FlyWeb – An API for web pages to host local web servers - <AUTHOR> https://flyweb.github.io/posts/2016/11/01/introducing-flyweb.html <comment><USER2> I'm very excited about this! I've been waiting for something like this for a long time!

To me, the power here is in using the technology to foster local, human-scale interaction.

Intranets are totally underutilized. How many people do you know who can reliably transfer personal files over a local area network? Not nearly as many as those who know how to use google or send an email... that's absurd to me, given how ancient of an application file sharing is.

It's my opinion that the survival of the internet may very well rest on p2p webs like this.

<comment><USER3> "Intranets are totally underutilized. How many people do you know who can reliably transfer personal files over a local area network? Not nearly as many as those who know how to use google or send an email... that's absurd to me, given how ancient of an application file sharing is."

It's crazy to me that there AFIAK aren't AirDrop clones. That application alone would make this awesome, and it will probably just one of the big use cases for this.

I'm also really pleased to see Mozilla producing this kind of innovation. I'm a Firefox user at home, and am starting to get really excited about Rust, but it has felt to me like the organization has been flailing for a while.

<comment><USER4> Of course there are AirDrop clones. [http://instashareapp.com](http://instashareapp.com) — oh wow their current slogan is "better AirDrop for mobile & desktop"! There are also open source WebRTC based ones like [https://github.com/RobinLinus/snapdrop](https://github.com/RobinLinus/snapdrop)

<comment><USER3> I wasn't aware of SnapDrop, so thank you for that. I'm aggressively uninterested in proprietary desktop software these days, outside of work.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> This is potentially huge. If other browsers can also jump into this, we could potentially see a rise in a new generation of apps that are local first and enable much richer real time collab features. I might be reading into this wrong but this could also usher in a better and open implementation for iot devices to provide interfaces for the user. Excited to adopt this and try some experiments out.

One interesting thing to figure out is the combination of local and global. When I have an iot device and I'm away from home, or someone collaborating with me from a different location, the same app needs to fall back to using standard internet based interfaces. Not sure if that disqualifies it from being a potential use case of this.

<comment><USER6> > If other browsers can also jump into this

The other major players being Google and Apple, they'll almost certainly want to push their proprietary app platforms to increase their market power, instead of open technologies which are in the interest of and benefit the consumer.

<comment><USER7> That's just wrong. Imagine a (definitely plausible) future where a snapchat- level social app is created which relies on this local communication. People would obviously jump ship from Chrome to FF if it meant being on the new local social network where all of their friends are. Google isn't going to keep a stick up it's ass when this happens. They will conform, because they follow the money.

<comment><USER6> I sure hope your scenario will happen. I'm just saying Google or Apple will probably not actively push this technology. And most app developers are either Apple or Google platform addicts (A and G being the duopoly in the mobile application space).

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> This is actually kind of cool. The discoverable features for pre-existing non- FlyWeb servers stands out to me.

Secondly, the FlyWeb server gives you access to a really flexible API for serving just about any content.

It feels like federated content, we just need to question whether it should be locked to the local network.

</comment><comment><USER9> Im not reading anything about opening ports on your routers firewall. Does this somehow circumvent this? Reading it further it seems to explicitly say "local" which probably implies you.ip.address.[0-255] is targeted.

I think this technology is intriguing and with some real use cases (more peer to peer) but the api seems disorganized. I cant tell if it wants to be another webstandard or be something different.

A part of me wants to dislike this and consider it as a distasteful competitor to pre-existing technologies that have learned to survive without "the web". Another part realizes that sandboxing these technologies protects and enables the average user in regards to awesome tech. This certainly wont replace torrent, webrtc or other existing p2p technology. But I certainly think its a cute way of opening up the field.

<comment><USER10> From what I can tell, it's for localized apps within say, your home network. Imagine being able to start a game and other people not need to download anything to join. Your phone announces it, they open their browser, see a list of Flyweb apps and connect to your game (like in the car racing demo video up further in the comments).

The thing that I worry about though, is that you're starting a local web server from within your browser. I feel like they're some big security concerns that should be addressed in like the opening paragraph.

Also that red background for their website is terrible. :-P

</comment></comment><comment><USER11> Oh great. yet another way for ad services and botnets to talk to eachother...

Because yeah, that's where this is going to be used first and foremost.

Most people are not intelligent enough to understand how to secure their internet banking, and now we're going to bake-in hosting tcp connectable servers?

These security prompts better have some real clear language and require giving permissions every time.

Now I can see some good things for this too, start a flyweb from your desktop and easily transfer some stuff from your phone for instance (something that _still_ sucks in 2016)

I just think that most of it's use will be malicious.

<comment><USER12> _Now I can see some good things for this too, start a flyweb from your desktop and easily transfer some stuff from your phone for instance (something that still sucks in 2016)_

I would just plug in a USB cable for that...

But this is definitely feeling like a reimplementation of more things that should be served by the OS into the browser, a concept that I am rather opposed to. I'm probably getting old, but I'd rather the browser stay a simple hyperdocument viewer than turn into a crude approximation of an OS.

</comment></comment><comment><USER13> There seem to be two parts to this. One is a way to inventory your LAN using multicast DNS and find all the web servers on it. (There may be one in every lightbulb.) The other is to run a web server in the browser. These are independent functions.

The first seems useful. The second seems to need a more compelling use case. Also, opening the browser to incoming connections creates a new attack surface in a very complex program.

<comment><USER14> FYI, the first part isn't new. Safari already uses mDNS to find webservers on your LAN. For me, this is also supported by my printer, so I can just go to the Bonjour bookmarks to find the admin interface without having to remember its IP address.

What _is_ new (and what appears to make Mozilla's implementation incompatible) is that they are adding a layer of UUIDs to ensure each service gets a separate origin. This ensures that, if you switch between LANs, an open tab for one device can't interact with a device on the other LAN with the same name or IP address. Makes a lot of sense for the security of IoT devices.

<comment><USER15> The UUID approach was a stopgap to solve the same-origin issue in the short term and stand up a simple prototype proof of concept.

Longer term, I think we'll need to use a separate URI scheme (e.g. fly://). It turns out upon further investigation that the ([http://](http://)) scheme relies heavily on TCP semantics. For example, port numbers are an implementation detail in flyweb, not something explicitly exposed via URI, but http demands that port numbers be interpreted (and without a port number, an origin assumes port 80).

We also want to restrict the underlying wire protocol to be a subset of HTTP, eliminating a number of the purely internet-related functionality, such as redirects and proxies.

We also need to specify different security semantics for interpretation of TLS certificates in the FlyWeb context. Devices are not websites, and they're not identified by internet-DNS names, and the current certificate model is oriented to work with that design.

We're slowly working through resolving all of these issues. The idea is simple, but the execution requires care and attention to detail.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> I'm obviously reminded of [http://www.operasoftware.com/press/releases/general/opera- un...](http://www.operasoftware.com/press/releases/general/opera-unite- reinvents-the-web). Is Mozilla reinventing the web again, too? Will this following the footsteps of Persona, and all those other Mozilla experiments. I would prefer less focus on such a public lab space where money is thrown, and greater focus on reality. Sorry for the negative view but Mozilla appears to have the same lack of focus problems as many other companies.

Edits: speling correctoins

<comment><USER15> Hi there, I work on the FlyWeb team, and initiated the project within Mozilla.

Most of Mozilla's dev resources right now are being targeted towards core development: the e10s process isolation work, the quantum graphics and rendering speedup work, general stability and crash rate work, asm.js and webasm work, etc. etc. The vast, vast majority of resources are being allocated to those core concenrs, and that's a direction I personally agree with.

FlyWeb is a very low-overhead experimental project with an eye to the long term. There are two people on the team, me and Justin D'Arcangelo.

I've said this before on HN, but there are no guarantees. I personally want this project to succeed, but that success depends on a lot of factors. Implementation work, security work, adoption, interest, market viability and other factors. We're working hard to make a viable path to success for the project.

Cheers.

<comment><USER17> Hi, the first things I thought of here is pages you are browsing snooping on or hacking other browser pages, e.g. ad payloads across multiple open pages communicating in realtime in their tracking of you.

Could that be a major change in the abstraction of independence/encapsulation of web pages, or in other words a break against user protections in the contract of using a web browser instead of applications.

So, please keep security and privacy as first order design considerations with this :)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER18> Here's a little Chrome addon I just whipped up which lets you browse and launch local FlyWeb services:

[https://github.com/BHSPitMonkey/flyweb-browser- chrome](https://github.com/BHSPitMonkey/flyweb-browser-chrome)

<comment><USER19> Thanks for this! How do I install it?

<comment><USER20> Instructions would be useful... [https://github.com/johnhenry/flyweb-browser- chrome/tree/patc...](https://github.com/johnhenry/flyweb-browser- chrome/tree/patch-1). Hopefully the developer accepts the pull request.

<comment><USER18> Merged :)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER21> It seems the feature here is server-less discovery (mdns). Because otherwise intranet communication between apps is already possible via WebRTC.

Along that track, it would be nice to see native DHT support in the browser, for _global_ server-less discovery.

Unfortunately, just using WebRTC is not a great fit for a DHT, because of connection costs. Also it makes more sense to have DHT persist between app sessions.

</comment><comment><USER22> "Curiously enough, the only thing that went through the mind of the bowl of petunias as it fell was: 'Oh no, not again.'"

[edit: ok, so it is cool, but I'm not sure it's secure, and I'm not crazy about web pages from other domains being able to setup local discovery on my network. Seems like a massive security problem. Uuids sounds like obfuscation, not security. ]

[edit: ok, well at least they've started thinking about it: [https://wiki.mozilla.org/FlyWeb#Security](https://wiki.mozilla.org/FlyWeb#Security)

Would like to see this fleshed out some more. ]

</comment><comment><USER23> It would be interesting to see how this plays out with websockets based torrent clients.

Meshnetwork torrent trackers with DHT anyone?

<comment><USER24> I was thinking IPFS

</comment></comment><comment><USER25> I think it is a great idea for devices to be web servers to allow remote devices to serve as their user interface.

I lean towards using bluetooth as a discovery mechanism rather than wifi. Google's "Physical Web" I think does something along these lines, though I am not sure whether or not they are thinking about web servers on these local devices. I think that is a key part of the idea.

<comment><USER10> I feel like with Bluetooth, you have that entire extra step of pairing. Connecting to Wi-Fi is something most people are familiar with and do regularly ("Hey man, what's your Wi-Fi password?").

<comment><USER25> With new bluetooth, as in with beacons, you don't have the pairing nightmares you did before.

Of course here devices that host their own server would not be simple beacons, but they could be found the same way.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER26> This looks really neat and I can immediately think of several use cases for it.

I'm pretty cynical and jaded, though, so I went looking for and finally found the "Security and privacy considerations" section of the FlyWeb (draft) Specification [0]. I'm quite disappointed by what I see there -- or, rather, what I _don 't_ see.

If Mozilla is to pursue this seriously then, in my opinion, they need to follow a process similar to Internet Drafts [1]. Development of the spec should be opened up to the public, other stakeholders (browser vendors and, of course, users) should be involved, and so on.

There was a time when we could remain somewhat confident that a device behind the firewall would not be accessible from the "Internet at large". That was before UPNP [2] and rebinding attacks [3]. As I said, I can quickly think of several use cases that would be perfect for something like this... but history has clearly proven that the privacy and security implications MUST be considered at every step of the way. This beast should be tamed before it has a chance to get away.

Myself, I'm going to go ahead and add a new _lockPref_ entry for "dom.flyweb.enabled" to my mozilla.cfg in anticipation of the day that this comes to my browser. (Of course, with Mozilla's track record, they'll probably push FlyWeb heavily for the next year or so, then just abruptly announce one day that they're killing it off.)

[0]: [https://flyweb.github.io/spec/](https://flyweb.github.io/spec/)

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

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

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

<comment><USER27> "I'm pretty cynical and jaded, though, so I went looking for and finally found the "Security and privacy considerations" section of the FlyWeb (draft) Specification [0]. I'm quite disappointed by what I see there -- or, rather, what I don't see."

Rest assured, there has been a lot more thought put towards security and privacy than the draft spec document currently shows. That's not to say that we have a complete security story at this very moment (we are still working on it), but there are many more considerations than what is currently in the document. I hope to try and provide an update in this regard in the coming weeks.

</comment></comment><comment><USER28> Some tips for whoever wants to try it out.

In the desktop FF Nightly the Flyweb menu must be picked from the customization menu (Menu, Preferences, drag the Flyweb icon to the toolbar). I think Mozilla forgot about this in their page.

Another important bit of information is how to install Nightly alongside with the current FF [http://superuser.com/questions/679797/how-to-run-firefox- nig...](http://superuser.com/questions/679797/how-to-run-firefox-nightly- alongside-firefox-at-the-same-time/680160)

My take on this: interesting, especially the server side part. Instead the server inside the browser could be at best a way to drain batteries and at worst a security risk because of the increased attack surface. I wonder how locality applies to phones on the network of a mobile operator vs on a smaller WiFi network.

Anyway, if we have to rely on browsers to implement the discovery mechanism I'm afraid that it won't fly (pun intended). I'd be very surprised if Apple, Google and even MS will include this into their browsers. I got a feeling that they might want to push their own solutions to sell their own hardware. I hope to get surprised.

Maybe there will be apps autodiscovering those services or other servers acting as bridges to a "normal" DNS based discovery service.

Btw: Mozilla should test their pages a little harder. I had to remove the Roboto font from the CSS to be able to read it. The font was way too thin in all my desktop browsers and FF mobile. Opera mobile was OK, it probably defaulted to Arial.

</comment><comment><USER29> I certainly like the discovery feature through mdns. Could be helpful for a lot of scenarios. Windows allows out of the box already something similar by showing UPnP devices in the network browser and double-clicking on them navigates to their advertised webpage. That makes it windows and UPnP (instead of mdns) only, but works with all browsers. Having it directly in the browser would allow to have it on all OSes, which is certainly also good.

I understand why they hide the real IP addresses behind UUIDs, but I think there should be an option to also convert it to the real IP/host address. Because often you want to share the address of the embedded device with your coworker, use the address in another tool, and so on.

However I'm not sold on the idea and state of the webserver in the browser API. It just leaves a lot of questions open: E.g. pages are often reloaded, how will this impact the experience. Or HTTP request and response bodys are possibly unlimited streams, the simplified API however does not expose this. What attack vectors are enabled through that and how will it limit use-cases?

</comment><comment><USER30> Is this compatible with Safari's Bonjour functionality?

Apple have hidden it behind flags in Preferences -> Advanced in recent versions, but when enabled, you get a "Bonjour" item in the favourites menu, which will show the internal settings websites of compatible printers etc. that are on the LAN.

<comment><USER4> I don't think so. It publishes custom _flyweb._tcp.local records, not _http._tcp.local...

</comment></comment><comment><USER31> Hey I know, I want to be able to connect to a device's flyweb server and give it voice commands. Oh, can't do that, accessing the mic requires HTTPS.

Sorry, I didn't mean to be snarky, I worked on a project that has some surface similarities to this (local only server) but last year when Chrome (and Firefox?) banned a bunch of features unless youre HTTPS that pretty much killed the project.

Thats not to say there aren't uses without those features. Its just interesting to see Mozilla make this feature that serves pagesp that can.t use the full range of features,

Examples:

You want to make media server but you can't go full screen

You want to use phones as wiimotes but you can't get device orientation

You want to speak into the webpage but you can't access the mic

You want to scan barcodes into the webpage but you can't access the camera

</comment><comment><USER32> A very fascinating idea. I agree, an autodiscovery mechanism like the described is badly needed for local applications. This could also be used to implement captive portals or "special-purpose" wifi networks in a less harmful way than currently done.

I don't quite understand the reason behind the random-UUID-as-hostnane design, however. Yes, it protects against a service stealing another service's cookies.

But wouldn't this also result in the same service having a different hostname and origin each time it is discovered? Woudn't this render cookies, storage and HTTPS(!) unusable for flyweb services?

</comment><comment><USER33> I don't really understand how this is better than just running a small webserver. The discoverability feature is nice, but I think you could do the same with a port scan in the local network. Can someone explain?

<comment><USER8> Discoverability is big, because port numbers can often mean anything, but the server side is basically web workers.

Most easy to spin up servers fall into these categories:

* Static files only

* Tough to fine tune configuration

* Synchronous connections unless you want to ramp the complexity up

* Require a separately installed interpreter

Web workers within the browser solve this.

You probably don't want to use this to run a Gmail clone, but a simple media server, maybe.

I see it as great for LANs, and potentially a simpler replacement for SharePoint in SMBs.

</comment></comment><comment><USER34> Examples of useful reasons to use?

</comment><comment><USER35> Flyweb botnets DDoSing services in 3,2,1...

<comment><USER10> I'm also curious why no one else in the comments are talking about the potential security concerns.

Or does no one remember that browsers have a built in protocol for video conferences (WebRTC) that can be use to exploit systems behind a firewall?

</comment></comment><comment><USER36> I imagine this will be the next generation of jackbox.tv-style experiences, except with no need for the external site. That'll make these more accessible and practical.

The stuff they've done with using phone apps to play group guessing games is a lot of fun.

</comment><comment><USER37> Really cool. If embraced by other browsers this can have good impact in iot space.

</comment><comment><USER38> > Enabling web pages to host local servers and providing the ability for the > web browser to discover nearby servers opens up a whole new range of use > cases for web apps.

That's not all it opens up. "Enabling web pages to host servers"\--who thought this was a good idea?

To top it off, later in the page, they tell users how to upgrade Node by running `curl ... | sudo bash -`. Good grief, the anti-patterns!

This FlyWeb site has me seeing red.

</comment><comment><USER39> Sounds like extensions that delegate text fields to native editors should be easier to write with better ability to expose a localhost http endpoint.

</comment><comment><USER39> How similar is this to Opera 12's built-in httpd?

<comment><USER40> Or Chrome's built-in webserver - [https://github.com/GoogleChrome/chrome-app- samples/tree/mast...](https://github.com/GoogleChrome/chrome-app- samples/tree/master/samples/webserver)

<comment><USER41> That app can't serve a local directory. It has to make a copy to a sandbox filesystem first. Try this app instead: [https://github.com/kzahel/web-server- chrome](https://github.com/kzahel/web-server-chrome) ([https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/web-server-for- chr...](https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/web-server-for- chrome/ofhbbkphhbklhfoeikjpcbhemlocgigb))

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER42> This is awesome but if Chrome and Firefox both supported UDP then we could build things like this in userland. Is that happening?

</comment><comment><USER43> Ok, this is cool and I think finally Mozilla have hit on something innovative. I'm going to check this out soon.

</comment><comment><USER44> "Hello Flyweb"? smh blasphemous hubris</comment>


Brexit: UK and EU 'agree text' of draft withdrawal agreement - <AUTHOR> https://www.bbc.com/news/uk-politics-46188790 <comment><USER2> This all seems to be entirely moot, given that there is a slim chance of this deal getting through parliament - assuming it's anything like it's expected to be.

What a colossal waste of time.

<comment><USER3> Nah, they're just blustering. Nobody would be crazy enough to let the UK crash out with no deal.

Err... I hope...

<comment><USER4> Last I heard, other MPs so keen to make sure that the UK wouldn't go for No Deal, they were threatening to make sure that the government couldn't get the changes to law required to make it possible through: [https://twitter.com/TomMcTague/status/1061897525467234304](https://twitter.com/TomMcTague/status/1061897525467234304)

Of course, this doesn't stop No Deal from happening, because it happens automatically on March 29th unless something changes... but it does ensure that it will be a complete and utter shitshow which will naturally be blamed entirely on Brexit supporters by the UK press.

So that's basically the state of UK politics.

<comment><USER5> I think most of the press would rather seek to continue blaming the EU for not acceding to the UK's demands and remainers for failing to give Brexit their full support.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> So, do we (the public) get to see this agreement? I thought the vote was about taking power back from unaccountable Brussels etc, etc, etc.

So what happens now? If half the torys are already against this, there doesn't seem much of a chance of this passing. May has ruled out a second referendum (I know I shouldn't take her word for it, but I cant see her now announcing a 2nd referendum). So what now? She steps down/ is pushed. Then A) A Brexiteer takes us out without a deal. B) No one wants to take responsibility for removing us and calls a 2nd ref. C) election called. Then back to square one? This is the option I'm most worried about. Labour doesn't seem ready to stand on a manifesto of remain. The lib Dems wont be able to get a majority, so brexiting parties will win by default, except we have no idea who. And they wont have anytime to do anything.

Did I miss one?

Edit: Spellong

</comment><comment><USER7> Irish foreign minister said the negotiations are still ongoing:

[https://twitter.com/tconnellyRTE/status/1062386105713131521](https://twitter.com/tconnellyRTE/status/1062386105713131521)

<comment><USER8> That's why it's a draft... 5 months before deadline...

<comment><USER9> The agreement has to be ratified by EP and 28 national parliaments though, so realistically it's much less than 5 months.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> I sure hope the EU hasn't given in to the DUP.

But since May won't get anything through parliament, it's probably a moot point.

<comment><USER11> Corbyn wants Brexit to happen he'll whip Labour into passing it.

<comment><USER12> Thats interesting do you have a reference for that?

There is a lot said about Jeremy Corbyn and I've noticed that a lot of the mainstream media (even left-wing like the Guardian) are very against him and have been vocal about everything he stands for, which I find interesting. This article,

[https://www.politico.eu/article/jeremy-corbyn-brexit- referen...](https://www.politico.eu/article/jeremy-corbyn-brexit-referendum- uk-should-stay-in-eu-warts-and-all/)

from 2016 says that he thought at that time we should stay in EU and this does align with what I remember of that time. He was widely quoted as saying that although EU needs to change, we should stick with it and help change it from within.

<comment><USER13> [https://www.theguardian.com/politics/2018/nov/10/labour- mps-...](https://www.theguardian.com/politics/2018/nov/10/labour-mps- criticise-corbyn-for-saying-we-cant-stop-brexit)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> I've said it before, and I'll say it again: there is going to be one hell of a bust-up before this is over.

</comment><comment><USER15> Shambolic

</comment><comment> man-and-laptop Opinion on Brexit. Hopefully of interest:

I'm torn on Brexit.

If Britain stays in the European Union, then it won't have a lot of power to manage her borders. The "liberalness" of Britain's immigration policy ends up being at minimum the liberalness of each of the other 27 EU countries. Germany could let in 1 million immigrants (good for them), all of them would get citizenship, all of them can go to the UK, the UK can't say to any of them "Hold on a minute. Are you even a fit?"

Also, this kind of unrestricted immigration is a historical anomaly. 100s of years ago, it took too long to travel from one place to another, and so people who lived far away were more different to each other. It's not clear whether throwing all the borders open will result in something stable that will last for centuries.

It's also a colossal experiment. If the experiment doesn't work out (see the above paragraph) then 28 countries pay the price. The UK will be deeply affected because it's an immigrant magnet, due to its high living standards, a lot of employment opportunities, and a widely spoken national language; something might happen to Romania and Poland, given that much of their population has apparently emigrated. If the experiment turns out bad, then multiply the impact by 28 for each of the 28 countries.

And there was a recent article on HN about an EU law that says newspaper headlines are going under copyright. Again, mistakes like this affect 500 million people (the citizens of the EU) and 28 different countries. This is a monoculture, which is bad in nature; why not in politics? The Ottoman monoculture might have been one of the things that set the Middle East / North Africa back. For instance, the Ottomans banned printing (in Arabic). How would that have been good for science? And China's another famous empire/union (monoculture), in which one emperor dissolved their fleet, which was the most advanced at the time, impacting their trade, and preventing them from settling elsewhere. How is a European, or even a globalised monoculture, any better?

On the other hand, I can see how the immediate economic impacts of Brexit might be bad.

<comment><USER16> You are talking nonsense.

The UK has (and always has had) complete exemption from EU common immigration policy. The EU is not able to dictate immigration controls to the UK. If you have a problem with how the UK handles non-EU immigration then it is the fault of UK government policy, not the EU.

The complete exception from common immigration policy of the UK (along with Ireland and in some matters Denmark) is laid out in the Treaty on the Functioning of the European Union (2009).

EDIT: to clarify -- I am referring to non-EU immigration here, not freedom-of- movement for EU citizens.

<comment> man-and-laptop Really? Because "freedom of movement" seems to be the sticking point in the Brexit negotiations. The UK can't go the Norway route because it doesn't want "free movement" into its territory.

<comment><USER16> I'm referring to common immigration policy, i.e. from outside the EU into the EU. This is distinct from freedom-of-movement for EU citizens within the EU. Such freedom-of-movement does not apply to non-EU citizens.

<comment> man-and-laptop A person from country C can immigrate into the UK by immigrating into one of 27 different other countries, and then using free movement to get into the UK. This makes border control harder.

<comment><USER16> Indeed. But to become an EU citizen you have to meet the citizenship requirements, the common standard for which the UK has previously negotiated and agreed along with the other members, PLUS additional requirements and limitations can be imposed by the UK for other kinds of long term residential statuses. It's not like one member state is allowed really lax citizenship laws, so people can choose to sneak in through there, and restrictions can be imposed even by the UK for a limited period.

The UK manages to both have influence over EU immigration policies AND also have exemption to it for non-EU immigration, AND can apply its own limitations even for when immigrants get citizenship for a limited period. Yet many brexiters spout on about how the EU just dictates everything to us and it's all out of our control. Absolute rubbish.</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment>


Ask HN: Service to distribute beta invites? - <AUTHOR>

Does anyone know a webservice that will distribute invites to your beta site? One that allows invitees to invite, say, 6 other friends.<p>I believe I saw this a few weeks ago, but can't find it now. <comment><USER2> bravura,

My site Launchset distributes beta invites but I don't have functionality yet for other users distributing invites.</comment>


Small proton charge radius from an electron–proton scattering experiment - <AUTHOR> https://www.nature.com/articles/s41586-019-1721-2 <comment><USER2> More background information on the problem [https://arstechnica.com/science/2019/09/physics-not- broken-a...](https://arstechnica.com/science/2019/09/physics-not-broken-after- all-were-close-to-resolving-proton-radius-puzzle/)

<comment><USER3> > The electrons aren't really orbiting the nucleus; they are technically waves > that take on particle-like properties when we do an experiment to determine > their position. While orbiting an atom, they exist in a superposition of > states, both particle and wave, with a wave function encompassing all the > probabilities of its position at once. A measurement will collapse the wave > function, giving us the electron's position

Physics will make more progress and faster than ever before, when it finally embraces that _everything is a wave_ and that our perception is inseparable from the world we perceive.

What we usually call particles/objects are just what things look like to us when we sample reality at the sampling rate of our perception.

Our reality is basically the intersection/interaction of our perception and the environment.

Here's a cool illustration of the concept: [https://mobile.twitter.com/zonephysics/status/11318628388747...](https://mobile.twitter.com/zonephysics/status/1131862838874710016)

Every physics problem is a coordination problem. The coordination of different waves/vibrations.

<comment><USER4> Human perception does not have a sampling rate. This is why our eyes don't produce weird shutter speed effects like the one shown in the video. There is no shutter and there are no frames.

The same is true for measurements in physics. Modern digital lab equipment may use sampling, but this has nothing to do with the underlying physics. Putting a photographic film behind a double slit "collapses" the wavefunction of the photons going through without any sampling.

<comment><USER5> That carries the analogy a bit too far. While 'sampling rate' commonly implies a discrete time interval it can also mean an average.

Wave function collapse isn't a physical process but instead a commitment to not try to explain what's behind the equations. (And IMO consequently not science. We don't just give up because it's hard.)

QFT meanwhile seems to say that samples is what you get when two fields intersect. However, Bell inequality and decoherence further implies that there is no such thing as an abstract 'sample'. The spread of quantum information from an interaction is a subtle physical process.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> I'm going to admit that I only got partway through the abstract when I was distracted by the pleasing font used for the body text on the website (HardingText-Regular-Web).

<comment><USER7> That is a beautiful font, but my googlefu must be lacking because I can't find a reference to this font anywhere. I wonder if it is one they created in house?

<comment><USER8> It's custom. [https://www.nature.com/articles/d41586-019-03083-5](https://www.nature.com/articles/d41586-019-03083-5)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> As a non-physicist, this is a spectacularly readable abstract and main text. What a fine example of scientific writing.

</comment><comment><USER10> Related: [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21438588](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21438588)</comment>


Ask HN: My minimal personal website. Any advices? - <AUTHOR> https://subsidd.me <comment><USER2> This should not be a Show HN submission since it's not something users can try out, it's just a landing page. Rules here : [https://news.ycombinator.com/showhn.html](https://news.ycombinator.com/showhn.html)

This is probably better suited for an Ask HN submission.

<comment><AUTHOR> I am really sorry, edited.</comment></comment>


Show HN: GOM is a Chrome extension that uses SPDY SSL proxies as a Web-VPN - <AUTHOR> http://getgom.com

<comment><AUTHOR> This is an iterative update from Go away Cameron ([http://www.reddit.com/r/technology/comments/1tb5fu/uk_go_awa...](http://www.reddit.com/r/technology/comments/1tb5fu/uk_go_away_cameron_bypass_porn_filters_with_this/)), a bypass tool that was built in response to Cameron's UK porn ban.

What was previously a proxy bypass, is now a secure proxy. It uses SPDY to encrypt your web traffic even in non-https sites, and tunnels your traffic around an anonymous proxy.

For more on Web-VPN as a technology stack, check this out: [https://www.igvita.com/2011/12/01/web-vpn-secure-proxies- wit...](https://www.igvita.com/2011/12/01/web-vpn-secure-proxies-with-spdy- chrome/)

<comment><USER2> Does anyone know if this is how "Hola!" chrome extension works? Though I'm more curious how it instant images a secure server on each peer.</comment></comment>


Nvidia stuffs desktop GTX 1080, 1070, 1060 into laptops, drops the "M" - <AUTHOR> http://arstechnica.co.uk/gadgets/2016/08/nvidia-pascal-laptop-specs-gtx-1080/ <comment><USER2> Well, it makes sense. If you're going with a dedicated graphics card in your laptop, battery life is already out of the window, so you might as well get as much processing power as the thing can handle.

As a proud owner of a laptop that could double as a self-defense weapon to cause massive blunt trauma (and a charger that falls squarely into the same category) I welcome this decision.

I am however considering getting a lighter notebook with longer battery life in the future. Having the power of a full desktop machine in your backpack comes in incredibly handy when you need it but it can get a bit awkward working with it on the train.

<comment><USER3> The issue isn't so much battery life, as it is heat dissipation. How does that thing handle cranking out that much? Granted the new 1000 series is pretty damn efficient at what it does(my 1070 is amazing for the price), it's still a lot for a laptop.

<comment><USER4> From the article: more CUDA cores at a lower clock. Since clock scaling isn't linear on power consumption, doubling the cores and halving the clock (as an example, not the actual ratio they used), leaves you with a net efficiency gain.

<comment><USER5> Tom's Hardware nicely demonstrated the non-linearity of power consumption in their desktop GTX1060 review: [http://www.tomshardware.com/reviews/nvidia- geforce-gtx-1060-...](http://www.tomshardware.com/reviews/nvidia-geforce- gtx-1060-pascal,4679-7.html)

At factory settings the card draws 120W and pushes ~110fps in their 1440p test, but throttling the power limit down to just 60W only reduced it to ~90fps.

(As an aside, the AMD RX480 comparison shows why people are disappointed with Apple supposedly using AMD Polaris GPUs in the upcoming Macbook Pro refresh)

<comment><USER6> I just don't understand why Apple seems to prefer AMD. Bad experience with Nvidia's drivers in the old Core Two Duo MBPs? Does AMD have a better track record?

<comment><USER7> Apple is a backer of and is invested in OpenCL. OS X itself leverages OpenCL throughout the OS (Quicklook for example uses it to make previews faster) and of course FCP/Motion/etc make heavy use of OpenCL as well.

Nvidia cards are capable of OpenCL but they've never performed as well with it as they do with CUDA. AMD has always been the better option for that.

Of course Apple could implement CUDA support in their software, but they've never been big on running with vendor specific standards that they had no part in the development of.

<comment><USER8> You have some outdated information.

Although Apple created OpenCL and gave it to Khronos, they have the most outdated support for OpenCL.

The future on Apple platforms is called Metal compute.

There were around 6 Metal talks at WWDC 2016 and zero about Khronos technologies.

<comment><USER9> How does that impact the AMD vs. Nvidia part of the discussion?

<comment><USER8> It doesn't matter which cards are better at OpenCL, because it is a legacy technology on Apple platforms, most likely to never be updated beyond the current version 1.2 (latest is 2.2).

[https://support.apple.com/en-gb/HT202823](https://support.apple.com/en- gb/HT202823)

Apple develops their own drivers for Metal Compute.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> The most exciting thing to me in portable PCs is the 'VR backpack' form factor. As cool as the HTC Vive is, moving around with a fat cable sticking out the back of your head is a big detriment. Putting the PC in a backpack will be so perfect for VR - bigger batteries, more efficient (without the LCD), no cables.

These GPUs will make VR backpacks even more viable, with reduced power consumption, better performance and reduced size. I am super excited to see what will be coming out in this field over the coming years.

<comment><USER11> The portable PC could double as a counter weight for the headset.

<comment><USER12> and everybody would need neck braces just to keep the contraption moving

<comment><USER13> how about an exo skeleton which as a bonus can provide force feedback.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> Anyone here have any experience with the new generation of TB3 External GPU docks like the Razer Core?

$500 is pretty steep for what's essentially just a tiny case + power supply, but if it works as advertised with no serious pitfalls, I might be tempted to make a splurge for the extra flexibility.

Though I wish someone could make a smaller, cheaper graphics dock that's built specifically to house less power hungry, single-slotted cards like the RX 460. Something like that would be more than enough to handle my modest gaming needs for the foreseeable future.

<comment><USER15> I wrote up my initial experiences here: [http://vitor.io/razer-blade-stealth- core-gtx-1080-12h](http://vitor.io/razer-blade-stealth-core-gtx-1080-12h)

Works pretty well, no insurmountable issues. I haven't done any 3D engine- related dev on it yet, but am not expecting issues.

<comment><USER14> Thank you for that very informative write up!

Very glad to hear the tech basically just works.

I hadn't bothered to look up the dimensions and weight on the Razer Core until you mentioned it though, and realized it's barely any more convenient to move around than my current desktop PC case (SilverStone FTZ01, only about 150mm more in a single dimension), which removes a lot of the appeal it had for my use case, unfortunately.

I honestly wouldn't mind a non-upgradable version that uses one of the laptop cards listed in this article if it means they could make it appreciably smaller and more discrete than a slim-SFF desktop case. I mean, the dock itself is a modular component that can be upgraded as a whole anyways.

<comment><USER16> I also appreciate the review, but I think it's a case of too little, too late and too expensive. For that price you can simply build a spare HTPC in a box of similar size or get a powerful laptop with good GPU built-in.

<comment><USER14> The problem with either of those setups is you don't get the flexibility of being able to use the same portable, quiet and power-efficient laptop for both work on the go and for gaming at home, so you never have to worry about keeping things in sync between multiple machines (which is easy enough if you just need files, but often impossible if you also want to sync arbitrary settings for frequently used applications).

For many people like myself, the TB3 laptop + GPU dock combo is worth a lot more than the sum of its parts.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER17> I think this is a sign they're worried about AMD Polaris. Most people don't realize just how much AMD has turned around the past year. I saw an article recently about people shorting Nvidia.

Full disclosure: I'm an AMD stock holder.

<comment><USER18> Polaris is not a serious threat to Nvidia. The GTX 1060 is significantly faster than the RX480 at a similar retail price; the GTX 1060 is considerably more expensive than the 960 was at launch and I expect that Nvidia have retained good margins. The RX480 seriously missed AMD's efficiency targets, hence the PCIe power fiasco. AMD have nothing to compete at the high end and have no serious HPC offering; with PC sales shrinking year-on-year, HPC is a crucial driver of growth.

Polaris is just barely enough to keep AMD in contention. As with their CPU range, AMD are relegated to a value-oriented offering for the low to mid market. This isn't a good place to be. Nvidia can afford to squeeze AMD's margins, because they have a monopoly on the more profitable high end. AMD are also being threatened from below by Intel's increasingly powerful iGPUs.

<comment><USER19> >The GTX 1060 is significantly faster than the RX480 at a similar retail price

Not from what I saw. Slightly faster or equal in DX11, slightly slower or equal in DX12/Vulkan.

And not price-comparable either, there is a $50 difference. If you are pointing to the EVGA etc, note that they have a single fan and as such are going to throttle quickly. For a good price comparison I suspect we will need to wait for the rumoured 1050Ti, which should be _actually_ price comparable to a 4GB RX-480.

Personally, if I was building a upper-midrange gaming PC right now, that marginal $50 would go to a bigger SSD, not to buy a 1060 over a 480.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER20> Notebookcheck has a better review with link to reviews of the actual laptops and lots of benchmarks (synthetic and games)

[http://www.notebookcheck.net/Nvidia-Pascal-for-Notebooks- In-...](http://www.notebookcheck.net/Nvidia-Pascal-for-Notebooks-In-depth- Benchmarks-for-the-Geforce-GTX-1080-SLI-GTX-1070-and-GTX-1060.171566.0.html)

</comment><comment><USER21> Another good reason for dropping the M is in my opinion all related to how good another company got at creating gpus... that's Intel.

Intel first eliminated the whole aftermarket entry level gpu industry and will probably eliminate the middle tier also.

As Pluma states

"If you're going with a dedicated graphics card in your laptop, battery life is already out of the window, so you might as well get as much processing power as the thing can handle"

<comment><USER22> I'm actually really excited about external GPUs (eGPUs) that supplement your laptop when you need it. I think this is the perfect compromise.

[http://www.pcworld.com/article/2984716/laptop- computers/how-...](http://www.pcworld.com/article/2984716/laptop- computers/how-to-transform-your-laptop-into-a-gaming-powerhouse-with-an- external-graphics-card.html)

<comment><USER21> Yes, I gave a read to it but if I remember I think there was a piece that didn't perform up to the speed of the thunderbolt link making the whole solution run 1/4 speed.

The solution approach I think goes as back as when using the express card port on elitebooks

[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IDiizICogMQ](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IDiizICogMQ)

It would be incredible on the other hand to get this solutions as official products from vendors like nvidia or asus without the DIY (not because I'm against it but to push making use of this solutions officially will improve the state of the solutions).

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER23> "And if you can make it look like it's for grown ups too, that'd be great."

THIS. I'm not going to buy a laptop that looks like a prop from a Michael Bay movie. The best current option for a laptop with a GPU and a design that wouldn't be embarrassing to leave the house with is the Microsoft Surface Book, which is expensive, has a mediocre GPU and is actually still kind of embarrassing to own. I'm pretty excited about the day that gaming laptop manufacturers realize that their target audience isn't entirely composed of guys whose main fashion inspiration is Reaper from Overwatch.

<comment><USER24> I don't see how much room for design there is on a Surface book besides the keyboard dock assembly, but even that looks pretty spartan with clean lines and a rather pale gray that could be mistaken for an Apple laptop from the Aluminum Powerbook era. So I don't know what's embarrassing about it except for, contentiously, the monochrome Microsoft logo attached to it.

<comment><USER25> The surface book is one of the few that isn't embarassing.

Most of the gaming laptops are big plastic bricks with red LEDs everywhere .

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER26> Man. Hopefully these come with some kind car-like exhaust heat shield between the keyboard and everything else. I tried playing games on my macbook pro, and while it ran fine (guildwars 2, a few years ago) the machine got so blazing hot that I had to play with an external keyboard.

After a few days of doing that I figured that having the laptop that hot for extended periods of time wasn't a good idea and quit playing. Probably for the better.

<comment><USER27> I ran into this same issue. I've been quite fond of the idea of external gpus for this exact reason.

</comment></comment><comment><USER28> So what about that great big "?" in the table: TDP? How hot is it going to run? How well is the laptop going to handle it - does it now require an all- metal body? How well is the essential issue of fan and heatsink maintenance considered in the design of the laptop?

I ask this because I have two GPU laptops both of which gradually degraded in usability over time entirely because of thermal issues.

<comment> jon-wood Did you try removing the heatsink/fans and cleaning them out. I was close to replacing my laptop because it was constantly overheating and it turned out the problem was a copper heatsink grid thing which was densely packed with dust, insulating the entire computer. Since cleaning that out my laptop is good as new.

<comment><USER28> Yes, that was my first thought on experiencing the problem. It's often quite hard to do (that's why I mentioned "How well is the essential issue of fan and heatsink maintenance considered in the design of the laptop?" above). One of my laptops requires taking the whole thing apart from the keyboard side in order to get at the heatsinks below, so I gave up.

And of course there are laptops on sale which are glued shut.

Air duster works reasonably well but can force dust further into cracks.

<comment><USER29> > And of course there are laptops on sale which are glued shut.

Are there? Even Macbook Airs can be opened with nothing more than the appropriate pentalobe screwdriver. I had to do it a while ago to clean out the fan which had developed an annoying clicking noise.

<comment><USER28> Microsoft Surface. I suppose you could call it a tablet, but it has a keyboard and an i7 processor and runs Real Windows including games. The tablet/laptop distinction is being eroded, and "tablets" are much more commonly held together with glue.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER30> "Gears of War 4 looks amazing in 4K"

Why would you put a 1.920px × 1.080px screenshot next to that?

4K = 4096 × 2160 Pixel

<comment><USER31> When people talk about 4K they usually mean (whether they know it or not) UHDTV, which is the standard used in consumer monitors and TVs and in which 4K = 3840x2160.

<comment><USER32> I think his point was the screenshot was regular HD, not even UHDTV resolution.

<comment><USER30> Yes, sorry if that was not clear. Just made me question every "4K" mentioned in the article.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER33> This makes sense, as the increasing capability of tablets and phones has made portability a lot less of a priority in a laptop for me, at least. It's almost hard for me to imagine why a MacBook Air was an appealing buy for me in 2011 - I think that a decent laptop was superior for a lot of general use tasks that any recent iPhone can now do just as comfortably/quickly. When I have to use a full system at home, I expect some sort of a major advantage in terms of capability and I care a lot less about form factor.

I wonder if Apple even has a response in these areas where svelteness has much less of a premium.

</comment><comment><USER34> I don't understand the somewhat negative tone. Small light laptops is a market, but big ones certainly too? E.g. LAN party.

</comment><comment><USER35> Meh, this is bullshit.

NVIDIA laptop GPUs were always the "same chip". Each "chip" in NVIDIA can be floorswept differently, with parts lasered off and its operating clock range adjusted. This is why the 1080 and the 1070 is the "same chip"\--GP104.

Previous mobile chips were actually the "same chip" as the desktop ones, except they lasered more off and reduced the clocks even more, sometimes reduced the clocks a lot and lasered less to make the performance better by cramming more hardware.

They just dropped the M thing to show that "oh look, we've come this far!" but in reality, none of their policy actually changed--just floorsweep differently to have less TDP and hopefully it's close enough to desktop tier perf.

edit: what they are, are different SKUs of the "same chip".

edit again: I'm not saying this isn't any small achievement, Pascal has brought a ton of improvements to the design. I'm just saying it's a marketing move that I expect the HN crowd to look through.

<comment><USER18> Nope. Unlike previous-generation mobile parts, these are functionally equivalent to the desktop parts - same number of cores, shaders and ROPs, same memory bandwidth. Of course clocks are slightly lower and these parts are binned for higher efficiency, but the performance is very close to the desktop parts.

The 980m was substantially cut down compared to the desktop 980 and only had about 55% of the performance.

</comment></comment><comment><USER36> Besides gaming, anyone has used this beefy laptops to run GPU intensive machine learning algorithms? I am curious to see if it's practical to use a gaming laptop vs. a desktop to run tensorflow calculations.

<comment><USER37> Personally I just built the desktop and ssh in with an old macbook. Best of both worlds- you're using the wired connection at home to download stuff, and your mobile device is just running a terminal and a browser so it has long battery life, and you can turn off the laptop and let the desktop chew on your model.

</comment></comment><comment><USER38> Amazing advances in GPU technologies over the past few years.

I love this comment: "...Oh, and don't forget the power adaptor, which—as I saw with some models in performance demos—is literally the size of a brick."

<comment><USER39> As long as it's not a wall-wart... Whoever seriously considers it a good idea to block off 2-3 outlets in a powerstrip to run one DC inverter ought to be bludgeoned with that inverter until they see reason.

<comment><USER40> Absurd as it may sound, one can find extremely short 3-prong extension cords designed specifically to take care of the wall-wart problem. Search Amazon for "1 foot extension cord" for examples.

<comment><USER41> You can even get shorter, down to a couple inches. They're fantastic.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER42> Good! We don't need portability in laptops that much anymore. We have smartphones and tablets for that.

</comment><comment><USER43> What about thermal throttle?

<comment><USER44> Well you can always get a laptop with a liquid cooling dock! :-D [https://www.asus.com/Notebooks/ROG- GX800VH/](https://www.asus.com/Notebooks/ROG-GX800VH/)

<comment><USER45> That setup actually works really well; its predecessor GX700 was one of the few previous-gen laptops that can drive HTC Vive _and_ Oculus Rift (adapters required) at the same time. [https://plus.google.com/+AudreyTang/posts/VGebgzXnefP](https://plus.google.com/+AudreyTang/posts/VGebgzXnefP)

<comment><USER44> > That setup actually works really well

I'm sure it does, and I wasn't suggesting otherwise! The new version (the one I linked) has dual GTX1080 in SLI so I'm sure it's a beast, and the liquid cooling docking station is actually very ingenious. I was just amused by how unconventional it is, given the current tendency towards ultra-thin and/or convertible laptops</comment></comment></comment></comment>


A new type of social network: Wormhole links MIT and Stanford - <AUTHOR> http://articles.boston.com/2011-08-22/business/29915401_1_stanford-university-wormhole-cafes?

<comment><USER2> This post: [https://engineering.stanford.edu/news/wormhole-connects- stan...](https://engineering.stanford.edu/news/wormhole-connects-stanford-and- MIT) has a picture.

<comment><AUTHOR> More pictures (Wormhole launch party at the Stanford cafe): [http://www.flickr.com/photos/stanfordeng/6323012297/in/photo...](http://www.flickr.com/photos/stanfordeng/6323012297/in/photostream/)</comment></comment>


'Free but Not Free': Zimbabwe's Amateur Filmmakers Turn a Lens on Their Country - <AUTHOR> https://www.npr.org/2018/07/14/628531508/free-but-not-free-zimbabwes-amateur-filmmakers-turn-a-lens-on-their-country <comment><USER2> Link to read the article without consenting to cookies [https://text.npr.org/s.php?sId=628531508](https://text.npr.org/s.php?sId=628531508)

</comment><comment><USER3> A bunch of references to this phenomenon throughout US culture[0]

One of my gotos on this: "Rich man, poor man, we all gotta pay Cause freedom ain't free, especially 'round my way" [1].

[0] [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Freedom_isn't_free#In_popular_...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Freedom_isn't_free#In_popular_culture)

[1] `youtube-dl -f mp4 'S77zUWqawag'`

</comment><comment><USER4> _" Young Zimbabweans are still tentative about taking advantage of that freedom of speech," Munyati says._

Honestly, I'd still wait a bit myself in their position. Maybe this government really will go in a new direction, but if not then this kind of thing could very easily come back to bite you. Having said that, I respect and admire the dozens of people who overcame decades of fear to speak up.

<comment><USER5> I too would fear a hundred flowers-inspired campaign. It'll take a while to know their true intentions.

<comment><AUTHOR> For those who might not know the reference:

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

<comment><USER6> Thanks - I'd never heard of this.

I guess one lesson here is to never trust a powerful man with everything to lose.</comment></comment></comment></comment>


Vivir Brings the Human Element of Design to the Medical Field - <AUTHOR> http://theindustry.cc/2012/09/27/vivir-brings-the-human-element-of-design-to-the-medical-field/ <comment><USER2> It's about time!</comment>


Chronicle, Alphabet's cybersecurity defense company moonshot - <AUTHOR> https://www.engadget.com/2018/11/30/chronicle-cybersecurity-alphabet-moonshot-x/ <comment><USER2> Worked in the space of using ML for security analysis. My experience of it was that it was a race for novel applications for now-standard toolkits.

The kinds of problems I encountered require you have an org where you can lose a top shelf researcher/architect for 4-5 months while they train up on new tools and then use them to run down rabbit holes. This requires both vision and direction, and a moonshot culture to support it.

Chronicle's focus on their customers' problem in the article is sound, the next step is that each customer, or class of customer is going to be defined by their own specific ROC curve, relative to their business. Some just want raw data, others the world ends over a missed alert (false negative), still others have costs associated with false positives.

When you are doing a deterministic rules based system, it's straight forward, but when you get into dynamic and scoring based systems like ML, the responses to it are going to be polarized between customers, and you need top a level vision to tie the whole product narrative together. It's not a thing you stand up that everyone uses, and few people want to buy a framework with a bunch of gigo based trade-offs.

Something I discovered in my own work was that the threat model is the business model, both for products and surprisingly for customers as well. I'm really interested in what Chronicle comes up with, as these are truly Hard problems.

</comment><comment><USER3> We use ELK (Elasticsearch, Logstash, Kibana) quite heavily for this at my company. It works, and it works well. We feed massive amounts of data into it --it's not unusual for our indices to grow by 50 GiB in a single day, which is quite a bit for a small company running a niche website.

It's expensive. Very expensive. Not just in terms of money, but also time: the countless hours spent maintaining it, upgrading it, expanding it, securing it, and actually using it.

And then, of course, there's the cost of actually knowing what's going on within your infrastructure. It's stressful: attacks are happening constantly. Most of them aren't worth investigating; the firewalls do their job and the attacks fail. But which ones are worth worrying about? Which bugs are actually worth patching? Is it really an issue if a small part of our site goes down for a few minutes--especially when it might cost us 80 hours of work to patch?

I doubt these problems can be solved by collecting and analyzing more data. Lack of data isn't a problem--there are already plenty of systems for collecting, analyzing, and storing data. The trouble is using that data in a cost-effective manner. Similarly, I have zero faith in anyone's ability to solve these problems by simply throwing more computing power at them, for much the same reason.

I really hope that's not what they're planning to do, but this is Google we're talking about, so I'm not holding my breath.

Edit: Clarification, wording

</comment><comment><USER4> The article is very light on product details. Reading between the lines, it sounds like the tool plugs into a bunch of existing tools (firewall, AV, etc) and then watches for certain heuristic patterns.

A clever approach, but I wonder how noisy it will be at the start.

<comment><USER5> That's exactly what existing SIEM tools like Splunk [1] have been doing for years. I've been following Chronicle since I heard about their initial project at X and I'm eager to see what their actual product is, but I'll be pretty disappointed if it's just yet another SIEM with yet another "powered by machine learning™" label slapped on.

1: [https://www.splunk.com/en_us/cyber-security/advanced- persist...](https://www.splunk.com/en_us/cyber-security/advanced-persistent- threat.html)

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> This is an extremely interesting product they're providing. My company would definitely be able to utilize this to great effect. Is this currently available to anyone for use?

<comment><AUTHOR> I'm not sure how the exact details currently work, but if you go on to their website, they do have a contact form [1] which I assume you can use to make any interested inquiries!

[1] [https://chronicle.security/contact- us/](https://chronicle.security/contact-us/)

</comment></comment><comment><USER7> What is with these horrible company names now? "Alphabet". "Chronicle". "Oath". Fuck. None of these names mean anything within the context of their business. Epitomizing mediocrity, this new generation of names waft aimlessly by and inspire exactly nothing.

<comment><USER8> Alphabet, at least, is a holding company that has no central competence (it has a subsidiary that dwarfs all the others, which also has what would be a terrible name except for the fact that it has attached meaning to that name by absolutely dominating key markets starting with search, so it's name conveys meaning but only because of the firm's own history.)

</comment></comment><comment><USER9> After Levandowski got into a car accident with a self-driving car and bragged about it to his coworkers, I think machine learning won't solve everything.

<comment><USER10> I don't think the article says that machine learning will solve everything... It's just talking about a new product in this space that _uses_ machine learning.

<comment><USER11> This new product is being pushed as a "revolution" that, by the subtext of the sales pitch, is supposed to "solve all your cybersecurity problems."

Sorry, that defense doesnt hold in this case.

<comment><USER12> Is there a sales pitch that doesn't claim to solve all your problems?</comment></comment></comment></comment>


Ask HN: Cheapest cloud DB service? - <AUTHOR> Hey gang, please help a front-end dev out.
I need advice on the best DB SAAS/cloud service.
I have an upcoming side project that will - if my assumptions are correct - be pretty popular, pretty quick. At least to some segments of the population.
It'll be a free(mostly) service that requires a heckin lot of DB reads.  The data being passed around won't be big or complex, but I'm anticipating really, really frequent reads and moderate writes. I guess a similar read/write equivalent would be a messenger app.
My day job is mostly front-end JS development; React, Redux, those kinda things. I have enough back-end skills to get me into trouble, but I want to plan this out right. If I'd need to scale the service up quickly, I'd need it to be in a position where it would be as fast and cheap as possible.
So what kinda DB would I need to look at? SQL or NOSQL? Which service provider would give the most bang for buck? Amazon AWS? Google? Azure? Does DigitalOcean have a solid db service?
What caching solutions should I be looking at?
Anything else I might not even be considering?
Please keep in mind that it'll just be me as developer(so the learning curve should me moderate), and that I'm, shall we say, on a really tight budget. <comment><USER2> do you mean dbaas?

[https://www.compose.com/pricing](https://www.compose.com/pricing)

[https://aws.amazon.com/rds/pricing/](https://aws.amazon.com/rds/pricing/)

[http://app42storage.shephertz.com/#pricing](http://app42storage.shephertz.com/#pricing)

[https://azure.microsoft.com/en-us/pricing/details/sql- databa...](https://azure.microsoft.com/en-us/pricing/details/sql-database)

[https://cloudboost.io/pricing](https://cloudboost.io/pricing)

there is one or two of them offer a free tier.

anyone knows what is the most cheap dbaas for mysql?

anyone knows what is the most cheap dbaas for mongodb?

I'm a student. pls do check. My parents enslave me

Pls help me. I wanna make apps so I can escape from this house</comment>


Floating-Point Parsing and Formatting Improvements in .Net Core 3.0 - <AUTHOR> https://devblogs.microsoft.com/dotnet/floating-point-parsing-and-formatting-improvements-in-net-core-3-0/ <comment><USER2> I was a bit confused about the talk about the maximum length of floating point constant that must be parsed, but a test case cleared it up... [https://github.com/dotnet/corefx/blob/master/src/Common/test...](https://github.com/dotnet/corefx/blob/master/src/Common/tests/System/RealParserTestsBase.netcoreapp.cs#L273)

The (760-character) string should parse as the smallest positive denormal number, but if even 1 of the trailing digits of the mantissa is deleted, the number should correctly parse to the double precision floating point value 0.0 instead. However, there are many much shorter string representations of this number possible, such as '5e-324'.</comment>


Mortality Rate of Covid-19 Is 0.5%, Much Lower Than CDC / WHO Claims - <AUTHOR> https://www.sciencenews.org/article/coronavirus-outbreak-diamond-princess-cruise-ship-death-rate <comment><USER2> Editorialized titles like that break the HN guidelines: " _Please use the original title, unless it is misleading or linkbait; don 't editorialize._"

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

<comment><AUTHOR> I get your point, but what my title says is exactly what the quote from the popular press article states. See my own comment to my post towards the end of the comments list in this thread. I did not come up with this title out of nowhere or to make clickbait-y.

<comment><USER2> I get that, and you're right that using language from the article itself is far better than making up something of your own. Still, the guidelines ask you not to rewrite titles unless they're misleading or linkbait. Cherry-picking a detail from an article and making that the title is editorializing—in fact it's the leading form of editorializing.

Titles are by far the most powerful influence on HN threads. The one who controls the title controls the discussion, and on HN we want that control to go not to the submitter, but to the article itself—except when it's abusing it by being misleading or linkbait. In that case, changing the title is necessary, and then it's best to find the most representative language in the article (which might be a subheading, the URL, the HTML doc title, a photo caption, or a factual sentence from the main text) and make that the title instead.

On HN, submitting an article confers no extra right to frame the article for everyone else. If you want to say what you think is important about an article, that's great, but please do so via a comment in the thread. That way your view will be on a level playing field with everyone else's.

I've posted a lot about this in the past if you or anyone wants further explanation:

[https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=false&qu...](https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=false&query=by%3Adang%20%22level%20playing%20field%22&sort=byDate&type=comment)

[https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=false&qu...](https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=false&query=by%3Adang%20editorializing&sort=byDate&type=comment)

[https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=true&que...](https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=true&query=by%3Adang%20special%20right%20submit&sort=byDate&type=comment)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER3> Good study, badly analysed IMHO.

If we presume the virus was still in exponential mode, then the 328 not showing symptoms could easily be those that had only just caught the virus.

Also you need to know the age distribution before trying to extrapolate rates to normal populations.

"As of February 20, tests of most of the 3,711 people aboard the Diamond Princess confirmed that 634, or 17 percent, had the virus; 328 of them did not have symptoms at the time of diagnosis. Of those with symptoms, the fatality ratio was 1.9 percent"

Edit: here's the study: [https://www.medrxiv.org/content/10.1101/2020.03.05.20031773v...](https://www.medrxiv.org/content/10.1101/2020.03.05.20031773v2.full.pdf)

I think "quarantined" was not individually quarantined, but that the ship as a whole was quarantined.

ONE SURPRISING THING: high ratio of asymptomatic cases for 70+, whereas most 20-30 year olds are symptomatic: that could explain a lot about why death rates seem absurdly low for below 40 year olds - sampling error because most 20-30 show symptoms.

<comment><USER3> Asymptomatic ~50% for 50+.

 _Very interesting_ if that turns out to be fact.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> Note that, even if true, this doesn't mean it can't destroy a country's healthcare system. At least 10% of cases appear to require hospitalization for pneumonia. No country has enough hospital beds for 10% of its population. Once you're out of beds, many people who need critical care start dying instead.

<comment><USER5> To be entirely fair to the statistics presented here, it is suggesting that only 4% of people require hospitalization assuming 60% are in fact asymptomatic but positive tests.

<comment><USER4> True enough! The 4% would still overwhelm any country's health system. E.g. US has around 300,000 available hospital beds, and 4% of population is 13M, 43x higher.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><AUTHOR> Excerpt:

"...Infections and deaths onboard suggest that the disease's true fatality ratio in China is about 0.5 percent, though that number may vary from place to place, researchers report March 9 in a paper posted at MedRxiv.org. That 0.5 percent is far less than the 3.4 percent of confirmed cases that end in death cited by the World Health Organization, but troubling nonetheless. The WHO's number has come under fire because the true number of people infected with the virus worldwide is not known."

Link to the actual study:

[https://www.medrxiv.org/content/10.1101/2020.03.05.20031773v...](https://www.medrxiv.org/content/10.1101/2020.03.05.20031773v2)</comment>


The Mixergy Guide to Building a Recurring Revenue Business From Scratch - <AUTHOR> http://hackthesystem.com/blog/the-mixergy-guide-to-building-a-recurring-revenue-business-from-scratch/ <comment><USER2> It seems a lot of these examples are from 'internet marketing businesses' or people selling info products on "how to make money online" or "how to create an email auto responder".

I've been following the internet marketing niche on and off for a while now so maybe thats why I have certain alarms going off in my head when I see words like:

"What's your biggest fear and frustration?" - Seriously, that is taught in every internet marketing eBook ever made.

And emails with really long pitches that try to be overly friendly and act like we are best friends and mention things like "Tomorrow I'll be sending you the "Internet Business Toolkit!" and "since we've found each other, I'll be hooking you up with all sorts of cool stuff"

Maybe it works, but to me it just seems so cheesy after seeing the same email format and same tactics from thousands of other wannabe "internet marketing gurus".

<comment><USER3> The trick is to not use the same tactics as wannabe "internet marketing gurus."

You can fit the strategies that Michael is speaking of into a number of other businesses. In fact, I'm always surprised the lack of email strategy by tech companies.

When a user comes to your site, there are methods of introducing him to your product that isn't a hard-sell "You need this product--sign up now." You need to introduce them to your product before you make a sale.

So you can offer a giveaway that entices a user join a newsletter. Then you send interesting emails---emails that a reader appreciates being sent. The kind they actually read till the end, and think it was a good decision to read. This builds trust.

But the next step? You introduce them your product, show them why they will get a benefit from it, and then offer them the product---and because they trust you, and understand where it comes from, the user will be likely to buy it.

I'm working on something similar with RescueTime---introducing users to the product with a more story-telling angle.

<comment><USER4> Interesting, do you mean you're working with the RescueTime on a consulting basis to craft their email drip strategy?

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> I don't like this kind of posts. There isn't much wisdom inside. Instead there is the usual kind-of inspiring talk that is not bad, but is not actionable and doesn't contain much details.

It's not "ultimate guide" at all, it's a collection of nearly random and not at all that insightful things that in general would work if you need to execute them well. And the execution is what will make or break your business, not just "knowing" the stuff.

<comment><USER6> What would make it the 'ultimate guide' for you?

I didn't know they were going to publish this, but I'm impressed that they connected different ideas in my interviews and I'm curious about other ways to do that.

<comment><USER7> Do you mind if I turn this around and ask you some leading questions?

Do you think that 7500 words can constitute an "Ultimate Guide" on anything, let alone a subject as broad and deep as, "Building a Recurring Revenue Business from Scratch"? Do the points featured in the blog post seem to flow naturally from one to the next? If you were to ignore the title of the post and what it claims to be about, what would you think it was about after reading it?

Does it read like an essay, or like an outline?

What kind of recurring revenue businesses will this guide help to build?

I had started to write an objection to this post hours ago after following the link to Maneesh's "first passive business" and doing a little more background research. About halfway through I canceled the comment, deciding that it probably wasn't constructive and probably wasn't worth my time (or a reader's).

(Side note: I was going to go to mixergy.com to try to also make the argument that the usual content from Mixergy is far better than this, but found that I couldn't actually load the site without first signing up with an email address. I look forward to the future messages delivered to my account, email@example.com. I also realize that my argument would have been wrong.)

If Maneesh has been building fame and fortune online by using SEO tools to come up with subjects that $.01/word writers at <http://thecontentauthority.com/> will blog about for him (it's "high quality" and "not spam", of course) and then post around the web for him so that he can make passive AdSense revenue from people directed to the ghost-written posts by Google, well ... awesome, I guess. I honestly kind of wish I could give up programming and do something like that; I certainly can't argue with his quality of life or how he's chosen to spend the money he's made exploiting a company that provides both ads and search results.

And if he's now coming up with ways to leverage his skills into enormously popular posts like, "How I quadrupled my productivity by hiring a hiring a woman to slap me", or, "How to learn a language in 90 days", or, "How to Earn $12,840 from a Single Guest Post", then that's awesome too, I guess.

And if he then writes a post that compiles a bunch of tips on building a social-media-newsletter-marketing-recurring-revenue business, then awesome, too. But, I find myself agreeing with handzhiev's sentiment that it's vague and incomplete and not polished, and I also find myself feeling like I should soon expect to see a follow-up post, "How I made $32,768 by having someone else write a guest post on my site and submit it everywhere", followed by the even more popular, "The ultimate guide to getting rich online".

<comment><USER8> _Side note: I was going to go to mixergy.com to try to also make the argument that the usual content from Mixergy is far better than this, but found that I couldn't actually load the site without first signing up with an email address. I look forward to the future messages delivered to my account, email@example.com. I also realize that my argument would have been wrong._

Sorry, but this is really rude and immature. Andrew has put an _incredible_ amount of effort into compiling info at Mixergy.com, apparently with the goal of _gasp_ making money. And you can get most (almost all?) of his content, which exists nowhere else and is hugely valuable, _completely free_. All he's asking for is a way to contact you in the future. And yes, partly to try and convert you to a customer at some point. God forbid you should actually _pay_ for the value you're receiving, right?

Ugh. We (developers) are the worst market.

<comment><USER7> I wasn't visiting his site to benefit from his content. I am not one of his customers, or readers, or viewers. I loaded up his site for the sole purpose of being able to point to things on it and say, "these are great and you have done a good job". Publicly.

Instead the site threw a barrier up in front of me and forbid me from proceeding at all until I gave it an email address. It went a step beyond all of the _goddamnproliferatingeverywherenow_ lightboxes that more and more sites seem to be using lately: there was no close box, no "cancel", no "no thanks not this time". Just, "give me your email address or go away."

The day that that particular tactic is no longer considered rude and inconsiderate and Bad will be the day that I'll be done with the internet.

Believe me when I say that I was _way_ more polite in my comment about it than my initial visceral response to it.

...Or am I not allowed to call him out on a bad move just because he's Andrew Frickin' Warner and "has put an incredible amount of effort into" Mixergy?

<comment><USER8> So it's rude and inconsiderate that he's asking for your contact info (or for fake contact info) before he gives you all his material for free? That seems more than fair. He doesn't owe you anything.

<comment><USER7> Would you mind pointing out what he gave me? Because I can't seem to find it. Thanks.

I would try a less snarky way to say, "he didn't give me anything", except that I already said that and you ignored it in your personal quest to annoy me.

<comment><USER9> Mixergy gives away hundreds of interviews for free via their podcast feed (I subscribed via iTunes and my iPhone podcatcher, search for Mixergy), and transcripts of the interviews are still available via Google search. I'm not a fan of the pushy email signup, but there's ways around it to get to the free content.

And there's definitely some great interviews on Mixergy. The most recent one I listened to was with the female CEO of a hardware company that builds spectral analysis devices for the oil & gas industry and US Defence Department. That's worlds away from the online eBook info-product market.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> OK side note: Anyone else use Adblock to remove that ugly fixed #getSocial div with the Twitter, Facebook, etc buttons? I do this all of the time to websites, wonder if others do too.

<comment><USER11> You are not alone. I adblock, stylish and tampermonkey the hell out of the great deal of websites I frequent.

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> Maybe the most powerful post I've ever read on recurring revenue businesses --- This post is a guest post on my site, and I took extensive notes for myself! Learned an amazing amount---nice!

<comment><USER11> maneesh, thank you and especially Michael for a post that has solid content but jumps right into the instapaper since reading it at your website is unreasonably hard. social sharing buttons _really_ get in the way.

<comment><USER3> why are the social buttons getting in your way? I don't see any problem with a full size Chrome browser on a mac---are you on mobile or something?

<comment><USER12> The margin between the the social buttons and the text is too narrow. You can still read the content but it's distracting.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> I wish there was a "Sticky" function on HN. Every SaaS startup founder needs to read this.

Seriously. Bookmark it. Instapaper it. Evernote clip it. However you save it, save it and read it.

<comment><USER14> Please give more information on why we would need to bookmark it and co. After a first skim, it looks like the normal e-marketing garbage ebook of people explaining what works for them in their specific niche 3 years ago...

</comment></comment><comment><USER15> Wow. Amazing!

Would love to see a section about what to do with your time once your business is covering all your expenses ("filling the void" type stuff)

<comment><USER16> It's easy. Here's what I did (after 20 months off)

1\. Visited Russian owned Wineries in Mexican wine country (yep they have them - they are amazing) 2\. Learned how to Horseback ride 3\. Volunteered at an orphanage in Latin America (changed my view on business for ever) 4\. Moved to Budapest for a while (amazing opera, kick ass clubs, amazing white wine, great caviar) 5\. Went clubbing in Stockholm (Midsommar ftw) 6\. Went clubbing in Marbella, visited amazing parts of Southern spain, loved it so much settled there (check out a kick ass co-working spot here: <http://www.nidomalaga.com>) 7\. Went clubbing in London - was supposed to go to falconry school but blacked out - LOL just kidding.... noticed a trend here?

Read a gazillion books, caught up on TV, started writing a book, etc. Actually now I'm back on my 3rd start up 'cause I want to get into movie production - self financed. It costs at least $50 million to produce a good movie and another $50 million to market it so I need a to get to work ;)

I thought about posting some screenshots but meh, too much work.

People discounting the whole 4HWW lifestyle - it's real. But who has time to convince other people of something you know to be true...

<comment><USER17> As someone with a movie production site I'm curious about your movie production start up. I find a lot of parallels between start ups and production companies.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER18> The creating fame section of this was pretty interesting, although it still seems easier written than done</comment>


c10k: Handling 10 thousand symultaneous connections. - <AUTHOR> http://www.kegel.com/c10k.html

<comment><USER2> See also: <http://brad.livejournal.com/2230083.html>

epoll-driven jabberd from Brad "LiveJournal" F, scaling to 25k connections in 97Mbyte of RAM.

</comment><comment><USER3> YAWS: <http://www.sics.se/~joe/apachevsyaws.html>

Handles 90,000 connections on a box where Apache dies at 4,000.

I didn't see Erlang in that article. I wonder why.

</comment><comment><AUTHOR> This is an oldie, but I haven't found any reference in news.yc so I thought it may be of use to some of you. Also, it's more up to date than it looks in the first few paragraphs.</comment>


Understanding Machine Learning: From Theory to Algorithms (Downloadable Book) - <AUTHOR> https://www.cs.huji.ac.il/~shais/UnderstandingMachineLearning/ <comment><USER2> When you guys are studying and learning from this, what is your strategy? Do you read the entire book online? Do you work through it and implement various things? ...?

<comment><USER3> Just like with learning how to program, it's ideal to have a personal project to go along with a book. This way when you dive in to the book(s) the knowledge learned will be more likely to stick.

This will leave holes in ones knowledge, because different projects have different challenges. Therefore, it's helpful to hold onto good books and come back to them when going over other projects, reviewing and learning even more useful information.

As for this book, I haven't read it, but it looks good and gentle, so there is potentially less room for holes when reading this book. On the other end, when doing a project, there is a higher chance of needing to dive into secondary material to learn edge cases. It's a common trade off. All in all, this book looks quite good from a ten thousand foot view.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> I downloaded the PDF and looked at the beginning of two random chapters. My first impression is that the authors define machine learning formally, but fairly simply and then offer practical material. Not really fair to offer an opinion after a 15 minute look, but it looks like a good book.</comment>


Ask HN: How much time do you spend in HN daily and how to manage it? - <AUTHOR>

Some users at HN raise the quality of discussions. Some of the more frequent contributers give their insights into many of the daily posts. I love their comments and learned a lot .. However, i often i feel guilty , if i spend time on hn (that i should be working ..). And then feel guilty if i don't spend time to contribute to community, from which i gained so much.  How much time do you spend in HN daily and how do you manage it ? <comment><USER2> To manage it ... in your account settings, there's a "noprocrast" option. Just set those values to how many minutes on, how many minutes off, and you'll get locked out so you can get your other work done. If it's interesting, I'm building a noprocrast for the entire internet ... there's a link in my profile. But for HN, your best bet right now are those noprocrast settings.</comment>


Ask HN: Do you think the whois rules need to be modified? - <AUTHOR>

I don't see the point anymore to require domain owners to provide address/phone#, not with all those domainbyproxy type services out there.<p>Leave to just email and be done with it. <comment><USER2> I think the solution is to not allow the domainbyproxy services anymore [like some cctlds have done]. Having valid whois contact information (especially abuse) is can be very useful. e-mail often isn't always sufficient.

<comment><USER3> I agree with you. There are numerous cases when a domain is abused and nothing can be done.

Consider the case that the domain owner has leased out the domain to a 3rd party who are willfully abusing the domain? Without the contact info, it will be much more difficult to get it sorted out

<comment><USER4> I don't necessarily disagree with you in theory but in actual practice I don't think what you are proposing is worth it.

The way I see it people who aren't causing trouble should have the right to stay anonymous on the net if they so desire. There are tons of reasons for this but the most obvious one is so people on the net can't seek retribution against you for something you say online.

Now I can see your perspective which seems to be that we should limit privacy because of those who abuse it and do cause trouble. But even if you do that at the Whois level these people can still create a dummy corporation or llc and stay anonymous. Which, to my eyes, means we really can't eliminate anonymous troublemakers.

So being we can't eliminate anonymous troublemakers I don't think there's any point in limiting the privacy of people who aren't troublemakers and who just want their privacy.

<comment><USER3> Oh I agree. There SHOULD be privacy controls.

I was only disagreeing with the OP that all contact information should be "not required" at all.

My take is: Yes, collect the contact information (and as much as feasible, ensure it is valid) but also provide options to make it private to an extent (perhaps have at least one public email (protected from spam bots obviously) while making the rest of the info private and available only through a court order etc)

As you can see, I also have extreme parentheses usage syndrome ;)</comment></comment></comment></comment>


Notes on design of a Haskell API - <AUTHOR> http://www.drmaciver.com/2011/11/notes-on-design-of-a-haskell-api/ <comment><USER2> This is a great article, but the title reminds me (fondly) of titles of academic texts that couch everything in qualifiers: 'A Sketch Toward Some Notes on a Proposal for an Investigation into a Re-evaluation of {Insert Topic Here}.'

<comment><USER3> A neutral title seemed the way to go. :-)

On the one hand, the process was pretty irritating. On the other hand most of the issues are ones I'd probably catch if I were to repeat the experience (which is why I thought it worth writing about), and the end result was pretty acceptable. All in all a fairly neutral experience.</comment></comment>


18 great uses for an old Android device - <AUTHOR> http://www.computerworld.com/s/article/9245370/18_great_uses_for_an_old_Android_device

<comment><USER2> Use it for app development test device too</comment>