Ask HN: do you trust your "secure email" now? - aw4y
After Lavabit and SilentCircle shutdown (the first said "better shutdown than give 'em access")...do you trust the other "secure email" providers?
======
jacquesm
I consider everything I type into a computer with an active network port to be
published.

Anything less would be folly, there are so many hops where people could be
listening in on your data (starting with the cable that runs from your
keyboard to your computer) that even an email sent to your 'drafts' box on
your own IMAP server is probably not secure. Unless you own the co-location
facility and all the infrastructure between where you sit and where you store
the mail.

The whole security thing to me is a matter of economics. I assume that any
data that is not worth reading is collected and that anything that is worth
more than it would cost to collect and read is read.

Maybe that's a paranoid view of the state of affairs but at least I won't be
surprised or disappointed. My main bulwark against wholesale exposure of the
contents of my inbox is a 'Rob'. Rob is a veteran sysadmin who configured and
set up my machine and I trust him (I have to, since he has access).

Rob is secure in the sense that he's an honorable person, and that I believe
that there is no offer that could be made that would make him break our bond
of trust. So short of blackmailing Rob (which is hard, and I would definitely
forgive him if that were to happen) my stored email is reasonably secure, but
any email in transit is fair game and will probably be caught somewhere along
the line and I treat all email that I send and receive as public as a
consequence of that.

~~~
VikingCoder
I think you get to a point, where you can't trust electronics at all. (Active
network or no.)

Van Eck phreaking. Optical Time-Domain Eavesdropping [1]. Zero-Day exploits on
operating systems, browsers, etc. Built-in vulnerabilities to processors.
Backdoors in encryption algorithms. Acoustic Keyboard analysis [2]. Laser
Audio detection [3]. Hard drive recovery. DRAM recovery. [4]

[1]
[http://www.rootsecure.net/content/downloads/pdf/optical_temp...](http://www.rootsecure.net/content/downloads/pdf/optical_tempest_crt.pdf)

[2]
[http://www.cs.berkeley.edu/~tygar/papers/Keyboard_Acoustic_E...](http://www.cs.berkeley.edu/~tygar/papers/Keyboard_Acoustic_Emanations_Revisited/tiss.preprint.pdf)

[3] [http://spie.org/x40847.xml](http://spie.org/x40847.xml)

[4]
[https://citp.princeton.edu/research/memory/](https://citp.princeton.edu/research/memory/)

If I wanted to send (very) secure email, I think I would want a Kindle-like
device, with an ePaper display, no physical keyboard just a touchscreen, no
bluetooth or wifi or 3G or microphone - just a single USB port. I'd install
the software I want on it, and then I'd physically destroy the USB port. I'd
want 4 AA batteries, no recharge port. I guess it would need a camera, as
well. And it would have its own Faraday cage. And a built-in, non-electronic
method that slags the RAM and storage with acid; possibly by pulling a pin
out. I'd wipe the screen clean, every time I used it.

How do I get data out of it? I drop data into a QR code sending system. It
would generate one full-screen QR-code like image every second or so. On
another computer, I'd have a camera that I'd show the device to, and it would
read the QR codes, and reconstruct the data. I can reverse the process to send
data to it. Show it my computer screen, and it decodes the QR codes to a data
file.

And if I personally wanted to increase the security, I would buy three
completely different hardware random generators, XOR their output together,
and make a giant One Time Pad. I'd invent a way to keep track of where you and
I were, in that pad. (You'd start at one end, and I at the other.) I'd
physically copy that data onto my secure-Kindle, and your secure-Kindle, and
then physically destroy the random number generating system in its entirety.
(And then destroy the USB port on both Kindles.) If I ever got a suspicious
message from you (re-using One Time Pad, etc.), I'd slag my secure-Kindle. And
you and I would invent pass phrases that we would use to communicate messages
in secret.

My secure-Kindle would also have a password to let me power it on. And it
would have one or more dummy passwords. If I entered a dummy password, the
system would act completely normally in every way, but it would secretly
insert the phrase "[COMPROMISED, DO NOT TRUST!]" or something like it, in the
middle of every message I send.

I might need to have the dummy password electronically wipe the system, to
help protect you from a government forcing me to decrypt messages you sent me.

But I honestly don't think there's a good way to stop this. If they have
physical possession of the device, and of me, they can force me to reveal my
passwords, and there's nothing I can do to stop them.

~~~
jacquesm
My second line of defense: I'm not important enough to monitor :)

~~~
VikingCoder
First they came for the... well, you know.

------
junto
"Secure email" is an oxymoron. Email isn't secure. We should treat it as such.

Even if you use the "technically challenging" PGP (i.e. challenging for the
layman), then the metadata still leaks relationships.

We need a replacement that is secure by default and easy to use, so that 'Mom
and Pop' can make the easy switch. Get that right and you can replace email.

In my opinion, a company like Yahoo is in the perfect position to write,
sponsor and open source an new innovative messaging solution, that is secure
by default (and cannot be made insecure) and cannot be monitored. External
validation of the source code and cryptographic implementation would be
paramount. A whole ecosystem of new "secure messaging" servers and clients
could spring up. It could be the next paradigm shift on the internet.

Yahoo are slowly getting back on their feet. If there ever was a perfect time
to release a killer app that would resonate with the majority, it would be
this. From trampled and downtrodden to the golden boys (and girls) again.

Go on Yahoo. I dare you!

~~~
junto
Here's a tongue in cheek piece that goes with this post:
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6185468](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6185468)

------
D9u
If the Director of the CIA can't keep his email secure, what makes anyone
think that their email is more secure than his?

~~~
zokier
What makes you think that Director of the CIA would have particularly secure
e-mail setup?

~~~
D9u
As the director of one of the world's most well funded intelligence agencies
one would expect that Petraeus would have been properly versed in all manner
of security precautions, as well as knowing how to conduct clandestine affairs
without coming under the scrutiny of his counterparts, yet this was not the
case at all.

So, either Petraeus was a blundering fool, or there exists no privacy for
anyone...

I'm guessing that Petraeus was no blundering fool.

~~~
dwrowe
His professional email was likely secure moreso than we'd ever see. However,
directing agency resources to cover for an affair would be more blatant than
someone discovering his GMail drafts folder. Being in charge of security and
having excellent delegation / leadership - doesn't make one the technical
expert.

------
alan_cx
If my, or some one else's, life or liberty depended on it, no. Not email, not
the internet.

From a simpleton POV... there is a wire from my computer to an ISP. Then from
that ISP to another ISP. Then from that ISP to a recipient. At any point some
one can intercept and decode. So, AFAIAC, that's an end to it. Even if the
data can be secured from being read, there is proof that one computer talked
to another computer about something. That's often enough "evidence". Its an
opening.

Frankly I don't see how the internet can be secure. AFAIK, it never was.

~~~
zokier
> Even if the data can be secured from being read, there is proof that one
> computer talked to another computer about something. That's often enough
> "evidence".

Tor/i2p mostly solve that problem.

> Frankly I don't see how the internet can be secure. AFAIK, it never was.

"internet" is not secure, but you can build secure communications over
insecure transports as long as you are able to do initial key-exchange somehow
securely (ie. face-to-face meeting). Something like OTR with Tor hidden
services is very secure.

------
wiml
My secure email provider is /usr/local/bin/gpg, so ... yes?

~~~
jimktrains2
Still leaks email metadata:)

~~~
DanBC
Which is cryptographically tied to an identity.

~~~
icebraining
Nope, just to a key.

~~~
DanBC
So Ann doesn't know she's really talking to Bob? Ann just has some key that
she hopes is Bob's, and isn't Eve doing MITM? Isn't that why web-of-trust is
important?

~~~
mbq
Nope, that Eve can intercept a copy of GPG-encrypted mail and extract
plaintext To, From, Title, time, with some luck also some info about sender's
IP and software, plus all info that is in recipient's and possibly sender's
public key (this usually covers full, true name, work, approximate location
and alternative e-mails, often also a photo). What you mention is an
orthogonal problem.

~~~
DanBC
Hang on, I'm a bit confused here.

Ann has a key. Ann must know that the key is Bob's key. If Ann isn't sure that
the key is Bob's key there's a bunch of bad stuff that might happen.

So now Eve can get the metadata, and be pretty sure that the stuff sent to Bob
actually is sent to Bob, and not someone else, because it's encrypted with
Bob's public key.

Eve can't decrypt anything. But my post wasn't about Eve getting any content,
it was about Eve getting metadata that's cryptographically tied to an
identity.

Where am I going wrong?

~~~
jimktrains2
The connection between key and identity doesn't have to be public.

The point is that the headers of an email aren't encrypted (otherwise it
couldn't be delivered). In the headers is who the message is to, who it's
from, the subject, the time, and if you're lucky, the ip of the sender. All of
that isn't encrypted and free for the taking and has nothing to do with the id
attached to the key used to encrypt the content.

~~~
DanBC
Right, the metadata is always public.

Without strong encryption you have metadata that can be tied to an identity
using statistics with enough data.

With strong encryption you have metadata that can be tied to a key and an
identity using statistics with enough data.

------
rainsford
I don't trust other secure email providers, and to be honest, I don't trust
Lavabit or SilentCircle...at least I don't trust them as far as they suggest I
should trust them.

I trust providers that offer encryption to prevent basic things like my ISP
looking at data or maybe casual eavesdropping if I'm in a foreign country. But
the idea of hosted services that completely protect you even against the
government of the hosting country, which is how these services seem to be
sold, is sort of unrealistic.

And in the broader sense, I trust something like Lavabit less than Gmail.
Permanently losing access to my email without any warning is a bigger threat
to me than whatever ill defined privacy line Lavabit claims was being crossed.
Email for me is primarily about convenient communication. If I want extra
security for some reason, I'll use something else or combine GPG with email.

------
albeertoni
Not especially. As others have mentioned, email leaks metadata and the
existing protocols are such that it would be impossible to secure them
reasonably.

Of course, it all depends on what your threat model is. Are you a target of
the NSA, or a jealous spouse? That's what this comes down to. Neither Lavabit
nor Silent Circle could have given encrypted and unattributable email service
- so if that's what you needed, you're SoL. If server-to-server encryption was
all you were interested in, then the distros of pgpu they used would have been
fine for you.

It's hard to think of a threat that would be stymied by server-to-server
encryption alone. Maybe someone else has a good idea of what that might be,
but it's too early for me.

------
SGFja2VyTg
Yes.

Lava happened to have a known, admitted national security threat as a
client/user. It is expected, legal, and proper for a national security letter
to be used in this context.

It is possible that the NSL was demanding things that were way too broad, but
I imagine that this was not the case (and rather that Lava had an ethical
issue with the whole process).

------
DanBC
What are you protecting, and who are you protecting it against?

I knew that well funded government agencies could probably get access to
anything, so with that caveat yes, I trusted a few providers.

In general if it's important you shouldn't trust anyone. Use GPG, but do so
carefully after reading all the documentation.

~~~
ams6110
Do you trust the person on the receiving side? Presumably so if you are
sending them something, but once it leaves your computer its out of your
control. The recipient could do something like accidentally (or intentionally)
forward or reply in the clear, or could have malware on their computer that
copies emails as soon as they are decrypted.

------
venomsnake
I will trust Lavabit if they reopen.

~~~
jimktrains2
Which may be exactly what "they" want;)

------
harrytuttle
There is no such thing as secure email. Use another channel.

Yes I'm aware of GPG etc but no one else is.

------
Zash
Yes, I do, because I host my own email on my own hardware.

------
aw4y
so apparently there's no reason for lavabit, silent mail, hushmail ...?

~~~
warcode
There is if you still care about keeping the contents of your message secure.

Or in a simpler sense; do you put your letters in an envelope, or do you just
put a stamp on the paper?

~~~
zokier
By that analogy so called secure email providers would receive plain letters
and put those into envelopes before handing them to you, and conversely
ripping your envelopes open before sending out your mails. Because the rest of
the world doesn't know how to use envelopes.

------
vegasbrianc
Go back to the stone age. Hand written notes with couriers.

------
Dirty-flow
never trust anyone! :)


Thaler: Recipes for Ruin, in the Gulf or on Wall St. - tptacek
http://www.nytimes.com/2010/06/13/business/13view.html?hpw

======
tptacek
Richard Thaler is a behavioral economist at UChicago, and a prolific author.
He wrote _Nudge_ with Cass Sunstein at Harvard Law, which is an interesting
but dry book on incentives.

I caught this on Marginal Revolution (which is to blogs what The Economist is
to magazines, namely, something I subscribe to because I feel I must) and
thought it was interesting.

Nutshell: we're damned if we do and damned if we don't. We can ask companies
to insure themselves (either through actual insurance or through heavy
taxation) for the harm they might cause. But we don't know how to calculate
the costs of future events, which companies will always argue are very
unlikely anyways. Meanwhile, there's little evidence that being forced to
carry insurance would cause companies to evince better judgement.

On the flip side, we could expose companies to uncapped liability for the
damages they cause. But then you run into the inability of companies to pay,
or worse, the restructuring of industries to ensure that the companies who
profit the most from, say, drilling are never the ones actually doing the
drilling.


Jobs, Jobs, Jobs - antr
http://www.avc.com/a_vc/2011/09/jobs-jobs-jobs.html
======
ajg1977
I usually enjoy the posts on avc a lot, but I don't know whether this is just
shameless promotion or a mistaken belief that recent unemployment trends are
simply due to people and jobs not finding each other.

Regardless of political leaning, I think most people would agree that those
who became unemployed in the last 1-2 years are not remaining so due to a lack
of looking.

------
davidw
The point of Washington DC talking about it is that, at the margin, more or
fewer entrepreneurs _will_ be able to "do something about it" depending on a
whole range of things like health care, taxes, regulations, infrastructure,
etc... But Mr. Wilson is smart enough to know this - he's just boosting his
portfolio's startup.

------
danvideo
There's not much here, basically a pointer to Indeed.com - a site I happen to
like - but why do we need to go to AVC to see it?

------
3pt14159
People here don't quite understand Fred's point.

His point is that just as some technology is replacing jobs, other technology
is helping the unemployed become employed by reducing the information and
timing gap between the employer and the potential employee.

------
zinssmeister
ok, so indeed.com is great and was a good investment. How does that help
create jobs?


Jan Hanasz: The Polish TV Pirate - mzs
http://kw.pl.eu.org/tvS/pirat.htm
======
mzs
the pirate broadcasts:
[https://youtu.be/Lztemas2fFI](https://youtu.be/Lztemas2fFI)

the hardware used:
[https://web.archive.org/web/20110815184918/http://epsrv.astr...](https://web.archive.org/web/20110815184918/http://epsrv.astro.uni.torun.pl/~ep/Solidarnosc/Wystawa_Bydgoszcz_2009/wystawa.html)


Has Chase Been Hacked? - stevenhubertron
URL:
https://www.chase.com
Safari:
https://www.dropbox.com/s/mmsp63xws9m84xo/Screenshot%202015-04-17%2016.28.58.png?dl=0
Chrome:
https://www.dropbox.com/s/yzbka9gcjn7r8ay/Screenshot%202015-04-17%2016.29.36.png?dl=0
======
Nadya
Chances are they are using a SHA-1 certificate.

* _checks_ *

Yep.

~~~
stevenhubertron
Oh fun.

~~~
Nadya
You can read more here:

[https://community.qualys.com/blogs/securitylabs/2014/09/09/s...](https://community.qualys.com/blogs/securitylabs/2014/09/09/sha1-deprecation-
what-you-need-to-know)

[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9368418](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9368418)

------
msie
Can the hackers clear my debt? TIA!

------
lightlyused
No. Looks good here.


Show HN: HTMLhouse – write and share some HTML - thebaer
https://html.house
======
digital_ins
Nice. Two questions: 1\. How long do you retain the code snippets for 2\. How
is this different from the many many options out there 3\. Why not have an
'Email This' button?

Good going on the simplicity of the page and also on the no-registration-
needed system

~~~
thebaer
Thanks!

1\. They're retained indefinitely, but adding the option to delete them
automatically after some time would be pretty simple (it still needs a regular
delete button).

2\. HTMLhouse is meant to be more of a dead simple paste-and-go thing, which
is why CSS, JS, etc. is all in one editor. And while it's fit for developers,
I have a few features planned that'll make it more useful for bare-bones web
hosting.

3\. I've tried to keep the interface as clutter-free as possible, but where
would that button be most useful, on the published page? Or on the editor
itself?

~~~
digital_ins
definitely on the editor

~~~
thebaer
Cool, thanks. I'll see how I can work it in.

------
mkaroumi
Cool project! You're live on Product Hunt now!
[https://www.producthunt.com/tech/htmlhouse](https://www.producthunt.com/tech/htmlhouse)

~~~
thebaer
Awesome!! Thanks!

------
wdstash
Interesting.. but why would one use this over jsfiddle, codeply, etc..? Is it
simply just for HTML?

~~~
thebaer
HTMLhouse is more useful if you want to create a small or single-page static
site, e.g. [1] -- I'd equate it more to an HTML-enabled pastebin, as far as
form and functionality go.

I'd also like to add an option for self-destructing pages and some kind of
discovery mechanism; tailor it towards more creative uses of web technologies.

[1] [https://html.house/tah2t9kp.html](https://html.house/tah2t9kp.html)


AOL buys Huffington Post for $315mm in cash - akharris
http://kara.allthingsd.com/20110206/youve-got-arianna-aol-buys-huffington-post-for-315-million-in-cash/?mod=tweet

======
jarin
I think the key news bit here is that Ariana Huffington will be in charge of
all of AOL's blog/news properties.

~~~
bvi
That would make her Arrington's boss, among others, wouldn't it?

~~~
zacharycohn
Correct. Paul Carr's words:

"I have no idea how any of this will affect TechCrunch. So far AOL has kept
true to its promise not to interfere with our editorial and there’s no reason
to suppose that will change under Huffington. That said, it would be idiotic
to think that our parents’ content strategy – particularly the SEO stuff –
won’t have annoying trickle-down consequences for all of us in the long term."

[edit- Corrected source of the quote.]

~~~
Samuel_Michon
For those who haven't read it yet, AOL's "Master Plan" for its blogs and news
sites:

<http://www.businessinsider.com/the-aol-way>

      AOL tells its editors to decide what topics to cover based on four considerations:
      traffic potential, revenue potential, edit quality and turn-around time.

      AOL asks its editors to decide whether to produce content based on
      "the profitability consideration."

      The documents reveal that AOL is, when the story calls for it, willing to boost
      traffic by 5 to 10% with search ads and other "paid media."

      AOL site leaders are expected to have eight ideas for packages that could
      generate at least $1 million in revenue on hand at all times.

      In-house AOL staffers are expected to write five to 10 stories per day.

Every time AOL buys another site, I mourn.

~~~
pavs
In other words "content farm". But since it will be done by "leading" blogs it
will be considered an ok thing to do. Makes perfect sense, huffpo and TC was
never too far from being a content farm. These sites are rarely about quality
but quantity. They often rewrite news they find in their rss feed.

~~~
patio11
I said it before and I'll say it again: take TechCrunch as it currently
exists, bolt-on a section for high-end electronics reviews, and you'd goose
their revenues without any actual human who reads TechCrunch noticing. (The
reviews rank based on on-page optimization plus the earned trust of
TechCrunch, and the eCPM would be out of this world relative to any article
TechCrunch publishes.)

<http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1734020>

Traditional publishers are cottoning to this tactic, too.

[http://topics.nytimes.com/top/reference/timestopics/subjects...](http://topics.nytimes.com/top/reference/timestopics/subjects/c/credit_and_money_cards/index.html)

Think like that, but 100x more aggressive. Will it degrade the NYT brand a
little bit? Meh, it is the NYT: they'll still be the world's preeminent
newspaper, they'll still make money from advertisements, and they'll still be
able to credibly threaten Google with PRmageddon if Big Daddy G gets uppity
about it.

~~~
mrkurt
Two things here!

1) Tech Crunch doesn't really operate in an eCPM world, they operate in a
"real" CPM world with advertisers that are largely paying for branding rather
than conversions.

2) The CPMs on electronics reviews (high end or otherwise) are significantly
lower than the CPMs on "content a CTO would want to read".

SEO for a publisher really only serves the purpose of getting organic traffic
to more premium ad campaigns, much like paid traffic (where a publisher buys
CPC ads). The catch with this is that inbound search engine traffic needs to
roughly match the demographics you've sold ads for or you end up shooting
yourself in the foot. You can do short term traffic buys to inflate ad views
with otherwise shitty traffic, but only rarely and it's still dangerous.

------
beagledude
I'm just amazed AOL still has money

~~~
simonsarris
TechCrunch, Bebo, and MapQuest are all owned by AOL.

And MapQuest still has the greatest market share somehow...

edit: AOL sold Bebo in June

~~~
l0nwlf
> And MapQuest still has the greatest market share somehow...

No. Google maps has the greatest market share. Mapquest is #2.

Disclaimer: I'm interning at MapQuest.

------
l0nwlf
Tim Armstrong is getting AOL to do all the deals that Bartz should be doing at
Yahoo.

------
simonsarris
Immediately an article I saw in December comes to mind:

AOL Investigation: No Proof TSA Scanners Are Safe

[http://www.aolnews.com/2010/12/20/aol-investigation-no-
proof...](http://www.aolnews.com/2010/12/20/aol-investigation-no-proof-tsa-
scanners-are-safe/)

Back then my first thought was: _Wait, AOL does investigations?_

I think this is a win for both parties and for readers. With a sort-of
'proper' news site maybe AOL's own journalism can be taken more seriously, and
conversely maybe they can make HuffPo more journalistic in the first place!

~~~
lucisferre
While some of the HuffPost I do find interesting and even occasionally well
written, I'd still have to say your argument amounts to: if we take one
steaming pile and combine it with another steaming pile it'll come out
smelling like roses.

------
thought_alarm
Send your comments and feedback to arianna1950@aol.com

------
MatthewDP
Is HuffPo really worth 7-8 times what AOL paid for Weblogs, Inc. and
TechCrunch?

~~~
cfinke
In terms of unique visitors, HuffPo beats TechCrunch 10:1.

~~~
ohyes
And in terms of demographics, I mean, my mom reads Huffington post. Ariana
Huffington is well-known enough to have done the talk-show circuit at least
once.

Tech crunch is a niche demographic (silicon valley gossip is only interesting
to people inside that particular bubble). I'm honestly not sure what weblogs
inc is.

~~~
acangiano
Not to mention that your mom is far more valuable from an ad revenue
perspective. Chances are you've never clicked on ads displayed on TechCrunch.

~~~
ohyes
Thinking about it, my mom is actually extremely savvy.

One of the first people on Amazon (the free swag and shipping era), one of the
first people using Google (got an email response from Sergei when she
complained about an inappropriate search result), doesn't like Facebook, is
into blogs, podcasts and web radio. So she probably doesn't click through the
ads displayed on HuffPo unless it is something that she wants (in fact, I
think she uses Adblock).

That said, she is fiercely loyal to companies that she sees as supporting her
ideals. So if she does need something, and a product that has that
functionality advertises on one of her media... she will get that product over
another (perhaps better known or cheaper) product.

This actually contradicts the implication of my above post; that my mom reads
it, therefore it must appeal to the masses. The truth is, my mom likes it, and
she is an excellent market indicator.

------
juanefren
As a non native English speaker, the first thing my head thought was AOL
paying with banknotes.

------
veb
How long would it take AOL to make $315 million + profit from HuffPost?

~~~
mkr-hn
[http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2010-12-14/huffington-post-
nea...](http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2010-12-14/huffington-post-nears-first-
annual-profit-expects-sales-to-triple-by-2012.html)

------
KMStraub
This after the About.me buy. I'm excited to see how this reinvention pans out.

------
jtchang
AOL is very different from what a lot of us remember it as. The moves they are
making will position it very well as a strong content provider. It's kind of
nostalgic in a way in that AOL started out providing premium content in a very
organized fashion for the web.

~~~
tomkarlo
How is it that different? It still makes most of its money off dialup
subscriptions. Considering how much crap content they pump out, it's amazing
they don't make more from that.

------
ojbyrne
1+1 = 11. Inspired idiocy. Or something.

------
spoiledtechie
I don't know if this a good thing or bad.

First AOL is a giant when it comes to news these days. Along with Fox, CNN and
MSNBC. I guess this allows for another competitor to hit the market. But also
allows for News to be under control again by a large corporation and that
corporations views on how the world should be reported.

I would gladly see Huff Post move to Television and Maybe more investigative
like Reuters.

Those area's would gladly and happily be invested in, if I owned a large New
Corp.

------
boh
I wonder if AOL will try to buy Gawker too.

~~~
kmfrk
Buy Gawker would definitely ensure that they are covered in most, if not all,
blogging genres.

They also own Engadget, though, and I would love to see how that would comply
with owning Gizmodo.

------
earl
How is Ariana going to justify not paying almost all contributors now?

Amazing that she built this on the backs of authors, most of whom got paid
_nothing_. Am I alone in finding this exploitative?

~~~
jdludlow
Was she forcing them to write articles for her? If they agreed to do it for
free, then where is the exploitation?

~~~
radicaldreamer
I think a lot of authors and journalists voluntarily write for Huff Post to
raise their profile... and I think it's great! If I were a journalist, if Huff
Post or Talking Points Memo published articles that I authored, I'd be
ecstatic, especially considering the economic situation a lot of journalists
find themselves in these days.

~~~
earl
Profile doesn't pay the rent.

<http://www.penny-arcade.com/comic/2002/4/29/>

~~~
cookiecaper
I think the theory is that high profile is an investment that makes it easier
to find rent money down the road.

~~~
gaius
Yes but the practice is there's always someone a year younger than you who
thinks that too, and so he's working for free and hoping the same thing. Then
a year later, another one...

~~~
cookiecaper
True, but next year you shouldn't be working for free anymore. There are
always going to be clients who care most about getting something cheap or
free, and there are always going to be clients who care most about getting
something good. Do a few deals for the cheaply oriented clients so you have
something that will impress the quality oriented clients and then move up
quickly, don't lollygag in the cheap valley very long.

~~~
gaius
A year just isn't that much experience in many fields. You'll be competing
with people who are 90% as good as you but cost infinitely less (as in,
nothing).

------
ActiveIndian
Now Thats a price which certainly deserves attention. This is the second
acquisition after about.me from AOL. Lot to come i am sure, but anyways users
would be benefited,


How I got into YC S13 - aelaguiz
http://aelag.com/how-i-got-into-yc
======
nwenzel
Pretty accurate assessment. I almost certainly would have not gotten in had I
not had a chance to talk to a few YC alums.

Side Note: Jason was absolutely the reason I got in. YC should do whatever it
takes to get him to become at the very least a part-time partner. They and all
future YC companies will be better off with him involved.

From my own experience, the OP is absolutely right about the no BS part. Just
explain what you're doing. You don't need to sell it or exaggerate (doing so
will actually hurt your chances). I think the most important thing to explain
is why people/companies want what you're making. The next most important thing
you can do is teach them something. If they are able to learn something new
about a market from you, you're chances of acceptance go up.

The in-person interview day is pretty exciting. It's sort of like the first
day at the dorms (which for me was in 1995). It's perfectly acceptable to walk
up to someone, say hi and and just start talking.

If you're thinking about applying, you should.

~~~
pg
Which Jason? (We've funded 11.)

~~~
kyro
Changing my name to Jason.

Actually, what is the most popular YC cofounder name?

~~~
pg
Michael.

~~~
grinich
2nd most common men's name globally. (1st is Mohammed.)

------
soneca
Great story, fun reading, not exactly good advices for me here. My take from
this is, in order to get in YC you must: i) have a successfull exit as track
record and ii) have YC alumni in your network to review your application and
pitch.

Well, turns out I am very far from both situations, so I just read it as a
success tale. Which I actually appreciated, as the author sounds like a really
honest and nice person.

~~~
aelaguiz
I'm the author :)

FWIW I didn't have Alumni in my network until I decided to apply and then I
started seeking them out. I went so far as to cold-email people on AngelList.

Also I live in Austin so the number of alumni has now doubled since I'm back,
to give you an idea of how slim the pickings are.

I don't know how much the exit mattered. pg has a way of making you feel like
nothing matters except the quality of the words coming out of your mouth.

~~~
jt2190
Great article aelaguiz , very thoughtful. I especially like the "no bullshit"
part.

I'd love to hear more of your thoughts about _why_ you decided to seek out YC
in the first place, especially since you'd already had some success with
PokerTableRatings.

Also, I was genuinely surprised that your typical experience with Angels is
that they focus so heavily on not loosing their initial investment. This
strikes me as too risk-averse given the nature of early tech startups. Did you
find yourself wasting a lot of time with these folks? Any advice for how to
spot/avoid them?

~~~
aelaguiz
Really I have to say it was an emotional decision. I've been a fan of pg and
YC for years and now I actually was free to try it and had a team that was
inclined to, so I went for it.

Angels are regular people. They are as diverse as any crowd at a mall. I've
found that outside of SF they tend to be MUCH more downside conscious. I did
waste a lot of time with some angels who turned out to be bad for the
ecosystem (willing to toy with entrepreneurs for long periods of time).

The best advice (and I live by it) is anything that isn't a yes is a no. That
doesn't mean stop trying but that does mean that you focus your energy on
stronger leads first. Nobody actually says no, with very few exceptions. It's
hard to understand this until you get a few checks closed and then you'll know
what a REAL yes feels like.

------
spodek
Regarding the advice to speak to alumni, does anybody have suggestions for
best alumni to talk to for not-for-profit applications?

P.S. Thanks for the informative and thoughtful post.

EDIT: at the risk of creating more competition for my eventual application,
here's a relevant quote in an interview of Watsi's co-founder:

 _I asked him if he would recommend that other non-profits apply to YC, and
without missing a beat he replied, “yes. For three months we were able to
focus on our mission and our products alone. We didn’t have to worry about
fundraising or entering competitions or getting grants. We focused on our
product and solving a problem. We grew like crazy in the last three months. We
went from getting $2,000 of donations a week to $12,000. That’s a crazy
growth….Every non-profit should have this opportunity for focus.”_

[http://thenextweb.com/insider/2013/04/06/catching-up-with-
wa...](http://thenextweb.com/insider/2013/04/06/catching-up-with-watsi-y-
combinators-first-non-profit-graduate/)

~~~
wellboy
Watsi, I think they are the only not-for-profit startup, are they?

~~~
soneca
Yes, but as one is too little, I would list some other companies that have
business models very focused on direct social impact: 7 Cups of Tea,
SoundFocus, Amicus, True Link Financial.

Other than that, both application forms are very similar and I imagine the YC
criteria are going to be very similar too. So... any YC alumni may provide
useful advice.

------
andrewhillman
These "how i got into yc?" post are usually lame but this was actually a
worthwhile read. Good luck to these guys. I am rooting for you.

~~~
aelaguiz
Thanks!

------
firearch
Google cache url for those that cannot see the page

[http://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache:http://...](http://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache:http://aelag.com/how-
i-got-into-yc)

------
aakashbarot
Very insightful read! Can anyone help me with reference an Education startup
Alumni from YC.

I am applying and would like to get some advice too. Thanks.

~~~
aelaguiz
[http://yclist.com/](http://yclist.com/)

~~~
aakashbarot
Thanks a ton. This was useful!

------
andrasokros
Thanks for creating the post, it really made my day! I'm just going in circles
now in the room and thinking what to do :). We already decided to skip the
winter batch and go for the next, but after reading your essay, we might give
it a try after all.

------
wellboy
Great read, you feel the love in your post :)


What It's Like When Steve Jobs Chews You Out For A Product Failure - evo_9
http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/g/a/2011/05/07/businessinsider-steve-jobs-mobileme-failure-2011-5.DTL
======
dazzawazza
If this is true how does Apple make sure there is a culture of collective
responsibility and not personal recrimination and back stabbing?


Futhark 0.6.1 released – High-performance functional programming on the GPU - Athas
https://futhark-lang.org/blog/2018-07-09-futhark-0.6.1-released.html
======
fulafel
"Fast automatic Futhark-Python FFI" and the REPL improvements sound like big
improvements.

------
thinkpad20
This project is super cool. I wish that I had a use case for the stuff in
here, but I dont really do any high performance or GPU programming. Maybe I
will one day, but in the meantime keep up the good work!

~~~
haolez
Same feeling here. I wonder if it's more expensive to load data into the GPU
than to simply process it "more" sequentially in the CPU locally.

~~~
abstractbeliefs
It depends on the data and the workload. I did some work on GPU accelerating
viewshed calculations - basically, line of sight from a point where cells are
marked visible or not visible. It's really useful in radio mast planning.

In this case, the result of any given cell doesn't rely on the result of any
other cell. This leads to the neat case where every single cell can be, in
theory, calculated at once. In this case, you essentially get n-times speedup
for n-time increase in processing power.

The other, often overlooked, bonus is that the GPU simply isn't the CPU. As
long as you're waiting on stuff to finish there, your CPU is free to do what
it pleases. In my case, whenever I started, I immediately triggered the
intialisation of the GPU, and then started reading command line switches,
reading in the data from disk, etc. Likewise, when the GPU was doing the heavy
lifting, I could start on the slow IO involved in preparing the output,
creating files, writing out metadata about the shape and limits of the output
that's trivially calculated.

In the end, the speedup varied, but at peak it was turning an 8-hour CPU bound
workload into one that taken 2 minutes. What was once a full days cycle where
you set up your simulation, did busywork for the day, and then collected
results and thought about the result overnight at home can now be done while
getting a coffee, and allowed people to make mistakes and play around.


Is this the most expensive game ever? - abdulhaq
https://robertsspaceindustries.com/pledge/Combos/The-Completionist-Digital
======
acemarke
Please note that the current actual pricing to purchase the game is $45 for
the single-player campaign (Squadron 42), $45 for the MMO portion (Star
Citizen), or $60 to purchase them together. All other packages that are
listed, such as the various ships, are there to allow backers to help fund the
game further.

Also, CIG is currently streaming live gameplay from Gamescom, and will be
doing a presentation on Friday where they plan to show off upcoming aspects
such as procedurally-generated planets (and possibly the Star Marine
competitive FPS game mode).


Citrix wants to kill VPNs forever - michaelansel
https://www.techradar.com/news/this-company-wants-to-kill-vpns-forever
======
Awelton
A remote desktop connection is not anything a million other programs don't
provide, and doesn't replace any of the reasons I use a vpn.

------
xt00
So they have a team viewer competitor that tunnels all traffic over some known
port to a third party server I guess?

------
m-p-3
Unless there's an open and free alternative to Citrix, not gonna happen.

------
rdtwo
And my daughter wants a unicorn, I think her unicorn is more likely to happen


Confessions of an Ex-Opponent of Whois Privacy - ca98am79
http://www.circleid.com/posts/20150703_confessions_of_an_ex_opponent_of_whois_privacy/
======
oldmanjay
Essentially, the opposition was based on optimizing the handling of
pathological cases - how to deal with abusers was considered more important
than how to provide customers with the tools they wanted. This shows up all
over society, from terrorism to 'think of the children', and any positive
effects are nearly always swamped by the deleterious ones brought about by the
perverse incentives created.

Shame that people don't see this ahead of time.

~~~
JoshTriplett
People do, but those people are ignored. The voice of reason is almost always
drowned out by the voice of panic and outrage.

Not least of which because the panic and outrage describes consequences that
sound applicable to the person hearing them (or their family), while the voice
of reason explains problems that sound like they affect _other people_. ("if
you have nothing to hide" is one of many instances of this pattern; having
something to hide sounds like something that only affects other people.)

------
vitd
I'm glad someone wrote this up. I would love to be able to control who has
access to my WhoIS record and to know when it's been queried and for what
purpose. The enormous amount of spam and even physical junk mail that comes
from having a WhoIs entry is ridiculous. I once got a credit card offer
addressed to me (male) and the woman at my ISP who was the admin contact.
Luckily my wife thought it was amusing, but it could have been a huge fight if
she hadn't understood.


Show HN: Simple Print – Convert web articles into printable PDFs - k1m
http://pdf.fivefilters.org/simple-print/
======
jclos
This would be insanely more useful if it could display math correctly. For
example, most of the math in [https://colah.github.io/posts/2014-03-NN-
Manifolds-Topology](https://colah.github.io/posts/2014-03-NN-Manifolds-
Topology) only shows the LaTeX code.

~~~
k1m
Thanks, we'll have to look into that.

------
hedora
Hey, five filters contributors: I’m a big fan of you work. How hard would it
be to make a web proxy type service that produced static html with working
links instead of a PDF?

The idea is to strip out all of the JavaScript before it even hits the client.
People could then use it exclusively for news reading. I suspect it would
reduce bandwidth and client side energy as well as block essentially all web
trackers.

I ask because it looks like you’ve done most of the heavy lifting between this
and your full-text RSS feed service.

Thanks!

~~~
jahewson
Tracking can be done with <img> tags and (recently) with CSS.

~~~
hedora
The idea is that everything would run through a normalizing presentation layer
(like the PDF converter and RSS full text services do), and only the
information needed for rendering would be sent to the client, so <img> would
be rewritten to some other url and served by the proxy.

The main problem I see is that you can embed trackers in the link URLs.

(You probably want the proxy to be a stateless cache shared by many users,
which prevents tracker stuff from persisting in whatever rendering engine it
uses for the conversion)

~~~
k1m
Thank you for the kind words.

We haven't really thought much about running this kind of thing as a proxy
service, or what it would be like to implement it. Our tools are really
intended for web articles, so they will fail on lots of other kinds of content
you'll encounter in day-to-day browsing. If the intention is to avoid
trackers, the proxy will have to handle everything, and not everything will be
web articles. Browser extensions might be best here.

~~~
hedora
For my personal browsing habits it wouldn’t be so bad. Basically, I just check
a few news aggregators (like HN) and sites that have rss feeds anyway, so
support for HN would get me most of the way there. I’m not sure how many news
aggregators are in common use, but I’d guess covering a dozen would get most
of the addressible market.

Thanks for the response!

------
tylerdiaz
I'd like to add that I use tools from fivefilters.org daily. (Mostly Push to
Kindle) If the authors are on this thread, thank you so much for making these
tools free to use and for such consistent uptime.

~~~
k1m
Thank you, Tyler. Appreciate the kind words - that's really great to hear. :)

------
iamben
Pretty decent idea - I'd love to see the stats on how many people print
things! About ~10 years ago the agency I worked at made sure every site had a
print friendly style sheet which cropped out all the crap and left you with a
very readable printed document. I don't think I've met anyone that's insisted
on (or even thought about) that in the last few years.

My own interest was piqued the other day when I went to pdf-print a paywalled
article for a friend and the formatting was atrocious. Would have been the
perfect use case for this. But that was the point I thought "does anyone print
anymore or do they just message the article?" Most of the print use cases that
came up in my life (maps, recipes, contracts) have been solved/replaced by
SAAS products, smartphones, tablets, kindles etc.

~~~
oneeyedpigeon
Schools in the UK most definitely print.

------
app4soft
Hope it has open API, for something like when request URL it will immediatly
return PDF for download

      http://pdf.fivefilters.org/simple-print/#http://example.com

Now I use PrintFriendly[0] for such things, but it was fully redesigned last
years and API was changed, also now it not usable for webpages with code
blocks and images.

[0] [http://printfriendly.com](http://printfriendly.com)

~~~
boundlessdreamz
PrintFriendly has an api -
[https://www.printfriendly.com/api](https://www.printfriendly.com/api)

Which webpage does PrintFriendly doesn't support?

------
roadbeats
Looks very cool! Could you explain the tech that you developed ? Did you
create a new algorithm for extracting the content from the page or used an
existing one ?

~~~
k1m
Can be broken down to roughly these steps:

1\. The tool for extracting article content is Full-Text RSS[0]. It relies on
arc90's original (open source) article detection algorithm, Readability, as
well as a set of site-specific extraction rules which we maintain on
Github[1].

2\. Our PDF Newspaper[2] application then cleans that extracted article output
to normalise HTML/CSS styles so we can present the output in our own layout
without things breaking. We use CSS for multi-column output.

3\. Finally, we use Chromium's new headless API to request the generated
output in step 2 and create three PDFs - injecting CSS to increase the font
size each time. After we have the three PDF files, we check the PDFs in order
of smallest to largest font size and as soon as a larger font size creates an
extra new page, we discard that and keep the PDF we had before and return
that. So if PDF 1 (small font size) has three pages, PDF 2 (medium font size)
also three pages, but PDF 3 (larger font size) four pages, then we return PDF
2.

[0] [http://fivefilters.org/content-only/](http://fivefilters.org/content-
only/) [1] [https://github.com/fivefilters/ftr-site-
config](https://github.com/fivefilters/ftr-site-config) [2]
[http://fivefilters.org/pdf-newspaper/](http://fivefilters.org/pdf-newspaper/)

~~~
gravypod
Does this support images? I tried to convert Ernest P. Chan's blog [0] into a
pdf using this and the results were not well formatted.

[0] - [http://epchan.blogspot.com/](http://epchan.blogspot.com/)

~~~
k1m
We'll add images soon. As for the blog post, should work if you use the
article URL: [http://pdf.fivefilters.org/simple-
print/url.php?size=A4#http...](http://pdf.fivefilters.org/simple-
print/url.php?size=A4#http://epchan.blogspot.se/2018/02/fx-order-flow-as-
predictor.html)

~~~
everydayavi
Timeline for images?

Well done!

------
m-p-3
[http://pdf.fivefilters.org/simple-
print/url.php?size=LETTER#...](http://pdf.fivefilters.org/simple-
print/url.php?size=LETTER#http://www.cbc.ca/news/business/stock-markets-
equities-dow-jones-1.4519930)

"Sorry, something went wrong :("

------
stewbrew
The original URL should be included somewhere.

That said, I don't quite understand the advantage of this solution versus a
plain article view (e.g. firefox's built-in article view or something similar
provided by some plugin/service) saved to disk via an PDF printer.

~~~
k1m
Good point, we'll add original article URL at the bottom.

As for the advantages, at the moment FireFox's built-in reader view doesn't
produce the kind of output we do. If you're curious, we created a video of the
kind of multi-column print layout we're experimenting with here a few years
ago. All HTML and CSS:
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=854Csokl3QA](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=854Csokl3QA)

So if they did create a more print-friendly output, it'd be closer. But
there'd still be that step of you creating the PDF yourself. Our server-side
approach allows it to be integrated in other kinds of applications. It also
allows us to do things like return a PDF which doesn't include an additional
page due to a slight overrun that can be avoided with a minor font size
reduction (see my other comment explaining how we try to do that at the
moment).

------
saagarjha
For those using Safari, I've often had good results by turning on Reader Mode
and then printing, which strips out a lot of the extraneous junk that articles
online tend to have.

------
bob_theslob646
Very interesting, reminds me of the chrome extension, send to my Kindle, which
sends a pdf version of the web page to my Kindle.

~~~
k1m
Thanks! We also have an extension and app to convert web articles into Kindle
ebooks: [http://fivefilters.org/kindle-it/](http://fivefilters.org/kindle-it/)

------
sfifs
Could there be a way to print to EPub? PDF is uniquely bad for mobile
readability but EPub solves for that

~~~
k1m
We already produce ePub and Kindle mobipocket files in our Push to Kindle
service. You can try it out here [http://fivefilters.org/kindle-
it/](http://fivefilters.org/kindle-it/)

1\. Enter a URL (we also have browser extensions)

2\. Click 'Preview'

3\. Select the No Kindle? tab and choose 'EPUB'

------
fladd
Nice idea! Unfortunately the PDF will not contain any of the headings of the
original document.

------
app4soft
Oh, no... It require[0] pay for more than few pages...

> Premium access key If you pay for premium access, enter your key here. A
> valid key will enable more pages in each PDF (provided the given feed
> contains more content), more full-text fetches, and the ability to change
> the subheading. > Subscribe — 24 € a year

[0] [http://fivefilters.org/pdf-newspaper/](http://fivefilters.org/pdf-
newspaper/)

~~~
k1m
That shouldn't apply to this. This is intended for single articles. PDF
Newspaper was originally intended for converting RSS feeds to PDF. For large
feeds we had to limit how much we processed to avoid overwhelming the servers.

------
stephenr
I dont really get the use-case for this.

macOS has had print to pdf for _any_ app since its inception, iOS has had it
for at least the last couple of versions, surely Windows and Android have
similar functionality built in by now too?

~~~
k1m
The idea is to produce a PDF that makes the article more readable than if you
relied on the default print output of the site itself.

In somes cases, e.g. a site that's gone to the trouble of creating a good
print stylesheet, printing from the site itself will probably create a more
readable output than this. But many sites don't do that.

There's also the use case of automating PDF creation from code. For example,
automatically sending a PDF to your printer (some wireless printers can now be
set up with email addresses) of articles you save to read later in a read-
later service.


Bob – A Tarsnap GUI client for OS X - CStorm
https://github.com/casperstorm/Bob

======
gburt
Warning that this doesn't detect errors properly. Reporting that it
successfully backed up when it definitely did not.

> command.run(job) File "/Library/Python/2.7/site-
> packages/tarsnapper-0.2.1-py2.7.egg/tarsnapper/script.py", line 347, in run
> > OSError: [Errno 2] No such file or directory

~~~
petergam
Thank you for reporting this.

Bob is still a very early project (development started 3 days ago). We just
released version 0.1.2 which improves the error handling.

Feel free to open issues on the Github page if more things come up.

~~~
grinich
You should probably put that disclaimer on the GitHub README. Lots of folks
will have no idea.

It's a testament to your good design that it looks finished though. Kudos! :)

------
chrissnell
Has anybody ever used Tarsnap to back up Time Machine sparseimages? I've
wanted to try it out but I'm not sure if Tarsnap will handle the de-dup on all
of the Time Machine snapshots properly. Will I end up with just the original
plus deltas or hundreds of copies of the original?

~~~
watersb
Short answer: Tarsnap can back up a sparse image without messing up any de-dup
properties of the contents of the sparse image.

I haven't tested Tarsnap with my Time Machine backups yet, but I've used non-
Mac file systems as file servers to Mac OS X clients for more than 10 years
now.

The only special bit of Time Machine backups is the hard-links to directories.
This requires HFS+.

A sparseimage that is an image of an HFS+ file system can use that file system
to hold Time Machine backups.

Such a sparse image can be copied to a non-HFS+ file system, without affecting
the Time Machine backups on the sparse image.

Using a "sparsebundle" instead of a single-file sparse image will let you use
non-Mac file systems such as FAT32 that limit the file size to less than 2 GB.

------
ikusalic
Tarsnap is really great service. It's obviously targeted at tech people, but
if you are one, just check it out. I do not feel the need for any wrappers as
the CLI is quite nice, but your mileage may vary.

What I'm backing up are a few true crypt containers. Not out of paranoia
(well...), but because I use TC anyway to separate different kinds of context
(by usage and importance). The nice thing is that incremental backups feature
still works great. Compression is not really useful though. Currently I have
~70gb of data, ~20gb being unique.

The service is also priced quite reasonably. Highly recommended.

~~~
ghshephard
As a newcomer to the tarsnap family (started using a month ago)- I completely
agree - I use Dropbox, Super Duper, Arq, Crashplan for various types of backup
scenarios - but the tools that I use to snapshot my ultra critical (all
Customer content - code, scripts, visio diagrams, network configs, site/RF
surveys) 677 MB "customers" folder is tarsnap. It really is as simple as:

       tarsnap -cf customers-2014.05.12 ~/Dropbox/Customers

Wait for 15 seconds (if there haven't been many changed files) - and I have a
snapshot of my files.

Even more tremendously wonderful - I deposited $20.00 a month ago, and I
currently have a remaining balance of $19.826571509446676694.

I.E. Tarsnap charges me 0.173428490553323306/month to backup/snapshot _all_ of
the content I've created in the previous 2 1/2 years.

(Note - Tarsnap users so many sigifnicant digits, that OS X calc, Excel, and
Python all gave me three different answers for 20-19.826571509446676694.

      Calc: 0.17342849055332
      Python: 0.17342849055332366
      Excel: 0.173428490553398

I had to check by hand, and use the Python "decimal" module to get the
"correct" answer of 0.173428490553323306.

------
dewey
Oh, that's neat. I was on the lookout for a Arq-like client for Tarsnap, this
looks promising and I'll definitely give it a shot. At first I thought that's
the one being posted on the Tarsnap mailing list [0] lately but it's not and
looks easier to install than the other one.

[0] [https://github.com/arnt/tarsnap-gui](https://github.com/arnt/tarsnap-gui)

~~~
stock_toaster
I wish arq supported tarsnap. That would be amazing.

------
melville_X
I fought the urge to want a GUI for Tarsnap and hand-wrote cronjob scripts
that I'm very happy with now. It was part of the fun. Definitely non-ideal for
everyone but I recommend it to any hackers to attempt the same.

One thing I learned as a result is becoming intimately with the unix/linux
folder structure and being able to backup an entire OS deployment, reinstall
the OS and just pull an old backup to recreate most of the important configs.

There might be a reason why there are a lack of good scripts, even on Github.

~~~
atmosx
Most tarsnap wrappers do not add any special functionality. You can find
hundred of tarsnap cron scripts or bash wrappers, or python wrappers... But
truth is that they don't add nothing special. Most people using tarsnap can
roll their own personalized solution easily if they require anything more than
the binary offers.

------
roryhughes
For those wondering, here is a popular post on tarsnap from a year ago
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5767116](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5767116)

------
nodesocket
Can Bob backup Time Machine backups?


MythBuster's Hyneman Launches IndieGogo to Build VR Shoes Like Mini Treadmills - evo_9
https://www.roadtovr.com/mythbusters-jamie-hyneman-launches-indiegogo-vr-shoes-act-like-mini-treadmills/
======
stuntkite
This kind of reeks of vaporware and that's sort of the pitch I guess. Hardware
ideas are crowdfuneded all the time that are kind of lofty, but I felt like
the common thinking at this point is that you really should have taken the
risks to prove the thing plus show that you could potentially build it at
scale before funding. There are so many ways that the funding of this project
can go totally sideways (unlike the shoes!). It even feels weird to have
everyone's favorite myth walrus promoting something so vapory. He's sort of
known for being a stodgy, no nonsense guy in terms of tech.

This all seems tone deaf. Maybe the shoe is like tunnel vision VR before we
had the oculus. The Ah-ha moment with VR was accelerometers, they at least
kickstarted with a paper one you could start to use no matter what! The
backpack and axe with whacky cannon fuse might satisfy some Bustin' fans, it
leaves me pretty flat. The branding is horror show gawdy too. Promise me a DIY
kit where I can play with the terrible shoes idea myself to really help you
get there.

Jamie! Your audience for a thing like this is builders like you! Sure you can
get some MB cash-in with this but if what I'm paying for is future skates,
give me some ruddy future skates so at least I can break my neck with you! Get
me some brushless DCs with nice aluminum hubs and some 3D printed tread parts.
Release with a community edition with STL files to open up the
experimentation.

Either that or just go get a bank loan like any other person and take some
risks on something you believe in. I do see from the outshot why your'd prefer
to risk someone else's money. It's all pretty silly. But if you don't buy it,
why should we?

~~~
Retric
“It might work. It might not work. We’ll know soon.”

Is IMO a completely reasonable stance. People putting up money are making the
bet that it's a good idea, and can either buy an actual product eventually, or
if it turns out to be a bad idea nobody is trying to manufacture all those
"pre-orders".

The benefit is without needing to ramp up production you can just focus on the
Research side of R & D.

~~~
stuntkite
I do not agree with you stance on crowd funding in this instance. I also think
the rewards are dumb, ugly, lazy and they could be engaging better with the
audience that is actually interested in the skates.

~~~
Retric
IMO, the entire idea of rewards is a poor fit for crowd funding. It confuses
_funding_ with buying an actual product that actually exists.

~~~
stuntkite
I understand that philosophy I think and platforms like Patreon do a great job
of fostering community in that way, still people want something for the
contribution. Even if it's a private newsletter, stickers, challenge coin, or
in this case cannon fuse. I think when making a request like they are making
here they are missing a huge opportunity to engage a passionate community of
open source hardware hackers, and they could totally do that in a low cost way
that protects their primary IP. I think the thing they are offering, maybe is
something die hard Hyni-fans are into, but it literally some wire, bandaids,
lights, and cannon fuse. It's just weird.

If they really don't want to share and engage that community, aside from the
software devs, I think they have a really long row to hoe. I would imagine the
concern is really neat IP because they have cool dudes working on it, but that
locks you right in for a very classic funding model that needs a buttload more
than $50k to get off the ground. Again, I feel like the original Occulus
kickstarter walked this line fantastically.

As an AR/VR Researcher, I wouldn't touch this gizmo that's being presented
with a 10ft poll.

------
pavel_lishin
I really like that everywhere on the project, they state that it might not
work. Many projects promise to deliver no matter what - it's good that Jamie
and his team are setting realistic expectations.

~~~
sharpercoder
This is why I will actually do my first donation on KickStarter.

~~~
Kiro
It's IndieGogo, not Kickstarter.

~~~
troymc
It's possible they know, and meant Kickstarter :D

(But it's unlikely.)

(But sometimes it's fun to imagine silly stuff.)

------
DigitalJack
Seem awfully weird to me to have marketing teams and people working on cad
designs when the basic concept hasn't even been proven in 6 prototypes.

at least the VR application of the concept of motorized shoes hasn't been
proven.

I guess this is just a "stepping stone" if you'll pardon the expression,
toward a general purpose motorized shoe. So if this VR aspect is just a side
trip on their grand scheme, maybe it makes more sense to have such a team in
place working on what they are.

~~~
stuntkite
I think "Marketing Team" is a pretty generous term. This is one of those dudes
using inkscape/the gimp and they got someone on UpWork to cad up a shoe from a
sketch. Maybe did it themselves, but don't know how to go get some free
substance materials to render that with a fabric and rubber look that would
light properly.

There is nothing about this that says professional design or marketing folks
are involved. No one seems to even know what a color wheel is or basic rules
of text readability. How many fonts did they download? Shit looks like a 90's
rave flier.

I'm all for DIY, whacky hardware projects (have a couple myself), and
MythBustin'. But I think after they finished prototype number six everyone
went over to Cody's house all drunk and went Old Man Ham on it. Jesus christ
guys, get on Shutterstock and buy some templates.

EDIT: I totally just realized that this project is the engineer equivalent of
a neighborhood dad garage band. Rock on brothers. Rock on.

------
Raphmedia
Actual Link : [https://www.indiegogo.com/projects/jamie-hyneman-s-
virtual-r...](https://www.indiegogo.com/projects/jamie-hyneman-s-virtual-
reality-electric-shoes-vr#/)

------
rhcom2
I can see it how it would work for forward/backward movement but not how it
could possibly work for lateral movement like pushing off of one foot.

~~~
CharlesW
Miniature Mecanum wheels[1][2] might be interesting for this.

[1]
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mecanum_wheel](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mecanum_wheel)
[2]
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_tmiu1wpp_E](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_tmiu1wpp_E)

~~~
dmazin
I remember Jamie talking about how much he loves his mecanum wheel forklift...

------
pbhjpbhj
I like it. The link in the comments there to
[https://www.3d.run/](https://www.3d.run/) looks good too. It doesn't seem far
from those Cybershoes to the VR Shoes, like it says if you're just allowing
linear motion they're basically reverse treadmills (or just how I look on
rollerskates!).

Snap on shoe based personal transport, like Heelies with motors, I can see
working but without some very complex Mecanum style wheels I can't see the VR
Shoe being functional any time soon (unless they have a killer new concept
they've not told us about yet).

I can't see one feeling balanced in this sort of get-up.

------
spyder
Prior art (video):
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=C5hPyHxrz94](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=C5hPyHxrz94)

------
chaostheory
This is still the best VR solution to running and walking, and it's already
shipped.

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

I just don't understand why they seem to no longer sell to consumers though.

I'm not sure I get Jamie's project.

~~~
troymc
Have you tried those Virtuix things?

~~~
chaostheory
Yes. Another problem is that back then it used Kinect. Not sure what it uses
now. It's not perfect but it worked, at least a few years back.

------
mrfusion
Questions (the video didn’t answer)

Will it work on carpet?

What stops you from slipping?

What holds you in place? Does the motor move you backwards to match any
forward movement?

Btw once we get all these vr accessories were really going to need wireless
charging and a giant mat to dump all your stuff on when you’re done playing to
charge it.

~~~
criddell
If you have to put everything on a mat, I wouldn't called that wireless
charging. That's like saying you can have a wireless network connection as
long as your laptop is sitting on a special pad.

I think it has to work over a range of at least a few meters before I'd call
it wireless.

~~~
spullara
My 10-yr old daughter described the current form of "wireless charging" as
using the shortest possible cord.

~~~
tekromancr
That's incredibly insightful. The way I see lots of people charge their
phones, you have a long cable so you can continue using it when it's charging.
with the wireless charging, you have to leave it locked in place while it
charges at 500ma for hours. It's neat at starbucks where I can pick up a quick
extra few percent on my battery bar, but otherwise pretty useless.

~~~
balfirevic
It's not useless. It's great for charging overnight while sleeping, without
the hassle of plugging in the cable before you go to sleep.

~~~
evilduck
I imagine some specific types of disabled people might really appreciate it
too. Plugging a cord in required a fair amount of dexterity and grip strength;
far more than using the phone itself requires. But Qi charging? You could
probably nudge it into position with your nose if you had to.

~~~
tekromancr
Great point! I never stopped to consider it as an accessibility technology.

------
catshirt
so, they're using tech they built to help you walk faster... to make shoes
that don't let you walk anywhere. science!

hope it works out, seems like an interesting solution.

~~~
vlasev
What speeds you up forwards can probably be used to slow you down if pointed
backwards

------
Glyptodon
Maybe someone will one-up and do some with a tread made of ball bearings.

------
xellisx
"Estimated Operating weight up to 215 lbs"

~~~
pbhjpbhj
c. 15 stone, c. 100kg

------
ainiriand
You should not back with your money something that rich people is not backing
with his own money. Just saying.

------
drzaiusapelord
VR will succeed because it doesn't involve a whole suit to make work. That's
why the Vive and Oculus ship with only two controllers and a HMD. No glove or
shoes to be fitted correctly, put on/off, cleaned, etc. This is also why the
Vive Tracker won't ever go mainstream for gaming. People aren't sticking 3
large sensors on their body outside of edge uses cases and now you have 5
things to remember to recharge. If good full-body tracking comes to mainstream
VR, we'll be doing it with cameras, not wearables.

This is absolutely the wrong way to go about this. Its clear that Hyneman is
trying to ride the VR hype to sell motorized shoes, which sound more
interesting to me as a mode of transportation than anything having to do with
VR. Especially if you can put in Segway-like logic in them to help with
balance.

On the flip side, considering how long walks are most people's only form of
exercise its probably a bad idea all around like those hoverboards or that new
mini-segway. If I bought any of these I'd be cutting a lot of calories I'm
burning and lowering physical activity drastically. Short range travel should
be by foot and losing that will just make our obesity epidemic worse.

~~~
stuntkite
>VR will succeed

Dang, that's a big assumption. As someone who's been a researcher in the field
for over a decade, I definitely can't make that claim.

Valve even says the total concept may be flawed and they are comfortable[1]
with complete failure.

Three (of many) big things to overcome:

* Lock in. People watch movies in the dark with other people. Head lunchbox is isolating and annoying.

* Transmittable skin infections.

* Stereo depth eye tricks messing with focus makes almost everyone sick and can have huge unknown effects on the brain, balance, and perception

We don't have light fields[2], easy holograms[3], or laser scanning projectors
on a chip[4] yet, but we might next week. Very probably VR at current is the
stone axe we are using to invent the steel one. In almost every practical way
it's broken, even if useful. We have no fucking clue what the final form is
going to look like.

[1]
[http://www.bbc.com/news/technology-38992294](http://www.bbc.com/news/technology-38992294)

[2] [https://www.magicleap.com/](https://www.magicleap.com/)

[3] [http://www.red.com/hydrogen](http://www.red.com/hydrogen)

[4] [http://www.bosch-presse.de/pressportal/de/en/mobile-world-
co...](http://www.bosch-presse.de/pressportal/de/en/mobile-world-
congress-2017-new-bosch-microscanner-bml050-for-interactive-laser-
projection-90624.html)

~~~
whathaschanged
It's only annoying because there is currently no output for your friends to
watch along while you're playing that isn't a complete hack.

~~~
stuntkite
That was worded like a rebuttal, but I think you agree with me. Sweet.


Amazon Taking Down Erotica, Removing From Kindles - sahaj
http://theselfpublishingrevolution.blogspot.com/2010/12/amazon-in-book-banning-business.html

======
ghshephard
To be clear, they are currently targeting "Incest" erotica. The irony, of
course, is that Amazon's Television Commercial features a women on the beach
reading her kindle, and the story on her kindle, is about a boy who has sex
with his stepmother. Admittedly, not erotica, but still ironic.

Amazon should feel free to yank whatever it wants off its bookshelves (and, in
fact, should probably be a bit more discerning given some of the recent crap
they've been selling) - but, I don't know if they should be sending their
customers _already purchased_ books into the memory hole.

~~~
flipbrad
You didn't purchase a book. You licensed an ebook. Big difference, in Amazon's
mind.

~~~
AgentConundrum
And that, in a nutshell, is why I don't really want to buy an eReader. They
just seem too restrictive.

My girlfriend and I occasionally share books (usually she borrows mine), but
my understanding is that the books you "buy" are licensed only to a single
device, and you can only share a book _one time_ , and even then only if the
publisher allows it.

I could be misunderstanding things, but it seems like if she wanted to borrow
one of my books, she would probably need to borrow my Kindle to do it, and
essentially borrow _all of my books_ to read one.

Until things get sorted out, I think I'll pass on the eReaders.

~~~
rbanffy
> And that, in a nutshell, is why I don't really want to buy an eReader. They
> just seem too restrictive.

You don't have to deprive yourself of e-readers. I am completely happy with
O'Reilly's and Pragmatic's policy (no DRM, multi-format). I am a little less
happy with Manning, who makes it clear my book is only available for download
for the 5 days following purchase. All of them offer DRM-free PDF as a
minimum. I am so far very happy with my Nook (B&W e-paper version).

And there is also Feddbooks, which is conveniently linked from Stanza (I have
it on my iPod)

Oh. And after the 1984 episode, it would be hard to convince me to buy a
Kindle.

~~~
AgentConundrum
_I am completely happy with O'Reilly's and Pragmatic's policy_

I don't really need an eReader for programming books. Most of the time I'm
better off reading those at the computer where I can play with the code in
them. For that, I can just buy the PDF and read it in Foxit.

I'd want an eReader more for fiction, and fiction definitely still prefers DRM
over non-DRM.

~~~
Tyrannosaurs
Other than the ability to carry a large library around with you the Kindle is
pretty sucky for Programming books - the screen is too small and the
formatting too limited.

~~~
igorlev
The Kindle DX, on the other hand, has become indispensable to me for reading
all kinds of technical books and pdfs. Along with the daily E-book deals from
O'Reilly it has almost completely eliminated the need to buy paper technical
books.

I think a good market for this is in areas with long, public transportation
commutes. Those who take the car to work have fewer good use cases for
e-readers.

------
rmc
_When some of my readers began checking their Kindle archives for books of
mine they’d purchased on Amazon, they found them missing from their archives_

I think Amazon (and any bookseller) should be allowed to sell or not sell any
sort of book they want. However deleting already paid for books that your
customers have bought from their devices is totally unethical IMO.

~~~
araneae
Also unethical is not automatically given them a refund, and then verbally
trying to humiliate them over their choice of reading when they request one.

~~~
roel_v
There's this story, I don't know if it's true, of a business who used to sell
gay sex toys (I don't know what is specifically 'gay' about it, let's gloss
over this for the sake of the story) from the back of magazine covers. Except
they didn't have any inventory or anything - their entire business was to
collect payments, guaranteeing 'discrete packaging' etc in the ads; but then
call the customer and tell them 'we're out of stock, but we can send you a
letter with our logo on it, and when you fill in the form in that letter,
we'll send you a cheque from Gay Sex Toys Inc made out to you to reimburse
you'. Their business floated on people who didn't want those letters or didn't
want to hand in that kind of cheques to their local banks and who just left it
at that.

~~~
ryanricard
You might have heard it from the movie Lock, Stock, and two Smoking Barrels:
<http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qjj8eMNxivM>

(warning: strong language)

I'd love to know if someone's actually run a scam like that at some point.
Seems like a clever hack, at least it would be before the days of ubiquitous
credit cards and online banking.

~~~
roel_v
Ah yes, I remember seeing this movie, didn't remember it came from there.
Thanks.

~~~
waqf
It's an urban legend that predates the movie; see here:
<http://www.snopes.com/risque/porn/porntape.asp>

------
prodigal_erik
They already demonstrated their power to abuse your property with the _1984_
fiasco, and that's the reason I don't own a Kindle. Fortunately it's possible
to side-load ebooks from ethical vendors who don't demand an ability to steal
your licenses yet keep your money.

[http://consumerist.com/2009/07/how-to-load-up-your-kindle-
wi...](http://consumerist.com/2009/07/how-to-load-up-your-kindle-with-non-
amazon-ebooks.html)

Whether root access is readily available on a Kindle is unclear to me.

~~~
DannoHung
Does anyone know if all of Feedbooks is DRM free? It looks like they're
carrying commercial publications now and I don't know of any store aside from
programming ones (and Cory Doctrow) that sell DRM free commercial books.

~~~
CWuestefeld
Baen books (<http://www.Baen.com> ) was a leader in ebooks, and sells only
DRM-free, afaik. In fact, they've even got a decent library of entirely free
(as in beer) books, to whet your appetite. They publish sci-fi books.

This is one company that "gets it", and I recommend them enthusiastically.

~~~
DannoHung
Thanks! I knew Baen gave away some books, but I didn't know they sold them DRM
free too. Only, uhh... I don't really know what's good in their selection :/

Can't have it all, I spose.

------
madair
the "debate" here is simply the utter failure by so many to recognize power
abusing non-power for ideas deemed unsavory

just as is the inability of so many to recognize that it is exactly the same
when wikileaks is refused a right to be _published_ via server space

you "debaters" should be ashamed of yourselves...but you won't be. i don't
fully understand that part. is it really that hard to see the shape of the
nation? the commerce infrastructure? the war, imperialism, peonage,
acquiescence to abuses in the name of stability and financial growth.

yet _nazis_ DID exist, and _nazis_ DO exists, and the more often Godwin's
crock of a law is pompously imposed the more _will_ exist. ask yourself: how
did they exist? were the german middle class simply naturally evil spawn of
the devil children waiting to grow up and be spawn of the devil killers? how
did they rise? not some macro view, a micro view. how did the middle class of
a western nation create the nazi's military machine?

have you considered that they were propagandized? and how did that occur? why
was information lacking? is it possible that information was suppressed? who
suppressed it?

you are not immune to the very same information deficit which you endorse. you
are not immune to the very same fear which envelops the nation.

but you say, "this is incest, i just don't like incest". well, there's lots of
things you might not like. perhaps for example consider that 80-90% of you are
not gay. presumably you don't read gay fiction. why are gays allowed to have a
_deviation from your norm while you are selectively willing to determine
another deviation from your norm eligible for suppression_? try to keep in
mind that _your cultural norm_ is a shockingly violent culture filled with
shocking amounts of violent fantasy. "oh but i don't like violent fantasy".
yeah right, i'm talking to the other 99.9% of you then.

you <\--- yes you, reading this, are the middle-class of a western nation with
quite a track record, and one that is only getting worse and so very very
quickly year upon year of this century.

what questions will people ask 70 years from now to try to understand you. the
middle-class "debaters"

metaphors are a powerful force against natural difficulty to place events into
context. i would say you're only hurting yourselves, but actually you're
hurting us all. You.

~~~
drndown2007
I think you take it too far. Yes, the powerful abusing the weak is not a
healthy thing. But there is actually 'bad' in the world that should be
suppressed. Unfortunately, there are people (you?) that are willing to say "we
can't all agree on what is bad, therefore nothing is bad". That would work,
except for the fact that we're human, frail and don't know nearly as much as
we think we do.

Since the original article is sex, and you refered to it above, let's continue
with it. Try going to an SA (sex addicts) meeting sometime and hear about
shattered lives because of what someone did to someone else. I'm going to put
my foot down and say rape is bad because of the horrible emotional baggage it
leaves in someone's life. Incest is usually in the same category (I personally
know a guy who will never have normal relationships because of what his older
sister and friend did with him when he was 12).

I'm sure someone (you?) will try to argue there are cases where it's OK, so we
shouldn't call rape 'bad'. PLEASE! Sometimes, there ARE things that should be
suppressed.

And this doesn't mean anything or everything should be suppressed. If people
are suppressing/hiding something because they did wrong (the government) then
it should be exposed.

Except, whoops, we just said the government did 'wrong'. That's a value
judgement! <sarcasm>Maybe some people think starting fake wars is OK and we
shouldn't be so quick to call that unsavory</sarcasm> Value judgements have to
be made as long as we're human. Value judgements mean there is 'good' and
'bad'. I don't think we want more 'bad' -- it's bad by definition! If we ever
get to the point that we're computers and can hit a reset button, then _maybe_
right and wrong will go away...

So wikileaks and exposing corruption -- good, bring it on, don't suppress it.
Encouraging rape or incest, I'm calling bad -- we don't need more of that in
society.

(OK, bring on the down votes)

~~~
ElliotH
There is a distinct difference between making something illegal and making
_writing_ about something illegal.

There are all sorts of films and books that show crime being committed,
sometimes even with the criminals being the good guys. These obviously
shouldn't be banned - but the crimes depicted probably should be.

 _"we can't all agree on what is bad, therefore nothing is bad"_

I don't think the parent was arguing for that, indeed I think you'd be hard
pressed to find anyone who truly believes that. He talks exclusively about
ideas and fiction.

On a final note its not very classy to 'bait' people to downvote you. It's the
reason that I didn't upvote you.

------
w1ntermute
What happened to not deleting books that had already been purchased?

> Amazon effectively acknowledged that the deletions were a bad idea. “We are
> changing our systems so that in the future we will not remove books from
> customers’ devices in these circumstances,” Mr. Herdener said.

[http://www.nytimes.com/2009/07/18/technology/companies/18ama...](http://www.nytimes.com/2009/07/18/technology/companies/18amazon.html)

~~~
jsolson
Supposedly they're not deleting them from devices, just from the archives
(thus preventing re-downloading the titles):
[http://www.teleread.com/ebooks/amazon-removes-incest-
related...](http://www.teleread.com/ebooks/amazon-removes-incest-related-
erotica-titles-from-store-kindle-archive/)

------
tzs
Is there any independent confirmation of this? Parts of it sound made up.

------
jasongullickson
I thought that Bezos himself said deleting books from people Kindles was
"stupid";

Here we go:
[http://www.guardian.co.uk/technology/blog/2009/jul/24/amazon...](http://www.guardian.co.uk/technology/blog/2009/jul/24/amazon-
drm)

~~~
jsolson
He did, and supposedly they're not actually doing that this time:
[http://www.teleread.com/ebooks/amazon-removes-incest-
related...](http://www.teleread.com/ebooks/amazon-removes-incest-related-
erotica-titles-from-store-kindle-archive/)

------
re
Poor title ("Removing From Kindles") on the HN submission:

> A discussion thread on Amazon’s Kindle Community forum notes that Amazon has
> begun removing some previously-published books or stories from its store,
> and from the Kindle archives. Readers who have previously downloaded them to
> their Kindles can keep them there, but cannot re-download them (and will be
> refunded the price of purchase assuming Amazon can still find the purchase
> record).

[http://www.teleread.com/ebooks/amazon-removes-incest-
related...](http://www.teleread.com/ebooks/amazon-removes-incest-related-
erotica-titles-from-store-kindle-archive/) (linked from the submitted story)

------
sigzero
Why "erotica" in the title and not "incest titles"? I know why. They aren't
banning ALL erotica...just a particular one that most people would agree with
Amazon on.

------
ktf
You know what's full of explicit incest? Nabokov's _Ada, or Ardor_. It's also
one of the most beautiful books I've ever read.

But it looks like it's not available on Kindle either, now that I check :)

[http://www.amazon.com/Ada-Ardor-Chronicle-Vladimir-
Nabokov/d...](http://www.amazon.com/Ada-Ardor-Chronicle-Vladimir-
Nabokov/dp/0679725229/)

------
SeanDav
Looks like I will be buying a Kindle or Amazon e-book about the time when hell
freezes over....

------
javert
A particular bookseller choosing not to sell incest erotica does not
constitute a book being "banned" or "censored", which only apply when the
government forcibly prevents _every_ bookseller from selling particular
material.

I wouldn't sell incest erotica either, and that doesn't mean I ban or censor
books.

This kind of exaggeration on the part of the blog author doesn't help her
argument; it just causes people to (a) lose intellectual respect for the
author and (b) give less credence to her argument.

~~~
abhaga
> A particular bookseller choosing not to sell incest erotica does not
> constitute a book being "banned" or "censored", which only apply when the
> government forcibly prevents every bookseller from selling particular
> material.

Going by that logic, to "effectively" ban the book while not "technically"
banning it, the govt just needs to pursue the top few channels to stop
carrying it. Book will be effectively unavailable and everyone's conscience
will be clean.

> I wouldn't sell incest erotica either, and that doesn't mean I ban or censor
> books.

But you would make that clear to everyone before starting to do business with
them, right? Or if you decided to change your stand one day (which is quite
plausible since things do change with time), you would perhaps offer a better
reason then "Because I can"?

~~~
m_eiman
_Going by that logic, to "effectively" ban the book while not "technically"
banning it, the govt just needs to pursue the top few channels to stop
carrying it. Book will be effectively unavailable and everyone's conscience
will be clean._

Hey, that sounds familiar. Say, for example, that some organization releases a
bunch of more or less secret stuff, and you want to prevent them from getting
donations to continue releasing stuff, you could just lean a bit on VISA and
Mastercard…

------
sliverstorm
_I actually wrote those incest books as a result of a contest where it was the
most popular category on the site...

Maybe you should expand your horizons._ _grin_ \-- The Author

Ok, I'm all for trying new things and all, but the world-wide cultural taboo
against incest exists for a clearly defined reason (ref: Alexei Nikolaevich,
for example), not just because we're all a buncha prudes.

~~~
Kolya
That isn't a reason against incest per se. It is merely an objection to
certain forms of incest - specifically, those that lead to children.

With freely-available contraception and abortion, it's hard to think of any
good reason for the absolute cultural taboo against all incest.

One of the goals of literature should be to challenge cultural taboos. Any
good bookseller should realize it.

~~~
sliverstorm
Though it does not thrill me to say so, you make a valid point.

It is worth noting though that cultural mores don't work well with shades of
grey- they are best suited to black-and-whites. (i.e. do/don't instead of do
this way/don't do that way)

~~~
jules
Do you really feel bad about a consenting man and woman having a relationship?
(or man and man or woman and woman) I have trouble identifying with this
feeling.

~~~
sliverstorm
You read too much into my words. What does not thrill me is realizing I was
wrong.

------
rprasad
This article is an exaggerated pile of crap. Pardon my language.

Amazon _is not_ taking down erotica. They still have a very large and healthy
erotica/romance section.

What they are doing is removing incest-erotica _published by Amazon's
Createspace_. According to the pages the author links to in his post, incest-
erotica from other publishers remains available for sale.

Incest, by the way, is illegal in most of America, except possibly in the
South. It's no different from Amazon removing bestiality-erotica or
pedophilia-erotica published under its own label.

Long story short: if you want to publish incest-erotica, _don't publish
through Amazon's CreateSpace._

~~~
prodigal_erik
Murder is illegal everywhere, but writing about it hasn't yet become
crimethink.

~~~
rprasad
Writing about it isn't crimethink. But it's highly undesirable for a
commercial company to be associated with incest erotica.

Amazon made a business decision to stop publishing incest-erotica through its
own publishing label. It did not ban other publishers from publishing that
crap in its store.

------
kmfrk
I think "Erotica" is a bit euphemistic for "incest fantasy".

~~~
potatolicious
Why wouldn't it be erotica, or do we have a problem with people finding
unconventional things erotic? Even things that may be shocking/distasteful to
you?

Everyone's a freak and a weirdo, and the sooner we lay off other people for
their kinks the sooner we may find acceptance for our own.

~~~
jonhendry
Incest covers everything from two related adults to, say, an adult and an
_infant_ , and beyond.

If I were running a store, I wouldn't want to sell baby rape erotica. I
wouldn't want to make money that way. If people want to spank to that stuff,
it's not my responsibility to assist in any way.


Learn Java in Minutes - Ashuu
http://learnxinyminutes.com/docs/java/

======
petercooper
I'm learning Java in my spare time just because in the same sense it pays to
know C if you dig Unix, I suspect it pays to know Java if you dig the JVM.

The _language_ has not proved to be too disturbing, happily, but I'm finding
the _tooling and ecosystem_ to be rather arcane and difficult to get a grip on
at first. Build tools, a choice of JVMs and JDKs, "enterprise" this or that..
it seems all the stuff _around_ the language is the real minefield than the
relatively simplistic language itself.

~~~
adnam
Exactly. The hard part of Java is not the language _per se_ , but the myriad
of IDEs and XML configuration files.

~~~
kryten
To be honest, as a Java veteran, there is very little XML any more apart from
a bit of Tomcat config usually. It's all gone in favor of annotations which
are much better.

It ain't J2EE 1.4 days any more (thank fuck).

The only thing I've done involving XML recently was setting tomcat 7 to serve
a war file from the root site and that took about 2 minutes to work out.

~~~
spullara
I haven't used an XML config file in literally years. Either use embedded
Jetty directly or use a nice thin wrapper like DropWizard.

------
krelian
I think we are getting into spam territory with this site.

~~~
tzm
It may be perceived to be spammy with the frequency of front-page posts, but
the site is anything but "spam". I find the site quite useful.

------
avargas
I can't seem to understand if people really do think they can learn a language
in X minutes. It takes countless hours of writing code in a specific language
to learn it, and many months of writing on it to call yourself a good
programmer in that language, or expert. </rant>

~~~
olalonde
It's getting tiresome to always see this same comment on every post of this
kind. Let's keep the semantics arguments off HN.

------
kriro
It should be obvious to anyone that you won't learn JAVA by simply looking
over this.

The point is that for learning it is very important to

1) Get a basic overview of terminology and a general feel for the domain
(traditionally you pick up three or so books on the topic, browse through them
and note similar/repeatet patterns on a very high level)...then you can break
down the learning into subcomponents

2) Find a way to get started and just do it

Creating your own checklists, flash cards, high level presentation on the
topic are great starting points and usually step 0 before practice, practice,
practice.

This looks like an excellent first step for anyone that wants to start with
JAVA.

~~~
edtechdev
Like someone else mentioned, they are essentially cheat sheets. Very useful if
you already know some other programming language.

I especially like pages that map the features of one programming language to
another (that I already know). The recent AlloyUI post was an example
comparing it to jQuery and YUI: [http://alloyui.com/rosetta-
stone/](http://alloyui.com/rosetta-stone/)

And also see Rosetta Code
[http://rosettacode.org/wiki/Rosetta_Code](http://rosettacode.org/wiki/Rosetta_Code)

------
Proleps
All these Learn x in y minutes are really good cheat sheets. They are also
pretty nice to check out before you start on a longer tutorial.

------
hmottestad
This looks like a great cheatsheet for those doing into to programming at uni
(in java). Quick place to check on syntax without having to open a book,
browse through slides or googling and ending up on a page from 1990 about how
to make good coffee.

------
huherto
Convert integer to string...

      "" + 123;

~~~
danbruc
This makes my eyes bleed.

------
nns
A lot of libraries these days come with a Docco[1] annotated code and examples
[2]. This looks very similar, but could make use of Docco.

[1][http://jashkenas.github.io/docco/](http://jashkenas.github.io/docco/) [2]
[http://documentcloud.github.io/underscore/docs/underscore.ht...](http://documentcloud.github.io/underscore/docs/underscore.html)

------
727374
I'm actually trying to learn java from a C# background. Two questions that
immediately jumped out at me:

\- Do experienced java programming concatenate a bunch of strings together, or
is there a format method? -Is anyone actually using Arraylist over Generics?

Also, is including 'switch' worth the screen real estate?

~~~
quacker
> Do experienced java programming concatenate a bunch of strings together, or
> is there a format method?

Yeah, I've seen this a lot. IIRC, String concatenations with the + operator
are compiled to use a StringBuffer for efficiency. There is also a static
method String.format that works with C-like format strings.

> Is anyone actually using Arraylist over Generics?

I'm not sure exactly what you mean by this. The following is pretty standard
Java, if you want a list of Strings.

        List<String> list = new ArrayList<String>();

The following gives you a list of Objects (the base type for all objects in
Java):

        List list = new ArrayList();

If you put Strings into this list, then they come out as Objects. You'll have
to cast to use them as Strings or the compiler complains.

------
mavroprovato

      // Import all "sub-packages"
      import java.lang.Math.*;

Nope, you don't import all subpackages with this, you import all the static
methods defined in the java.lang.Math class

~~~
eonwe
For static import you would need to do

      import static java.lang.Math.*;

The current version would just import all the classes defined in package
java.lang.Math (which does not exist, but java.math does).

------
nnq
looking forward for a Javascript version :) ...it would be serious fun to
read, knowing all the horrible language gotchas that will soon byte a beginner
that starts coding Js after reading only such a guide.

~~~
kaeruct
See [http://bonsaiden.github.io/JavaScript-
Garden/](http://bonsaiden.github.io/JavaScript-Garden/)

~~~
olalonde
Great reference. I've been programming Javascript since 2005 (back then it was
more copy/pasting Javascript snippets though) and still go back there once in
a while (mostly for some stuff like type coercion).

------
kodeater
If you are learning that's a good source. They never said that this would make
you become an expert. thumbs up. If you already know the basics just don't
read it. But everybody one day was a noob.

------
thewarrior
The faster you learn something the faster you forget it.

~~~
trailfox
That's why guys who finish bottom of their class remember the most.

~~~
thewarrior
Well I'd be willing to bet that for the things they manage to learn and imbibe
they would be quite proficient. And no matter how smart you are if you learn
something as complex as the Java Syntax within just 5 minutes then you're not
going to remember it well enough to apply it for very long.

------
benburton
The class name should really be upper camel case...

------
midnitewarrior
I'm surprised that anybody would be interested in learning Java after seeing
the poor stewardship Oracle has put into the platform.

~~~
Sandman
And I'm surprised you made this comment. I'm no fan of Oracle, but they've
done a lot more for Java then Sun did since version 6 came out in 2006.
Actually, I'm interested in why you feel this way, would you care to
elaborate?

------
antonmaju
Peter Norvig said otherwise
[http://norvig.com/21-days.html](http://norvig.com/21-days.html)

~~~
dallos
[http://norvig.com/jscheme-design.html](http://norvig.com/jscheme-design.html)

"I decided I didn't want to spend more than 20 hours on this exercise of
learning Java, learning the IDE I was using, and producing a Lisp
interpreter."

------
rodolphoarruda
Uff, I got spoiled by Python's simplicity last week when I checked its page...
Java is way more complex to follow through.

------
plunchete
Seems like the author forgot to learn the conventions of the language. The
site looks like a good reference though

~~~
joelg236
My thoughts to. Indentation was all wrong.

------
anExcitedBeast
I feel like this might already exist, but a sheet like this for vi/vim and
emacs would be tops.

------
yati
I would really like to see a "Learn C++ in minutes" post.

------
drmr
.. and then forget it in seconds.

------
chunkylover53
you learn it and forget it.