Coinbase raises $100M Series D led by IVP - <AUTHOR> https://blog.coinbase.com/coinbase-raises-100m-series-d-led-by-ivp-f5f25cb51019 <comment><USER2> I'm pretty naive on the subject of Bitcoin so I might be missing something here, but can someone explain to me how it's used right now? Aside from treating BTC like a stock that is. The value of it fluctuates so much that actually buying/accepting it seems incredibly risky. The price can go down just as fast as it goes up.

As a someone looking make purchases with BTC; if the value of a BTC is going up, why would I use it to buy anything? It's gone up $700 in the last week; up $200 in the last 24 hours alone. I'd feel incredible silly spending bitcoin in a growth phase.

As someone looking to accept BTC for purchases, how do I do so with confidence that when I accepted $3400 today that by the time I cash out it's not worth $2700?

My confusion really comes from the buying/selling of legal goods; I can see the risk being worth it if you're operating outside the law. But really; if I'm selling something then there's a pretty good chance I'm buying my supplies with a fiat currency. I have hard and set costs I need to cover. If I accept BTC, there's a chance that when it's all said and done the BTC isn't worth what I paid and now I'm losing money.

Are businesses just expected to accept that risk? If so, how many businesses are actually willing to accept that risk? Or do we have to wait for the price to settle down before seeing more widespread adoption?

<comment><USER3> Bitcoin purists will say that, eventually, there is no "cash out" phase. 1 BTC = 1 BTC and who cares about what the dollar equivalent happens to be. Once everything is in BTC you will never exchange it for dollars.

Do you spend dollars today wondering if tomorrow the Euro will be worth more or less? No, so why would you care what the dollar equivalent to a BTC is when everything you buy is priced in BTC?

This is long term obviously. The reason the price is "high" now is because there is a finite amount. ~21 million BTC is the max that can ever exist at once. So, theoretically if you replaced the world's currencies with BTC, having a single BTC would make you incredibly wealthy.

<comment><USER4> Can you elaborate on how that is going to happen? Not trying to flame, I can see a world where people use BTC for everything, but I am confused at how that will happen with current valuation.

BTC is worth thousands of dollars, so if everyone starts using BTC will people pay irrational fractions of BTC for bread and milk at the supermarket? will there be some adjustment? How will other entities handle conversion and exchange? Will the general population have some compulsatory event to liquidate their own bank accounts into BTC funds?

Could this change asset valuation worldwide(Real estate, investment funds, etc)? If no government entity mediates currency value and printing can they tax your earnings if companies pay through some decentralized medium? What happens when nobody is paying taxes?

How about other cryptocurrencies, is there some kind of zero-sum game race to the top going on? Can they co-exist in the long term purist scenario?

Some of these questions are probably extremely stupid as I have little financial and economics knowledge and I am almost illiterate when it comes to Bitcoin, and I don't know how it works for the average joe if this purist scenario becomes true.

<comment><USER3> I'm not an expert on BTC or anything. In fact I'm not even long on BTC. I don't think it will work in the long term. That said I'm just answering questions as I understand them:

> BTC is worth thousands of dollars, so if everyone starts using BTC will > people pay irrational fractions of BTC for bread and milk at the > supermarket? will there be some adjustment?

The block chain supports values as small as 0.00000001 BTC (called a Satoshi). More terms will be coined as more common denominations eventually are used to buy things.

> How will other entities handle conversion and exchange? Will the general > population have some compulsatory event to liquidate their own bank accounts > into BTC funds?

There will be no single event, over time people will simply not use their local currency any more in favor of BTC. Slowly, over time, the population will lose trust in fiat and gain trust in BTC. This may occur over decades or more.

> Could this change asset valuation worldwide(Real estate, investment funds, > etc)? If no government entity mediates currency value and printing can they > tax your earnings if companies pay through some decentralized medium? What > happens when nobody is paying taxes?

I'm not sure about these. Right now if you sell things for BTC I'm pretty sure you have to pay taxes on the "fair market value" of the BTC, which I have no idea what that would be (maybe the average price at the time of the payment?). I assume people long on BTC are hoping laws will adapt by the point when it is widely accepted.

> How about other cryptocurrencies, is there some kind of zero-sum game race > to the top going on? Can they co-exist in the long term purist scenario?

I mean, a cryptocurrency is only as valuable as the trust people have in it. So all the same rules/theories apply to other cryptos the same as BTC. BTC just happens to be the most popular at the moment, and therefore has the highest market cap (not even sure if this term applies).

<comment><USER5>
      >There will be no single event, over time people will simply
      not use their local currency any more in favor of BTC.
      Slowly, over time, the population will lose trust in fiat
      and gain trust in BTC. This may occur over decades or more.

The BTC network processes about 3 transactions per second. Bitcoin advocates will tell you this doesn't matter, or it can be improved with a future fork - which by then why not just make a newly designed protocol/altcoin network entirely ?

(Consider: is what they're telling you based on their current investments that they'll sell off after you've bought in? Now think of what happens when a hedge fund, or other early adopter who has acquired several thousand coins or if there's whales who've traded their way to now own %10 of the coin supply in the network. What happens if they divest and crash the 'value' of this coin 'investment'?)

The great thing about cryptocoins is you can create an improved protocol and if it's better then previous protocols, the users will migrate.

There's a lot of misinformation flying around because people are trying to spam their investments into their cryptocoin service networks which they've bought into (or engineered a marketing pump and dump scam, i.e. premined ICOs like antshares) in hopes that they can later sell at excessively inflated prices because of some arbitrarily limited "supply" which a programmer just typed into the software running their network.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> Coinbase makes a killing with their fees. The spread between the buy and sell prices on coinbase are 1-1.2%. On top, their bank transfer charges are proportional to amount transferred instead of standard flat fee. I wonder why they need another $100M !

For people who want to buy, I would recommend Kraken - they have much higher volume and sane pricing. There are others too like Bitfinex, Poloneix, etc.

<comment><USER7> It's important to note that Coinbase also operates an exchange, GDAX, that anyone can get access to. The fees for limit orders on GDAX are currently 0%, and there are no transaction fees for withdrawal (at least on USD->Bank account or BTC withdrawals). I'm not sure if GDAX has any deposit fees.

Buying/selling directly on Coinbase is merely for convenience, and obviously you're going to pay for that convenience. I'm glad that Coinbase offers that option, because there are a lot of people for whom the fees are worth the ease of use.

But if you're one of those people for whom the fees aren't worth it, and you want to get your hands dirty, by all means use GDAX and pay no fees at all.

<comment><USER8> the fees for market making orders is 0% other orders is about 0.25% (better if you are trading more). market making is when you place an order that is not instantaneously filled.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> Even in the bitcoin community, I think many people don't realize just how big Coinbase is. I have a paid Alexa account, so I can grab traffic data to for any website. Let me show you how Coinbase compares to several other sites you guys might be familiar with:

      coinbase.com - 4.8 million monthly unique visitors from the US
      4chan.org - 5.3 million
      chase.com - 47 million

So Coinbase is almost as big as 4chan, and is 1/10 the site of Chase.

Let me repeat that again: The largest bitcoin exchange has 1/10 of the traffic of the biggest general banking site in the world.

That is huge.

</comment><comment><USER10> Hopefully they spend all $100mm on support. I've never experienced such bad support.

<comment><USER11> At this point me and many of friends with Coinbase account came to conclusion that there is NONE. I don't believe a single person works in customer support.

I also heard that it is such a big issue that some California attorney is advertising heavily in top 5 states to gather traction for a class-action lawsuit regarding this problem. Unfortunately I haven't stumbled upon his advertisement yet, but wouldn't be surprised if judge will give it a green light.

<comment><USER12> According to LinkedIn, they have 7 people who work in support.

At a company of ~200 people, that's not an unreasonable number to have. It feels mean to say they have none.

<comment><USER10> You know what I find mean? Getting locked out of my GDAX account for no apparent reason for months on end while ETH rises and I have no way of doing anything because I can't access my USD or ETH. Not one single word from support until one day I get a random message that directs me to an article that I've already read 10 times and is of no help.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> Definitely late to the game, but finally bought bitcoin this week. I've followed bitcoin since ~2010, but it's volatility and financial constraints had prevented any real action. Here are some notes if there are any other holdouts out there: I used Coinbase and Gemini. It was surprisingly difficult to get money into these places, which was a bit frustrating, but in the same sense reassuring that they are playing by the rules. I actually setup on Gemini because Coinbase kept cancelling orders on my debit card (Schwab), and I was able to setup wire transfer with Gemini, and then transfer that to Coinbase to fund the GDAX account. I set out Saturday morning to buy bitcoin and didn't ultimately have any until Monday afternoon when the wire transfer reached Gemini (standard account for ACH transfer is now approved on both platforms, Gemini took 2 days, Coinbase 4). Coinbase has a nice app to monitor accounts and price charts, but it doesn't seem to link to GDAX (their exchange), so you can't get a unified view of holdings in one spot. Gemini doesn't have an app, but has a web application which is annoyingly secure. It remembers a device for 24 hours, after which it requires 2 Factor SMS verification. Security is great, but it's a bit annoying when all you want to do is check account value once a day. Gemini trading volume seemed a bit low, and their API didn't offer any compelling features over GDAX, which is why I've transferred from Gemini to Coinbase (took about 1.5 hours to go through) and then GDAX (Coinbase to GDAX is instantaneous). Both offer websocket feeds and the APIs are well documented. The C# GDAX sample application was last updated in 2015 interestingly, but it still has many useful pieces. Another bonus for GDAX is their fee structure, which is simpler (and cheaper) than Gemini's, maker orders are 0% fees. I've always been intrigued by automated trading systems, but the barriers to entry are so high in the stock markets (data, platforms, high fees, account minimums, day trading rules), to the point where you can't really just 'try it out.' 6 days into this adventure and I'm maintaining my own order book and programmatically making trades with tiny amounts of money. Next step is to work on strategy.

<comment><USER14> I have actually already created a C# Gemini API wrapper[0], if you are interested. Along with a GUI for it [1]. Both are open-source.

I used my library to write an automated trading system that's running on Gemini (not open source, obviously). I like Gemini much more than it's competitors.

[0] [https://github.com/lazear/Gemini](https://github.com/lazear/Gemini)

[1] [https://github.com/lazear/Libra](https://github.com/lazear/Libra)

<comment><USER13> Awesome, thank you for sharing, I will check it out!

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> Coinbase is positioning themselves to be the first legit cryptobank. Fidelity now feeds their customer portfolio data (on BTC, LTC and ETH holdings) from their user cold storage holdings at coinbase.

Its extremely risky to hold client keys that hold money. Making a CryptoBank is like making a regular bank on hard mode.

<comment><USER7> > Making a CryptoBank is like making a regular bank on hard mode.

Back in "the old days" bank security was based around metal vaults and guns. That I would also consider doing banking on hard mode.

Coinbase just needs good specialist engineers and a good insurance policy. Not much different from a traditional bank.

At least Coinbase has an advantage over traditional banks. Good engineers would probably rather work at Coinbase where they get to play with cool Bitcoin tech, rather than a stuffy old banking system which still limits passwords to 8 characters...

<comment><USER15> Insurance on cryptocurrency holdings? might be hard to find a provider that would accept that level of risk and volatility. Would the premiums increase with the value of the BTC?

What if there just isn't enough bitcoin in circulation to cover the loss (there is a 21 million cap on BTC).

Bank robberies don't usually leave the bank with nothing :-) Exchange gets rolled, it might not even afford the claim.

Agree about advantage as being a great place to work vs traditional banks. They will attract better talent for sure.

<comment><USER7> > What if there just isn't enough bitcoin in circulation to cover the loss > (there is a 21 million cap on BTC).

It's being defacto established that when a cryptobank gets robbed, the funds are repaid to customers using local currency, not BTC, priced at the time of the loss.

So, from the underwriter's perspective, it's just insuring whatever total USD value Coinbase currently holds, with consideration given to Coinbase's ability to prevent theft. Not any different from a bank insuring itself against loss due to cybertheft.

<comment><USER16> FDIC makes this analogy a tad more difficult, afaik.

<comment><USER7> How so? FDIC doesn't cover theft.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER17> Why does Coinbase need another $100M when it's making tons of money with its fees?

<comment><USER18> Raise when you don't need it. VCs are desperate to part with cash ("use it or lose it"), and Coinbase probably has the best chance (after perhaps Stripe and Braintree) of becoming the de facto home for the crypto payment/trading industry.

<comment><USER19> Even so, a 1.6 billion dollar valuation of coinbase is certainly very high. Assuming that over the course of the long term they are comparable to something like intercontinental exchange (the owner of NYSE/EURONEXT, and controller of the clearing house for 50% of the worlds oil futures/derivative products).

The total market cap of coins traded on their platform would need to be magnitudes larger to justify this valuation unless they can somehow either continue to justify their high fees amidst competition, or they would need to totally monopolize all future cryptocurrency banking, something that could certainly involve large amounts of competition in the future as well.

<comment><USER20> By deduction they make about a million USD in fees a day. A startup making real cash along with huge growth potential. Seems valid.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER21> Maybe now they can spare a human to respond to my 4 attempts to get my account unlocked?

</comment><comment><USER22> Can anyone who has been investing in digital currency provide some alternatives to Coinbase vis-a-vis fees?

If I am plunking down $65k, then that is almost $1k in fees. In comparison, if I buy stocks, I pay around $7 in commission. I know that it is not a direct comparison cause there is currency conversion fees involved.

Are there any better alternatives? How do you guys invest to avoid fees?

Thanks

<comment><USER23> If you are investing that kind of cash you should be using Coinbase's GDAX exchange not their brokerage service. If you place limit orders on GDAX with the "post only" option checked you will be able to buy coins with zero fees.

Other exchanges have similar fee structures so if you don't want to pay the 1% brokerage fee you really need to learn how to use limit orders regardless of what exchange you ultimately use.

</comment></comment><comment><USER24> So I'm late to the digital currency game. What are the regular use cases for digital currency? Who accepts it? Is it mostly for person-to-person trading?

<comment><USER25> As a nitpick the proper term is "cryptocurrency", not "digital currency". A cryptocurrency does not necessarily have to be stored or generated digitally.

<comment><USER24> Makes sense. Coinbase's website is plastered with the term "digital currency" so that seemed the safest to use since I'm not too familiar with that market :)

<comment><USER26> They do that for their benefit, & for the benefit of their regulator bedfellows (I think). The SEC, for example, dare not mutter the word 'crypto', confirming that Bitcoin et al do actually exist!

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER27> Unrelated, but it still blows my mind- that the creator of this cryptosystem thats now worth $50B is still unknown.

He has to have been lived somewhere, gone to school somewhere, studied, worked somewhere, left some track somewhere about who he was.

<comment><USER28> Dave Kleiman - Look him up. It's actually all a kind of sad and sordid story. The myth is far better than the reality.

<comment><USER29> I think that story was largely debunked. It even turned into a dicey situation for gwern, though I respect his commitment to chasing down a lead.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER30> Can anyone recommend a decent exchange that supports deposits and withdrawals from a UK GBP bank account without needing to do a SEPA or SWIFT transfer?

Neither Kraken nor Bitstamp do :(

<comment><USER31> I can't find one either. I've decided the best option is depositing/withdrawing using localbitcoins.com, then transferring in/out of there to your preferred platforms.

<comment><USER30> Yeah, it's infuriating. I'm hoping Revolut enables bitcoin on their platform soon. Until then, will check out localbitcoins.com, thanks.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER32> Seems like a no-brainer for IVP. It seems like coinbase is exceptionally well positioned to harvest a big chuck of the institutional money that's about to hit crypto.

</comment><comment><USER33> Does this means they'll be arsed to reply to customer support queries more rapidly in future? Say a 1-2 month turnaround instead of 2-4?

</comment><comment><USER34> With this trading frenzy on gdax and on coinbase itself, why do they need round D? They are charging hefty fees on coinbase, and some fees on gdax too. It's "pure play" , there's no fixed real world expenses

</comment><comment><USER35> It's nice to see that, until this comment, CTRL-F yields nothing for "ponzi" or "scam." "pyramid scheme" and "drugs" are still making appearances, though.

</comment><comment><USER36> So that's why they refunded everyone after they got taken advantage of in the flash crash.

Maintaining confidence had greater consequences than not.

All about those user numbers, or attracting other people attempting to exploit the same glitch. Pretty efficient market in that regard.

</comment><comment><USER37> Why not do a Coinbase tier2 not-stock-but-we'll-pretend-it's-stock ICO?

Could raise even more money with zero actual equity dilution.

</comment><comment><USER38> Edit - Moved to comment I was trying to address -

<comment><USER39> > Crypto could become the "people's" wealth vault, and undercut nations > ability to tax & control markets by truly privatizing wealth. All it takes > is MOST of us to decide.

You say that like its an admirable goal we should strive for. Taxes built the roads and bridges you drive on, the crystal-clean water that flows from your tap, the lines that your internet runs over, and the (admittedly glacial) bureaucracy that prevents your city, municipality, province and country from descending into unorganised chaos.

<comment><USER36> Roads, bridges and schools were built before national governments began passively levying taxes on income. this is a 100 year old concept.

Taxes on capital gains are a 70 year old concept.

Just recognize the amorality of it. It can only be billed as a "duty" for "roads and schools" when pandering to the lower classes who have no choice in the matter, while recognizing those classes have the numbers to get you in office. But "taxes" are not an absolute on the concept of how a government can fund itself. Governments have to balance the consequences of how they attempt to raise revenues, by being competitive amongst other countries, as their ecosystems primarily rely on attracting or incentivizing investment.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER40> They have been doing this since 2012 when Bitcoin was essentially free...I guess they took the money just in case.

</comment><comment><USER41> Great news! I'm very bullish on digital currencies.

<comment><USER26> *Crypto currencies.

Without cryptography, we may fall into 1984 -- or something like that. Cryptography grants us privacy.

</comment></comment><comment><USER42> That money would have had better upside if invested in bitcoin directly.

<comment><USER43> Are you saying that the investors would get a better return on their investment if they had instead simply purchased bitcoins?

That claim seems to require the ability to know the future. Bitcoin may eventually be superseded by a superior alt coin, and disappear into history.

<comment><USER44> > That claim seems to require the ability to know the future.

One could say startup investing does too.

<comment><USER43> Startup investing requires willingness to take risks with an unknown future.

<comment><USER45> So does investing all your money in bitcoin.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER46> How in the bloody hell does Coinbase not fund its own operations with profit??? I figured they made over a $100m every quarter.

<comment><USER47> Do we have any source on what is their revenue? I sincerely doubt they are making 100 million in profit every quarter. I would be surprised if they were actually profitable.

<comment><USER48> With the fees they charge, and the volume on the exchange, I don't see how they _couldn 't_ be making a profit? Of course I'm not a business guy, might be something I'm not thinking of.

<comment><USER47> If they were making profit, I'd assume they would make a press release. They would want the business world know.

<comment><USER23> Privately owned profitable businesses don't usually go trumpeting to the world how wildly profitable they are. That is just inviting competition. Kind of dumb.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER26> I don't think coinbase are going to add Monero. It's too much like cypherpunk money.

</comment><comment><USER49> lots of people have used it to buy drugs

<comment><USER50> lots of people have used cash to buy drugs...</comment></comment>


4chan's Vitalik Buterin Death Hoax Crashes Ethereum Price - <AUTHOR> http://bitsonline.com/ethereum-vitalik-death-hoax/ <comment><USER2> There is no reason to think this was it. There's been ICOs realising their ETH deposits.

<comment><USER3> I don't think that was the reason at all but do you have any tx proofs?</comment></comment>


Tisa - <AUTHOR> http://www.tbray.org/ongoing/When/201x/2011/07/17/Tisa <comment><USER2> Tisa is quite nice, I've used it for customers that required a warm, personal appearance.

The article itself is poorly "typeset", Tisa requires a line-height far above 1.3em. The author also has an inexplicable love for the "·" character, which quite frankly reminds me of the MSN names of younger friends.

Verdana and Tisa don't work together on the same line. Someone will probably throw "matter of taste" at me, but no, just no.

The HTML is pretty bad (though I'm going to assume the author knows this), <p class=h2> is not cool. If you really want to put your header on the same line as your paragraph's initial line, there are some tricks for that.

-> [https://plus.google.com/photos/116442928671550976358/albums/...](https://plus.google.com/photos/116442928671550976358/albums/5630578662550213281)

<comment><USER3> I am constantly pleasantly surprised here, I come into comments expecting the usual "How is this hacker news?" type of thing, and instead find some practical and useful suggestions on typography... Speaking as someone who can't make head or tails of it himself, thank you for the info :)

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> I would never imagine this guy had thought about fonts for this site.</comment>


Email traffic data casts doubt on global village theory - <AUTHOR> http://www.technologyreview.com/blog/arxiv/23717/ <comment><USER2> _"They studied the messaging habits of 100,000 Facebook users by zip code"_

This skews the study substantially. My facebook friends are my old classmates, colleagues, family and friends. Most of them are people that live close to where I do.

My e-mail habits are very different. Businesswise I probably correspond with more people abroad than in my own country.

The sample determines the output - and in this case the sample isn't representative of all online communications.

<comment><USER3> The sample is also much smaller than the article suggests. The paper itself says they found about 1800 'linked pairs' of users with a stated ZIP code in that sample of 100K. And in the graphs for the larger (4500) sample of email data, the fit is quite bad, with a pronounced 'hump' in the tail. There are just far too few sample points here to make these kinds of sweeping conclusions.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> Alternative title: Study shows we all gravitate to each other

               m1 m2
      p(r) = G -----
                r^2

where p(r) is a probability of a social link between two specific individuals with a distance r between them and m1, m2 their individual susceptibilities of being linked. <http://arxiv.org/ftp/arxiv/papers/0906/0906.3202.pdf>

<comment><AUTHOR> "Gravity" laws are actually common in many real case scenarios (like transportation networks, etc).

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> I think the conclusion fits neatly in to a different idea: more time is spent on relationships that are of greater value. (I don't equate value and returns - you could have a harmful relationship that you greatly value)

And with communication getting easier, maybe so does the realization that it is easier to find value in in-person relationships.

</comment><comment><USER6> I wonder why they did this just on Facebook. Why not get access to real email logs, look in the Received: headers and do geo-location on the IP addresses. I'm sure if you looked in my email you'd see all sorts of messages coming from all over the world.

</comment><comment><USER7> Eric Gilbert has analyzed facebook friending vs geography and found it also followed a power law distribution. Wouldn't the correct interpretation be then that we're indifferent to geography for anyone we're already friends with?</comment>


Weather, an argument against simulation hypothesis - <AUTHOR> https://abishekmuthian.com/weather-an-argument-against-simulation-hypothesis-e4339031300e <comment><USER2> Author is not thinking it trough.

Firstly, simulating intrinsically chaotic weather does not have to be accurate. It's just has to be close enough to be indistinguishable from the real thing.

Secondly, weird rounding errors, randomness, aliasing effects, truncations etc. will be physical reality for the beings living in simulated world.

Thirdly, physical laws we encounter might not be the real physical laws. Imagine super quantum Newtonian universe (infinite light speed, infinite speed of causality) where relativity and quantum effects are caused by the limits of the computer architecture and are not the laws of the underlying universe.

<comment><AUTHOR> I appreciate the comment, but we seem to have different understanding about the context of the article.

>It's just has to be close enough to be indistinguishable from the real thing

Then that 'close enough'simulation is the real thing for us. The summary of the content is, the computational complexity of that simulation is so large that we need a 'close-enough real thing' to simulate 'close enough simulation' of itself. In that case is it even a simulation?

The second & third point mentioned seems to have assumed that such computational complexity is achieved; it doesn't change my argument of it.</comment></comment>


$41 Million Startup Color Is Forced Into An Early, Buzzword-Laden Pivot - <AUTHOR> http://www.businessinsider.com/inside-colors-pivot-2011-6

<comment><USER2> _Color has "38 employees [who] work in a space with room for 160, amid beanbag chairs, tents for napping and a hand-built half-pipe skateboard ramp."_

Wow, just wow. And we all thought that the excesses of the original Dot Com bubble (Aeron chairs, etc.) were excessive.

Then again, it might serve as a nice recruiting tool. If the half-pipe is big enough for BMX bikes in addition to skateboards, I could see it being a perk I'd care about. :-)

Now if they'd just design and build an outdoor "street" course, with a few old cars, a box ramp, wall ramp, etc....

<comment><AUTHOR> " _it's hard to blame someone for raising $41 million on an idea if they can_ "</comment></comment>


Ask PG: An essay on how to evaluate startups for prospective employees - <AUTHOR>

I made an Ask HN post here about a year and a half ago titled "How should I evaluate a startup as I job hunt?"
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4340196
PG expressed interest in writing an essay on how potential employees should go about evaluating startups, especially on distinguishing 'true Bill Gateses from mere good talkers'. (If this already exists, I have overlooked it. Please let me know).
I think such an essay would be great to motivate engineers at Big Corps who are considering making the leap into the start up world. I know I could have used something like this myself.
But maybe the range of startups and the breadth of potential employees is too large to be generalized. <comment><USER2> Somewhere he mentioned on how to consider working for a startup. If you have $xM would you consider investing in it?

<comment><USER3> That's a good metric... but often investors have more information on the start-up that potential employees.

This is the purpose of asking your own questions about the company in interviews... but I think there will always be more information asymmetry for potential employees than for potential investors.

Also investors can spread risks in ways that employees can't. Depending on your risk tolerance this may also change your judgements.

However, if you think its a bad investment, then you certainly shouldn't work there.</comment></comment>


Support EFF: Move Your Domain Day on Namecheap (1/22) - <AUTHOR> http://www.namecheap.com/2nd-moveyourdomainday.aspx

<comment><USER2> Namecheap is still a good registrar (I've been with them for nearly 7 years), but they've gone downhill a little lately. I see more ads than I used to when I go to change a DNS setting, including ones that look like application alerts but are really ads for hosting or SSL certificates.

<comment><USER3> I had the same experience with Namecheap--I frequently have to change my records, but it was a deep dive past a lot of layers of fluff to get to that part of the control panel each time I wanted to do it.

Oddly enough, though, the process became a lot more pleasant when I began using CloudFlare, purely as a side-effect: my domains are still _registered_ with Namecheap, but since CloudFlare requires you to host your DNS records through them to do their magic (I grumbled at the time, I admit), you do all your little zone-record edits through their DNS control panel instead. And it's a _nice_ control panel. Now I only have to deal with Namecheap when I actually need to renew/buy/transfer something, which seems about right.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> Not many know about <http://www.badger.com>. What I love them is that they're a no-frills registrar. Been pretty happy with them.

P.S. Most of their front-end code is on Github.

</comment><comment><USER5> I'll just put this here: [http://plaintextoffenders.com/post/39285063264/namecheap- com...](http://plaintextoffenders.com/post/39285063264/namecheap-com-domain- name-registrar-they-sent)

<comment><USER6> Hey omer - I'm Namecheap's community manager and just want to clarify some things:

I investigated this as soon as it was brought to our attention a few weeks ago. First, this is NOT Namecheap's control panel. This is Kayako, our support system, and only is created when one does not have a Namecheap account. Therefore, your account data on Namecheap is completely secure.

Second, as soon as we were alerted to this being an issue, I brought it to Kayako's attention. They replied and told us that the information is stored in a hash.

More info in these tweets: <https://twitter.com/Kayako/status/288304914151661568> <https://twitter.com/Kayako/status/288305161737220096> <https://twitter.com/Kayako/status/288306260644880384>

We value customer privacy and security and hope that Kayako will resolve this as soon as possible.

</comment></comment><comment><USER7> Still hoping/waiting for some sort of two-factor authentication at Namecheap. They don't offer it yet.

They suggested they were looking into it in 2011, but nothing yet. GoDaddy offers it. :)

<comment><USER6> It'll be ready soon.

</comment></comment><comment><USER8> Damn. I just moved 4 domains to them earlier today, would have waited if I'd had known about this.

In case it's useful for anyone else, I moved them because they're currently running a promo for transferred domains where they'll throw in a years whois privacy for free and a discounted SSL cert.

<comment><USER9> You could always donate two to six dollars to the EFF directly for the same effect- or round up to $10 just to one up them.

</comment></comment><comment><USER10> I still have a domain or two on GoDaddy that I keep meaning to move. This is the impetus I needed, I think.

<comment><USER11> Namecheap is a decent registrar, and I'm glad to see they support a free and open internet.

But if you want a _good_ registrar:

[1] <https://iwantmyname.com>

[2] <http://www.gandi.net>

iwantmyname has a refreshingly clean interface and absolutely no frills. Register a domain (tons of TLDs), set DNS. Done.

gandi claims it's a "no bullshit" registrar. More features, like auto-setup of vanity nameservers, but less focused on domains.

Both better than all the alternatives. You pay ~$5/year extra for the lack of features (how ironic), but it's well worth it. No intrusive interstitial ads, no sad excuses for DNS managers, no cluttered control panels, and no constant upsell attempts.

<comment><USER12> Gandi is a little _too good_ for those of us running anything other than a comment-free religious blog.

The contract you agree to when purchasing a domain legally binds you to observe, uphold, and enforce on your visitors a code of ethics. That code involves, among other things, fighting "deviant uses of the internet" and "protecting public order and good moral standards". That's just the beginning of your extensive moral policing duties should you not want to give Gandi the right to steal your domain from you at any time.

Good luck explaining that your post about hacking on a Raspberry Pi is not the type of hacking they prohibit you from discussing using a domain you purchased from them. There's virtually no way to run a forum, blog with open comments, or anything else enabling user-generated content without breaching your contract.

I'm not making this up. I think their "no bullshit" policy is marketing bullshit considering the actual stuff they put in their TOS. The terms are ridiculous for the service they're providing -- commodity domain registration, which is the updating of tiny records in a database at Verisign. Read it yourself:

[https://www.gandi.net/static/contracts/en/g2/pdf/MSA-1.3-EN....](https://www.gandi.net/static/contracts/en/g2/pdf/MSA-1.3-EN.pdf)

<comment><USER11> While in practice I don't think it'd be much of an issue, that's really scary.

Thanks for pointing that out.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> Unfortunately, doesn't include .io domains. Anyone know a good place that handles those?

<comment><USER14> I personally like: <https://www.gandi.net/>

<comment><USER11> See dangrossman's comment below. [1] (I was shocked too.)

iwantmyname [2] is great and supports .io registrations, but you'll pay a little extra for the clean interface.

[1] <http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5085850> [2] <http://iwantmyname.com>

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> I've transferred about half of my domains from godaddy to namecheap at the end of last year. It looks like I have a great excuse to transfer the rest of them now.

</comment><comment><USER16> Would love to switch, but for some reason they don't allow whois privacy on .ws domains, unlike a number of other registrars.

</comment><comment><USER17> There are other good registrars. I use Gandi.

</comment><comment><USER18> How much will be the renewal fees?

<comment><USER12> $10.69/year for .com without a coupon. It's a fair price for working with a good company that's stood up for its customers in court, whereas a certain top-selling budget registrar frequently does the opposite.

<http://www.namecheap.com/domains/domain-pricing.aspx></comment></comment>


Study Shows Decongestant No More Effective Than Placebo - <AUTHOR> https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/wonk/wp/2015/11/04/the-truth-about-cold-medicine/ <comment><USER2> Should be "phenylephrine" specifically in the title.</comment>


Nasa Open Datasets - <AUTHOR> https://open.nasa.gov <comment><USER2> If you are purely looking for some beautiful datasets, checkout NASA's Datacasting website[1]. They have a large RSS feed directory[2] with a lot of data on earth science. They even built their own RSS feed reader[3][4] to download and filter the data. And I think everything is already geo-tagged.

[1] [http://datacasting.jpl.nasa.gov/](http://datacasting.jpl.nasa.gov/)

[2] [http://datacasting.jpl.nasa.gov/feed_directory/](http://datacasting.jpl.nasa.gov/feed_directory/)

[3] [http://datacasting.jpl.nasa.gov/download/](http://datacasting.jpl.nasa.gov/download/)

[4] [http://sourceforge.net/projects/datacasting/](http://sourceforge.net/projects/datacasting/)

</comment><comment><USER3> Also check out [https://data.nasa.gov/data?category=&search=&type=datasets](https://data.nasa.gov/data?category=&search=&type=datasets) (linked to from open.nasa.gov) which all have consistent APIs -- so you can write code once and re-use it as opposed to having to write a new API wrapper for each disparate data set

Disclosure: I work for the company that helps run data.nasa.gov

<comment><USER4> Know of any interesting examples/fun projects where this data is used?

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> It will be interesting to see how much uptake such a top-level index gets.

The search capability (e.g., [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10264811](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10264811)) returns so many results for typical naive queries ("temperature" returns 8300), that it's impossible to sift through them. They seem to be un-curated, so a niche product with marginal calibration gets equal play to flagship products with thousands of users.

People like me who use lots of this data every day have sat in panels and workshops and mused whether a searchable top-level index would be useful, because this is not how scientists work. They ask their friends which sources are best for their use, e.g., which have the right coverage and sampling in space, time, and wavelength. And they settle into something, and maybe make a big shift to a new product when it comes online.

But: something _like_ this index could be helpful, to citizens, decision- makers (e.g., tree canopy depth maps for fighting forest fires), and to out- of-discipline scientists ("what if I brought in NASA sea surface temperature to my analysis of beach restaurant revenue fluctuations?").

For CO2, here's an example ([https://co2.jpl.nasa.gov](https://co2.jpl.nasa.gov)) which gives 5 simple use cases and sketches why you'd choose one over the other.

</comment><comment><USER6> First off, awesome, I'm always looking for new datasets. So these complaints are fairly small, but currently stopping me from doing some things:

I can't see more than two items on this page: [https://data.nasa.gov/data?&search=&type=datasets](https://data.nasa.gov/data?&search=&type=datasets) I'm just after a big list of datasets so I can skim through and find ones I'm intrigued by. Here's a screenshot: [http://i.imgur.com/TtP630G.jpg](http://i.imgur.com/TtP630G.jpg) (latest Chrome, mac)

The featured dataset links to a 404 page: [https://open.nasa.gov/nasadatanauts/](https://open.nasa.gov/nasadatanauts/)

Again, great to see the data out.

Edit - scratch the listing problem, it seems to be one of my extensions, either readability or pushbullet, breaking the site.

<comment><USER7> It is great to see them releasing data, but I'm surprised they went with something based on Socrata given there are other OSS products out there. I can't imagine how much they paid - I guess that won't be in the data catalog anywhere :(

<comment><USER8> Could you name some of the alternatives to Socrata, I really like what it does and its interface but would prefer something free.

<comment><USER7> There's [http://ckan.org](http://ckan.org) (disclaimer, I work with this) and [http://dataverse.org](http://dataverse.org) if you're more academically minded. There are others, but hard to judge any claims of open-sourceness without access to source code.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> In addition to being a beautiful design I like how NASA is making use of personas. As I've discovered in working with open data it isn't just developers who are interested.

In Michigan mappers, citizen activists and journalists are drawn to it in equal numbers with developers. Giving different views that allow them to get what they're looking for is very powerful.

</comment><comment><USER10> [http://www.skywatch.co/](http://www.skywatch.co/)

SkyWatch is doing something similar. If you're into this sort of thing, check them out.

</comment><comment><USER11> Wow, this is hugely improved. Used to be lots of scattered files everywhere with poor access and no consistency.</comment>


Cloudflare gets wildcard certs for a domain using their DNS-only service - <AUTHOR> https://groups.google.com/forum/#!topic/certificate-transparency/1tAcVS17wMM <comment><USER2> "With CloudFlare being in control of the DNS and having a wildcard certificate without the domain owner's knowledge would give CloudFlare the possibility to run a MITM on many, many domains without anybody noticing as the certificates are valid and issued by a trusted CA"

This is how the system works when it comes to domain validated SSL certs. Anybody who controls the domain's DNS, can get a trusted SSL certificate for the domain from certificate vendor. As long as the DNS is controlled by third party, revoking the existing certs does not make a big difference, since if they want to do MITM, they can just get new certificates at any point.

<comment><USER3> Would pinning mitigate this?

<comment><USER2> Partly, but that requires the user has visited your site with their browser before.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> > ... would give CloudFlare the possibility to run a MITM on many, many > domains

A CDN is operating as a man in the middle, by design. It doesn't even make sense to take about "MITM" in the context of CDN. If you have a problem with that, don't sign up to a CDN.

</comment><comment><USER5> Hmm, [https://news.ycombinator.com/user?id=jgrahamc](https://news.ycombinator.com/user?id=jgrahamc) seems like the type to call something like this "hella creepy" ... comments?

</comment><comment><USER6> Wow, same for my website (using Cloudflare for DNS-only). How do we get these revoked?

Edit: If you're using Heroku, the zerigo_dns addon makes it easy to switch to Zerigo.

</comment><comment><USER7> The takeaway: Cloudflare fraudulently misrepresents your authorization to issue a certificate.

It would appear the CA baseline requirements are insufficient to deal with providers such as cloudflare. Comodo got authorization via control of DNS, which not differentiated from the actual domain name owner. So when cloudflare fraudulently impersonates the domain name owner it is not identifiable.

<comment><USER8> That may be your "takeaway", but it's wrong on several fronts:

1\. There's nothing "fraudulent" about providing a service explicitly permitted by our Terms of Service[0]. See S7.4: "Other changes to increase performance or security of your website."

2\. Continuing on #1, the BRs[1] provide explicitly for an agent to apply for certificates on behalf of another person. Look for the defined term, "Applicant Representative" and see 220.127.116.11.7 for DNS changes as permitted for DV validation.

[0] [https://www.cloudflare.com/terms/](https://www.cloudflare.com/terms/) [1] [https://github.com/cabforum/documents/blob/master/docs/BR.md](https://github.com/cabforum/documents/blob/master/docs/BR.md)

<comment><USER9> It is unclear to me how issuing certificates you have no intention of using in any way constitutes "other changes to increase performance or security of your website."

In fact it can only decrease security, as it increases the number of valid certificates in existence for a domain, and the number of certificates available to be compromised.

Logically, you can only claim that this behaviour falls under "other changes to increase performance or security of your website" if you actually make use of the SSL certificate after obtaining it.

<comment><USER8> We don't know /a priori/ whether the user will, as 99%+ of zones on us do, reverse proxy traffic through us. The vast majority do, and thus your statement of "you have no intention of using" is wrong; we intend to use this certificate, and almost always do.

The reason that a certificate is issued on zone activation is that issuance takes non-zero time. And the second a user decides to route traffic through us, we need to have a certificate in place terminating TLS otherwise the user will experience downtime due to their visitors not being able to connect via HTTPS.

<comment><USER10> you oblivious mouthpiece. The vast majority are sheeple who TRUST YOU. YOU ARE ABUSING THAT TRUST.</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment>


Steve Jobs' cancer clinic sighting sparks new Apple worries - <AUTHOR> http://venturebeat.com/2011/02/16/steve-jobs-cancer-clinic/

<comment><USER2> Very sad if true...but I really wish people would leave the guy alone and give him some privacy. I know it's hard when he's such a big figure in the tech field, but the guy is dealing with life threatening health issues...

</comment><comment><AUTHOR> Oh, this is very sad if true. Whether you like Apple or not, there is no denying Jobs has been a visionary and leader in the tech space since its inception.

A few weeks ago I had a dream that I was Steve Jobs' personal assistant. He was very frail and not looking good in my dream. Here's hoping it is still a (bad) dream.</comment>


We can't leave it to billionaires to solve the world's problems - <AUTHOR> https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2020/feb/21/billionaires-bloomberg-bezos-government-mega-rich <comment><USER2> I'm really not a fan of the rising trend to attack billionaires just because they're billionares. There are plenty of points that each of the mentioned individuals can be legitimately criticised on. Their level of wealth or the decision to donate it to one cause or another is _not_ a valid point of criticism.

<comment><USER3> Their balance sheet isn't the point, it's what they did and are doing to get there that is the point:

\- taking away healthcare from the poor, killing people

\- destroying/privatizing what was once free and part of the shared commonwealth

\- privatizing what never should've been profit-motivated in the first place: hospitals, prisons, schools and so on.

\- "deregulating" removing pollution and safety protections that were written in blood

\- spending money to corrupt the political process in order to buy passage of laws

\- underpaying workers so they have to live in their cars and cheating them out of the profits they helped create

 _It is difficult to get a man to understand something, when his salary depends on his not understanding it._ \- Upton Sinclair

(One could also call it the "Upton Sinclair-effect".)

<comment><USER4> Maybe it'd be more productive to criticise people based on those points. Rather pick a somewhat correlating group.

How about we pick a skin color correlating with petty crimes and then draw conclusions on that? Not so cool, huh...

<comment><USER5> Your skin color isn't based on your actions, but your wealth is. It's not a fair comparison to make. You should be judged for your actions.

<comment><USER4> Exactly, people should be judged for their actions. Not for skin color or net worth.

One's wealth isn't automatically a result of bad actions. It's a very accurate comparison. Generalisation is generalisation.

<comment><USER5> > One's wealth isn't automatically a result of bad actions.

It almost always is, though. Skin color never is. I don't agree with your take at all.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> I much more trust the billionaires to solve the world's problems than the politicians.

I know it's popular to rain crap on rich people (just see Hollywood's long list of well moneyed villains) but in the Real World I have many billionaires I respect and admire (from Gates to Musk and Bezos) and ZERO politicians.

<comment><USER7> Benevolent dictators are the most effective may to govern, but it's really hard to prevent malicious dictators from rising in such a system.

<comment><USER6> All the dictators I know were non-billionaire politicians first.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER3> I think the operative word is _We,_ because left to their own device drivers billionaires (and soon-to-be the first "Tyrell Corporation" trillionaire):

\- narcissism, greed & hubris

\- political, regulatory & media captures

become the dominating gradient vectors which tends to aggregate capital in the hands of those with the most power and extract it from those with the least. (Not a conspiracy theory, but a diffuse set of circumstances, patterns, attitudes and behaviors that snatch externalities and collapse from the jaws of success.)

<comment><USER8> If the government was competent, Tyrell and Wayland Yutani wouldn't be the interspacial leaders in space mining, would they?

</comment></comment><comment><USER9> Another funny thing is, "we" usually attack both millionaires and billionaires. Now, millionaires are forgiven. It seems many of "we" become millionaires.

<comment><USER10> Or more likely it means that millionaires have more social and political influence than before.

</comment></comment><comment><USER11> The real issue is we can't leave it to billionaires to decide what the world's problems are.

</comment><comment><USER12> The real dilemma is our eroding trust in politicians. Why is this happening?

</comment><comment><USER13> Why is this flagged? Stop using a moderation feature as a downvote (or maybe the flag threshold should be raised higher).

</comment><comment><USER10> The government needs to make it undesirable to become a billionaire. There should be an upper limit as to how much money you can have.

Most of the world's problems are caused by millionaires trying to become billionaires - Beyond a certain point, it's all zero-sum games that destroy society.

<comment><USER10> No one complains when the government creates regulation to artificially help boost rich people's wealth but if I make a comment about artificially limiting billionaire's wealth, people who are not even billionaires care about that? Even though it doesn't affect them personally??

Then they go around preaching the doctrine of capitalistic self-interest.

The law of capitalistic self-interest according to Milton Friedman basically says: Take the money from wherever you can get it, however you can get it. Billionaires have a lot of money, so why don't we all collaborate and take it? Why the double standard?

Why is everyone collaborating against the lower and middle classes? If you're reading this, you're the middle class! Unless these billionaires are paying you to down-vote, the law of capitalistic self-interest says screw them.

<comment><USER4> Usually such regimes end up in shortage of toilet paper.

<comment><USER14> Japan seems fine, better than the US even in almost every way, yet they have 1/8 the number of per capita billionaires the US does.

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

Pretty sure they have a greater variety of toilet paper than the US does.

<comment><USER4> When did Japan artificially limit wealth of their billionaires?

I'm sure their economical issues of 90s and 00s did hit their wealthy quite a bit though. But that's not exactly artificial limitation.

<comment><USER14> Nobody but you used the statement "artificially limit wealth" anywhere. Obviously the Japanese have some policies in place which discourage these social menaces from growing and taking over their political system. What's wrong with adopting some of those? Works for them, and doesn't impact their prosperity or standard of living in any way.

<comment><USER4> Did you read the comment that I originally replied to? Dude said that in plain text.

Japan is a funny case actually. Massive corporations play a big role there. Both historically and nowadays. Yes, those big corporations take care of their workers. But it doesn't change the fact, that the rich are barely limited in that country.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> Firs thing this article takes a shot at is Bezos deploying $10b "like Gates before him."

Gates has, to my knowledge, been vastly more successful than any government program at reducing malaria and getting people vaccinated.

Which is an exact antithesis of the subheading of the article.

</comment><comment><USER15> You clearly cant leave it to governements.. whuch one is the worsr devil ?

</comment><comment><USER16> This is a false dichotomy, to put it mildly.

Bill Gates singlehandedly did more to eradicate Polio & several other deadly diseases than multiple Governments, WHO, and several development orgs over several decades!

This demonization of the billionaires is uncalled for, many of them do plenty of good for society on balance.</comment>


Keeping Northern Iraq's ancient Nineveh alive and well in NZ - <AUTHOR> http://www.newswire.co.nz/2011/05/keeping-northern-iraqs-ancient-nineveh-alive-and-well-in-new-zealand/ <comment><AUTHOR> hi</comment>


xkcd is now selling reddit schwag, potentially starting geek merch empire - <AUTHOR> http://blog.reddit.com/2009/02/get-your-reddit-and-xkcd-merch-all-in.html

<comment><AUTHOR> Oh, and if you buy a shirt, there's still a chance for a free bobblehead - <USER2> all it takes is 3 hamsters and 1 Richard Stallman: [http://www.reddit.com/r/reddit.com/comments/7zxqk/xkcd_store...](http://www.reddit.com/r/reddit.com/comments/7zxqk/xkcd_store_now_selling_reddit_gear/c07v2l1)

</comment><comment><USER3> "geek merch empire", for now, thinkgeek it's, right?</comment>


The Broadband Gap: Why Is Theirs Cheaper? - <AUTHOR> http://bits.blogs.nytimes.com/2009/03/11/why-is-their-broadband-cheaper/?hp <comment><USER2> It's not just that foreign governments have done "better" things. It's that the US is a much harder place to provide broadband (or any service to). The population density of the US is 31 people per square KM. Compare that to the UK at 246 or South Korea at 498 or the Netherlands at 398 or even Ireland (the least dense European country) at 59 - and, of course, Ireland has crappy internet.

The cost to lay cable in the US is higher by several orders of magnitude. 10 miles of fiber cabling will cost 10x the cost of 1 mile of fiber cabling when both are bought in bulk. The US has inherent higher costs. The answer cannot be, "just do what other countries do".

Since someone will ask: why then can't New Jersey and Massachusetts which have high population densities have better cheap internet? Because companies price things nationally and not relative to the actual cost of providing the service to the customer. Customers revolt when you try to explain to them that they cost more to service and so you're going to charge them more money.

The US will have higher costs for anything that has costs per mile because we have more miles to cover. I'm actually shocked that the US is so competitive in areas like broadband and wireless coverage given that those business have to build a ton more infrastructure to cover the same number of people.

<comment><USER3> I actually blogged about that specific argument a little while ago here: <http://felixcrux.com/posts/mind-gap/>

I am curious about some of the statements you made, because I am not aware of the data supporting them, and yet they could change my analysis completely. Specifically, why do you say that "the cost to lay cable in the US is higher by several orders of magnitude?" Is there a valid reason for why US prices are so much higher, and are they really?

In terms of areas with higher population density having different prices -- I'm not sure that it's entirely true that they can't do that, since here in Canada it's fairly standard practice to vary prices for Internet service by postal code.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> I'm in a rural area with monopoly DSL from Frontier. These days they use repeaters to service people that are more than 18k feet from the CO:

<http://www.flickr.com/photos/paul_houle/3340856649/>

If you're far from the CO they use an ordinary DSL line card that communicates to the repeater, which itself contains both a DSL modem and a line card that talks to your DSL modem.

This strategy is good in the short term, but they'd be better off running a fiber bundle to the repeater farm in the long term.

Cable service terminates about 1.5 miles from my house: everyone who wants TV gets it by satellite, so Time Warner doesn't think it could get enough customers to justify further build-out.

The main trouble w/ Frontier is reliability: the ATM network that hooks up DSL line cards to the network goes down regularly, particularly on the weekends. They've been making noises about a preposterously low 5 GB cap, but haven't enforced it. I wouldn't mind having some reasonable way to pay $1 a GB or so past a certain point, but there's been no talk about that.

Perhaps white space would help, but I've got no faith in wireless broadband systems above 1 GHz. Our area is subdivided into narrow and long valleys that don't get cellphone coverage -- there's an independent ISP that offers tolerable WiMax service around the city of Ithaca, but they're having trouble getting a stable upstream connection and trouble getting high-performance DSL lines to support their infrastructure.

</comment><comment><USER5> Or we could pay private companies to build fiber and then let everyone use it, which exactly how bridges work.

</comment><comment><USER6> The fact that this question keeps coming up without a solid, convincing answer seems to indicate that there is no simple answer. It is most likely a huge combination of factors.This also means that simply copying one aspect of another country's solution is likely to be a disaster.

</comment><comment><USER7> I've always wondered what would happen if local/state governments owned last- mile fiber/copper lines and auctioned off the usage rights to service providers.

</comment><comment><USER8> So is theirs less reliable than ours due to less maintenance of the bits which they are forced to share?

</comment><comment><USER9> Whatever they do in South Korea, do that here (in the US).

</comment><comment><USER10> Thing that excites me about the future: Strong enough signal reception for wireless telecommunications that there's minimal need for physical infrastructure. Monopolies on any form of communication are ugly and greatly slow down world progress.</comment>


Ask HN: How to get started with distributed systems? - <AUTHOR> I have been working in software development for a few years, but, unfortunately, I didn't get enough exposure to problems that require true scalability and high availability. I know there is a wealth of great reading material on these topics, but it feels like I wouldn't truly internalize that knowledge without putting it into real practice.
There is an opinion that the best way to start is to work for an existing project with high scalability requrements. However, having little practical experience, I would personally be worried about either being useless at my job, or worse, dragging my team back by introducing bugs as I learn.
An obvious solution would be to practice writing scalable code on my own, but then, naturally, I would need a performance testing framework/service, which could validate my work, but I still don't seem to find one that can actually help me.
I am curious about how software engineers generally learn to design the efficient, scalable and performant code that powers the services that millions of people use every day.
In advance, I apologize if this question is too trivial for the HN audience. <comment><USER2> As far as testing tools, we have released a distributed testing framework that allows you to write tests (with Mocha, or similar) that run across many machines and it verifies wither your system is correct:

[https://github.com/gundb/panic-server](https://github.com/gundb/panic-server)

In terms of performance I recommend things like Benchmark.js, and I recently did a talk on JS performance here: [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BEqH- oZ4UXI](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BEqH-oZ4UXI) .

Your question is great! Definitely not trivial. :)</comment>


Another Great Presentation by Giles Bowkett at Goruco 08 - <AUTHOR> http://goruco2008.confreaks.com/02_bowkett.html <comment><USER2> Wow, that was a tremendous talk. Initially, I was expecting him to go on for an hour about his pet project and it really turned into a much larger discussion about business on the internet a la DHH's recent talk at startup school.</comment>


The Male Programmer Privilege Checklist - <AUTHOR> http://lafalafu.com/krc/privilege.html

<comment><USER2> What is the goal of this checklist, other than causing a series of individual guilt trips for a gender imbalance that results from societal factors and/or legitimate gender predispositions for/against our field? What are we supposed to _do_? Do these people think we don't wish there were more women in the field?

Also, I'm sure the ensuing discussion is going to resemble at least three other HN discussions.

<comment><USER3> So, if you pay attention to history, you can see that there isn't actually a predisposition which affects this.

In the 1980's, about half[1] of computer scientists were women. Now? 10-20%. Something is being done, and it is being done wrong. So it's not as simple as "They don't want to" or "Society makes them".

[1] I believe it to be about half. However, it might be slightly more or less. Definitely far higher than today.

<comment><USER4> Based on what metrics?

Where are your #s coming from? What are you defining as "a computer scientist"?

<comment><USER3> There was an article in the NYT (I think it may be mentioned above) that discussed this. It appeared on slashdot, and I remember being quite aggravated at comments akin to 'Maybe they just don't want to', as the article explicitly dealth with this.

Also, I believe their metric may have been students, but I am not sure.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> > Never being described as a "hot guy" first and a competent professional > second.

Oh Really?

<http://www.flickr.com/photos/46457493@N00/230535210/>

> Having potential romantic partners assume from your career that you're smart > and well-to-do rather than unattractive and unfeeling.

Unattractive, unfeeling, AND with neck beard is our stereotype.

> Joining in appreciation of the sex object du jour without having to be gay > or bisexual.

This goes the other way too. Johnny Depp doesn't exactly place guys in a less awkward position, you know, because we're all totally comfortable with our sexuality in the male community.

> Listening to speakers refer to an inanimate software construct as "this guy" > without getting distracted.

And ships are referred to as "she"'

All in all, there are some good points hidden among many "grass is always greener" style arguments. Programming is hard work, people are insecure by their nature, and yes, there are gender related issues in the community. Hopefully, the stigma against women programmers will continue to lessen as the stigma against all programmers (bunch of nerds) also subsides.

<comment><USER6> I'd like to add

> Having your desk near the entrance to your office without visitors assuming > you're the receptionist.

I'm male, I've had the desk near the entrance and guess what - I got treated like a recptionist too. It's not gender, it's that your the first person people come across.

<comment><USER6> also

>Having interests that are unstereotypical for your gender and getting seen as cool and progressive rather than freaky and asexual for it.

A male (programmer or otherwise) with interests that are unstereotypical for a male is rarely seen as "cool and progressive" - being seen as freaky and gay is far more likely.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> I think that in a healthy society the point of someone talking about things that make them feel uncomfortable is that you have an opportunity to spend some time thinking about how what they are saying applies to that society rather than telling them the one hundred ways how what they just said can't possibly be true.

If we don't take those opportunities to think about what makes someone else uncomfortable (maybe because it makes us uncomfortable ourselves?) then, over time, the people with the willingness to speak out about something which could be improved simply leave and an opportunity to improve that society vanishes with them.

Which is a great sadness because I think we've all got our own stories about things we don't like about the software biz and I think many of us feel a little bit hopeless about ever being able to change some of that...

...but discouraging folk willing to talk about things that can improve, even if it's not something we find important ourselves, means that it's a little less likely that any other conversation about improvement is going to get a hearing either.

For the record, I'd like to see more women and other types of human than white&male&alpha in software myself because over fifteen years of doing this I have found that the most toxic development environments (high levels of stress, distrust, dishonesty, coercion etc.) have also been the environments with the lowest human diversity.

It is not difficult to scare away people who are different from you or people who you expect to silently put up with problems caused by your point of view.

But the problem is, as that happens, without differences your society slowly stops having anything to communicate about and without communication it becomes dumber and without intelligence it eventually becomes a target for attack and takeover by some other failed community with an eye to your resources. (Sun / Oracle anyone ? ;-D)

</comment><comment><USER8> Interestingly, she possesses this bias as well:

"If you're married, having people take you to lunch without them speculating on how your spouse would feel about them taking you to lunch."

She is assuming here that the person "taking them out to lunch" is also male. If the offerer were female and the offered were male and married, there definitely _would_ be speculation as to his fidelity, perhaps moreso than with the roles reversed.

<comment><USER9> I'm a guy.

<comment><USER8> Sorry, I was using the politically-correct singular-second-person-of-unknown- gender pronoun (I couldn't tell from the post that you were male.)

People don't seem to care as much when you assume a girl on the Internet is a guy, but assume a guy is a girl and everyone is up in arms. (This may be a point toward your post.)

<comment><USER9> _puzzled_

My name, as the author, is at the top. Do you know a lot of women named "Tim"? (Kake, the original author, is a woman, but I contributed that particular item. Yes, I know that's not obvious from the list, which is why I clarified.)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> As a man, I'd like to point out that I really can't help sexualizing basically anything. Studies have shown that straight men will ogle other men if they've got chest. Frankly, I don't like how it can hang over everything either, but I do my best to minimize it. If anyone can actually propose a solution to this "problem", great, but otherwise can we collectively move on?

<comment><AUTHOR> I'd just like to point out that I also am a man and I don't have your problem. I have the capability of keeping my professional work environment _professional_.

<comment><USER11> Look, here's the deal. If you are a man, you have to actively move the eyes away, but the pull is always there. Now that does not mean you cannot be professional, but it does mean you have to constantly and actively choose to be so.

A woman who dresses provocatively in the office is a distraction. Far be it from me to tell women how to dress, but most women do not understand the effect they have on men, and of those who do, very few understand that men are, essentially, helpless when it comes to their reaction (even, as I said, if it is a reaction that they suppress). Heterosexual men who do NOT have this aspect of male nature are in the vast minority, although thy do exist. It is a part of being male, and as such, I refuse to apologize for it.

<comment><USER12> What exactly does "a woman who dresses provocatively" distract you from? I can see how it might be enjoyable, but I'm not sure how that would prevent you from doing work. I also don't see why you can't keep those thoughts to yourself, just like you don't make fun of "a provocatively stupid guy" to their face.

On the other side of the coin, if you work closely with 10 other people of the opposite sex, it confuses me as to why you wouldn't think one of those people would be attracted to you. Who else would they be attracted to?

<comment><USER8> It's not an active distraction: there is a certain type of woman (a minority, but a very vocal one) that will get pissed off when a man's visual autonomic systems examine them differently than they examine men. A man's eyes are doing something passive that he's completely unaware of; this woman is actively watching the man's eyes to see where he's looking in order to decide whether to be offended by his "distractedness."

<comment><USER12> I guess the next logical question is "who cares if they are offended". People get offended when they find out that I am an atheist. It's their problem, though, not mine.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> Prissy social correctors are no less annoying than boors.

<comment><USER14> "Prissy" social correctors are at least smart enough to critically analyze the world around them. Boors are completely clueless. I'd take the former over the latter any day of the week.

<comment><USER13> _"Prissy" social correctors are at least smart enough to critically analyze the world around them._

That's not true in my observation. Most adopt a prefab ideology that they try to impose on the world around them. They like to label this "critical analysis" (or that old stalwart, "thinking for yourself"), but it isn't: if it were, their ideas and positions and tone wouldn't be so predictable. Actually, trying to impose a rigid ideology on others is a large part of what makes them prissy. The OP seems to me a nice example.

<comment><USER14> That's entirely your opinion. Say what you want about the list, the author put in at least enough critical thought to compile it. So far, you've insulted the author and dismissed her (him?), but you haven't addressed any of the arguments in the list.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> <http://xkcd.com/385/>

</comment><comment><USER16> "Not having to explain why the term "gentlemen" doesn't include you. " - So no "Hi gentleman", fair enough

"# Listening to speakers refer to an inanimate software construct as "this guy" without getting distracted. " - So no "Hi guys", fair enough

"Not being the special case ("hi guys and girls, I guess, too, if you want to get really technical about it!!") " - So no "Hi guys and girls", err..

<comment><USER9> The second point was meant to be about inanimate software constructs: for example, "This guy jumps to that guy without pushing a new stack frame."

The difference between "hi guys and girls" and "hi guys and girls, I guess, too, if you want to get really technical about it!!" is that the second sentence goes out of its way to call attention to the Other-ness of the marginalized group. But why not circumvent the issue entirely and use a gender-neutral term like "folks", "everyone", or (depending on the formality of the occasion) "distinguished colleagues"? It perplexes me that people who have no trouble writing a compiler or debugging device drivers apparently find it so difficult to phrase a simple sentence in a way that doesn't exclude anyone.

<comment><USER16> I see your point but guys has come to become gender neutral. Sure a guy is still male but "you guys" is anyone.

<comment><USER9> On this point, I recommend Douglas Hofstadter's "Person Paper on Purity in Language": <http://www.cs.virginia.edu/~evans/cs655/readings/purity.html>

Hofstadter makes the same point (that words that claim to be both gendered and gender-neutral are never the latter) in a less snarky way in Chapter 7 of his book _Metamagical Themas_, entitled "Changes in Default Words and Images, Engendered by Rising Consciousness". You can find it on Google Books.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER17> The first programmer was a woman.

Perhaps a better checklist would be "actual reasons why the average human, without regard to gender, does not enter technical fields"

</comment><comment><USER18> > Listening to speakers refer to an inanimate software construct as "this guy" > without getting distracted.

I wasn't sure why this particular item was included, but I suppose I too am momentarily distracted when I hear a woman personify an inanimate object as 'she'. I mean, I understand it's a perfectly reasonable thing to do, but there's just that split second where the world seems to turn inside-out and I have to recollect my thoughts.

I wouldn't call it a Male Privilege, though.

<comment><USER19> I find the whole anthropomorphising abstract objects to be an annoying and distracting trait, anyway, whether they're saying "he" or "she". (My mind is saying inside "It's an IT, damn it!")

</comment></comment><comment><USER20> Female Programmer Privilege Checklist:

Guilting every male programmer for both real and imagined slights.

The beauty of startups is that no one cares who or what you are, so long as you can deliver. So stop complaining , AND BUILD SOMETHING ALREADY.

<comment><USER21> Sure, "so long as you can deliver". Are we going to be treated equally when we fail? Even worse, are we going to be treated as representatives of half the species (someone's already linked to that XKCD cartoon). It may be paranoia, but it doesn't help.

PS. Mostly I try not to guilt my co-workers about stuff. I don't think it makes them or me any more productive.

<comment><USER22> "Are we going to be treated equally when we fail?"

I don't get this. You think men don't get problems if they fail? And why do you even ask, how about trying it out? It sounds as if you don't even want to try it because of all the prejudice.

<comment><USER21> Well, I've not been employed all that long, no-one's waved a study at me, and I don't know so many girls in my field that I can figure this out just by talking about it to other people (I'd have to talk to an equal number of boys as well, but for some reason they're a lot easier to find).

I already have one (fairly minor) failure under my belt. I seem to have got away with it. I'm still in my job, still working on the same kind of stuff I was before, and no-one told me not to bother my pretty little head about that bit because I'm clearly not so good at things like that.

Yes, I think everyone gets problems if they fail. But my worry is about second chances, and blocking off areas of computing for other people.

Someone I know made an off-hand comment about every girl who has worked in this department has worked on the UI. I don't know if they've ever had a girl on the build team. I don't know if they've ever had a girl working on the really low-level stuff. There certainly aren't any at the moment. Is there an underlying current of 'girls are better at the touchy-feely UI stuff'? Do girls overall really tend to work better with UIs? Am I comparing teams with a high turnover with teams with a low one? Am I trying to generalise from too little data again?

So, let's have a hypothetical opportunity for me to go and work on some arbitrary low-level stuff. Maybe it's to do with networking protocols. And maybe for one reason or another I'm blindingly obviously no good at it whatsoever. Will this affect my ability to go into unrelated areas with similarly few past examples of successful ladies later? Will it affect Alice (who knows not just about networking protocols, but also basic cryptography) when she is hired next week? Will she then have to work harder than Bob to persuade everyone that she is competent in that area? Maybe I should play it safe and work on something that is less challenging and that I know I can succeed at. After all, if Alice fails as well, then Eve may be looked over entirely. And that would make me feel really guilty. So the penalty for failure is higher.

Of course, there's a good chance there is no bias whatsoever. And I'm fairly likely to take a few risks. But you don't need actual bias for this to have an effect. If there is enough fear of bias you'll end up with too much risk- averse behaviour, and thus under-performing ladies.

<comment><USER22> "If there is enough fear of bias you'll end up with too much risk-averse behaviour"

But why start out with the fear of bias? For what it's worth, there are a lot of bad male programmers. I even suspect most programmers think that most other programmers are bad. And for men, there can be bias, too, like "we have always been disappointed by coders who did not study to university level" or "coders from India" or "Java developers" or whatever.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER23> _Having potential romantic partners assume from your career that you're smart and well-to-do rather than unattractive and unfeeling._

Res Ipsa Loquitur. This is called "confirmation bias."

<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Confirmation_bias>

</comment><comment><USER24> Some of the things that have been added to the list since it was posted to HN are actually obnoxious:

 _Laughing at jokes like this (<http://codetojoy.blogspot.com/2007/08/closures-are-hot.html>) because women holding bumper stickers about closures is funny in the same way pictures of cats "reading" calculus books is funny, rather than wondering whether your colleagues see you in the same way as those women._

I do think the Code To Joy thing is funny. Why? Because the discussion about closures in java (so far as i am aware) has left the realm of technical discussion, and now is just gridlocked. The opinion on closures of women at bars (however well informed), at this point is just as relevant to me as other discussions on the pros and cons of including closures.

It's not funny because girls are stupid, or because being hot precludes one's knowledge of pros and cons of closures. I would not expect random strangers at bars (be they male or female) to have an informed opinion about closures in java. The fact that Code To Joy picked only pictures of women to post may be sexist in the sense that they show a bias, but i don't think that the joke is demeaning to women.

</comment><comment><USER25> Chief among those privileges not in the checklist: attendance at Wellesley College!

<comment><USER9> Interestingly enough, the maintainer of the checklist (me) is a man who went to Wellesley.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> I find this kind of thing absolutely nauseating, divisive, and thoroughly unhelpful.

I'm sure it makes you feel good, Mr Ultra Feminist, but you're not advancing "your" cause whatsoever by trying to guilt people - and with such weak, whiny examples, too.

You just make women look weak and whiny. (And, by extension, yourself, since you're not even a woman.)

That's unproductive and leads to - guess what! - women being not taken seriously, and being avoided because well-meaning men will assume everything they say will cause offense, and women not getting hired or picked because they make everyone else uncomfortable.

Isn't that ironic?

You also treat all women the same when you presume to speak for them. That's just more plain old sexism dressed up in a suit of righteousness.

I hate people grouping me with all other breast-and-vagina people, and assuming I like them, and agree with them, and share their agenda... and support them speaking on _my_ behalf, as if we are all alike.

If you want to create change, you have to stop whining, stop laying blame, stop pointing fingers and saying "YOU DON'T KNOW WHAT IT'S LIKE WHEN THEY CALL OBJECTS 'GUYS'!!!!" and do useful, productive things. This is not it.

For what it's worth, men in IT are more likeable than women, because when men fail, they don't blame it on other people's oppression of them due to their sexual equipment.

<comment><USER22> My favorite was from another article where they claimed that all programming languages were tailored towards male ways of thinking. If that would be the case, why not set out to create a programing language tailored towards the female way of thinking. I for one would be really curious to see that.

<comment><AUTHOR> Just out of curiosity, would you happen to have a link to the article? I'm genuinely curious as to what makes a programming language "male oriented".

<comment><USER22> I tried to yahoo it, but did not find it. It came up during the recent "male vs female programmers" surge.</comment></comment></comment></comment>


Show HN: We've created Tutanota, an encrypted email App (GPLv3) - <AUTHOR> https://tutanota.com

<comment><USER2> Thanks, will create an account. Always good to know that there are open source alternatives!

</comment><comment><AUTHOR> You can try out our beta-app by sending your email address for the Google Playstore to email@example.com

All data in Tutanota is encrypted with the user's password. With Tutanota we want to protect our human right to privacy, particularly as we know most services save their user's data unencrypted. We would very much like to hear your thoughts and recommendations!</comment>


Show HN: Headless CMS for Google Firestore and Firebase - <AUTHOR> https://www.pushtable.com <comment><AUTHOR> The goal here was to simplify the UX of content management systems. I always hated the fact that most CMS systems is just layers and layers of forms to fill out. I think a table or spreadsheet interface can give a more direct connection with the underlying data and it allows you to edit the data and data models all in one view intuitively.

I have to thank the Firebase team for all the support. The project is also built entirely using serverless stack using Google Cloud Functions.

<comment><USER2> What's pricing like? Can't see a pricing page...</comment></comment>


Show HN: LegalSite – Free privacy compliance for up to 1k users - <AUTHOR> https://www.legalsite.co <comment><USER2> "You agree that LegalSite is not a law firm and is not providing you with legal advice. The information provided on this website and by the Legal Pages and templates provided by LegalSite do not, and are not intended to, constitute legal advice."

Given the potential risks of non-compliance, I would think you want legal advice here. LegalSite, if you would like a privacy lawyer to ensure your product is compliant in the U.S. and abroad, please contact me.</comment>


What the....? - <AUTHOR> http://googleblog.blogspot.in/2013/06/what.html

<comment><USER2> This is 4 months old. Why post it now?</comment>


What Ethereum Does Next - <AUTHOR> https://decryptmedia.com/4398/lane-rettig-interview-ethereum-foundation-constantinople-web-assembly-ewasm <comment><USER2> Changing to WASM won't fix Ethereum's security problems if it's still Turing- complete.</comment>