Universities Attended by CS PhD Students at Stanford (Reddit) - <AUTHOR> https://www.reddit.com/r/MachineLearning/comments/i3ve2e/d_universities_attended_by_cs_phd_students_at/ <comment><USER2> I'm not sure what to take from this.

<comment><USER3> That climbing the academic ladder in terms of prestige is near impossible if you don't already go to a highly ranked school? I'd wager the other top grad schools in CS source similarly. As fatalist as it seems, if you don't have "it" at undergrad admission time it seems like you're never going to if one goes by this metric.

(When I was bummed out about not getting into any good schools in high school folks said if I did well in undergrad I could get into a good grad school. I was skeptical, and I'm glad to say I was justified in being bummed out!)

<comment><USER4> This is not true at all. Many people go to stellar PhD programs from not so famous state schools.

<comment><USER3> I see maybe 3 people on this list that fit that bill. I doubt it's much different at MIT, CMU. Might be different at Berkeley.</comment></comment></comment></comment>


Show HN: Mixtrss - the best mixes (20+ min) on Soundcloud - <AUTHOR> http://mixtrss.com/

<comment><USER2> Code wise. Yeah, pretty good, it seems like a nicely built app that serves it's purpose well.

Concept wise. I wish people would stop trying to push the user voted content model onto music. Or any kind of art for that matter.

Community voted stuff works great where the end result is common across the entire userbase. Everyone wants to stay up to date with the latest news articles or funny youtube videos. This is why Hacker News and Reddit work well.

The fact is though that my idea of what makes good music is going to differ hugely from the next person. The top submissions are simply going to be the least offensive, most agreeable. I think soundcloud realise this which is why thier explore tab picks randomly.

I agree with the ideology of sharing music and making it easier to access, but it's something way too subjective to apply this approach to. If all music was ranked by popularity, we would end up with something called a chart, and ironically "chart music" was probably a huge driving force for you to branch out and explore music that connected with you as an individual.

</comment><comment><AUTHOR> Creator here. I'd be happy to hear any thoughts or feedback you have on mixtrss. I've been using it for the past few months and thought you guys might enjoy it.

<comment><USER3> How often are there new mixes? Can I come back every day and find new music?

<comment><AUTHOR> yeah, the data is refreshed (and re-sorted) daily. You will often find the same mixes for a few days since they keep getting more popular, but good new mixes will bubble up while older ones fade away.</comment></comment></comment>


I Hit $115k/Month with a Status Quo Improvement - <AUTHOR> https://www.indiehackers.com/interview/how-i-hit-115k-mo-with-a-status-quo-improvement-c45d11ad17 <comment><USER2> This product lets people send up to 10,000 emails[1] at once to a cold list of contacts (ie, not opted in). Let's not kid ourselves: The use case is spamming.

The reason it's making $115k/month is because most other ESPs (Mailchimp, etc) don't allow spamming, so spammers flock to (and pay for!) products that look the other way.

To the creator: Good on you for creating a successful business. I hope you take these resources and do something positive for the world.

[1] [https://www.gmass.co/blog/you-can-now-send-10000-emails- with...](https://www.gmass.co/blog/you-can-now-send-10000-emails-with-gmass- and-gmail/)

<comment><USER3> You're confusing a couple of issues. It's not that we're looking the other way. It's that I wanted to design a system where we don't have to look at all. GMass doesn't actually send any emails through its own servers. Emails are sent either through users' own Gmail accounts or through a third party SMTP service like SendGrid. Those actual email server operators (Gmail or SendGrid) have pretty sophisticated systems to detect spammers. THEY will shut down a user's account before I could ever even notice it. I don't have to look, because the owner of the email server will do the monitoring.

<comment><USER2> > Those actual email server operators (Gmail or SendGrid) have pretty > sophisticated systems to detect spammers.

Yes, and your product helps spammers bypass those detection systems. You even explain it in the post I linked:

> GMass will automatically send 500 emails/day or 2,000 emails/day if your > email campaign has more than 500 or 2,000 recipients, respectively. You can > also control, however, how many go out per day with the new Spread out > setting under the GMass Settings arrow. If left blank, GMass will use 500 > (regular Gmail) or 2,000 (G Suite) automatically, but you can override this > by setting your own value.

And...

> It's not that we're looking the other way... we don't have to look at all.

That is what the phrase means.

<comment><USER3> The text you're quoting has to do with how we distribute volume, NOT how we enable spammers. High volume campaigns does not equate to spamming. You can send a 10-email campaign that IS spam and a 10,000-email campaign that is NOT spam.

<comment><USER4> This is effectively structuring for email. Would it be immoral to sell a system that allows people to bypass money laundering restrictions by automating structuring? I don't see how this is any different.

<comment><USER5> Structuring email isn't illegal.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> If that were my service, I'd be pretty embarrassed by the number of unhappy users who have commented on the blog posts about cancellation[1] and refunds[2]. Doesn't seem like a good look.

[1] [https://www.gmass.co/blog/how-to-cancel-your-paid-gmail- mail...](https://www.gmass.co/blog/how-to-cancel-your-paid-gmail-mail-merge- subscription-to-gmass/)

[2] [https://www.gmass.co/blog/request-a- refund/](https://www.gmass.co/blog/request-a-refund/)

<comment><USER3> It's not something I'm proud of, but I'm not embarrassed by it either. The upset commenters are the minority of our users. Some parts of our UI are a little difficult -- most commands have to be done via the Gmail Compose window, because we want the entire experience to be inside Gmail. That workflow is unnatural for some.

<comment><USER7> I hear you, except you don't address the refunds and cancellations concerns. I now have a habit of only using software that makes refunds and cancellations pain free. I shouldn't have to email you to cancel, this is just creating a false barrier to make your users life more difficult so maybe they won't cancel and you can get another charge out of them. The fact that you believe this impacts a small minority of users and your overall response to this is very disconcerting. This impacts all of your users, only some of them are complaining. I also guarantee that you aren't reaching your full potential because people are reading those comments and not signing up in the first place.

<comment><USER3> Cancellation is instant and doesn't require an email being sent. You'll see that in the post.

You may be right. A better solution might be to build an external UI for account management, but I've shied away from that, wanting to keep everything inside Gmail. Maybe in the future though.

<comment><USER8> I think you should have the email set up not to bounce and cancel accounts sent to that address just as readily as you cancel when they press the magic button. A lot of headaches and bad will considering anyone can cancel with their credit card and you might get screwed by your payment processor.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> > Most successful businesses aren't based on revolutionary ideas, but rather > improvements to the status quo. The media tends to focus on the > revolutionary ideas, so it's easy to think that an idea isn't worth pursuing > if it's not groundbreaking. But in my case, email marketing had been around > forever when I started GMass but I found an unfulfilled niche and built a > business out of it.

This is a really great paragraph. I think the part that I get hung up on is right at the end - how does one actually go about finding an unfulfilled niche? It seems like they are kind of difficult to find almost by virtue of them being unfulfilled.

<comment><USER10> I've heard one of the best ways is to work at a company for awhile and identifying what they have problems with.

<comment><USER11> Another neat approach is to use Google auto complete to help. If you are a Excel wizard, type "I wish Excel could..." and let Google complete the rest. You might find some interesting use cases that people are searching for.

<comment><USER12> I tried letting Google complete that for me and it didn't offer a single completion. Go figure. A great general approach, though.

After sorting through a bunch of junk about making an Excel wish list, here are some pages about suggested Excel improvements:

[https://www.thespreadsheetguru.com/blog/excel-weaknesses- a-w...](https://www.thespreadsheetguru.com/blog/excel-weaknesses-a-wishlist- for-improvements)

[https://answers.microsoft.com/en- us/msoffice/forum/all/excel...](https://answers.microsoft.com/en- us/msoffice/forum/all/excel-wish-list/174196bf-6a23-4687-937d-d5cdee3d8d43)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> I cannot wrap my mind around why growth hacking/analytics tools make such profitable businesses. They don't add any actual value to society, so it doesn't make sense that they should be profitable at all. All they do is deceive people into thinking that a low quality product is actually good (and distract them away from better alternatives). Why is it that so many profitable businesses these days add 0 or negative value to society?

It seems that the best way to make money for yourself these days is by destroying value; by obfuscating facts, masquerading, deceiving, pretending, laundering, coercing, manipulating, diverting attention, saturating the media, manufacturing hype...

<comment><USER14> Adding "actual value to society" is a very vague term and very prone to opinion.

Adding value to a business process is much easier to define.

<comment><USER13> >> Adding value to a business process is much easier to define.

But the effects of a business process on society are really important.

Money is a social contract which is universal and fungible. It was designed to be a measure of the value that an individual brings to society and which that individual can redeem from society.

If we lose sight of that fact and focus only on thinking about individual business processes in isolation, then the economy will lose its substance; it will be all smokes and mirrors; and everyone on the planet will end up wasting their lives working on one silly trend after another instead of helping to make actual, lasting progress.

<comment><USER14> You make a good point, and a lot of sense, but also a very abstract point. While I agree, it's good to think about business processes in a macro sense, most of the time that won't solve the problem of where you can add value.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> In today's world, a status quo improvement _is_ revolutionary, because the default is for everyone to seek to create nothing but revolutionary products.

In other words, you might say OP is disrupting the disruption industry.

<comment><USER16> Not to mention a lot of disruptive ideas are poorly executed leading to wonderful headlines but sub-par products/assets.

</comment></comment><comment><USER17> Funny, I don't see similar moral outrage at talented engineers working in Facebook and Google, doing no evil. (I do see such outrage at the companies themselves - but rarely at the developers working for them).

Yes, these companies do make useful products. But they have real negative effects on the world, which would have been better off if all those engineers had made these products for companies other than these lobbyist, competition- stifling, aggressive monopolies.

There's no real moral difference between selling your talents to the highest bidder and this specific case of running a spam service to make money.

<comment><USER18> For one thing, facilitating spam is _some distance_ further down on the benefits to harms scale than facilitating Facebook or Google. Google, especially, has created a enormous amount of value, and continues to do so^; spam, not so much.

^Which isn't to say that it's perfect, of course. Or even necessarily a net good, although my personal belief in the case of Google is that it still is.

<comment><USER17> > facilitating spam is some distance further down on the benefits to harms > scale than facilitating Facebook or Google

So... Facilitating spam is worse than facilitating censorship in China?

<comment><USER19> Is an arms manufacturer at fault when there's war?

China is always going to censor. Google facilitating it or not make no difference. Might as well make the money, and also hope to influence the system from a position of power rather than a position of weakness (i.e, not involved at all)

<comment><USER17> Spam is always going to exist. Might as well facilitate, make money, and try to influence the system from a position of power?

<comment><USER18> That's like saying theft will always exist, so you might as well go steal things. Tools like this actively add to the quantity of spam out there, making it worse for everyone.

<comment><USER19> the analogy isn't to do stealing, it's to make lockpicks.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER20> I'm happy for people who find personal success according to their own value system, but my personal measure of self wouldn't increase if I spent my days expanding the amount of email advertising in the world.

<comment><USER21> You can do it like a lot of philanthropists. First make your money through cut throat business tactics and then become well-respected by giving away some of your money.

</comment></comment><comment><USER22> This seems like a serious violation of gmail TOS and am surprised gmail isn't shutting down your customers and banning your extensions

<comment><USER23> Having a look at some comments in the linked pages (further above) it seems like people get regularly banned by GMail for using this spam service.

<comment><USER8> And when they get banned they have trouble cancelling their subscription, which is tied to their email account. Apparently to cancel you have to use the plug in from your email account. I think we figured out where a lot of the $115k/mo is coming from. Wouldn't be surprised to see some legal push back.

<comment><USER19> Why would one use the same email to sign up, and to send spam?!

<comment><USER23> Because that is how this works. There is so much wrong about this service, this is just another tip of the iceberg.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER24> This is a good story, but I'm surprised Google allowed this extension to exist, especially if it's true that it was widely used by spammers.

<comment><USER3> All the extension does is provide a conduit between the Gmail UI and the Gmail API, really. Google's systems for detecting spammers are pretty good, so they're more likely to shut down a spamming account rather than my extension.

</comment></comment><comment><USER25> > _I was so excited to have a working version to play with that I paid the > freelancer $5,000 dollars to build the backend that I needed under the > condition that he delivered his part within seven days, which he did._

> _All of this happened while I was living out of a hotel room in Oahu, > Hawaii. My then-girlfriend was getting her yoga certification there, and the > program lasted a month._

Ah, if only we all used our hotel room in Oahu for a month, _and_ $5k to drop on some developer to help! We could be building status quo improvements.

Seriously though, that just comes off as completely out of touch with reality to me, or some weird "humble brag". Most of us probably have day jobs. Not all of us are probably lucky enough to be in a regulatory environment where moonlighting is protected. But by the time I get home, more software is almost always the last thing I want to do. Mostly, I want to sleep, or eat. Or recover.

By the time my mind recovers enough to think about coding something that appeals to me, it's Monday again.

But perhaps I'm just not the type of person that'll ever get $115k/mo.

<comment><USER26> Umm... I don't think he's insinuating that this is what it took to make it happen, but rather that's just how it played out in his case. I view it as him just being transparent. Maybe a humble brag but is that really a bad thing?

Plenty of IndieHackers get their product out as a side hustle after work; it just takes luck and patience since progress will be slower.

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> Hey everyone - someone just alerted me to this post. I'm Ajay, the person interviewed in that article. Let me go through now and respond to people's comments.

<comment><USER27> Maybe I'm cynical, but I have a hard time believing that the brand new user JamesIH created three hours ago whose only submission or comment is posting a link to your indiehackers page, and then you, a relatively savvy SEO person from skimming the article, suddenly show up because you were "alerted" to the post, when the post has a specific link to HN in its sidebar. My guess is that the simplest explanation is probably the right one: you created the JamesIH account, posted the link to your content, then were "alerted" to the post to post here and help give it traction. A better story than posting it yourself to be sure, but also kinda scammy.

<comment><USER28> Please don't post like this to Hacker News. It's really easy to convince yourself that you've uncovered a sinister plot that simply must be true—everything adds up! and then it's hard not to come out blasting. But because you're working with incomplete information, most of the time it's just not true—and the people on the receiving end of the blast are as human as you are, and basically it just really sucks. This is covered by the site guideline that asks: "Assume good faith." ([https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html](https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html))

Sure, a small portion of the time, you guessed right and your suspicions were correct. But the upside of being right isn't worth the downside of being wrong. Statistically speaking, it poisons the commons, even though your intention was to protect it.

<comment><USER29> Dang! The was a very even-handed correction.

You are exceedingly good at your job :)!

<comment><USER28> Well, that was nice of you. It's mostly just a lot of practice, but there's an interesting part too, which is learning to observe one's own reactions so one doesn't unconsciously just feed them back to the other. Slow process.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER30> I would like to not have to have a monthly subsription model to every gosh darn interesting service.

How about "Try us unlimited for $10" for X days.

For example - I have a campaign I would like to send out. to >2,000 addresses... I'd like to try that for $10 and not have a subscription...

<comment><USER31> Companies have every incentive to create recurring revenue. Wall Street these days is all about repeat business, from Tech to Industrials to residential services like security cameras and alarms.

Some companies like Adobe were extremely successful in changing their business model to that end, so investors expect all other companies to follow suit and severely punish those who don't

<comment><USER30> I get that.

But what you're missing from my comment is that companies all think to themselves "Well cmon - $X/month isnt that much money"

But also forget about subscription fatigue, as well as the fact that a company/individual might want/need >a dozen "subscription" services to accomplish what they want. So if you're paying ~$10 to $20 per month for every thing you need....

Thats a lot.

What we should have is a subscription hub - where all these startups can place their services and with a single account - I can click the services I want access to.

Eliminate payments across thousands of little subscription startups, allow me one account, one dashboard, one resource to find all the various tools... let me see results and reviews from users etc...

All in one place.

So - who is going to apply to YC with this for 2019?

<comment><USER32> What sort of monthly subscription fee would you be willing to pay for a subscription hub? :-)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER33> > Also, I sleep with a CPAP machine, and I've found that it's enabled me to > get by with only five to six hours of sleep, allowing me to be productive > during most of my waking hours. Before my CPAP, I was sleeping 9-10 hours a > day just to feel normal. It's weird, but my CPAP machine has been the > biggest contributor to my productivity gains in the last few years.

This is my first time hearing about CPAP. Has anyone else tried this?

<comment><USER34> My knowledge of this is little more than yours, but my understanding is most people use CPAP machines to cure sleep apnea (extreme snoring basically). I've never heard of someone using one as a sort of sleep-hack. I imagine the machine is fairly uncomfortable? Would be curious to hear more about this.

<comment><USER35> I assumed that the OP was saying as they'd mitigated the effects of their apnea they now managed on only 6hrs of sleep instead of 10 [ie 6h of good sleep is enough, 10h of poor sleep was what they were getting before].

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER36> As one of the founders of Streak and someone who helped build the InboxSDK this is so cool to see. Congrats to Ajay!

<comment><USER3> Hi Omar! I'm eternally grateful to you, Chris, Aleem, and the entire InboxSDK team.

</comment></comment><comment><USER37> An $8,000 a month AWS bill is surprisingly high for this service.

<comment><USER3> Here's January's bill: [https://www.dropbox.com/s/wt2qofjla2lnsg7/Screenshot%202019-...](https://www.dropbox.com/s/wt2qofjla2lnsg7/Screenshot%202019-02-20%2013.28.10.png?dl=0)

<comment><USER38> So roughly $1300 in bandwidth, possibly could cut some there by putting Cloudflare in front of static assets, but no idea how much of that is from static vs dynamic assets.

Most of the compute cost ($2400) goes to an m4.xlarge and an m5.2xlarge. That could be reduced by using reserved instances - but there's other gotchas there if you're likely to change that anytime soon. Google cloud is much nicer in this regard with the auto discounts for continuous usage.

The provisioned IO for EBS $2500 makes me sick, but may be necessary to get adequate performance.

Honestly you could move everything onto two dedicated servers (one as a hot backup) and cut this down to $1000/month and get better performance. But that's the AWS tax.

I use AWS all the time for work, but I would never build my own business on it.

<comment><USER39> the benefit is outsourcing operations. If he used dedicated instances he'd need to manage his SQL server, disks, deal with hardware failures...etc.

7k$/month is cheaper than hiring an additional head.

<comment><USER40> I'm not sure I agree, now I have no clue where he's from, but assuming he would save 7k a month that'd be 84k a year.

Obviously there's other overhead/costs involved, but surely he could find somebody for 60k+ a year (I make less then that at my current development job but I'm from Michigan)?

<comment><USER41> That single person you are paying a sub-par wage won't be providing 24/7/365 support, which is a big benefit of AWS / cloud providers. It's also a bit of insurance on your hardware in case of failures, free replacement. Finally, if something catastrophic was to happen, with a recent-ish offsite backup it's usually pretty trivial to setup on a different region or even cloud provider. With your own hardware, that's a bit harder.

I agree though with one of the parents, AWS costs here can likely be significantly reduced. I cut costs in half by (a) reserving instances and (b) thinking about EBS and downgrading / downsizing where possible rather than using the defaults.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER42> Most products really do not need to be revolutionary, and very few are.

Markets are unimaginably large and complex, and they're always changing. Sometimes even the most basic feature can divide huge portions of markets.

<comment><USER43> Indeed. But knowing how to market to the right audience is very important.

There are so many good X (where X can be anything from a potato peeler that doesn't clog to a fantastic musician that you've never heard of or even a software service you need).

I'm definitely in the camp that sees needs and pain points and solves them, but doesn't know how to market...

</comment></comment><comment><USER44> I am really happy with his success. He is a classic case of blowing his own trumpet in world chasing next unicorn.

One question though. If he is enabling his users to send mass emails using Google's infrastructure. Doesn't this violates Google TOC?

<comment><USER45> > Doesn't this violates Google TOC?

Users risk having their account locked if they send too many emails (mine was for 1 day)

</comment></comment><comment><USER46> This is impressive but I'm surprised he thinks it's possible to build a personal legacy from an email tool like this. Almost all web software is transient and will be forgotten in a few years. Certainly not the stuff of "legacy after I'm gone." Even mega apps like Facebook or Instagram will likely be long forgotten before their founders die.

<comment><USER47> What makes you think FB and Instagram will be forgotten? They are billiondollar companies

<comment><USER46> Billion dollar companies come and go like dust in the wind, especially in something as fickle and quickly evolving as the internet. I'd estimate roughly 0% chance your grandkids will have heard of either of these companies.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER48> Any problems with Google shutting down accounts due to mass mailing? We run our business on G Suite, getting locked out would be catastrophic.

<comment><USER3> It does happen, but it's rare. You have to be a true spammer or phisher to get shut down, and we've found that Google is a lot more lenient with G Suite accounts than regular gmail.com accounts.

<comment><USER2> > You have to be a true spammer

And what exactly is a "true spammer," in your view? Your product allows people send 10,000[1] emails at once to people who never opted-in.

You and your product enable spam. Shame on you.

[https://www.gmass.co/blog/you-can-now-send-10000-emails- with...](https://www.gmass.co/blog/you-can-now-send-10000-emails-with-gmass- and-gmail/)

<comment><USER49> Isn't an opt-in email spam already? Personally I'd prefer to _not_ get opt-in emails (as I've already opted in on the website where I put my email into the "subscribe" box) so looks like this product works OK...

<comment><USER23> Anyone could enter your email into that subscribe box. You totally want double opt-in.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER50> I listened to your IH podcast interview last week - great job on filling a niche market need!

</comment><comment><USER51> > _I know one entrepreneur building an app who 's too focused on the security > of his app. Unless the fundamental offering of your app is security, you > don't need to be concerned about that until you have some actual users to > secure._

Ignoring security in favor of profits is exactly the reason why we get massive leaks like the most recent 2.7M medical calls one. [1] You can certainly make money by screwing over your customers, but I don't think this behavior should be promoted.

Security is not unlike brushing your teeth. It's about habbits. You need to do it correctly and consistently. If you skip brushing your teeth for years, you can't just spend days brushing your teeth to catch up.

\--

[1] [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=19191241](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=19191241)

</comment><comment><USER52> Isn't using this service just asking for your Gmail account to be banned? Even if the emails are legitimate, if only a small percentage of recipients report them as spam you'll probably be turned off.

</comment><comment><USER53> Love or dislike the business model, I really enjoyed the article. The candid look went beyond the survivor bias I'm used to reading when it comes to startup stories. Thanks for sharing @ajaygeol.

</comment><comment><USER54> The difference between me and this guy is I would never have gone to market with a product that locked up the UI when trying to send 1000 emails. And I've never made $130k/month.

</comment><comment><USER55> Really shady:

From chrome extensions page ([https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/gmass- powerful-mai...](https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/gmass-powerful- mail-merge/ehomdgjhgmbidokdgicgmdiedadncbgf))

"Writing a review Good day,

I would love to take Ajay Goel on his offer to refund my fee by writing a review, but I am getting a message stating I cannot because my email address is not authorize"

</comment><comment><USER56> Cant finish reading it, so you make money by spamming me basically, to me this is like selling drugs.

you probably wrote that article to get more spammer customers, shame on you.

</comment><comment><USER57> Devil's advocate here: tens of thausands of deaths in car accidents on roads all over the world - shame on Toyota, Ford, BMW and everyone else allowing people to use 5,000 pound of metal to kill each other. We should just stick to horse riding. Also - 100 deaths per year wordlwide related to children choking on bubble gum. Shame on Hubba Bubba for creating product that murders children!

Now to the definitions part: "True spammer" - someone who utilizes his services with only intent to maliciously message people. "Not true spammer" - someone with no spamming intention who for example lacks knowledge which keywords create spam alerts and hence his spam score goes up thru algorythms and ends up of flagging him a spamer.

Also extra knowledge for you, free of charge: emails posted publicly for example on someone websites are not directly protected so long as emailer can prove they got your email from public source. Further a large excemption was created by congress to for example exempt emergency services and politicians from being labeled spammers even if they do send unsolicited no opt-in messages.

Finally - so long as he doesnt advertise or encourage using his tool for spam, there is absolutely nothing morally wrong with the tool he wrote.

You welcome.

</comment><comment><USER45> I actually built some ruby scripts that do that using the gmail gem :), got my account locked for one day after 500 emails :) (Google Apps domain)

</comment><comment><USER48> Any plans to integrate with Streak?

</comment><comment><USER58> Amazing story!

Congrats to founder!

</comment><comment><USER59> TLDR: he made a tool for spammers. What an enterpreneur!

</comment><comment><USER60> Also you dont need hockey stick growth if you dont take VC capital or any outside capital

Businesses like this make more for founders when they dont take outside capital. With obsessions on growth and liquidation preferences, a business like this likely wouldnt result in a windfall for a founder during an exit event.</comment>


Ask HN: Any service you wish you had? - <AUTHOR>

I'm looking for inspiration for a side project, mainly in the area of developer tools / services for making the devs life easier. Is there anything out there you wish you had to make your life easier?
For example right now, I'm thinking about a device directory with api where you can keep up-to-date on mobile/desktop/console/ereader devices and use the DB in your apps. Also a CSS parser to remove redundancies in a large code base.
Any ideas would be appreciated :) <comment><USER2> A really good mysql gui client that runs on Linux and Windows. Doesn't need to have loads of features, just make common things like browsing data sets, creating new tables, deleting data etc very quick.

<comment><AUTHOR> up vote :), theres definately a need for this. The only "good" sql gui out there in my opinion is sequel pro that only runs on mac. Mysql workbench crashes on remote connections on linux and is a sluggish beast, it just gets worse from there phpmyadmin...

<comment><USER2> SQLyog is better (though not free) and will run on Linux using Wine. But Wine makes it ugly and clunky and crash prone.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER3> A service that takes care of parking tickets, speeding tickets, etc. for me. I miss way too many deadlines.

And if you're dreaming big, please take care of my car registration, smog check, registering me to vote when I move, etc.

Oh, sorry, this was supposed to be for dev tools. Just noticed. Well, anyway.

</comment><comment><USER4> I wish there was something akin to Homebrew for Windows package management.

</comment><comment><USER5> I wish that Ruby on Rails worked on Windows.

<comment><AUTHOR> This is interesting. Rails does "work" on windows but the problem is that an extensive amount of gems do not. So for any large/mid-sized project that depends on a lot of other gems like rmagick, postgreSQL, solr, etc, you can basically forget getting it to work under windows, which is really annoying when your trying to test your app on old IE browsers, it would be nice to be able pull your project on windows and directly edit the source and view log files while testing in IE without the hassle of VM's etc.

<comment><USER2> <http://www.vagrantup.com/>

Edit: Yes it is technically a VM, but it is the lowest friction solution I have found and you can configure it in such a way as to make the VM fairly transparent.

<comment><AUTHOR> This looks interesting I will definately try it out. But could you explain how this is better / easier than setting up a virtualbox with windows + IE ?

<comment><USER2> Easiest to just play with it , work through examples and see for yourself.

It actually uses virtualbox under the hood (though you can make it work with other virtualisation software)

It is much quicker to get a VM up and running since you don't have to run through the installation process of the distro.

You just look online for "rails dev box, vagrant" and run the command to download and set it up.

It creates a shared folder between host and guest automatically, and port forwarding is very easy to configure in such a way that localhost:8000 can map to guest:80 or whatever.

SSH is super easy, just do "vagrant ssh" to get a shell, no key or password settings required.

Also integrates with puppet etc and low memory footprint since you just get what you need and not X etc.

But it's really the ease and speed of creating VMs that is the killer app for me. So when I start a new project I can just type a few commands and have a fresh VM for that project.</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment>


Ask HN: Cloudflare incorrectly banned me – can anyone help? - <AUTHOR> Hello HN,
The TLDR; 10 days ago I was banned from Cloudflare allegedly for "phishing". I have never phished, nor used Cloudflare to proxy illegal content.
I am a long time HN user but I created a throwaway account to avoid being linked to my employer.
10 days ago I got an email saying my account was suspended for "phishing". I contacted Cloudflare support immediately and within 60 seconds I got a reply saying my account was permanently banned with no further information. I think this was an automated response. I followed up explaining my account had never been used for "phishing" and it hosted a number of small businesses and would they reinstate it. I never got a reply.
My downfall must been related to Cloudflare Workers. I used it to create some apps including proxies that modified mainstream news websites. They acted as uBlock + Stylish for locked down computers where I could not install browser extensions. I did not share these with anyone, but I did not secure them with HTTP auth. I didn't think anyone could guess the xyz.abc.workers.dev URLs to access the proxies but automated software must have detected them and flagged them as phishing sites.
I was too clever for my own good, but I was not malicious, I did not abuse the Cloudflare platform and I never phished. I just created an application for my own personal use. I do not think any Clouldflare engineer looking at my Worker code would think it was malicious in any way. My account had current billing details and I was a paying customer in the past.
Lessons learnt: Don't be clever and security is ALWAYS important.
I would like to continue using Cloudflare. I worry I will be banned from their other services. If I was blocked at an IP level, it would be far more devastating than being permanently blocked by Google.
If anyone can help me, even just to clear my name, I would very grateful to you. <comment><USER2> > My downfall must been related to Cloudflare Workers. I used it to create > some apps including proxies that modified mainstream news websites. They > acted as uBlock + Stylish for locked down computers where I could not > install browser extensions. I did not share these with anyone, but I did not > secure them with HTTP auth. I didn't think anyone could guess the > xyz.abc.workers.dev URLs to access the proxies but automated software must > have detected them and flagged them as phishing sites

Strange, Cloudflare has an official worker template to do just that (sans modifications): [https://developers.cloudflare.com/workers/templates/pages/bu...](https://developers.cloudflare.com/workers/templates/pages/bulk_origin_proxies/) Sounds like officially endorsed use case to me.

In fact I was thinking about doing the same the other day, but haven't gotten around to it...

</comment><comment><USER3> Same thing happened to me. Paying account and when I asked what rule I had violated I was directed to the paragraph that said something along the lines of "CloudFlare reserves the right to terminate an account for any reason." It's been a real pain but I'm happy to pay for KeyCDN now.

</comment><comment><USER4> I pinged our Trust & Safety team to take another look.

<comment><USER5> OP - I suggest adding some info to your profile or post here so they can identify you? Not sure if you can do that without revealing yourself to everyone else...

<comment><USER4> Yup. What's domain in question?

<comment><AUTHOR> I did not delete any of the Workers because I thought that would potentially make me look guilty to CF support. This Worker domain is in my account:

[https://ip2.surprise.workers.dev/](https://ip2.surprise.workers.dev/)

The proxy's are also at *.surprise.workers.dev.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> >Lessons learnt: Don't be clever and security is ALWAYS important.

What kind of lesson is that, we wouldn't have the internet as we know if people just followed the rules. If anything this signals that cloudflare is yet another huge company that can just shit on you with little recourse.

</comment><comment><AUTHOR> Hello again HN, this was kindly all resolved by Cloudflare. Thank you to eastdakota and sonstry for looking into this for me.

</comment><comment><USER7> The automated contact emails are hilarious. Basically just there to help you scratch an itch to try things.</comment>


When people ask for security holes as features: Privileged execution - <AUTHOR> http://blogs.msdn.com/oldnewthing/archive/2009/09/24/9898728.aspx

<comment><USER2> This post is good on security and bad on OS design. The last 10 years of OS design has in large part been about finding small facets of the kernel that can be exported to userland via apertures and very-low-level programming interfaces.

The answer "no you can't have these privileged instructions" is incomplete; it's missing "but here's the API that safely wraps them."

Problems like this are part of what makes OS security so interesting. Good security isn't about saying, "no, moron, if I give you that capability you'll be able to own up the kernel." In fact, security is almost never about saying "no". When you tell someone "the only way to build this feature is by writing a driver", you're asking them to write kernel code instead of userland code, which makes security _worse_.

<comment><USER3> Well, what that really means is "the only way to build this feature is by writing code that gets signed, either by you or by some trustworthy guy." The trust is supposed to come from the code signing, not from the fact that it's a driver and not a user-mode app.

<comment><USER2> Code signing is rubber chicken security. It sure sounds good. But the threat with code like this is incompetence, not malice, and nobody --- _nobody_ \--- has the resources to audit every Windows driver, or even every OSX driver for that matter.

The problem here is that the interface the MSDN blogger is talking about is brittle. "You can't have those instructions unless you write a driver". Well, they're going to get the instructions, genius. They have a business driver, and business trumps principles every time. So they're going to go through whatever dance MSFT requires this year to ship as a driver, and the kernel's going to get one more piece of incompetent driver code.

Maybe I'm missing some backstory here, but that's my read.

<comment><USER4> Better that one vendor incompetently write a driver than have Microsoft open the floodgates with a shockingly insecure API 'feature' (again).

It's much easier to replace third parties than the OS.

<comment><USER2> I think pretty much all the OS vendors have equally bad track records with kernel/userland interface design. But, having done a few device driver audits, I respectfully disagree, and submit to you that if your job exposed you to 3rd party driver code, you too would rather MSFT took a risk on kernel APIs than increase the number of drivers.

<comment><USER4> Don't get me wrong: I would absolutely prefer MSFT write a proper API to handle the necessary requests, rather than leave it to vendors to write drivers.

But in reality no API will cover every corner case. And if the choice is between vendors writing drivers to cover those situations, or Microsoft leaving a 'hole' in the API which allows arbitrary instructions to be passed through, I'll take vendor drivers every time.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> This extends to other areas as well. I was shocked the first time I found an "enterprise" app with an interface for executing arbitrary SQL with full permissions. The shock wears off when you see it over and over. It's nuts.

<comment><USER2> Amen. I'm surprised by how many developers think this is a totally reasonable debugging feature, and think that nobody is going to find it because it's in a hidden diagnostic support section of the application. Note to product developers: we always find these things.</comment></comment>


Awful Recruiters - <AUTHOR> http://awfulrecruiters.com/ <comment><USER2> I first started writing software on contract in the mid-90's. It was a good time, full of C++ jobs and my skills and my market seemed to be in harmony. I put my resume out there on the still-so-new-it-shined internet and immediately got over a dozen calls, the vast majority being from 3rd-party recruiters.

I complained to my wife after the third call in a row and she explained to me that I should never be upset when someone called because they wanted to get me a job. She had endured a lot of unemployment in her family and a call from a recruiter was a cause for celebration, not complaint. From that point on, I've never complained about a call or email from a recruiter.

2002 and 2003 were some lean years for software jobs and those calls became few and far between. Now the phone is ringing again, and I don't even have my resume posted anywhere. Still, I won't complain and I haven't blocked emails from any recruiter.

I actually go out of my way to respond to recruiters that seem halfway decent or better. A couple have expressed grateful surprise and I've made new connections that may work out in the future. The awful ones aren't blocked (at least none have been so awful to merit blocking so far), but I don't respond to them either. I just keep the channel open in case times do get lean once again.

The third-party recruiter model may indeed be broken, and, with a few exceptions, isn't a fit for the startup world. It does however seem to work well enough for nearly every BigCo in existence and should I work for a BigCo on contract once again, I'll likely work through a third-party recruiter.

<comment><USER3> > ... when someone called because they wanted to get me a job

She overestimates the bad recruiters. Recruiters have been known to advertise non-existent positions so they can build up their folios. They have been known to alter resumes to make it look like the candidate is a fit when they aren't. They have been known to lie about candidates. They have been known to try to make the candidates do all the work. They have been known to take jobs posted by companies that do want recruiters involved and then repost them (it makes them look better having these jobs on their books).

My biggest grievance is them having put in zero effort to check if I am a match for the company or the company for me, despite the means to do so being readily available. ie they are wasting the time of everyone involved.

More personal context <http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=3661261>

<comment><USER2> Thanks for the comment. I noticed Modis on your list. Do you recall how they earned the spot? I've worked for them (granted, years ago) with no problem. I've had very few bad experiences - never had my resume submitted without approval, or had my resume edited. I do check out a recruiter before working for them and maybe my internal warning system works. Often I try to work for companies that offer insurance, which is a hurdle that fly-by-night shops can't clear.

Protip: If a recruiter ever uses the term "DIRECT CLIENT" in an email, they are ignored, especially if it's in all caps. That seems to be a great filter for getting rid of bad recruiters. I'm not even sure why so many places use it.

<comment><USER3> > I noticed Modis on your list. Do you recall how they earned the spot?

They were added in February or March 2011. I don't record specifics as to why, but they all follow the same pattern - a useless content free email where it is obvious they have made no attempt to see if I am good match or the company is, despite the ease with which they could do that. The messages are usually almost indistinguishable from spam. They have to be pretty egregiously bad that I never want to hear from the recruiter ever again under any circumstances!

See also <http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=3677709>

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> > All third-party recruiters are awful and need to find a real profession.

Wow, I'm not the biggest recruiter fan but this makes the site pretty hard to take seriously.

<comment><USER5> Obviously I'm kidding.

<comment><USER6> not obvious...

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> It would be great to see an example of the bad recruiter e-mails received from each domain. I think this would give the list some more authority.

<comment><USER8> I had the same initial reaction, but upon visiting a few of the domains the caliber of the companies became apparent.

</comment></comment><comment><USER9> I'd love to see a RateMyProfessor-style site for recruiters. Among other things, it might provide some reward for the few who try to behave well towards developers and employers.

<comment><USER10> I agree. I think the great recruiters should be rewarded as they are few and far-between, and the terrible ones should be outed. It'd be nice to turn the tables and evaluate their qualifications just as they do ours.

</comment></comment><comment><USER11> I'm going to take issue with one of the companies on his list, Riviera Partners. I worked with this company for several months last summer (Hey Matt!) and, in my dealings with them, they were utterly professional. I hate recruiters in general, but the guys at Riviera were the definite exception.

First, their list of clients were very top-notch. I did a number of phone screens and on-site interviews with companies I was introduced to via them. Never found exactly what I was looking for, but met lots of cool people and companies.

Matt was my main contact after I asked to only deal with one of their people. Was always professional and helpful. I've had good interactions with some of their other employees too.

<comment><USER12> I posted my experience with them elsewhere here (<http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=3678767>) but it was basically the exact opposite of your's - extremely unprofessional the whole way.

<comment><USER11> Sucks you had an unpleasant interaction with them. I worked with them quite a bit and never got that. I did stupidly take an interview from a recruiter called Jivaronic or something. That was pretty bad.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> We recruit directly. Our ads are clearly marked at top and bottom with 'We do not use, and never have used, a recruitment agency. Please do not contact us if you are a recruitment agent'

Despite this, we receive multiple calls a day from agencies.

Exasperating!

<comment><USER3> I've seen that as well. There are two things going on. One is that agencies will add the jobs to their books. It makes them look better - "hey look at all these cool jobs we are recruiting for".

The second is that they can claim to have introduced a candidate to you and can try to sue. Often a company will just roll over especially if it turns out to be a good candidate.

Remember that the good recruiters will be successful meeting the needs of their clients (employers & candidates). Bad ones won't so they will spread themselves far and wide until they get a bite.

<comment><USER14> > The second is that they can claim to have introduced a candidate to you and > can try to sue. Often a company will just roll over especially if it turns > out to be a good candidate.

If they have no recruitment contract, how does this hold water? They're suing because you (allegedly) used some unsolicited advice they gave you?

<comment><USER3> > They're suing because you (allegedly) used some unsolicited advice they gave > you?

You seem to be confusing the American legal system with justice and it being free to innocent parties!

The recruiter will claim they sent the candidate details and represented the candidate and now you owe them. If you don't they will take you to court. It will cost the innocent company a fair bit of cash to defend even though they are in the right. So faced with a bill from a scummy recruiter for $10,000 or potential legal costs (not to mention time) of $25,000 they end up picking the former.

The same kind of crap goes on with domain names where squatters will set their price a little below that of following the legal route to get your domain. You either pay them in order to get the domain right now, or you spend several months and even more in legal fees in order to get it via the ICANN rules.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> You can add cybercoders to that list.

<comment><USER16> They are annoying. In my personal experience, this is the only firm whose recruiters don't even bother reading your resume as opposed to just making sure it was key words.

</comment></comment><comment><USER17> Until someone changes the payment model for 3rd party recruiters especially, I'll always cheer lists like this on. No matter what a recruiter may tell you, they'll never have your interest at heart if there's a commission to be made. The incentives are wrong for you, wrong for companies too.

</comment><comment><USER18> There's a disclaimer to this effect, but just to reiterate: there are real companies on this list. Good and Lumos Labs are two that I recognize off the bat.

<comment><USER2> Turner.com is for Turner Broadcasting. I think some people have gotten some interesting jobs there, working on stuff like Adult Swim.

<comment><USER19> Kforce, also. Many people I know have had great success through them.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER20> There's another list here:

<http://www.rogerbinns.com/blocked_recruiters.txt>

<comment><USER3> Hello again :-) That is my site and list. Here is the context about how the list arose and why I block those recruiters:

<http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=3661261>

</comment></comment><comment><USER21> Looking at that list, the thing that occurred to me is how one bad individual can harm the reputation of an otherwise OK firm. The OP obviously had bad anecdotal experiences with every firm on that list. Also anecdotal is the fact that there are recruiters worth talking to one or two of those firms (I've talked to them.) I don't know if my experience makes that firm good or bad - but I also don't know if the OP's experience makes any of those firms good or bad.

What I have done with my "awful" anecdotes was email back the abusive recruiter, and track down the person's boss (usually there's somebody on the web site whose email address you can at least derive.) In the email I say I'm going to start filtering all messages from their domain to deleted items. If the person doesn't respond, the boss usually does, and more often than not the experience is positive - and if not, I'll follow through and send 'em to the trash. It has worked for me.

<comment><USER3> > ... one bad individual can harm the reputation of an otherwise OK firm

If the recruitment firm is unable to make good hiring decisions for itself in its own industry on a topic it knows about, then why should they be trusted for other firms and candidates?

</comment></comment><comment><USER22> A week or two ago I got a LinkedIn friend request from a recruiter who used the message to tell me about how I should get in touch with him.

He clearly used the friend request mechanism to skirt around the LinkedIn rules about having to pay to send recruiter mails. I can't imagine how else he would try to cut corners or sell people out to save himself a buck.

</comment><comment><USER23> Wouldn't it be easier to produce a list of good recruiters?

<comment><USER24> It would be a short list - and you need the list of bad domains to do email filtering.

</comment></comment><comment><USER25> Friendly suggestion ... alphabetize the lists.

</comment><comment><USER26> A better idea would be a site dedicated to rating recruiters and recruiting agencies. That way you can democratize the process and get a feel for the average experience.

<comment><USER27> Sort of glassdoor for recruiters? I'd be good with that.

</comment></comment><comment><USER28> ugh, yeah the jobspringpartners one I saw in there.. I actually met with them at their office once as I was in town from out of state for another interview so figured why not (I didn't know much about them and figured I should squeeze an extra interview in even if it was going to be a dud)... it was definitely a weird experience, they had me meet with this one girl first, then they send me out in the waiting room to have five different people each come out to meet with me individually and they each asked basically the same stupid questions... and these were really basic questions that were all answered on my resume. Its just odd that companies like this can stay in business. There was no succession of meeting with different levels of managers, etc, they were all just basic recruiters (salespeople), its as if they were either so inept at communicating that they couldn't share information among one another (or take the time to actually read my resume) or that they were so ultra competitive that they couldn't trust one employee to meet with me, they had to add go directly to the source.

</comment><comment><USER12> I was contacted by a recruiter from Riviera Partners recently. Stupidly, I thought that it might be beneficial to respond to them.

After not receiving a call from him at our scheduled time, I emailed him. He responded three days later telling me that he had called in sick the day he was supposed to call me and asked for my availability in the next few days. I gave him my availability, and never heard back until he just called me out of the blue. It was fine that time, but would have been very annoying if my availability had changed.

We talked for a bit and he said that he wanted to get me in touch with a startup company that he thought had a position that would be a good fit for me - same deal, I gave him my times and received no confirmation until the company called me one afternoon.

A little bit into the phone call it became apparent that he had told them I was open to permanent positions despite me making it very clear to him I was only looking for internships.

Great.

</comment><comment><USER29> Nice list. I was surprised how none of the ones who email me are on it, so I'm assuming recruiters are mostly by area.

One question, though: why are you archiving these in GMail instead of trashing them? If you trash them, you still have 30 days to correct your mistake, and no recruiter email is worthwhile after 30 days anyway.

</comment><comment><USER30> A terrible recruiter from flex-associates.com found me on linkedin, I came "highly recommended", from a super secret sauce. Next day they tried it on with my junior. Same person, same conversation tactic, same lack of knowledge about the industries I work in and the systems I work with and develop for.

</comment><comment><USER31> What's the metric for "purely crap"?

<comment><USER5> "Requirement: Java Engineer" when I don't know Java, etc.

</comment></comment><comment><USER32> I expected this to be a Coding Horror for bad recruiters. Now that would be interesting :)

</comment><comment><USER33> I happen to work for one of the firms that is listed in this post. It is so funny how people like to talk smack when they are anon. I think that is ironic that is I were to rate Soffes on his track record, he'd get a C+ maybe...hasn't held a job for more than a year and even when he worked for himself, he lasted less than 2 years...I am not saying that there aren't some Awful recruiters on this list, but obvious Sam has a axe to grind, because that are obvious some well respected firms on the list. I will be sure to add Sam Soffes to our internal list of AwfulCandidates!

</comment><comment><USER34> Sounds like this person has put himself up on some/many job sites and is wondering why every recruiter on the planet is sending him referrals. Besides, if a particular company sends you a bunch spam, it's usually a 1-3 click process to add them to your spam filter.

As for the list he provided, I don't agree with the top entry. I got a great referral from WorkBridgeAssociates, and our company has found several good people through them as well. (Note: I do not work for or get any kind of recompense from them.)

<comment><USER35> Or, you could easily figure out who this person is and then realize they are quite good and that is why they are getting contacted all the time...?

<comment><USER34> Yes, that is certainly a possibility. And if they are that good, then they'd definitely have set up a spam filter and not have complained so loudly, so publicly. I don't really care too much either way about it. It seems to be too much huffing and puffing over a trivial issue.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER36> I got my current job from LinkedIn, so it's not all crap from there. A lot of it is, though, so I would understand if a person wasn't patient enough...

<comment><USER27> I was surprised to see LinkedIn on the list. LinkedIn is _so_ much more than a job exchange. Everything from its Answers (which is often very good, if you scrape off the people who -- for reasons I cannot fathom -- answer 50 questions a day) to its Groups (varying quality, but worth it for the good ones) to just plain old "where's _she_ working now...?" gossip.

</comment></comment><comment><USER37> I once had a job that depressed the hell out of me. I had thought the company would be good because the job ad said they'd never, ever lost an engineer in more than 10 years of operation.

2 months after I'd left, the same job ad was on the recruiter's website.

</comment><comment><USER38> Don't know if the author is reading, but would be nice if the main domain list was sorted.

Have dealt with a few of those mentioned and agree, and was going to forward the site to our internal recruiter to make sure don't use them. :)

</comment><comment><USER39> Add Techlink to the list. Not only do their recruiters lie about the positions they are looking to fill but they get the hiring managers to lie about the positions as well.

</comment><comment><USER40> Ok. But thebackplane.com is not a "3rd party recruiter" .. they're not even a recruiter. :)

</comment><comment><USER41> Isn't @good.com just an email service like gmail but used by BlackBerry or corporate users?

<comment><USER5> Ah, I think that's a company. A few got mixed in my list of recruiter firms. Like it says on the site, I need to take some time and filter it.

</comment></comment><comment><USER42> I really wanted to read user-submitted emails they've received from recruiters.

<comment><USER43> FWIW, I started a tumblr like this and abandoned it due to lack of interest:

<http://yousuckatrecruiting.com/>

</comment></comment><comment><USER44> A couple of friends and I got this idea a few years ago. We've accumulated over 340 companies their recruiters who are less than desirable. Inflated salaries lead the pack of the tactics used. Posting misleading information about the job description and benefits follow closely.

Wouldn't mind some VC-$ to launch.

From experience - most of the job boards are junk, including the ones on that site.

<comment><USER28> The problem with things like this is who is going to pay for it? Its a rather small market (software developers).. I'm not sure its a viable business model but more of an idea for an open source project</comment></comment>


Apple Updates MacBook with Latest Processors, Longer Battery Life - <AUTHOR> http://www.apple.com/pr/library/2016/04/19Apple-Updates-MacBook-with-Latest-Processors-Longer-Battery-Life-New-Rose-Gold-Finish.html <comment><USER2> 8gb RAM as standard is a good move, extra battery does not hurt.

will macbook air 11 go away, will wait and watch</comment>


Why hunting for life in Martian water will be a tricky task - <AUTHOR> http://www.nature.com/news/why-hunting-for-life-in-martian-water-will-be-a-tricky-task-1.18450 <comment><USER2> "Carl Sagan famously mused that if life is ever found on the fourth rock from the sun, "Mars then belongs to the Martians, even if the Martians are only microbes." In this view the planet would become a sacrosanct sanctuary, forever off-limits to encroaching humans."

What sort of broken understanding of ownership must one have in order to posit the idea of microbes owning anything?</comment>


Racist hosts, not hotels, are the greatest threat to Airbnb's business - <AUTHOR> http://qz.com/706767/racist-hosts-not-hotels-are-the-greatest-threat-to-airbnbs-business/ <comment><USER2> I think Airbnb (even leaving out the 'skirting regulation' stuff) is pretty much primed for discrimination. As soon as you require a photo of users you are doing that. It's interesting to compare Airbnb and Uber (another company I'm leery of for skirting regulations).

As a black man in Boston, catching at taxi was an exercise in humiliation/frustration. Either they did not stop, or they did and were incredibly rude/racist. When Uber became available in Boston I immediately joined. It was an incredible experience. No more having to deal with rude/racist cab drivers, no more having to worry whether I'd actually ever be able to catch a taxi to get somewhere. I have not used Uber in SF since I've found no problem catching a cab when I need to (and I've become disturbed by their business model)

Airbnb is the exact opposite. It is essentially renting without the benefits of the Fair Housing Act or anti-discrimination laws. I've faced housing discrimination even with those laws in place (a good program on this is This American Life's "House Rules" episode) so I'm under no illusion that things would magically be better on Airbnb's platform. here are things they could do to fix this

\- Not require photos \- Have metrics to track rejection by race (track when a host says no to one person and then yes to someone else for the same time period) \- Have a streamlined complaint policy

It's not enough to ban one host cause he was so outright racist/egregious that it came to the attention of Social Media and finally their CEO.

</comment><comment><USER3> It's tempting as a host to reject people of a certain type, but the line that I draw isn't on race, gender or religion — it's age.

I've come to find out that older folks — somewhere around 50+ — have been the worst possible guests, with no exceptions so far. They tend to be stingy with their star ratings and leave poor reviews even if they had a perfect experience. They also tend to be much more high-maintenance and not self- sufficient, acting as if they think the Airbnb is a hotel and the host is their concierge or room service.

The cost-benefit ratio doesn't work for me in these cases, so I've been intentionally passing on older people recently and trying to fill my Airbnb with younger folks. I never see age mentioned as a factor for discrimination in articles like these, and it seems that it may not be legislated in the same way that the other factors are.

But it feels like it's the exact same issue, and I'm willingly becoming more and more guilty of it.

<comment><USER4> Does AirBnB make it easy to view what ratings people have given? Certainly the history of an individual user provides much more useful, actionable information than any broad trait.

It should be easy for hosts to say they only want people with X reviews where most of them are 4-5 stars. Or a better score that weights it based on the host rating (i.e. if a user's hosts generally get 5 stars, but this user rates them all 3 stars, then it's probably a problem with the user, so avoid.) Perhaps AirBnB doesn't want do to this to avoid putting pressure on renters.

<comment><USER3> That would be a hugely useful metric for a host, but it actually is difficult to see how a user has rated their past hosts. The only method I know of is: view the user profile and look at their reviews, go to each host who reviewed them, search through their reviews to find the prospective guest. There are two points of failure here: if the guest didn't get reviewed by a host _or_ if they didn't review a host. So when a guest only has 1-3 reviews, which seems to be about the average for older folks, it's hard to paint a picture.

I did reject a guest through this method, though. Their reviews from hosts were actually all very good, but when I read their reviews of their hosts, they contained things like "he was nice enough to give me a ride to the airport when I asked, though the car was a bit cramped."

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> So a guy all of a sudden sees strangers in his neighbors house. Nevermind their color - wouldn't you be suspicious if you all of a sudden saw 2 20-something dudes in your neighbors house? I know I would - I wouldn't even think twice about their color.

This is the example the article is holding up as the example of racism and it isn't even racist.

The trans example: I'm 100% for property owners deciding what they will and won't use their private property for. Get over it. You can't go through life getting offended at every opinion different from yours, even if you think it's irrational.

<comment><USER6> There used to be an era in America where hotels could legally discriminate, making travel for minorities extremely difficult. This is not a matter of feeling offended, but a matter of having equal access to resources.

<comment><USER7> Hotels are a regulated industry. This is my home and as such, I deserve to make decisions that I believe to be morally correct. If I google the guy who wants to rent my room and he has Facebook postings criticizing the US and cheering on ISIS then I don't want him in my home. I have the right to extend my personal value system in this way. Big government should not be able to shove people into my home against my will. This is clearly a 4th amendment issue.

Don't like it? Call the Best Western.

We also see exemptions to non-discrimintary laws for churchs, mosques, temples, etc. Its clear that society is not a "one size fits all" thing and exemptions are morally and socially justifiable. The same way I can't get funding and entitlements like affirmative action and other race-based policies, that are 100% racist and accepted by liberals as normal.

<comment><USER8> It's almost like Silicon Valley's attempts to "disrupt" regulated industries by replacing them with its own alternatives that don't follow the regulations is a bad thing...

<comment><USER7> We live in a society of laws. If Congress and SCOTUS want to get rid of the 4th amendment, then certainly things will change.

<comment><USER9> Please share with us your legal analysis that the Congress and SCOTUS are violating the 4th Amendment by passing and upholding anti-discrimination laws.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> It's a private host offering to rent out to private guest. They can accept or deny anyone they please to for ANY REASON they feel. That can be race, gender, religion, anything...it doesn't matter. Go find a new hosts then or don't use Airbnb.

This problem is NOT Airbnb's to solve. In fact, I don't see this as a problem at all. If I don't want somebody staying at my place, I'm going to reject you, period. That's it...you can't sue me, nor Airbnb, stop crying discrimination, move on.

<comment><USER11> That's really weird perspective. Because the moment you are making a listing in the marketplace (Airbnb in this case). You are selling a good or service. And denying that good or service based on someone's race is definitely unlawful as it should be.

</comment></comment><comment><USER12> I was arguing with a friend that convicted felons shouldn't be discriminated against in job searches, or they will never become upstanding members of society. Then later I was thinking about how someday I'm going to rent out my apartment. And if I do a background check on a tenant, and it turns out they are a convicted felon, I honestly couldn't let them rent the apartment because it's too risky. I feel bad about it, but when it comes to risking my own assets, I can't do it!

<comment><USER10> Welcome to the concept of Enlightened self interest. It's pretty much the same as, when poor: "The rich don't pay their fair share", and now if you become rich: "I pay a stupid amount in taxes".

Many fiscally liberal/progressive ideas are centered around hypocrisy. Everyone likes to talk the talk, but they don't act upon it.

Others call this human nature...

</comment></comment><comment><USER13> Would it change anything if this was about couchsurfing (free service) rather than airbnb? If it was about white co-renters voting against new black tenants?

What if I was traveling a lot and would let my friends use my car and/or stay at my house and all of them happened to be white? What if I was selective and refuse my best friend? Would it change anything if I asked for some kind of compensation? Compensation larger than to cover my direct costs? Is it business yet?

I am selling a used item and cancel the transaction if the buyer is black. Does it change anything if I resell items for a living and do the same?

I am not asking if this is racism. All I am asking is whether there is any difference between displaying discrimination in human to human interactions and human to society interactions.

I personally hate this hypocrisy of treating sharing economy as business when it is convenient and sharing between individuals when it is not. Very similar to general opinion I happen to read about Uber: since it is "ride sharing", therefore most regulations are excessive, yet drivers sharing full time is somehow a norm.

</comment><comment><USER14> I dont see how this is related to AirBnB. They may are a good case to study this phenomen but in reality it is the society that creates this fears.

Ironically it isnt to far off ether. Where i live the majority of black youth have a bigger criminal history than their white peers. Sure this again fully depends on how the society treats them.

<comment><USER15> Airbnb cant fix society, but they can easily enforce non-discrimination on their hosts.

<comment><USER4> They could try, if they want to sink their business. Telling people they no longer control who stays in their home does not seem like a smart move -- at least for actual home-sharers, not illegal hotel operators. And AirBnB doesn't want to really recognize the hotel operators, do they?

<comment><USER15> I doubt they would sink their business. Airbnb is no longer a startup that is given free licence to go against established laws. Compliance at this stage will benefit their business.

<comment><USER4> AirBnB isn't discriminating. Private home owners are choosing to share their homes. For anti discrimination laws to apply, AirBnB would have to admit that many of their "sharing" people are just illicit hotels skirting the law.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><AUTHOR> Particularly wondering what this community thinks as AirBnB is a YC company and some of the proposed solutions to this problem are startups:

[http://www.innclusive.com/](http://www.innclusive.com/)

[http://noirbnb.launchrock.com/](http://noirbnb.launchrock.com/)

<comment><USER16> This was actually my immediate reaction - so AirBNB because of it's size is going to attract some racist hosts because their demographic is "anyone with a room".

If you create a site where the intended demographic is "anyone with a room that is pro-inclusivity", then surely you could create a community around people who self-select as not perpetuating racism/transphobia/general bigotry.

<comment><USER17> Those people have embraced the idea of repressive tolerance and would proudly turn away religious pro-gun Trump supporters.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER18> There is latent racism on Airbnb, but I think they're looking at it the wrong way.

We have two properties on Airbnb and instead of my white and shaved ugly head, my wife is on profile picture (she's asian). We get far more requests from minorities than is normal.

Basically, we've cornered the market on asian people visiting Cape Cod. It's not our doing, but there is clearly a selection bias by renters, which I think is human nature.

<comment><USER8> Your experience would easily be explained by other AirBNB hosts not renting to non-whites.

</comment></comment><comment><USER19> AirBnB is a YC company, so I can see why this is relevant. But the biggest threat to their business model isn't hotels, or the behavior of hosts. It's that they're still in the 'disrupt' phase and none of their status quo has been tested in the courts.

If there is alleged discrimination, some wronged party will eventually file suit, and the courts will decide whose rights are more pertinent.

If there is alleged skirting of regulations, some wronged party will eventually file suit, etc. Until these threads play out, they're growing, but after, they could crumble overnight. This uncertainty is the biggest threat to their business.

</comment><comment><USER20> It's not really a secret that some AirBnB hosts discriminate on the basis of race, sexual orientation and other factors when deciding on which guests they allow to live in their homes.

It's also no surprise that neighbours of those hosts also sometimes discriminate against guests who stay in their neighbourhood.

AirBnB can definitely work towards educating hosts and guests to try to reduce the chances of this happening, but I'm not sure that it's their job to try and fix what is really a societal problem that is reflected in how people use their service.

<comment><USER4> The US collects racial information in crime statistics, right? So it should be one evaluation of Bayes' Theorem to demonstrate actual increased risk based on race, if any. Seems like it should be pretty trivial in some areas to demonstrate exactly what the probabilities are (and if they are even relevant if background rate of crime is low).

</comment></comment><comment> guard-of-terra What's wrong with being "really, really" white? Why it's a "dirty secret"? That's a bit intolerant to my liking.

(Not coming from USA if that matters)

<comment><USER21> It's a clickbait and racist title; the article itself has nothing to do with white people, just two incidents.

Which is what they are, incidents.

</comment></comment><comment><USER22> As long as these are personal residences serving short term boarding needs I have no problem with people being openly racist. To help AirBnB should put a very large black and white banner on listings where the owners have racist, homophobic, sexist, etc. visitor restrictions.

I know I can't bring my dog to certain places, I should know whether I can't invite my black friend.

<comment><USER23> People hate being labeled racist more than actually being racist. Good example: Trumps feelings on undocumented immigrants being rapists and murderers.

<comment><USER24> >Good example: Trumps feelings on undocumented immigrants being rapists and murderers.

Terrible example for whatever point you wanted to make. Here is the original quote:

>When Mexico sends its people, they're not sending their best. They're not sending you. They're not sending you. They're sending people that have lots of problems, and they're bringing those problems with us. They're bringing drugs. They're bringing crime. They're rapists. And some, I assume, are good people.

So, what kind of mental gymnastics do you have to perform to conclude that he meant "undocumented immigrants are rapists and murderers"?

<comment><USER23> "they're rapists... And some are good people"

Can I use this same logic for your typical Stanford, white male student? I'm pretty sure if I did I'd be considered the racist.

<comment><USER24> Yes, if 80% of Stanford females are victims of sexual abuse (like 80% of female illegal immigrants crossing the border are).

<comment><USER23> Raped by whom? Smugglers. And where are these rapist smugglers? In Mexico.

So who is the Donald referring to doing all the raping? Mexican based smugglers or US based undocumented migrants?

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER25> I can confirm this. Even in Germany. My wife is black. Her sister wanted to visit, they are didn't came but that's another story.

Back to the renting act. They are two parents and four kids. All black.

Well, I'm white. So I tried to do the renting.

Soon or later the topic will come up who will come.and fRom where etc.

Told them, they are from Nigeria and have American passports.

End of story. No one replied.

Ever.

People are still resists. Like it or not. Or they hate children.

Make out of it what you want.

</comment><comment><USER26> Can we keep these social justice warrior posts off hacker news?

<comment><AUTHOR> You don't think this is pertinent?

[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11960708](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11960708)

[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11645433](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11645433)

<comment><USER26> I'd rather see the internet as an extension of human life rather than a chance to have public and private groups regulate it.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><AUTHOR> It appears this story has been flagged. It's dropped off the homepage rather suddenly. I can't find it ten pages deep.

Blackernews anyone . . .

HN wanna ring in?

<comment><USER27> Your second line, "Blackernews anyone...", is unnecessary.

<comment><AUTHOR> I think it's rather salient: [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11960708](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11960708)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> SJW outrage articles like these hopefully will die out as gawker-style journalism does. I don't see how this adds anything to any conversation other than the demographic that travels in the US is primarily white as the US itself is 77% white. I think there will always be perceived racism or other "isms." Playing up edge cases for ad imperssions seems questionable to me. There are 2 million listings on Airbnb, its clear edge cases will always be there.

Also, it would be trivial to use this brand of multiculturalism to justify open racism. Why should a Chinese person in Chinatown who doesn't speak English allow a white family to stay in their property? Or allowing a Russian to deny a Ukranian? Or allowing a black family who have been victimized by the police to allow a family containing police officers.

I imagine most SJW's would agree for "special exemptions" for these cases. The idea that no one should be turned down is asinine. These are people's homes and by the 4th Amendment the government can't shove people in them. Want to stay somewhere where they don't have these issues? Then call a hotel.

<comment><AUTHOR> Did you read through the article? It seems they're reporting on something airbnb users, the company, and academic researchers have recognized as a problem and what's being done about it, including a few startups.

Not to mention the whole socially pertinent(Trump???) legacy of entrenched discrimination in the U.S.

<comment><USER28> Liberal tree-hugging anti-racist hippie here:

I'm not sure if the original story is racism. If I (white) am staying in a Chinese apartment house that otherwise only has Chinese tenants then the _likelihood_ that someone recognizes me as a non-tenant is 100%.

Therefore, the likelihood that someone reports me as a stranger is far greater than if I were Chinese.

In other words, I'd not be surprised if someone reported me (white) while staying in a (hypothetical) Chinese AirBnB.

As far as "recognizing the problem" goes: You pretty much _have_ to acknowledge a "problem" if something like this comes up or you'll be harassed on the Internet.</comment></comment></comment>


Research backs human role in extinction of mammoths, other mammals - <AUTHOR> http://phys.org/news/2015-10-human-role-extinction-mammoths-mammals.html <comment><USER2> I was just reading Guns Germs and Steel, and Jared Diamond made a convincing argument that humans are most likely responsible. Wherever humans go, the large megafauna seem to die shortly afterwards. Humans are pretty effective hunters, and hunt in different ways than other animals. Animals evolved to defend themselves from wolves, not spears or being chased off cliffs.

The reason megafauna didn't die off in Africa is because humans evolved alongside them. As humans gradually became better hunters, the animals had time to adapt. But now that humans have guns, and that's starting to change too.

The alternative hypothesis of climate change doesn't really make sense, because there have been many periods of climate change in the past that didn't wipe out all the megafauna.

<comment><USER3> Megafauna in Africa has two different characteristics not found in the Arctic:

1\. Scavenger species which would've nullified the prize of the prey [you can't easily drag an elephant away for butchering]

2\. Things in the tropics rot fast. Your megafauna will either rot or more likely eaten by scavengers before you have a chance to hack something useful off. And, you're likely not keen on attracting predators who might see you as competition for the foodsource you just produced.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> I see this university press release and the paper to which in points[1] both came out in October 2015. I wonder if there has been some follow-up on this by other scientists yet.

[1] [http://www.pnas.org/content/early/2015/10/23/1504020112](http://www.pnas.org/content/early/2015/10/23/1504020112)

</comment><comment><USER5> See Graham Hancock's book, "Magicians of the Gods: The Forgotten Wisdom of Earth's Lost Civilization" ([http://www.amazon.com/Magicians-Gods-Forgotten- Wisdom-Civili...](http://www.amazon.com/Magicians-Gods-Forgotten-Wisdom- Civilization/dp/1250045924)) for a rebuttal to the archaeological model presented in this article.

Hancock's position is the archaeological model from this article is full of holes; created by multiple assumptions based on assumptions re: radiocarbon dating & general lack of critical thinking.

Instead he points to evidence of two comets hitting the ice caps in the last ice age (younger Dryas period), which melted the ice, causing "fire to rain" & worldwide flooding.

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

\---

Imo, there is too much uncertainty to commit to one historical model; yet I perceive Hancock's model to have more integrity.

<comment><USER6> Graham Hancock's theories are charitably described as "unconventional" (1) and less charitably as "crank" (2) and "woo" (3)

I don't think it qualifies as a "rebuttal" of anything.

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

2) [https://fabulousblueporcupine.wordpress.com/2009/10/23/the-l...](https://fabulousblueporcupine.wordpress.com/2009/10/23/the- lure-of-the-crank/)

3) [https://whyevolutionistrue.wordpress.com/2013/03/10/more- woo...](https://whyevolutionistrue.wordpress.com/2013/03/10/more-woo-and-anti- science-rants-at-tedx/)

<comment><USER5> > "unconventional" (1) and less charitably as "crank" (2) and "woo" (3)

those are socially defined terms (i.e. they don't say much about the validity or invalidity of a theory). only the facts & the system that ties the facts together.

the thing is, many of our "facts" poorly constructed assumptions. one has to be discerning & not afraid of ambiguity, nuance, & unknowns. i recommend to not lock yourself into a predefined box.

from your perspective, you don't see this as a "rebuttal". from my perspective, i see it as a rebuttal. ad hominem techniques are not evidence for a position.

i'm also open to neither of these models as being correct.

indeed, we choose what we are skeptical toward, based on our existing bias...</comment></comment></comment>


Deobfuscating malicious code layer by layer - <AUTHOR> http://pandalabs.pandasecurity.com/deobfuscating-malicious-code-layer-by-layer/

<comment><USER2> Check this one out too: [http://synapse- labs.com/EN/Reversing%20step%20by%20step%20of...](http://synapse- labs.com/EN/Reversing%20step%20by%20step%20of%20cve-2010-0188%20javascript)

</comment><comment><USER3> Likely could have thrown in hooks and called it a day with little to no modifications.

<https://gist.github.com/1472896>

</comment><comment><USER4> Given that he takes an inordinate amount of time explaining how to format code using a tool, is the rest actually worth reading?

<comment><USER5> Yes, he is merely being complete.</comment></comment>


Ask HN: Any European HNers want to get a (free) drink? - <AUTHOR>

Hi HN, long time reader, first time submitter.<p>Anyway, I'm on a three week European vacation with no solid plans for most of it. I was wondering if there are any HN readers in France, Germany or Benelux that would like to meet up for a drink and some conversation. <comment><USER2> If somebody is ever in Budapest and has a free evening:

<http://blog.scalien.com/ecard/mtrencseni/>

</comment><comment><USER3> When you hit Berlin, we should get a decent group together. I know at least of @wheels and me, there should be more Berliners here...

<comment><USER4> Count me in :-)

<comment><USER5> me too

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> There is a standing offer for drinks for HN people in Padova, Italy, which is a great area in any case:

[http://padovachronicles.welton.it/2008/09/05/visiting- italy-...](http://padovachronicles.welton.it/2008/09/05/visiting-italy-places- to-see-things-to-do)

<comment><USER7> Just come back from Venice few weeks ago, really great city to see.

<comment><USER6> Venice is neat, but Italy is 'fractally' interesting and beautiful, and there are interesting things even in small, out of the way places, such as some of the castles that at one point formed the border between the city states of Padova and Verona.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> If any HNers ever need a stop over in 'Limburg', the Netherlands, they're free to stay on my couch.

(until last week it was a hammock, now we have a couch ;) )

</comment><comment><USER9> If you plan to go in Sicily, feel free to ask me what to visit and the best places to eat. antirez / gmail / com

</comment><comment><USER10> Live in Rotterdam & work in Delft. Let me know if you end up in the Netherlands.

<comment><USER11> Another point for Rotterdam here. I'm always up for a beer or two.

<comment><USER12> Although I'm not living and/or working in the Randstadt (and I'm not even Dutch), can always be interesting to meet.

<comment><USER11> Not being Dutch shouldn't prevent you from having a beer :)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> If you ever come to Düsseldorf, drop an e-mail. gonvaled at gonvaled dot com.

</comment><comment><USER14> Sure, why not. I'm in Paris. ned ät baldessin döt fr.

<comment><USER15> I'm interested in any meeting down here in Paris. Gotta find a suitable place though. joss82 at gmail dot com

</comment></comment><comment><USER16> I'm in Luxembourg. So if you come by, let me know.

</comment><comment><USER7> If somebody from HN stops at Brno, Czech Republic, drop me email and I can show you the city, have some drinks and so on.

<comment><USER17> You don't have your e-mail listed in your profile though.

</comment></comment><comment><USER18> Eindhoven here. Anyone interested in meeting around southern Netherlands, drop me a note! (email is in profile).

</comment><comment><USER19> If any HNers ever come to Hyderabad India , drop an e-mail rama.vadakattu at gmail dot com

</comment><comment><USER20> Geneva, Switzerland might be on the way between France and Germany: tkappler, gmail.com.

<comment> a-priori Huh, go figure. I'm in Lausanne. To you or the OP, give me a shout if you're in the area. My email's in my profile.

</comment></comment><comment><USER21> Porto, Portugal. We have Port!

<comment><USER22> Anyone in Porto up for an hacker news meetup?

<comment><USER21> Time permitting, yeah.

<comment><USER22> Please send me an email (or gchat me) to alexandre (dot) rijo (at) gmail (dot) com so we can chat over a cofee!

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER23> If you want to take a detour around Sweden you're welcome to stop by ;P

</comment><comment><USER24> I'm in Barcelona: email is in profile!

</comment><comment><USER25> I'm in Belgium. Our beer rocks.

</comment><comment><USER26> Please don't turn this into reddit, I come here to get away from all those "ASK"s. Go back to Reddit Prog, please.</comment>


Slideshow Video Showcasing My Artwork - <AUTHOR> https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=f4QK2R6Yk-M <comment><AUTHOR> Busting the cherry on these comments.</comment>


A real life version of 'The Room' - <AUTHOR> http://www.broadsheet.com.au/melbourne/arts-and-entertainment/article/entering-escape-room

<comment><USER2> I would be interested in something like this in my area. Has anyone heard of other examples, like the North East US for example?</comment>


Companies vying to turn asteroids into filling stations - <AUTHOR> http://www.bbc.com/news/magazine-29334645

<comment><USER2> "Companies vying to turn asteroids into filling stations"

No they aren't. This is complete nonsense. Companies are not vying for this at all. The title is total rubbish.

</comment><comment><USER3> If you can independently get to the moon or an asteroid, I feel you can do what you want. Legal declarations from parent countries and kindoms always try to curtail or control what colonists in new lands do. While somewhat effective in the early years of settlements when external support is still needed, eventually the settlers have ideas of their own.</comment>


Clicker CEO Jim Lanzone, Busting Internet TV Myths - <AUTHOR> http://searchengineland.com/clicker-ceo-jim-lanzone-busting-internet-tv-myths-56246?utm_source=twitterfeed&utm_medium=twitter&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+searchengineland+%28Search+Engine+Land%3A+Google%2C+Bing%2C+SEO%2C+PPC%2C+SEM+%26+Search+Marketing+News%29&utm_content=Twitter <comment><AUTHOR> From the article:

> _It's less of this generation of having Melrose Place parties and more > watching Glee and then IMing or Facebooking or Tweeting._

It's sad that "this" generation, which is _our_ generation, is less concerned about being social in person than online.</comment>