Dropbox Could Be A Bargain At An $8 Billion Valuation - <AUTHOR> http://techcrunch.com/2013/11/18/dropbox-could-be-a-bargain-at-an-8-billion-valuation/

<comment><USER4> This seems like a very convoluted way of coming to the valuation. Revenue != profit. I can easily create business that generates $1bn/month in revenue by selling dollars for 90 cents. Dropbox may be worth $8bn, but surely it makes more sense to assess the valuation based on the growth in profitability?

<comment><USER5> Indeed. Especially given that Dropbox uses Amazon for the actual storage and the massive scale, I wonder what % of that revenue ends up in Amazon's pockets.

<comment><USER6> Do they still? I would have thought that by this stage they'd have started building their own (at least mini-) data centers.

<comment><USER7> Their traffic is not even close to Netflix and yet, Netflix runs on AWS.

<comment><USER8> Netflix also has a very different use case. Building a data center that can meet the storage needs of Dropbox seems _much_ simpler than building one that can meet the compute/bandwidth needs of Netflix.

<comment><USER9> hah

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> The Dropbox board obviously feels that an $8 Billion valuation is appropriate. As rational actors, they want to raise money at the highest valuation possible. They have more information than any TechCrunch blogger, so I highly doubt Dropbox is undervalued.

</comment><comment><USER11> It's incredible how cynical everyone is in this thread about the valuation of a company that actually MAKES MONEY and how optimistic people were about the Snapchat valuation in the thread from last week, a company that hasn't made a dime.

It seems the only way to really get a massive valuation as a "company" is to make sure you don't start making any actual money, otherwise people will stop harping about "growth is the only thing that matters, this valuation is accurate" and switch to "profit is the only thing that matters, this valuation is ridiculous."

<comment><USER8> Well, when you have no profit to speak of there's nothing to anchor the discussion. The hopeful talk about "growth" with the hazy implication that the company has a "profit" switch they will eventually flip into the "on" position. The cynical see a storm of speculation with no concrete anchor and walk out on what they see as a waste of time.

Which, I guess, is a long way of saying "I agree with you". I think my theory does at least fit the patterns of conversation, though.

<comment><USER12> By that standard, how do you justify Amazon's $170B market cap, given it's notoriously low profit margins?

<comment><USER8> I don't think your comparison makes sense. When Amazon was at the stage Dropbox is at now investors were taking a risk I thought was insane. That risk paid off, but there are countless examples that didn't. Amazon now practically owns their space and has inexplicable license from the market to reinvest in infrastructure or outright avoid profit. Few other companies are in this position, so comparing valuations of Amazon and Dropbox is assuming many things I wouldn't agree to.

My point was about _why_ people get cynical about a company that is actively making money but are more lenient on ones that aren't. When profit is an uninteresting point in the discussion, it tends to not be discussed.

<comment><USER12> > That risk paid off, but there are countless examples that didn't

If every risk paid off, there's no such thing as a risk. These investors are making the calculation that DB has some % chance of being in a similarly dominant position as Amazon is today.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> Twitter's and Dropbox's business models couldn't be more different. Heck, everything about their businesses is dissimilar. This comparison is idiotic.

<comment><USER14> With all of twitter and dropbox and youtube I think about how with ubiquitous IPv6 they might get replaced with P2P protocols. A fancy OceanStore client could eventually do everything dropbox does.

All these operations seem so vulnerable to innovation that is quite likely in the next eight years. I'm skeptical about the super high valuations.

<comment><USER15> IPv4 and UPnP allows most of the P2P scenarios IPv6 does. Please clue me in as to how a P2P system is going to maintain always-on backups/storage of my personal photos.

<comment><USER14> > how a P2P system is going to maintain always-on backups/storage of my > personal photos.

A client to something like OceanStore.

<comment><USER15> I read the first paragraphs of the overview[1]. It sounds like a federated service that the end-user would still pay for and treat like AWS. The P2P aspect is inter-company federation of storage (so like AWS and Azure could cooperate).

This isn't P2P in the common sense (end-user devices aren't talking to each other). And it doesn't eliminate the need for AWS-esque providers, even if their backend happens to be federated among multiple companies. To the end- user, there's zero difference.

1: [http://oceanstore.cs.berkeley.edu/info/overview.html](http://oceanstore.cs.berkeley.edu/info/overview.html)

<comment><USER14> There's no need for anything like AWS or any payments. You offer some of your bandwidth and storage to the P2P network and get bandwidth and storage in return. Any machine on the network can participate. It has nothing to do with cloud providers. It's quite analogous to bittorrent.

<comment><USER15> Right, so in other words, it doesn't help most users in any way, shape, or form. It's no replacement for AWS or Dropbox or anything of the sort. I'm not going to run it on my tablets. My kids aren't going to run it on their laptops.

Edit: Even the overview says "The providers automatically buy and sell capacity and coverage among themselves, transparently to the users." It's clear from the overview that it's meant as a way to achieve a better availability than a single company, not as some magical free P2P replacement.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> The analysis sounds a bit absurd to me. It does not matter if Dropbox is making $1B or $0.5B, what matters is how much profit are they making and if that method of making profits is scalable.

If a company that is making $1B in yearly revenues is raising a paltry sum of $250m through investments I am not sure if they see themselves in good financial situation.

<comment><AUTHOR> True, a better way to ascertain value is by factoring in the profits, which is why you have the P/E ratios. However, it is not uncommon to use revenues to calculate value as well.

It is also important to note that they are not making $1B yet, but have just hit a run-rate of $1B. Having $250M in cash is a different thing.

</comment></comment><comment><USER17> I don't know much of anything about company valuations, but in terms of what the following two companies mean to _me_ and what I believe they means to the _world_ : if Dropbox is valued at $8B, I no longer have any reservations whatsoever with Tesla's valuation based on its stock price. (I do recognize that its price is being corrected this month, but I suspect it will eventually trend back upward.)

From my point of view, Tesla brings me at least ten times the value of Dropbox. I don't even think Dropbox represents a problem that should exist long-term assuming a re-disintermediated Internet, which is where I am optimistic we're heading eventually. Storing and sharing my data using someone else's service is retrograde.

</comment><comment><USER18> Social networks are winner take all markets, whereas Dropbox is not in such a market. Twitter, Facebook, and LinkedIn are all trading at 20-40 times revenue based on the fact that they enjoy strong network effects.

<comment><USER19> Dropbox is very social. Go see how a lot of students in University share files with each other. A lot of them just assume that the other person has a Dropbox account. It's certainly how teams keep their projects aligned.

</comment></comment><comment><USER20> Anybody have any idea what the distribution is here for consumer vs business?

I've literally never heard of anyone, company or individual, paying for Dropbox.

<comment><USER8> You're right to doubt your personal evidence at this point. Almost everyone I know who _has_ a Dropbox account pays for it.

<comment><USER20> Ok, are they businesses or individuals? What are they using it for?

<comment><USER19> Once you start to share files with a lot of other people, you very, very quickly use up the initial quota that you get with your free account.

That's the Dropbox strategy - if you use it as an individual, you probably won't use that much. But, once you start using it in a social way - <USER2> quickly need to pay for a pro account.

<comment><USER21> They give out so much free space, right now I have 55GB of free space for life. Then again, I'm not the typical user; I've visited Dropbox HQ a couple times, gone to their recruiting events, and know some Dropbox engineers.

<comment><USER19> Yes - you would be atypical. I'm guessing that 99% of Dropbox Users have < 5GB of free space based on my rather geeky attempts at adding free space to my account and eventually ending up with 1.51 GB free space in addition to the initial 2 GB.

<comment><USER22> >install dropbox on VM

>snapshot

>10 minutes of referral link + revert

>???

>45GB of free space for life

<comment><USER8> And you believe this is something a _typical_ user is capable of, let alone that they would do?

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER23> Valuing any company by comparing it to Twitter, a company many consider to be crazily overvalued, seems somewhat inaccurate... I'm sure the Dropbox board has a better idea of what the company is actually worth.

</comment><comment><USER24> Considering that Dropbox are completely dependant on Amazon for their service and overnight Amazon could sink them "ooops your instances just got deleted, oops"

8 billion is a bit of a joke

Now if they owned their own equipment in their own datacenters...

<comment><USER25> That would however permanently damage Amazon's AWS business, which Bezos believes could become their largest revenue generator. Amazon and Dropbox aren't even competitors at the moment. Very unlikely.

<comment><USER24> You would think an 8billion dollar business would be able to afford a server or two (or datacenter or two) and not be reliant completely on someone else

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER26> Are there not several DropBox clones on GitHub?

And several competitors already there (and something called Box that is less consumer orientated?)

Add in the switching costs are low to non-existent (it is just git isn't it?) - surely their competitive most is almost non-existent - in which case their profits are going to constantly eaten by competitors.

What is it I am missing?

<comment><USER19> The lock-in with DropBox is huge - I have eleven shared folders that I use to keep other people up to date with files, and I have never had a request to share files with anybody on anything other than Dropbox.

I trust dropbox. Dropbox has a great track record (with me). Dropbox is installed on all my tablets/smartphones/desktops/laptops. And, at $100/year, it's cheap enough that I'm not really inspired to bother price shopping.

This is clearly a case where Dropbox came in and won - and now it's time for them to invest aggressively, and make sure nobody else enters this market.

Now - I am not saying that people aren't using other systems - <USER3> Microsoft and Google have their products, and both Google Drive and Microsoft Skydrive are excellent products, that are technically comparable to what dropbox is offering. Apple's icloud is just annoying for knowledge workers, so I'm not going to include that in the same class - but, in terms of a generalized folder Sync Product - Dropbox has won.

</comment></comment><comment><USER27> Can we please redefine what bargain means?

</comment><comment><USER28> When was the last time techcrunch posted something worth reading?</comment>


Should All Research Papers Be Free? - <AUTHOR> http://www.nytimes.com/2016/03/13/opinion/sunday/should-all-research-papers-be-free.html <comment><USER3> If it is funded by government in any way (public university, research project) I think it is borderline defrauding the tax payer that the research funded by tax-money is not free by default. Since close to all research is government funded in some way, shape or form...my answer would be yes in the general case.

I think the long term answer is decentralized publishing. Publish everything you do on a university or private website and let others decide if it's good or not when they want to cite it instead of a peer review that is set in stone. I think people reading papers deciding if they want to cite you are smart enough to figure out if it's good research or not. The peer review process is overrated (and quite often suffers from insider networks). If you decentralize publishing you can also have other researchers upvote a paper to basically approve of the academic standards in the paper. I also think the static nature of papers is a problem. I'd much rather cite a specific version of the paper. I'm thinking about git and pull requests along the lines of "want to cite, fixed layout" or "new research disproves this" etc.

<comment><USER4> I don't have a ton of time to search each university's publication database or every 2nd tier research team's private home-grown web site.

Journals provide a filtering intermediary that helps me better use my time. Hopefully I can figure out which editorial teams are going to publish good vs ok vs crap research and pick from those, relying on the curative capabilities of their staff to provide interesting and useful reading.

Journals should still want to publish great research, and publicly funded research should still be available to the public. Maybe there's indeed a more relaxed middle-ground to "just put it all out there and hope folks find and share it." We all agree the journal industry needs some help, but I don't think society is well-served by completely decimating its economic model.

<comment><USER5> > I don't have a ton of time to search each university's publication database > or every 2nd tier research team's private home-grown web site. Journals > provide a filtering intermediary that helps me better use my time.

I don't have time to scavenge through all the tech news every day, but that's partly why I visit HN. Also, I use Google when I'm looking for some specific topic.

In other words, filtering can be done perfectly well by communities and third- party organizations.

<comment><USER6> One difference between HN and, say, math is that in this community most readers are probably interested in at least a sizable minority of the topics that get posted here, whereas in a hypothetical community of mathematicians discussing papers, I find it hard to believe that most people will be interested in more than about 1% of the literature.

<comment><USER7> Then you just use more specialized content aggregators or more specific searches. To make an analogy to reddit - rather than following r/math, you'd follow a specific topic like r/compling.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> Full disclosure: I'm a founder of a company called Scholastica that provides software that helps journals peer-review and publish open-access content online. One of our journal clients, Discrete Analysis, is linked to in the NYT article.

It is incredibly obvious that journal content shouldn't cost as much as it does.

\- Scholars write the content for free

\- Scholars do the peer-review for free

\- All the legacy publishers do is take the content and paywall PDF files

Can you believe it? Paywalling. PDFs. For billions.

Of course the publishers say they create immense value by typesetting said PDFs, but as technologists, we can clearly see that this is bunk.

There's a comment in this thread that mentions the manual work involved in taking Word files and getting them into PDFs, XML, etc. While that is an issue, which you could consider a technology problem, it definitely doesn't justify the incredible cost of journal content that has been created and peer- reviewed at no cost. Keep in mind that journal prices have risen much faster than the consumer price index since the 80s (1).

The future is very clear, academics do the work as they've always done and share the content with the public at a very low cost via the internet.

PS. If you want a peek into how the publishers see the whole Sci-Hub kerfuffle, check out this post from one of their industry blogs - the comment section is a doozy: [http://scholarlykitchen.sspnet.org/2016/03/02/sci-hub- and-th...](http://scholarlykitchen.sspnet.org/2016/03/02/sci-hub-and-the-four- horsemen-of-the-internet/)

1\. [https://cdn1.vox- cdn.com/thumbor/jtj2dzMfklULQipRZt_3xaLoFxU...](https://cdn1.vox- cdn.com/thumbor/jtj2dzMfklULQipRZt_3xaLoFxU=/800x0/filters:no_upscale\(\)/cdn0.vox- cdn.com/uploads/chorus_asset/file/6143539/fig-increases.0.png)

<comment><USER9> Why are you under the impression scholars write the papers for free? That is what researchers are employed at universities to do ... Yes, it is not like publishing a book but these papers are not really like books anyway.

<comment><USER10> They're not getting paid by the publisher.

<comment><USER9> No we don't get paid by the publisher but we are paid to write papers. I can be downvoted for being correct but it doesn't change anything. Researchers are paid by research institution to do research for which product are papers.

<comment><USER11> You're being downvoted because this technicality / POV has no real bearing on the main question and doesn't add to the discussion.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> I feel especially strongly that papers that result from taxpayer-funded research should be free.

<comment><USER13> Are you, as a taxpayer, willing to pay (your share of) the extra $1000 or so per paper that it would take?

<comment><USER14> In CS, conferences (which organise peer review and pretty much all publish open-access proceedings) hardly ever charge more than something like $200 for attendance, and this also pays for the conference venue, logistics and a slush fund of financial support for student attendees. Why would the peer review and publication part cost more in other fields?

It seems much more likely that PLOS simply charges the "$1000 or so" because they can, and it's easy enough to piggyback on the traditional publisher narrative that they are actually providing this amount of added value.

<comment><USER15> PLOS is a non-profit, and employs full-time professional editors.

People forget the weird workflow in any journal that does biomedical work (including most of the PLOS family): manuscripts are submitted as Word files, then converted to XML and reformatted by a semi-automated process. There's manual labor involved to format the references and cross-references, mark up tables and figures, and proofread the HTML, PDF, and XML versions. The XML is then submitted to PubMed Central for archival storage.

There's a lot of manual labor involved in the profess. You can't just hand- wave away and say "peer review is provided for free" and assume the rest of the process is free.

<comment><USER16> For all that matters , a badly formatted "times 12" word document is just as fine as a "polished" research article. This is science we are talking about, it's not an infomercial. Besides, all journals have strict and long guidelines that all presumbissions follow. I just don't buy the manual labor argument.

<comment><USER17> I've read enough journal articles that I've come to appreciate proper formatting, rather than "Time New Roman 12" Word documents or "Generic LaTeX Template #17"

<comment><USER18> DJB got a quite different view on journal provided LaTeX styles : [https://cr.yp.to/writing/visual.html](https://cr.yp.to/writing/visual.html)

Nice value added by the MSRI style right here.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER19> When I finished my PhD at Northwestern, part of the university's procedure involved going to the ProQuest Web site. ProQuest is a journal and dissertation publishing company.

They asked if I wanted my dissertation to be available, free of charge, to anyone interested in reading it.

Clicking on "yes, I want to make it available for free" would cost me something like $800.

Clicking on "no, I'll let you charge people to see it" would cost me nothing.

Having just finished, and being in debt to do so, it shouldn't come as a surprise that I wasn't rushing to pay even more. So now, if people want to see my dissertation, they have to pay -- or be part of an institution that pays an annual fee to ProQuest. (BTW, e-mail me if you want a copy.)

My guess is that it's similar with other journals. And while professors have more than PhD students, they have limited enough research funds that they'll hold their nose, save the money, and keep things behind a paywall.

Which is totally outrageous. It's about time that this change, and I'm happy to see what looks like the beginning of the end on this front.

<comment><USER20> There is an alternative: you host your thesis (and/or papers) on your own website, or you put them on arXiv.org. It's called self-archiving and it's allowed by most publishers. Funny thing is: making your papers available for free also increases the number of citations, something academics really care about.

<comment><USER21> And another alternative at some universities is the university thesis open archive itself. In Northern Europe I'm told some universities won't even give you your diploma if you don't upload your thesis in their open archive.

Frankly, every university in the world should have an open archive for thesis (and mutualized is even better). It's just the continuation of keeping thesis copies at the university library.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER22> Some things, like dissemination of knowledge, are truly in the interest of all humanity. It seems criminal that a few hundred people at the publishing houses should benefit at the expense of billions' welfare.

<comment><USER23> While it is the scientists who are writing the papers and editing them, the journals provide a valuable service as intermediaries between the scientists. Whether this service is best provided "for free" or for profit is another question. In some fields, the leading journals are already published by not- for-profit organizations such as the ACM, but I am not sure that they are doing a better job than Springer or Elsevier.

In a language that's understandable to the HN crowd, journals:scientists are as VCs:(founders + investors).

<comment><AUTHOR> Does ACM sell individual papers? If so, what's the price?

<comment><USER24> It's about the same as everyone else: about 15 USD per paper, e.g.

[https://dl.acm.org/purchase.cfm?id=2756548&CFID=761526954&CF...](https://dl.acm.org/purchase.cfm?id=2756548&CFID=761526954&CFTOKEN=47826433)

They also have a somewhat restrictive licensing on their software:

[http://www.acm.org/publications/policies/softwarecrnotice](http://www.acm.org/publications/policies/softwarecrnotice)

This part is kind of weird, as they have a noncommercial clause on their copyrighted algorithms, which makes them non-free.

On a slightly different note, I was somewhat saddened by how the International Lisp Conference talks were recorded but unavailable because the ACM will not allow their publication.

<comment><AUTHOR> How the hell can that be "non-profit"? Where is the money going? Free conferences in Dubai?

<comment><USER25> The ACM publishes annual reports with a high level breakdown of their finances. The most recent one is here:

[https://www.acm.org/binaries/content/assets/about/annual- rep...](https://www.acm.org/binaries/content/assets/about/annual-reports- current-fy/acmfy15.pdf)

The finances are on pages 12 and 13. The short version: they're spending money on all the things you'd expect, but they seem to be slightly cash flow positive and have accrued around $100m in net assets.

<comment><AUTHOR> What I'm wondering about is the economic justification for charging $15 per article copy. Other than "we can", I mean.

<comment><USER26> The usual "economic justification" for such things is that people are paying it.

In reality, very few people pay the individual article prices. The real market is in site licensing, as it were. The individual article prices are probably set to support the sales story on these institutional access licenses, not the other way around.

<comment><USER25> I think you can also get access to the ACM library via membership. When I was in college I paid for a student membership, I think its was $25/year or something generally reasonable. Probably a better value proposition than my actual CS degree, not that its a great point for comparison.

<comment><USER26> That's true. Many of these sorts of memberships are at least a few hundred dollars when you are no longer a student, so they add up pretty quickly (but maybe have tax credits).

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER27> All everything 'should' be free. At least, that which is not scarce.

The correct question to ask is 'can' all research papers be free - does the world continue to spin, will research still happen, will we still progress, if they are free?

The only reason we even have this debate to begin with is because the producers of this information require scarce/controlled resources in order to survive.

<comment><USER28> It's not exactly post-scarcity, it's just zero marginal cost. It's true that, given the product has already been created and has zero marginal cost, it "should" be free. But for setting the expectations that producers of future products have about what compensation they'll receive we can't simply say it should be free.

<comment><USER29> The marginal units absolutely can be free, just pay for the research itself. Fixed cost for fixed work.

<comment><USER30> That is how private research is funded, say at Microsoft Research. You agree on "deliverables" and get your money for each stage of your work. Deliverables include tech reports, source code, prototypes and things like that. You get nothing after your stop working on the project. For producers, i.e. researchers, this scheme is not worse than grants and getting money for published articles, citations etc., they don't get money for years after the publication anyway.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER31> I think Elbakyan should do everything to make sci-hub easily replaceable. Once it's hosted on multiple places it would be much harder to shut down.

Maybe completely free research papers are not the future but there should be a Spotify for research papers that is affordable for everyone. I hope that Elbakyan will reach her goal and ultimately change the whole industry.

</comment><comment><USER32> Taxpayer funded research must be free to read.

Also, a research that has been at least partially tax-funded resulting in a publication, must not be usable as an necessary ingredient for a commercial patent.

That is, a patent can include this type of research, but it cannot be a 'necessity' for the patent to be viable. Or, if the particular research, is necessary for a given patent to be viable, the patent must grant no-fees, no- commercial-strings-attached use.

This allows a corporation to establish patents as means to protect itself, while allowing the tax funded research to be used by others without commercial strings attached

</comment><comment><USER33> Something I'd like to see here: results published in research papers aggregated and released as open data.

There must be a lot of interesting meta-analyses that aren't getting done because the necessary data is locked away behind paywalls, and usually not in an easily machine readable format into the bargain.

</comment><comment><USER34> > "The real people to blame are the leaders of the scientific community — > Nobel scientists, heads of institutions, the presidents of universities — > who are in a position to change things but have never faced up to this > problem in part because they are beneficiaries of the system," said Dr. > Eisen. "University presidents love to tout how important their scientists > are because they publish in these journals."

For me, this is the cog of the problem. People who are in a position to change should push for it.

</comment><comment><USER35> There must be thousands of people who could use free access to research papers: PhDs and Masters now in industry trying to apply the state of the art, engineers who have worked their way into a subject, concerned citizens who want to read the source material.

I am a PhD who'd love to be working in industry, but I'm shit scared that once I leave the gates of the university I'll simply lose touch with the state of the art because the papers will no longer be accessible.

<comment><USER36> Many university library systems have programs where alumni (and sometimes outsiders) can purchase access to their resources for a yearly fee. If that's unavailable to you or cost prohibitive, most academic libraries are open to the public. When I worked at an engineering library for a large university, a good part of my day was spent helping working professional access these kinds of resources.

</comment></comment><comment><USER37> Yes. They should.

It is in the best interests of _humanity_ to make the knowledge obtained through research available to anyone looking for that knowledge. There is a clear consensus among scientists that the current publishing model is at best inexpedient and at worst hostile to that end.

Most people are asking what good the current publishing model provides, but I think to answer that question we need to ask: "compared to what?" It seems clear to me that the current model is better than having no publishing mechanism at all, but I doubt that anyone seriously thinks that the "none" model is the only alternative.

I think that if we sat down today and thought up a new publishing model from scratch, we would be able to outdo the status quo on just about every "good" people have mentioned here, as well as provide features that the current model is incapable of. I think it is highly likely that we could make a system that ran on donated resources alone.

Some things we might want/have in a "from scratch" model:

1\. Direct access to data-as-in-a-database instead of data-as-a-graph-in-a-PDF

2\. Blockchain-based reputation system for scientists

3\. P2P storage and sharing of scientific data

4\. Tiers of scientific information, e.g. an informal forum-of-science, semi- formal wiki-of-science, and formal publications

5\. Automated peer review process

6\. A better and more consistent authoring tool for scientists

</comment><comment><USER30> The main problems with tax-funded research and grants is that money is given in return for citations in journals with high "impact factor". As a result, publishers of those journals are indirectly supported by the state. Instead, government or funding organizations should review the results of the work for themselves, but they are unable to do it, because they usually don't understand a thing about research subject.

<comment><USER16> That's the problem, organizations don't _want_ do do the work so they outsource it. But the journal market is not free, it's dominated by incumbents who earned the position centuries ago. As the experience with open access journals shows so far, it's near impossible to get scientists to volunteer their free labor to a new journal. Regulatory action (like requiring open access for all govt-funded science) should be taken here.

<comment><USER38> But the publishers outsource _the same work_ to referees. Why not cut out the middle man and have the funding agencies orchestrate the peer-review? That's what they do for grants anyway.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER39> Can someone explain me why the researchers themselves don't publish their work for free? The article says they are not paid for the articles so I don't see why they couldn't do that.

<comment><USER40> For the $1000-3000 that a single OA application costs I can pay for a new computer, or send one or two students to conferences, or pay for part of a stipend, finance a temporary web design guy, etc. Now I try to publish 10 papers per year - that's $10-30,000 out of the window for no "return" to our group. For $30,000 I can send everyone to several conferences!

Conferences are more important to a scientific career than an OA paper. The people who hire you will in all likelihood have access to your paper even if it's behind a paywall.

<comment><USER41> > Conferences are more important to a scientific career than an OA paper

Depends on you field of research, maybe? Paper publications make or break early biomedical research careers.

Further, the grants that these funds are paid out of often have travel funds built-in, so conferences are still available.

<comment><USER40> >Paper publications make or break early biomedical research careers.

Yes, but that has nothing to do with the OA-status of those publications - <USER2> it's a high-impact journal, then it makes the career, if it's not, then not.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER42> Publishing used to cost money when it required physical printing/distrubution/storage of journals. Now all of this is basically free, but they still charge. Most theoretical physicists for example only care about "publishing" in the ArXiv (all free, open source). The traditional publishing is ridiculous.

<comment><USER43> Publishing cost today is smaller -- yet publishers actually charge more.

Libraries used to get a physical copy of the papers, which would grant lifetime access to the research.

Today, they pay for subscription, and as soon as they stop paying, they lose access to everything.

</comment></comment><comment><USER16> I hope this publicitly doesnt lead to swift shutdown of scihub. She provides us with a great service that helps many researchers work faster. We should also commend her for stirring the most lively debate about an anachronistic and dumb publishing system.

</comment><comment><USER44> This isn't the right question. The question is, "Who should be profiting from research papers?" The Journal performs quality control for the sake of consistency and prestige, but the papers and their reviews are put together by researchers, commonly at great cost for marginal personal gain. The article's hero doesn't really care. She needs to read papers, and needs other people to be able to read them, so she built sci-hub (demo: [https://sci- hub.io/10.1038/nature16990](https://sci-hub.io/10.1038/nature16990)).

<comment><USER32> WRT > This isn't the right question. The question is, "Who should be profiting from research papers?"

I am not sure that the way you put it s right either.

Because "who should be profiting from research papers?" is too generic of a question, and does not appear to necessarily supersede the question 'should tax-funded publication be readable for free?'

If I may rephrase your question to be: "Quality control of a research paper, must be, necessarily funded (either by money or a form of barter). Therefore question a) who should fund it, question b) who should receive funding to do the quality control"

Then, obviously, this is an important question. And I do not believe has been clearly answered either in polices or on this forum.

My answer to ( a ) would be -- the same entity that funds the research (therefore in this case the tax payers)

My answer to ( b ) would be -- a licensed or otherwise professionally certified group, independently selected (that is not selected by the researcher that authors the publication).

</comment></comment><comment><USER45> What follows is just my very uninformed opinion. I'm not a scientist myself, but my interest in CS and math has made me an avid reader of scientific papers and books - whenever they're publicly available, that is.

What publishing houses do is exploit the rules of the social games that scientists themselves willingly play. When the importance of an academic work is judged by the names of its authors, or by the name of the journal in which it is published, or by the presence of fashionable keywords in its title or in the abstract, scientists are giving publishing houses the very rope with which they will be hanged. So, while the behavior of publishing houses is certainly antisocial and most abominable, it is only made possible by the very scientific community that condemns it.

Is there any fundamental reason why scientists can't always submit their papers to the arXiv, and let the web of citations determine their relative importance?

<comment> Al-Khwarizmi In my country, for example, most applications for tenure, salary complements, required assessments, etc., have an assessment scale like this (simplified but this is basically the idea):

Paper in the 1st quartile of the ISI JCR journal list - 3 points

Paper in the 2nd quartile of the ISI JCR journal list - 2 points

Paper in the 3rd quartile of the ISI JCR journal list - 1 points

Rest - 0 points

So if you publish a ground-breaking paper in arXiv that everyone reads and everyone cites, you get exactly zero points.

Of course, stuff like length of the paper, number of authors, possible overlap with other published papers, or just actual quality (as in someone reading the paper to see whether it's any good) also count zero. And then you have the roulette factor of submitting a paper to a first-quartile journal in year X, which gets published in year X+1 (due to the length of the publication process), only to see that in year X+1 the journal is now fourth-quartile as in CS they are dancing all the time...

<comment><USER45> What you described is exactly what I mean by "the social games scientists themselves willingly play". I'm not saying that any individual scientist has the power to fix this, but it's undeniable that it's a problem - it empowers publishing houses that profit from restricting access to science!

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER46> Providing more open access to existing research information is just as important as empowering people to share and distribute the findings of their research in formats that both machines and people can understand. I believe we have already produced large amounts of data in wildly different fields of study that can potentially be used with the help of machines (and the diverse perspectives of many humans) to solve problems for which we currently don't have answers.

It looks like the Fair Access to Science and Technology Research (FASTR) bill linked in the article would be a step in the right direction for US citizens. I wonder how other forces (like Sci-Hub) will affect the direction of things to come.

</comment><comment><USER47> I was thinking a good startup company may be an open publication and peer review site. Something where users are non-anonymous and they are weighted by their accomplishments irl. Submissions and peer reviews would be open to anyone but weighted heavily by ranking, which is affected by irl achievements and cumulative quality contributions to the site. Like a combination of stack overflow and wikipedia maybe.

Money would be made by donation (ala wikipedia) and paper submission fees. Perhaps organizational level membership fees, such as universities, etc.

Just an idea I haven't had time to work on.

</comment><comment><USER48> I am still willing to pay for a high-quality printed version of research journals, but for the online access I think we should simply give away because research knowledge should belong in the public domain when you choose to publish the knowledge with a research journal. You are not publishing a paper within your 4x4 walled intrnaet.

But I get it. There is a business cost behind running a journal / magazine (although not all reputable one charge fees!). So here is the radical question: why the fuck do we need 100+ CS-related journal publishers out there? All we need is one.

<comment><USER30> > So here is the radical question: why the fuck do we need 100+ CS-related > journal publishers out there? All we need is one.

I don't get it. You want it to be monopoly?

<comment><USER49> It need not be a monopoly even if there is only one. It could be a decentralized single entity along the lines of usenet with a whole pile of people contributing and there being only one major distribution network.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER50> Let's rephrase the question: should public research funded with public money have results available to those who paid for it?

This isn't Elseviers fault, or the researchers fault or the universities fault, it's the fault of whoever distributes public money to research without having proper criteria for what is expected in return.

</comment><comment><USER51> I plan to submit my next paper to peerj [https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/PeerJ](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/PeerJ)

</comment><comment><USER52> All the state funded research must be in public domain. Everywhere else the one who funds the research must decide what to do with it.

</comment><comment><USER53> A better question to me is "Should there be fields where distributing your work for free will harm your academic career?"

</comment><comment><USER54> Science funded by taxes should be free, obviously.

</comment><comment><USER55> I found it chuckleworthy that this posted on the NYT site, which is known for paywalled articles.

</comment><comment><USER56> I wonder, in the end what's really holding open-access publishing back? What can we do, as technologists, to help fix it?

</comment><comment><USER57> Nothing is "free", the only question is: "who pays, and how does that change the incentives and results?".

<comment><USER58> Of course there are things that are "free", such as scientific progress and artworks made by already dead people, or sun radiation. Making everything "non-free" will lead to self-contradictory theories such as labor theory of value.

</comment></comment><comment><USER59> How is something that is, in essence, "truth determination and dissemination," not free?

</comment><comment><USER60> At least they will get wider and less biased and institution-conditioned reviews.

</comment><comment><USER61> Research funded by taxpayer dollars should be free to those who paid for it.

</comment><comment><USER62> unpopular opinion ahead: no, and probably not even for taxpayer funded research.

Can you demand a lift in a garbage truck? or in a tank? both of these things are provided for local or central government. why not? because it distracts from the job that they are there for. The same can be said for research (and source code). It takes time, effort and money to publish and peer review research. If journals can't make money providing access to the research who is going to pay for it?

Also there is currently a lot of BAD research out there. Domain experts don't have time to review all of it. Journals with prestigious names act as filters and as sort of priority queues for where you should look first.

<comment><USER63> Just to clarify: Is your position that research written by academic scientists, funded by government grants and university budgets, reviewed by volunteers, and proofread and typeset by the researchers themselves, handed off to a journal to put in a print edition or stick a pdf on their website, should belong exclusively to the corporate owners of the journal for a period of ~100 years after publication, with no profit flowing back to the university, the researcher, or the reviewers?

If this is not your position, can you clarify what you think scientific publishing should look like?

> _because it distracts from the job that they are there for._

What is the "job scientific papers are there for", if not sharing knowledge with other scientists and the people of the world?

As for your silly garbage truck / tank analogy: instead of these, we have buses, which work much better for the task.

<comment><USER64> This.

Journals made a lot of sense before the age of the internet, when they actually did have to do a lot of work to coordinate the activity of physically collecting research papers, mailing them for reviews, paying dedicated people for typesetting and so on. Although the cost of all of this has almost vanished now that tools for editing are so accessible and delivery costs are inexistent, publishers still charge ridiculous sums for papers produced mostly from public money simply because of their prestige.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER65> You don't want me to read your paper? Charge for it.

</comment><comment><USER66> required open access publication

</comment><comment><USER67> Yes

</comment><comment><USER68> Yes

</comment><comment><USER69> Yes.

("Betteridge's law of headlines" fails)

<comment><USER70> Not much of a law when it's broken so often.

</comment></comment><comment><USER71> What benefit do the publishers provide to anyone? Why do the publishers deserve billions of dollars?

<comment><USER72> Someone has to coordinate the peer review process - that is, vet the trash, enforce standards, locate qualified reviewers and coordinate their feedback into digestible form. Now, in my opinion 95% of this is automatable and the other 5% probably costs about $50 per manuscript, so the current fees are certainly outrageous. However I don't think we will be doing ourselves a service to say that publishers do nothing at all. They just don't do anything comparable the value that they extract.

</comment></comment><comment><USER73> Why does it cost $3000 to publish an article?? You can put it on Medium for free.

</comment><comment><USER74> Who will produce meaningful research for free?

<comment><USER75> The people who conduct the research, and the people who fund the research, are not collecting the fees to view the research.

<comment><USER13> The open access journals charge thousands. Journal publishing has costs, and they need to be born by someone. If not from access fees, they'll need to be paid upfront, which means each study costs more, which means either less studying gets done, or funds come from elsewhere to fund it.

<comment><USER76> >Journal publishing has costs

I've yet to see any justification at all for the outrageous fees charged by academic journals.

The only costs I can see are printing/distribution and web hosting.

Typesetting is trivial. Editing is non-existent. Editorial isn't paid. Peer review isn't paid.

Having a nice office and marketing staff who hold university libraries to ransom shouldn't count as a cost.

<comment><USER13> The first fact you need to deal with is that open access journals, started to explicitly counter the cost problem, have similar costs. If it was as simple as you think it is, open access journals would be much cheaper. (Arxiv is not peer reviewed, and does not count.)

The second point is that publishers costs are around 70% of revenue, as the article says margins are around 30%. That means there's a limit to how low they can go and not lose money, and I doubt many of those complaining would suddenly stop if prices were 30% lower.

<comment><USER34> > (Arxiv is not peer reviewed, and does not count.

Oh it does count. Peer reviews in journals are done by scientists for free. Peer review adds completely negligible costs (or even ZERO) to a journal. ArXiv is the perfect example.

<comment><USER13> > Peer review adds completely negligible costs (or even ZERO) to a journal.

Then can you explain why arxiv costs around $10 per paper, while plos charges over 100 times as much?

<comment><USER34> I don't know why PLOS charges more. The point I'm trying to make is that - just because there's an OA journal out there which charges $100 per article; it doesn't mean that the costs are justified.

<comment><USER13> Do you have any compelling evidence that the costs for OA journals is one or two orders of magnitude less than everyone claims they are? (See e.g. [http://www.nature.com/news/open-access-the-true-cost-of- scie...](http://www.nature.com/news/open-access-the-true-cost-of-science- publishing-1.12676) which also shows a wide variety in publishing costs.)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER77> Should leibniz, keppler, Einstein, newton, flemming, jenner papers should have been free?

Oh they were. And it is thanks to flemming that people stopped dying in atrocious ways over the world from gangrene.

Should citizens be able to access state of the art research about how to prevent vascular disease, dietetic, chemical pollution, effects of fracking, urbanisms to help them make good choices when voting? I do think so.

Because no vote exists without enlighten choices.

Chosing without relevant information on future choice that will impact every one require citizens that can have a constructed opinion. And experts are doing a poor job at being right. (look at the financial regulations made by experts and the long lasting crisis since 2000).

So yes, papers should be free to support the exercise of democracy.

</comment><comment><USER13> >The largest companies, like Elsevier, Taylor & Francis, Springer and Wiley, typically have profit margins of over 30 percent, which they say is justified because they are curators of research, selecting only the most worthy papers for publication.

> But that financial model requires authors to pay a processing charge that > can run anywhere from $1,500 to $3,000 per article so the publisher can > recoup its costs.

These two facts seem to point strongly to the publishers' being in the right. 30% is not a high number. If they were to lower their prices by 30%, running completely as nonprofits (or whatever number would break even), do you think people's complaints about difficulty of access would go away? If not, your complaining is _not_ about their profit.

And you can't seriously expect them to eat a >$1000 loss on every paper.

Either we need a single party to fund upfront, like the government, or we need some other way to pay for it.

<comment><USER13> The quote from the The Universal Declaration of Human Rights (not the UN charter [http://www.un.org/en/charter-united- nations/](http://www.un.org/en/charter-united-nations/), odd mistake by the nytimes) is also misleading.

The very next sentence says

>(2) Everyone has the right to the protection of the moral and material interests resulting from any scientific, literary or artistic production of which he is the author.

<comment><USER78> Note that the authors do not get materials benefit when journals sell their articles. If anything that sentence means that authors can claim back the profits made by publishers.

<comment><USER13> Authors sign over their copyrights to the journals. Are you suggesting copyright should not be transferable (people should not be permitted to transact freely)?

Authors do benefit by being able to publish for much less than it would cost were they to bear all the costs. To be precise, they benefit by the cost of open access that offers comparable service.</comment></comment></comment></comment>


Triple Flaw in Nest's Dropcam - <AUTHOR> https://www.bitdefender.com/box/blog/iot-news/triple-flaw-nests-dropcam-opens-door-burglars/?cid=soc%7Cbox%7Cfb%7CBlog <comment><USER2> _The first vulnerability involves using the camera's Bluetooth Low Energy (BLE) – always on by default – and pinging Wi-Fi SSID with a really long parameter. This causes a buffer overflow in the camera and prompts the device to crash and reboot. The second vulnerability also involves a buffer overflow crash, but this time caused by an overly long Wi-Fi password._

If a burglar can do that, he can definitely make better money elsewhere. His burgling career can officially be retired.

 _Because the smart camera has no offline footage storage capabilities, this attack would give a burglar a window of opportunity to sneak into the house. Considering the attack could be repeated indefinitely, the burglar would have a lot more than 90 seconds to move about the house, without fear of being recorded._

Technical aspects aside, the scenarios painted in the article are almost comically far-fetched. In 2017, a spy scenario might even be less so.

<comment><USER2> I don't know what burglar fantasy-land you folks are familiar with, but in my part of the concrete woods, burglars are known for their prowess. Their dexterity. The ability to put fear aside.

Their technical experience, perhaps less so. How many could pass a red-black tree traversal whiteboard interview?

The day these attributes are combined with an understanding of buffer overflow exploits will be a scary day indeed.

<comment><USER3> It only takes one person to automate this process for every one to use. Nobody expects burglars to manually write the exploit. Running a single thing from your phone? Much easier.

<comment><USER2> BurglarPro 1.1, now available from the Play Store. Modules available for front cam common buff overflow exploits, more. See testimonials for yourself and any positive feedback appreciated.

<comment><USER4> s/Play Store/underground carding forum/i and you're pretty much correct

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> Guess what the burglar could also cut the cable line coming into the house to completely disable the internet. Works on every DIY camera with no local storage that only uses home networking.

<comment><USER6> Aren't most of those cables either buried in the ground, or 12 feet up in the air?

<comment><USER7> And almost all of them actually enter the house at ground level, often entering the basement around the same place as the main power line does.

<comment><USER8> Whether it's overhead or underground depends on the house. Usually overhead in older neighborhoods and underground in newer ones.

Telephone lines almost always have an externally accessible demarcation box at ground level (usually a little grey one that says "telephone wiring" on it), making them very easy for a crook to cut. Cable varies a lot, though. It's common for cable to be retrofit into older construction in such a way that the lines are externally accessible, but in newer houses it may have been installed at construction time and well hidden. The cable splitter/distribution amplifier is often in the basement or elsewhere in the house, but is sometimes also installed on the exterior, basically depending on what was easiest to the installer.

So basically, there's almost no common standard for cable. You'll just have to look around. Sometimes the incoming line is lazily run along a fence, sometimes it's buried and all house wiring is internal.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> Nest cameras work over WiFi (as far as I know). Presumably you can defeat them with a spark gap or a microwave you've jimmied to run with the door open. Vulnerabilities against technical hackers sending hand-crafted artisanal Bluetooth packets are laughably irrelevant.

<comment><USER10> A spark gap (aka noise jammer) is laughably broad and would also cause interference with everyone in the neighbourhood. But a frequency selective Wifi noise jammer is very effective, especially if aimed at the base station with a directional antenna.

I wouldn't recommend disassembling a microwave oven to get at its magnetron, because you will probably electrocute yourself at best, and if you manage to turn it on (e.g. by jamming the door closed sensors), literally cooking your eyeballs.

<comment><USER11> I have a cheapo Chinese 2.4GHz video transmitter which quite effectively jams 2.4GHz wifi for hundreds of feet in every direction (as my neighbours let me know...)

I've got a friend who claims you can force a DJI drone to autoland from well over 1km with some microwave oven guts duct taped to a satellite tv dish.

<comment><USER12> > with some microwave oven guts duct taped to a satellite tv dish

The word you're looking for is "maser."

<comment><USER13> I think microwave ovens usually use mangetrons rather than masers: [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cavity_magnetron](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cavity_magnetron)

It's true though that both of them are coherent microwave sources. And the magnetron is arguabbly more "laser-like" than a maser.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> > "the smart camera has no offline footage storage capabilities"

How on earth did this get approved to go to market? A security camera that can't record when the internet goes down!

<comment><USER15> Perhaps because it would become a significantly more expensive product?

<comment><USER16> You can store hours of video on an SD card.

<comment><USER17> yep, and although thieves could steal the SD cards, it wouldn't be hard for Google to make the system redundant, so that if the internet goes down, each cam sends its motion-activated footage to all the other local cams, for storage on the SD cards. That way, the thieves have to physically access all of the cameras in order to remove the SD cards.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER18> IMO only the last of the three flaws is something that would be practically exploitable by a burglar. The rest, while poor coding practices and do illustrate some flaws with the system are not likely that a burglar would exploit.

This is FUD causing article.

</comment><comment><USER19> The first two are simply embarrassing. Google paid 3 Billion for this stuff? Does anyone do QA any more? Especially for a device you use for a security purpose, you'd think bugs like this would be not only found, but designed to not happen in the first place.

<comment><USER20> I live near the Nest main office on Foothill Expressway. There used to be a signficant amount of cars there on the weekends. That is no longer true.

<comment><USER21> I know you're implying that they don't care anymore, but I think over-working leads to fatigue and rush jobs/corner cutting, which is a great way to end up with security flaws.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER22> Someone should package this exploit in an iPhone app and market it as an anti- peeping product for Airbnb customers.

</comment><comment><USER23> Does anyone have recommendations for IP cameras that (in theory) are relatively secure?

<comment><USER24> I bought a Ubiquiti Micro[0] camera, and sat up a local server that runs their NVR software, that saves the recordings and controls the cameras. It was important to me not to get a cloud enabled camera.

Sadly they are out of stock most places, but a new version have been rumoured.

[0] [https://www.ubnt.com/unifi-video/unifi-video-camera- micro/](https://www.ubnt.com/unifi-video/unifi-video-camera-micro/)

<comment><USER25> I can second the Unifi cameras if you don't mind setting up a server to monitor them. I'm using their outdoor cameras to watch my front/back doors at home, and I have about a dozen of the dome cameras at work. The NVR software has been working flawlessly in both places.

I was less impressed with the image quality of the Micro camera, it's adequate, but the Nest cam is better.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER26> And in a follow up article, it was discovered that burglars could disable a Nest Cam by using an aerosol deployed enamel compound that occluded its lens. Press officials for Rustoleum were unavailable for comment.

</comment><comment><USER27> Leaving a Bluetooth service available, visible and unauthenticated seems to be the crux of the issue.

</comment><comment><USER28> This kind of cameras are just to scare non-sophisticated burglars. Alarm systems work on the premise that burglars will decide to choose another target as the "protected" one is slightly more inconvenient to rob. It is really hard to stop a highly motivated thief.

That doesn't justify the camera flaws, thou.

<comment><USER29> Yes it's a pretty sophisticated burger that jams wifi and Bluetooth

<comment><USER30> Or cuts the power / cable line with the same bolt cutters they use to cut locks.

<comment><USER31> I'd encourage any burglar who wants to cut my mains with bolt cutters to do so at any time.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER32> Is the main use case for these security? I've been considering getting some. I mainly want to watch my dogs and see how they're doing when I'm out. My dogs can't buffer overflow so I think I'm still OK to purchase.

</comment><comment><USER33> >buffer overflow in the camera

I'm pretty ignorant in the embedded/hardware area of tech, but I would have guessed by now C or other buffer-overrun-prone languages would have been replaced by the majority of companies making new-ish products. Is something like managed C# not an option still despite hardware gains? Or, I keep hearing about Rust on Hacker News as a possible fix to this. Is it a problem with the education pipeline, like students learn that devices like this need C so they code C for them out of school?

<comment><USER34> Pascal, Ada, Oberon, Basic compilers have existed for micro-controllers for decades.

Even C++ would be a better option, given its improved type safety over plain C.

However the culture in embedded systems industry makes it very hard to use anything else besides Assembly and C.

As an example, I recently saw talks that some BMW and Sony units only now in 2017 are moving away from C into C++11.

<comment><USER35> Couldn't one use an alternate malloc() library that enforces boundaries?

<comment><USER34> No, because the way pointers work in C.

You need compiler support for generating bound checked instructions, and additionally processor support like the Intel MPX or Sparc v8 tagged instructions.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER36> Am I really supposed to be scared of a burglar who has the skills to hack a security system though? If he has those skills maybe he can find a good paying job easily enough.

<comment><USER37> You'd think that with malware also, and that has turned into a business model by now: the people writing the code often are not the ones using it, selling exploitkits instead. Even offering it as SaaS or subscriptions nowadays.

Not sure if disabling Nest cameras is interesting enough, but there could be a black-market business somewhere in interrupting IoT devices. (E.g. sell an android phone preloaded with an app to unlock remote controlled locks)

<comment><USER38> Yep. I remember reading that sophisticated car remote entry hacks were encapsulated in little mircrocontroller-based push-and-go boxes and sold via the criminal underworld to people who would actually be willing to take the risk of using them.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER39> On the other hand no one's remotely hacked the Nest Thermostat, so their own code was fine, dangers of acquiring code and then not auditing it.

Seeing as you could just jam all wifi anyway, not that great a problem

<comment><USER40> True, but this does show a buffer overflow, which is one path to get to a remote hack. Well, remote as in wifi distance remote.

<comment><USER39> But dropcam is a company they acquired, I'm guessing they didn't rewrite all the software. The stuff they wrote themselves for the thermostat is apparently more secure than at least 99% of things.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER41> I own several dropcams but don't understand most of the language in this article - are there any precautions I should be taking that I may not be already?

<comment><USER42> Add some security cameras that do local storage.

Which is of course completely counter to the 'win' of cloud based video storage. The bug is that a sophisticated burglar can cause your cameras to stop recording.

<comment><USER43> Most burglars don't care about alarms or cameras. They wear a mask, go to the back door between 11am and 3pm when most people are gone, kick it in, rummage for anything for 3 mins and then run away. It's very low probability of catching criminals with a simple workflow like this.

<comment><USER44> Does this statement come from statistics? If so, can you cite the study, please?

<comment><USER45> No study, but this is a very common MO, if not the most common. This is not an extraordinary claim that needs proof.

<comment><USER44> The claim was (emphasis mine):

" _Most_ burglars ... wear a mask, go to the back door between 11am and 3pm when most people are gone, kick it in, rummage for anything for 3 mins and then run away..."

Emphasis on the word "most" here. That implies a majority. If the author had said "some" or "many," that would be uncontroversial. Here, however, the author is making a specific quantitative/statistical claim, and it is that that deserves proof.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER46> What amazes me is that the vulnerabilities have been known for many months yet haven't been patched.

Maybe I shouldn't be too surprised. I bought a Dropcam two years ago before Nest/Google acquired them. It worked fine for a while, but since being acquired the app and reliability has gotten worse and worse to the point that I no longer use it because it's too flaky. Based on that and everything else I read about the company, it seems that they're severely mismanaged.

<comment><USER30> Nest hasn't done anything significant since the smoke alarm. I'm really not sure how their leadership maintains employment. They launched that in October 2013. What company can go for 3 1/2 years, 3 of those with Google money, and do so little? There are tons of opportunities for them to launch e.g. A real home security system with window sensors, locks, a 24x7 monitoring service, more smart home devices / integrations...

The smoke alarm wasn't even a good idea. A smoke alarm is a device you hope to never have to use. It's like making a smart fire extinguisher, or a AED with Siri integration. Really unimpressed with Nest as a company.

<comment><USER47> My Nest smoke alarm actually justified its value a couple of weeks ago: We were out in town when it let me know that there was CO in the house. We were able to rush back and turn off the leaking gas stove before things got out of hand.

I think the peace of mind that this now gives me is extremely valuable.

<comment><USER48> Interesting. I wonder if there's any connected valves that could auto shut off gas to the house if the smoke or co alarms go off?

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER49> I know this is the original title, but it's kind of misleading. I clicked this article thinking that somehow the vulnerability literally opened your door to burglars (e.g. if you have a smart door lock).

<comment><USER50> Yeah, less "opens the door" and more "stops the cameras from recording, maybe".

<comment><USER51> If I were a burglar and would see Nest or other smart-home stuff in the Bluetooth device list... well here's someone who fancies technology and might be worth a try.

To make stuff even better: forcing the Dropcam to disassociate with the owner's wifi network and reassociate with my own? Take a RPi, a 3G dongle, a battery pack and throw it into a nearby bush... perfect to stalk out when the home owners are not there, and thanks to the 3g connectivity no one will even have to look around and arouse suspicion with neighbors.

<comment><USER52> Actually if you were a burglar you'd likely be a teenager out for the thrills or a drug addict and the most you'd do is see if anyone or a dog was home before kicking in the door.

Burglary rates have cratered not because of security systems but because people don't have things that are easy to trade for cash.

Unless it's jewelry, cash or guns it has virtually no value sold hot.

<comment><USER53> Stolen documents are a goldmine to identity thieves.

<comment><USER54> What percentage of identity theft is the result of burgled documents?

<comment><USER53> Not sure, but a stolen (some say give away by disgruntled postal carrier) USPS key was used to break into dozens of mailboxes in a very affluent zip code in San Francisco (Nob Hill and Russian Hill).

It must have been very lucrative for the pair of thieves. Also scary that a single key works across an entire zip code.</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment>


Spain issues arrest warrant for Netanyahu - <AUTHOR> http://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/europe/spain-issues-arrest-warrant-for-israeli-prime-minister-benjamin-netanyahu-over-2010-gaza-flotilla-a6736436.html <comment><USER2> Does anybody know 1) Spain's jurisdiction in this charge and 2) if there are any other examples of similar charges being brought against members of a foreign government?

Under International Law, I understand they can be charged by The Hague, but by an individual country? How rare is this?</comment>


[Node.js] Want to Convert JSON to CSV? Check This Module - <AUTHOR> https://github.com/Cnova/jsonexport

<comment><USER2> Looks cool, I made a similar tool that works on arrays and exports to *sv, xml and yaml. It's called AOOT (array of objects to...) and available on npm [https://github.com/montanaflynn/aoot](https://github.com/montanaflynn/aoot)

<comment><AUTHOR> Looks awesome! thanks for sharing =)

</comment></comment><comment><AUTHOR> I just published this module, any comments are welcome. =) Thanks!</comment>


How to fix HeartBleed on Ubuntu and CentOS - <AUTHOR> http://www.hak9.com/fix-heart-bleed-bug-centos-ubuntu/

<comment><USER2> Also don't forget to update SSL with any applications running on the server. OpenVPN for instance uses it's own SSL libraries that need updating libcrypto.so.126.96.36.199 and libssl.so.18.104.22.168. Make sure you update your certificates everywhere too.

<comment><AUTHOR> Absolutely!</comment></comment>


Cybersecurity 2.0 Humble Book Bundle - <AUTHOR> https://www.humblebundle.com/books/cybersecurity-wiley-books <comment><USER2> Looks like a lot of these books were already offered before. Anyone know of anything new here that would be worth getting?</comment>


Ember v React - <AUTHOR> https://docs.google.com/presentation/d/1afMLTCpRxhJpurQ97VBHCZkLbR1TEsRnd3yyxuSQ5YY/preview?usp=sharing&sle=true#slide=id.p

<comment><USER2> I don't think he read up too much on Flux since he implies Flux ditches unidirectional data flow. Flux is all about unidirectional data flow.

In the example involving the cart; he assumes the only way two sibling components can share state is by bloating parent components (by making them pass callbacks that they don't care about to their child components) or by breaking unidirectional data flow.

However, Flux (as described by Facebook) has a Store in which interested components can subscribe to change events. Your top level components will subscribe to the store and pass data to the child components. When a change occurs, only the top level component will get the new data and it will pass the data to its child components as usual. That doesn't break unidirectional data flow.

<comment><USER3> My point is that the React marketing is "top down unidirectional data flow", and that you quickly reach the end of what you can do with that before needing to add a another perpendicular uni-directional data flow (which is Flux or one of its variants), which breaks the vanilla React paradigm and many of the simplifying assumptions implied within such a simplified system. Two flows, both uni-directional, but in different directions, and the top-down flow no longer has anywhere near the same degree of control once you've added Flux to your system.

<comment><USER2> > ...you quickly reach the end of what you can do with that before needing to > add a another perpendicular uni-directional data flow (which is Flux or one > of its variants)...

Can you expand on that? For a simple application without Flux, the data flow starts at the top-level component and ends at the bottom. That's unidirectional and we both agree.

For more complex applications that require Flux, the data flow starts at the top-level component which gets the state from the store and passes it to the child components, which may raise change events which will run the callback registered by the top-level component that gets the state from Store and passes it to the child components, which may raise change events and the cycle continues.

I don't see two flows, I don't see different directions and I'm not sure how anything is perpendicular.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> This is a very enlightening view into React - reading this and thinking about complex application challenges, I think React can supplement even the large frameworks (such as Angular and Ember) well.

</comment><comment><USER5> I was there live for this presentation. It was epic. Fun, but also very level- headed. I learned a lot.</comment>


Google Chrome Disallow Sync XHR in Page Dismissal - <AUTHOR> https://www.chromestatus.com/feature/4664843055398912 <comment><AUTHOR> FYI. The Google Chrome team has decided to remove the ability of scripts to perform synchronous requests during the beforeunload and unload events of a page. If your software uses this stuff, you need to ensure it doesn't break.</comment>


All 40 Runners Fail at 100-Mile Tennessee Mountain Race - <AUTHOR> http://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2015-03-30/all-40-runners-fail-to-complete-100-mile-tennessee-mountain-race <comment><USER3> It's interesting to note that in every year that someone finishes, they add additional parts to the course making it more difficult for the competitors in the following year.

 _In 2013, Nick Hollon finished in 57:41 and Travis Wildeboer in 58:41. A new hill was added, "foolish stu", increasing the total climb to over 60,000 feet.

In 2014, Jared Campbell got his second finish in 57:50. Another new hill, Hiram's Vertical Smile, brings the total climb to 62,680 ft.[1]_

1- [http://www.mattmahoney.net/barkley/](http://www.mattmahoney.net/barkley/)

<comment><USER4> I think this "addition" of complexities needs to be treated as totally new course each time such addition is made.

Otherwise previous finishers (total respect to them of course) would claim to do something that new participants cannot using the identical name of event/race. Which in fact is totally different race by now.

Marathon is not adding extra 10km every year to compensate for too many finishers.

<comment><USER5> I would agree with you if the competitors were in any way competing on time over the course of multiple years, but in reality they aren't. It's a one time race, repeated annually, and each course & victory stands alone. (Not like other extreme ultras like the Leadville 100, etc, where there absolutely is competition each year to lower the record.)

<comment><USER6> I don't think many ultra runners would consider Leadville extreme. It's mostly fire roads. Ever since the buy-out from Lifetime Fitness, the top runners seem to skip the event.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> As an ultramarathoner I can tell you that the Barkley is notorious in the community.

Here are the r/ultramarathon threads on it this year:

[http://www.reddit.com/r/Ultramarathon/comments/30x5at/all_40...](http://www.reddit.com/r/Ultramarathon/comments/30x5at/all_40_runners_fail_at_100mile_tennessee_mountain/)

[http://www.reddit.com/r/Ultramarathon/comments/30isk7/you_he...](http://www.reddit.com/r/Ultramarathon/comments/30isk7/you_heard_it_here_first_this_will_be_the_year_a/)

<comment><USER8> Great comment on that first one:

"Fail is a strong word. I'm sure every one of the runners were successful in learning something about themselves. You fail by not trying."

<comment><USER9> You also fail by failing to complete the race

<comment><USER8> Makes me think of "The Man in the Arena":

 _It is not the critic who counts; not the man who points out how the strong man stumbles, or where the doer of deeds could have done them better. The credit belongs to the man who is actually in the arena, whose face is marred by dust and sweat and blood; who strives valiantly; who errs, who comes short again and again, because there is no effort without error and shortcoming; but who does actually strive to do the deeds; who knows great enthusiasms, the great devotions; who spends himself in a worthy cause; who at the best knows in the end the triumph of high achievement, and who at the worst, if he fails, at least fails while daring greatly, so that his place shall never be with those cold and timid souls who neither know victory nor defeat._

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

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> I live slightly south of Frozen Head, and have hiked there a number of times in the last year or so since I moved down here (dryish-winter hike[1], a snowy day up top[2]). It really is a beautiful park and TN state parks are free, so if you're in the area I recommend stopping by.

I've been trying to convince a few ultra-marathoner friends to apply for the Barkley since I got out here, but they're all extremely hesitant. From everything I've read and gathered this race is just totally unlike what they're used to out West in terms of its general terrain (including plants, stepping off the trails in the spring and summer you can quickly get into quite vicious thorns, and the race isn't really on trails anyways as far as I know), and overall idiosyncratic nature. The weather down here can also be all over the place this time of year. I hiked Frozen Head in the high 50s/low 60s back in late January or early February; this past Sunday I was 2 hours south, in the Smokies, hiking in 5-6 inches of snow.

It's certainly a personal pie-in-the-sky feat to dream about before I move away in a few years, but realistically I'll just settle for an AT through hike instead (which should be far, far more manageable).

[1] [https://www.flickr.com/photos/23215983@N02/sets/721576407426...](https://www.flickr.com/photos/23215983@N02/sets/72157640742661175/)

[2] [https://www.flickr.com/photos/23215983@N02/sets/721576422837...](https://www.flickr.com/photos/23215983@N02/sets/72157642283756455/)

<comment><USER11> If that kind race looks interesting, but you are not an ultra-marathoner, check out orienteering: [http://www.mensjournal.com/adventure/outdoor/the- rise-of-ori...](http://www.mensjournal.com/adventure/outdoor/the-rise-of- orienteering-no-path-no-rules-20150327).

It's basically a land navigation race. The club I'm in, ([http://mnoc.org](http://mnoc.org)), does courses that are usually 3km to 8km in length (there will be several to choose from).

The events are pretty minimalist compared to obstacle races like Warrior Dash, mud runs, ect. It's just you, a map, and a large chunk of woods.

<comment><USER10> That actually sounds incredibly appealing, thanks for the heads up. I love finding my way with a map and a compass, but I've somehow never heard of orienteering specifically before.

I hike basically every weekend, but since most of that is in the Smokies I adhere to the trails. It would be nice to venture into some more self-guided routes. I have relatives up near the UP I visit once or twice a year, I'll definitely look into this the next time I'm near a more active orienteering community.

<comment><USER12> There's also the sport of rogaining, which is like orienteering but much longer (6-24 hours):[http://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rogaining](http://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rogaining)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> Watched a great documentary on the Barkley awhile back. I've done a city full and a trail half marathon, but its mindblowing to comprehend just how rough this race is. For those not familiar with the handful of people who have finished, these guys are seriously tough. Brian Robinson has a wikipedia page ([http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Brian_Robinson_%28hiker%29](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Brian_Robinson_%28hiker%29)) that highlights his accomplishments, and the Barkley is one of them:

"Brian Robinson was the first person to hike the Pacific Crest Trail, the Appalachian Trail and the Continental Divide Trail (or the Hiker Triple Crown) in one year, a total distance of over 7,000 miles."

"In the years following the Calendar Triple Crown, Robinson became an active ultra-marathoner. He has completed several 100-mile races, including the Western States 100 and the Hardrock Hundred Mile Endurance Run. In 2008 he set the course record at the Barkley Marathons, a grueling 100 mile course in Frozen Head State Park, Tennessee."

Jared Campbell has also, I believe, won Hardrock previously.

<comment><USER14> The best part of that documentary (I'm guessing it's the same one) is that the official starting signal for the race is when Cantrell lights a cigarette.

Also, the license plate is part of the entry fee. You have to bring him a plate to enter in the race.

Also, there are no trails, no markers, and the only aid station is the starting line which you pass 4 times during the race. You do have to stop and check in at various stations to verify that you actually did the course. IIRC, you had to pick up some kind of memento from the station. As someone mentioned, you're frequently going through brambles.

The entire idea of the race was based on James' Earl Ray's attempted escape. Cantrell was fascinated that a man on foot could make it only 8 miles in almost 60 hours, and that led to him starting the race.

<comment><USER15> Which documentary is it?

<comment><USER13> My mistake, forgot to include the link: [https://vimeo.com/97270099](https://vimeo.com/97270099)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> A brisk walk is 4 miles per hour and an average walk is 3 miles per hour. If you do the race at a slow walk, 2 miles per hour, you'll do the 100 miles in much less than the allotted 60 hours.

Which means that the elevation and sleep deprivation must really take their toll. Those are the limiting factors, not running speed.

<comment><USER17> Check out Naismith's Rule. A climb of 60,000 ft alone adds about a hundred hours to the speed you've mentioned above.

[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Naismith%27s_rule](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Naismith%27s_rule)

<comment><USER18> It adds 30 hours at 3mph. 63 hours total.

<comment><USER19> actually there are 60000ft of ascent and 60000ft of descent in that race. With steep and or bad condition of descents (check the photos from the links others posted), you need to apply the rule (at least partially) to descents too. Thus we come almost all the way to 90hrs.

<comment><USER20> And speed has got to be a good bit slower at night.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER21> _"I got a little confused where I was," Coury said upon returning to camp, explaining that he took an eight-hour nap on a mountaintop after getting lost._

Man, I take one of those naps every day and I'm not even running 100 miles. What's wrong with me.

<comment><USER22> I'm left to wonder what is a regular sleep cycle for him ;-)

</comment></comment><comment><USER23> I'm planning to compete in a 75km race with 4 1000 meter vertical assents in October. This is about as mountainous as you can get in Australia. This is a walk in the part compared to the races in Europe, New Zealand and North America, which have more geologically recent mountain ranges, and communities in which alpine / mountaineering / orienteering and running cross over.

I've heard Anton Krupicka (well known and achieve North American ultra racer) refer to the UTMB (the most well known ultra marathon race in Europe, in which a loop of Mt Blanc taking in 3 countries is done) as "unexpectedly flat"

Here's some footage of that race: [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=St49BdhuA8c](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=St49BdhuA8c)

I look at the course profile for that, and the course profile for the 4 1000m assents for the 75km race I'm doing in October and think "how do that many people finish".

The US has harder races, which still have remarkably high finishing rates. The "Hard Rock 100" (miles) is basically at times a rope-free scramble up mountain tops, and it has a remarkably high finishing rate (when we're talking more that 10% of the field finishing, it's remarkable)

It's quite amazing the variation among ultra races, and 100 miles is not just 100 miles.

The interesting thing is that many of the trail / mountain runners need that sort of variation for psychological reasons and find things like 100 mile tarmac races to be more psychologically and physically taxing. A mountain / trail race having highs and lows geologically, mentally, physically but a flat tarmac race having less variation being harder to switch out of a down patch, and requiring serious inner resilience to counter-act a "runners low".

<comment><USER12> I'm surprised there's nothing more extreme in Australia. I'm in Adelaide, and we have road cycling events with 4000m climbing in 140km. You don't need high mountains to get the total elevation, just lots of steep climbs.

<comment><USER24> We generally don't have sustained climbs, especially like those in Europe. In cycling terms, we don't have an Alp d'Huez or a Tormalet - something that is 15+ km of HC climb.

We tend to either 2 - 5km of sharp steep stuff, or maybe up to 15km of less sharp (like cat 3/4) climbs.

It's that sustained climbing at > 9% that will get ya.

<comment><USER25> You don't need the high mountains to get lots of total climbing. Look at the Ardennes races coming up in Belgium, or even the Amstel Gold race - <USER2> meters of climbing in the Netherlands!

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER26> There's a fascinating essay about this run here: [http://www.believermag.com/issues/201105/?read=article_jamis...](http://www.believermag.com/issues/201105/?read=article_jamison)

</comment><comment><USER12> The _Outside_ magazine story of the Barkley is pretty good if you are looking for some background: [http://www.outsideonline.com/1924491/60-hours-hell- story-bar...](http://www.outsideonline.com/1924491/60-hours-hell-story- barkley-marathons)

It's be interesting to see Jornet try it sometime.

<comment><USER27> Now that you mention Kilian Jornet (the world famous sky runner), I can't refrain from saying that at KiteBit we actually built and run the service used by him and others to sell his movies.

Technology stack we have set up at KiteBit is RoR + Unicorn + Redis + Postgres + Vagrant. And we make also make use of Sendgrid + AWS S3 + CloudFront + ElasticTranscoder.

Kilian's movies and other stuff from him are on sale at his website summitsofmylife.com. This is a PrestaShop store but when it comes to the downloads and video streaming it's KiteBit (our service) which takes the relieve.

</comment></comment><comment><USER28> [https://vimeo.com/97270099](https://vimeo.com/97270099)

<comment><USER29> You should have included a description! I was about to post that link myself. It's a really impressive documentary about the race and shows why it's so difficult and what's so neat about it. The music score is awesome too.

</comment></comment><comment><USER30> I don't think most of the entrants expected to succeed, so that's not too big a surprise. Even in a "runnable" 100 mile ultra marathon, only about 50-70% usually finish the race. You can see some stats here:

[http://run100s.com/ultra.htm](http://run100s.com/ultra.htm)

The same race director puts on a much more finishable race - 314 miles, typically self supported, in the middle of summer, across the entire state of Tennessee:

[http://ultrasignup.com/register.aspx?did=29688](http://ultrasignup.com/register.aspx?did=29688)

It's on my list of runs to do.

<comment><USER31> I understand race preferences are idiosyncratic but what about Vol-State appeals to you? Distance? Crossing a state? Laz?

If anything on your list includes something in Colorado (or Bighorn or Fat Dog this year) send me a note--pacing is sometimes more fun than racing. (Same goes for anyone else reading this).

</comment></comment><comment><USER32> Is this really harder than Mount Baker Marathon? That one involves 108 miles of trail from sea to summit of 10,700 foot snow clad volcano. Just climbing the volcano alone even when starting at 5000ft is usually quite a bit of an accomplishment. This race adds a long ~100 mile run on the top of it.

[http://www.trailrunnermag.com/people/adventure/1495-revival-...](http://www.trailrunnermag.com/people/adventure/1495-revival- of-the-toughest-race-youve-never-heard-of)

<comment><USER33> Yea, way harder. The vertical climb is equivlant to going up and down your volcano almost 6 times.

Also, the whole thing thing is in backwoods on practically non-existent trails.

</comment></comment><comment><USER34> It always amazes me that there is always, _always_ , a harder race out there then the one I've done.

Humbling...

<comment><USER35> Do you reckon the 1% of the people who completed are looking for something even harder?

<comment><USER34> Wow, that is a good thought as well. I imagine the 1% of competitors that complete the race would be willing to do any challenge given to them.

Just constantly driven.

<comment><USER5> There are a small handful of extreme races that are all approaching impossible in their own special way. The Barkley, because of it's traversal of insane undergrowth and ridiculous total elevation, is one. The Marathon des Sables ([http://www.marathondessables.co.uk/](http://www.marathondessables.co.uk/)) across part of the Sahara is another (6 days max to traverse 251km while carrying all your supplies except a tent (and you can refill water containers each night at the aid stations)). The Arrowhead 135 is essentially the same style, but conducted in northern Minnesota in the middle of winter ([http://www.arrowheadultra.com/index.php/race- inforegistratio...](http://www.arrowheadultra.com/index.php/race- inforegistration/race-rules)). The Iditarod is a fourth.

<comment><USER36> Meh, the Iditarod is easy. They should do the Antarctica dog sled race to the south pole. Amundsen did that one at the beginning on the 20th century with ease.

I once was in Argentina and met some people who were going to climb Vincent Mastiff in Antarctica. The tallest peak in Antarctica. It cost them something like $25,000 a person to fly their group in. Basically you have to get someone willing to fly a perfectly good long range airplane and land it on a glacier in the middle of nowhere with no hope of rescue if you screw up.. and then you have to have it take back off and get you back to south america. Now that's adventure.

<comment><USER35> Perhaps eitally refers to the Iditarod Trail Invitational?

> The Iditarod Trail Invitational is the world's longest winter ultra marathon > by mountain bike, foot and ski and follows the historic Iditarod Trail from > Knik, Alaska over the Alaska Range to McGrath and to Nome in late February > every year one week before the Iditarod Sled Dog Race. The short race 350 > miles finishes in the interior village of McGrath on the Kuskokwim River and > the 1000 mile race finishes in Nome. Racers have to finish the 350 mile race > in a previous year before they can enter the 1000 mile race.

<comment><USER5> Yes, thank you for clarifying.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER37> Since not many sports news make it to HN's front page, I am wondering why this one did. Am I missing some context or is running just popular among the HN crowd?

<comment><USER38> It is a uniquely difficult and quirky marathon. One of the qualifications is bringing the organizer a pack of his favorite brand of cigarettes, etc.

[http://www.nytimes.com/2013/03/28/sports/the-barkley- maratho...](http://www.nytimes.com/2013/03/28/sports/the-barkley-marathons- few-know-how-to-enter-fewer-finish.html)

</comment></comment><comment><USER39> Ultra distance running has always been something that has inspired me - I got into it through my friend Mal Law who has just run 50 marathons in 50 consecutive days over 50 mountains (I think adding the mountains made it unique compared to past efforts). [http://www.high50.org.nz/](http://www.high50.org.nz/)

</comment><comment><USER40> We need a new work for not succeeding at something as unfeasible as this. "Fail" doesn't seem appropriate...

<comment><USER41> All the runners came in 2nd to last, I guess.

</comment></comment><comment><USER42> Reminds me of the book Born to Run. For anyone who has taken any sort of interest in running, I highly recommend it. [http://www.amazon.com/Born-Run- Hidden-Superathletes-Greatest...](http://www.amazon.com/Born-Run-Hidden- Superathletes-Greatest/dp/0307279189)

<comment><USER43> I'd recommend it even more if you're not interested in running. It might change your mind.

<comment><USER42> Completely agree.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER44> Pretty harsh. At the Old Dominion 100, finishers under 24 hours get a silver belt buckle, and there are always some handed out. It has plenty of relief--or so it seems to those going over Massanutten Mountain in the dark at about 70 miles in--but I'd guess the total climb to be well under 10,000 ft.

(Information based on going as "handler" a couple of times many years ago for a friend, who got the buckle on her second try.)

</comment><comment><USER45> This might put things in perspective. [http://www.irunfar.com/2014/04/silver- linings-at-the-barkley...](http://www.irunfar.com/2014/04/silver-linings-at- the-barkley-marathons-jared-campbells-2014-report.html)

</comment><comment><USER46> I knew this was Barkley without even having to click through. it is notorious, and unlike other ultras - tough terrain and tons of elevation gain/loss. I love running ultras, but I also like to finish. This one is not on my list.

</comment><comment><USER47> Fail? I would say that they succeeded simply by getting most of the way.

</comment><comment><USER48> Is the race supposed to honor James Earl Ray? That's fucked up.

<comment><USER49> I'm pretty sure that's not the case. My reading was just that his escape was the inspiration for this particular physical feat. I wouldn't say it honors him any more than those escape from Alcatraz triathlons honor the escapees or marathons in general are political statements about Athens v. Persia.

</comment></comment><comment><USER50> What opportunities are there to get into long-distance orienteering races in the SF Bay Area? I'm already randonneuring and this seems like another sport worth exploring.

</comment><comment><USER51> >With a finisher rate of about 1 percent, the Barkley has been labeled by many as the world's hardest race

The 1% figure doesn't add up with the rest of the data they provide

<comment><USER52> > In 30 years, 14 out of about 1,100 runners have completed the race, made up > of five loops around a mountainous 20-mile course. With a finisher rate of > about 1 percent

14/1100 = 0.0127…

</comment></comment><comment><USER53> > Cantrell was inspired to hold a race in the rugged mountains by James Earl > Ray's failed 1977 escape from Brushy Mountain State Prison.

My southern racism sense is tingling.

</comment><comment><USER54> It's like Ninja Warrior (the Japanese version).

</comment><comment><USER55> Should it really be considered a "race" if less than 1% of people finish?</comment>