon > vehicles, without branding the titles or taking other steps to protect > consumers."_

<comment><USER20> > It appears they are attempting to evade state lemon laws

"Appears" how? Where is the substantiation? I came away wit the same concern. I can see the "onerous" terminology in the settlement agreements, which is standard lawyer CYA in these kinds of disputes.

<comment><USER21> from the article: [https://www.reddit.com/r/teslamotors/comments/ct284e/tesla_j...](https://www.reddit.com/r/teslamotors/comments/ct284e/tesla_just_listed_my_buyback_model_3_for_33k/)

The article also noted a former employee is involved in a lawsuit accusing Tesla of reselling lemons.

<comment><USER18> But... that link clearly says it was _not_ a lemon buyback! It's not illegal to voluntarily buy a car back and then resell it. Lemon laws are a very specific thing, that effectively force a manufacturer to buy the product back. If it wasn't invoked, then it doesn't apply.

<comment><USER21> Lemon laws are not a very specific thing, they are wildly different between states. Not all lemon laws require disclosure, but some states require disclosure even if a lemon claim isn't actually filed but the car meets the criteria: [https://www.lemberglaw.com/lemon-law/rights/lemon- laundering...](https://www.lemberglaw.com/lemon-law/rights/lemon-laundering/)

<comment><USER18> And I ask again, what exactly is Tesla accused of doing that violates lemon laws. As I see it, we have two facts:

1\. Tesla sometimes does repairs via "goodwill" accounting instead of standard warrantee service. On it's face, this sounds like a good thing.

2\. Tesla bought some guys car, then resold it. Again, that's a good thing in isolation.

And the suggestion is that they did the goodwill thing so that they could scam the new owner of the car by evading lemon law disclosure. Well, OK. Did they? Show us the evidence. If there's no actual car that got sold where you can document these repairs and show they were unresolved... I just don't think there's much of a case here.

The only way this makes sense is if you start out a priori with an assumption that Tesla is trying to scam their customers, then try to find a scenario where they could do it. That works for writing novel plots, it's not much evidence in an actual court.

<comment><USER21> > Tesla sometimes does repairs via "goodwill" accounting instead of standard > warrantee service. On it's face, this sounds like a good thing.

In what way is that possibly good?? At best its a deliberate mischaracterization that obscures the number of serious manufacturing flaws. At worst its fraudulent accounting.

> And the suggestion is that they did the goodwill thing so that they could > scam the new owner of the car by evading lemon law disclosure. Well, OK. Did > they? Show us the evidence. If there's no actual car that got sold where you > can document these repairs and show they were unresolved... I just don't > think there's much of a case here.

I linked two, and theres firsthand testimony from someone who was in the company. You're just freely making shit up

<comment><USER22> >In what way is that possibly good?? At best its a deliberate mischaracterization that obscures the number of serious manufacturing flaws. At worst its fraudulent accounting.

At best it's _not_ a deliberate mischaracterization. It depends on the judgment call of whether the repairs would otherwise be covered under warranty.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER22> This is really confusing to use the term "goodwill" here. It's a term of art in accounting, and despite this story being partly about accounting, it appears to have nothing to do with accounting goodwill...?

Maybe there is a reason why these repairs relate to accounting goodwill, but otherwise, I suspect journalistic malpractice.

<comment> b-team That's what Tesla calls it. Source: I have had a Model S for many years and repairs I have had under warranty have been listed as "goodwill." e.g., Torn sunroof seal (presumably, due to manufacturing defect).

<comment><USER22> I'm sure they do, and the meaning is obvious, it's just that when you get into the issue of accounting for it, it ought to be clarified that it's not _accounting_ goodwill.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER23> Given all of Tesla's shady business practices, this doesn't surprise me in the slightest.

Tesla has really made huge progress in modernizing cars (making them electric and not terrible, getting rid of middlemen, continuous/rolling product updates, infotainment that is not slow/terrible, etc) I just really wish they would have focused on the positive parts of the future and left the negatives behind (remote lockout of features, vendor lockin for service, and generally trying to screw your customers at every possible turn...)

<comment><USER24> They also have a history of reverting back to poor worker treatment. I forgot the statistics, but the accident rate for their workers is quite high. I recently read an article about the lead safety engineer being told that Elon Musk doesn't like the color yellow, so that's why they couldn't paint yellow safety lines on the ground. Just think about that.

<comment><USER25> Tesla injury rate is now lower than any other US auto manufacturer per their recent 2020 report.

<comment><USER24> Are you going from their own blog post? I would be suspicious of any claims by Tesla. Also, it has been reported that they underreport injuries.

Musk continually pulls the same tactics that Trump does, except that Musk is applauded for it. The methods are the same: lie, confuse, insult, make grand claims.

[https://www.businessinsider.com/tesla-factory-injuries- incom...](https://www.businessinsider.com/tesla-factory-injuries-incomplete- records-osha-california-2020-3)

[https://www.wsws.org/en/articles/2020/03/07/tesl-m07.html](https://www.wsws.org/en/articles/2020/03/07/tesl-m07.html)

<comment><USER25> Wouldn't it make sense that all manufacturers are doing the same thing then? Therefore it just becomes a case of who can juice their numbers best?

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER26> "... Chrysler also erased computer records that would allow people that eventually bought these cars to discover they were lemons ..." I am sure that a system manager had backups (perhaps a tape buried in his desk drawer), no matter what Chrysler said.

</comment><comment><USER27> This article is BS. Every repair I've had in the past was marked as a warranty repair.</comment>


Netflix Has Saved Every Choice You've Ever Made in 'Black Mirror: Bandersnatch' - <AUTHOR> https://motherboard.vice.com/en_us/article/j57gkk/netflix-has-saved-every-choice-youve-ever-made-in-black-mirror-bandersnatch <comment><USER2> Why would you think that Netflix shouldn't be doing this?

What I have a problem with, is that netflix provides me with a rigid and non customization of browsing experience.

What I want from Netflix's UI/UX:

* Ability to create my own channels

* Tagging

* Commentary, even if only visible to my account

* push queues to other profiles in the account "Hey billy, you should watch this" \-- push also to other accounts.

* metrics on what I watched (You watched 4 hours of documentaries, 80% of which was cooking related)

\-----

I think that netflix can offer a much greater user experience with a better UX that allows me to organize access to their content like a smart-file- manager... Why Cant I make folders/playlists??? such as "My favorite 2018 action flix"

Or "approved kids movies for the girls"

WTF netflix. Why arent you on top of having a flexible lens to your catalog?</comment>


The Devil & Online Advertising -- Young Go Getter - <AUTHOR> http://www.younggogetter.com/2007/04/15/the-devil-online-advertising/ <comment><USER2> By reading some of the comments there...it created quite the stir. Lot's of varied opinions.</comment>


SkyBlue – Small SASS framework - <AUTHOR> https://stanko.github.io/skyblue

<comment><USER2> What license was this released under?

Quick note: You can't distribute any of the free stuff available from Pixeden: [http://www.pixeden.com/license](http://www.pixeden.com/license)

You'd need to provide a link to the asset so that SkyBlue users can download the package.

<comment><AUTHOR> I updated the license and readme, it is under MIT license.

As for Pixeden, thank you for noting this, I'll contact them about it.

<comment><USER2> Great choice of license. Good luck with your project. Looks nice!

<comment><AUTHOR> Thank you man!

I want to add, that I contacted Pixeden and got their permission to use their icons in SkyBlue.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER3> Thanks! I like the minimalistic style. I will definitely use this for a small test project soon.

What I like less however, but it is a vice that bootstrap shares is that the grid system is a html driven one. As in: I have to define the classes on my html elements. I like [http://neat.bourbon.io/](http://neat.bourbon.io/) for example in that it uses extends in sass to apply grid styles to elements from within the css. So my html isn't riddled with layouting.

How well do your grid classes lend themselves to applying through css?

<comment><USER4> To do something similar with Bootstrap you just use the grid mixins within your classes:

.left-side { @include make-md-column(3); }

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> Always nice to have more basic tools out there, esp. simple ones you can customize, and it looks nice.

Thanks for putting it out there.

One issue I have with table is on hover, they get a bit janky (hovered row resizes entire table a bit). I think it's b/c you are removing cell border on hover so everything shifts a pixel or two (or however many column - 1).

Chrome on windows Version 41.0.2272.76 m.

[http://imgur.com/7B99Zu2,K1HwU5f](http://imgur.com/7B99Zu2,K1HwU5f)

<comment><AUTHOR> Thank you, I'll take a look at it and fix it soon. EDIT: Fixed :)

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> This is great...very very simple one to be frank..

</comment><comment><USER7> Its still 96KB in base CSS format.. hardly "small" by any standard. Never tried it but at least Min ( [http://mincss.com](http://mincss.com) ) is proper small: 995 bytes to be exact, or 96 times smaller than SkyBlue if you will (which I'm sure is in another league feature wise, but I digress).

</comment><comment><USER8> The main button linking to "Git-hub" should read "GitHub."

</comment><comment><USER9> Reminds me of [http://960.gs/](http://960.gs/), which is what I use for every webpage (being a backend dev).

<comment><USER10> why not simply use flexbox?

<comment><USER11> I'd love to use flexbox but haven't found a polyfill for IE. What are people using?

<comment><AUTHOR> Same here. I used it on a couple of mobile-only projects. But 99% of the clients want IE support, and it is way easier to skip flexbox in that case.

<comment><USER12> I agree. I've actually taken to using table/table-cell for primary/container grids because it works in IE 8+ and with border-spacing I can set consistent grids with (fixed) sizes if needed to suit a design.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> Looks very convenient and practical, congrats. BTW, I would use flexbox for grid... then you kind of don't need grid anymore...

</comment><comment><USER14> I know this is pretty trivial but "Git-hub"! I think it "GitHub". Look at their copyright text.

</comment><comment><USER15> Your radios buttons act like checkboxes right now in the demo.

<comment><AUTHOR> Hehe true, just fixed it. Thank you all guys!

</comment></comment><comment><USER16> Looks good - will take a peek.

BTW, "CSS checkboxes"</comment>


Public access Linux system: Your non-profit shell provider since 2002 - <AUTHOR> https://freeshell.de/ <comment><USER2> There are a lot of good shell systems out there. I first used SDF. Then circumlunar.space (which is still a mainstay for me). I also now run a micro- pubnix off of a raspberry pi zero (featuring a custom built shell and software suite for gopher phlogging, chat, bbs, and gaming) at gopher://colorfield.space:70/

I do not know much about freeshell.de, but can say that I have found the type of internet community that I have missed since the early 90s ont hese shells.

The tilde crew is really awesome as well.

<comment><USER3> I used to be on SDF and at the time (99-02) recommended it to everyone who needed a place to put a webserver for a small website.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> I've been a user of SDF for many years, and even though it may be irrelevant form a technical standpoint, even with all its faults I am thankful for its continued existence.

At least in the case of SDF, it can be a "social" community just as much as a platform for various hosted services.

It features a custom BBS of sorts called 'bboard' \- which lets users post messages about any and all conceivable topics - from Unix to ham radio to philosophy and old telephones.

It also has its own chatroom called 'com' in addition to various channels on its own irc.sdf.org server.

There is an active ham radio "club" within SDF, and there are regular "partyline" voice chats (conference calls) offered through its VoIP service.

It also hosts a huge gopher/phlog community - where users not only post interesting and unique content, but often make a point of writing posts in response to other users' posts.

As someone who first got online in the mid-1990s via AOL on a Macintosh, I largely missed out on the early days of the Internet, before it came to be dominated by the WWW. I truly appreciate SDF because it is a nice space for folks to get a small taste of what life used to be like on the net, before it became dominated by commercial interests, relentless invasion of privacy, and proprietary services.

I'd encourage all to create an account and take a look around. The one-time $36 donation to get lifetime ARPA membership status is well worth it, in my opinion.

</comment><comment><USER5> There's a network of shell providers called the Tildeverse: [https://tildeverse.org/members](https://tildeverse.org/members)

</comment><comment><USER6> This is a bit off-topic but I'm wondering about this since I had a shell acount at university many years ago.

Is it safe to ssh into an untrusted host? What are the things to watch out? I know that ssh -X is not a good idea but are there other options that are potentially dangerous?

Or is it just that people trust their shell providers?

<comment><USER7> One attack vector is your terminal emulator's interpretation of escape sequences. Some of them allow code execution.

E.g.: [https://www.proteansec.com/linux/blast-past-executing- code-t...](https://www.proteansec.com/linux/blast-past-executing-code- terminal-emulators-via-escape-sequences/)

 _> Its important to emphasize that escape sequences used in up-to-date terminal emulators used today most likely don't have such vulnerabilities, since they have been mitigated in the past. However, terminal emulators developed recently and used on other devices, like on embedded devices, Android, iOS can still contain such vulnerabilities._

</comment></comment><comment><USER8> My first experience with a free UNIX shell on a public machine was [http://grex.cyberspace.org/](http://grex.cyberspace.org/) and it seems that they're still up.

<comment><USER9> Wow! I also used to use that system, for many years my primary email was firstname.lastname@example.com. I never used the actual shell for much, but I did use it for email until gmail came along.

Interesting, that is a blast from the past I had nearly forgotten about.

</comment></comment><comment><USER10> Also [http://nyx.net/](http://nyx.net/) which, at least when I joined, was free to sign up. An existing member could verify your ID face to face, and you just had to provide a photocopy, envelope and stamp(s) so they could send a copy to nyx.

<comment><USER11> Fond memories of nyx. I made the "quick reference" card, and it looks like it's still around: [https://www.nyx.net/help.html#QUICK%20REFERENCE](https://www.nyx.net/help.html#QUICK%20REFERENCE)

</comment></comment><comment><USER12> Also [https://sdf.org/](https://sdf.org/)

<comment><USER13> I tried out SDF when I wanted to give someone some basic intros to how to use the shell and do shell scripting, and was looking around for something that provided some kind of free shell access.

The problem is, unless you donate or find someone to sponsor you, you don't actually get shell access; you get some very limited BBS functionality. And even once you do donate to get the basic access level, there are a number of basic programs (like Python and a C compiler) that aren't executable without getting a higher access level.

I wound up installing my own local version of pkgsrc in my home directory just to see if I could use that work around the issue, but that's not really a good option for the "teach someone how to use a Unix shell" use case.

It's easier to just spin up a free tier VM on one of the cloud providers than it is to use the "Public Access Unix" on SDF.

<comment><USER14> One other benefit of experiencing this system instead of a random cloud VM is that one can experience what a properly managed 'classic' unix system is like - e.g:

\- multinode / shared nfs homedirs / multiuser

\- CLI mail is wired up properly

\- publish www via ~/public_html

\- finger/whois

\- system from source, 3rd party stuff in ports

the modern 'random ubuntu laptops + dhcp on wifi' network feels hugely impoverished by comparison as far as network cohesion (but yes there are positives to this tradeoff too)

<comment><USER15> cli mail, finger and talk could be a great initiation to traditional tools!

As for the random ubuntu laptops, try to do the dhcp on wifi using a debootstrap of a minimal debian on a separate partition, then configure wpa_supplicant to start dhcp by systemd dependancy, and detect wifi card to start wpa_supplicant@wifi_card_device_name. This could give you a great introduction to modern tools! (bonus points if you setup a native wayland)

Understand the old and the new ways gives a better picture of the overall system, and will help you make education decisions.

(And it's not forbidden to setup CLI mail on your modern system, or a systemd- based classic unix! mix and match to your tastes!)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> I have always wondered how they manage security on these systems.

My long term hobby project is a web desktop for Linux. Security wise it is much the same as letting people use a shell from https. It would be nice to have a system to allow people to try it out and have a couple of hundred meg or so of persistent storage.

It's quite a daunting prospect, and such fun if you get it wrong.

<comment><USER17> Back in the day you would use grsecurity. It was very impressive. It pre- empted virtually every bug you'd hear about.

It has gone private/premium since. Nowadays perhaps you can achieve the same with SELinux or AppArmor?

</comment></comment><comment><USER18> I can go back further. My first experience with a free non profit shell provider was nyx.net in 1992.

[https://www.nyx.net/](https://www.nyx.net/)

I could dialup to Peachnet - a free Gopher server provided by the University System of GA and somehow navigate to it. It was a six step process to get there and I had a macro to automate it.

It was a 7 bit connection and I could only use Kermit to transfer files. I still haven't found an interface as clean as the "nn" news reader I use to use to read Usenet.

</comment><comment><USER19> Amazing they aren't abused out of existence.

<comment><USER20> Having to send in a physical postcard before account activation probably helps with that.

</comment></comment><comment><USER21> This sort of thing got me into unix based operating systems. Such a fantastic service.

</comment><comment><USER22> As shells go, I used to pay for FreeBSD hosting on pair.com. The problem with free (I like free stuff, just not free shells) is, if it ever becomes popular, some people will abuse it and a Tragedy of the Commons is a likely result... it's better to pay for what you use so that:

a) survival of the service is more likely assured

b) there's someone to file a ticket with and an SLA/SLO when things break

c) doesn't enable jerks to ruin something for everyone, i.e., draconian limits or taking a service offline

</comment><comment><USER23> I was surprised recently how cheap low end *nix VPS are.

Like 2 bucks for a year. Sure it's a crappy 128mb system but that's enough to do a lot of things.

<comment><USER24> 2usd/year with a public IP? Link?

<comment><USER23> At that price range it'll be IPv6s and NAT'd ipv4. The v4s are specific port ranges (and to SSH). I bought a 5 pack multi country one recently to experiment with distributed stuff. :)

A more respectable machine is probably like 15 usd a year (1gig w/ ipv4).

Keeping in mind that you get what you pay for

Relevant linkages...

2USD ones... [https://lowendspirit.com/locations.html](https://lowendspirit.com/locations.html)

ipv4s... [https://alphavps.bg/clients/cart.php?gid=33](https://alphavps.bg/clients/cart.php?gid=33)

More... [https://www.lowendtalk.com/discussions](https://www.lowendtalk.com/discussions)

<comment><USER25> That first link redirects to spam on mobile. I sure wouldn't trust them with my credit card.

<comment><USER23> oh wow. Yeah that is indeed rather dodgy. Sorry about that.

Yeah I'm not giving anyone in this price class a credit card. Paypal & disposable credit cards only.

It's also quite possible that they close shop fly-by-night style so I wouldn't rely on them for anything serious. Still for the price I find them useful for experimenting & learning.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER17> Since people are recommending other projects of this kind, allow me to throw in [https://hashbang.sh/](https://hashbang.sh/) which is IMHO the slickest one.

freeshell.de, however, has this great oldschool feel without being too crowded. Very hipster, highly recommended.

</comment><comment><USER26> reminiscing about hobbiton.org now :P

</comment><comment><USER27> Any examples of what people might use these systems for? Is it mostly socializing?

<comment><USER28> Playing around on a Unix box that someone else can administer? An alternative social network? Or even just retrocomputing.</comment></comment>


Ask HN: What motivates you? - <AUTHOR>

Where do you find your drive and energy? <comment><USER2> In something that's novel and makes a difference. Everything else is drudgery (even if it pays the bills).

</comment><comment><USER3> Mary's Club, at Burnside and Broadway in downtown Portland.</comment>