Hacker News Reader

nowarninglabelon Lawsuit claims Ancestry.com gets preferential access to New York public archives

Hi Brooke, one thing that isn't clear from reading the links you provided, did Ancestry pay the fee requested by the state? From what I can tell, you refused to pay the fee (rightly or wrongly, I have no ability to assess the cost quoted to you). But if Ancestry paid it, would that not explain why their request was fulfilled first?

nowarninglabelon PHP solves problems. Oh, and you can program with it too

>Those people do not want to learn to program, they want to solve problem

I've come to learn that this is why some (many?) established programmers have such a visceral reaction to people using PHP, because at the root it's actually a threat to their job. If someone with little experience can quickly solve a problem with a substandard tool, what need will they have for them?

For those who are skilled though, this should not raise mental objections, for there is a nearly endless supply of problems to solve and the more easy problems solved by people on their own, the more that skilled programmers can spend their time solving more difficult ones.

nowarninglabelon The City of Seattle Accidentally Gave Me 32M Emails for $40

It's not sloppy, it's what the law allows for. You seem to have a misunderstanding in stating "the metadata should have only contained anonymized entries for the email addresses of the counterparties." That's simply incorrect in terms of what is allowed under law and for the request, though there is some variation state-to-state as to their FOIA.

nowarninglabelon 42 percent of new cancer patients lose their life savings

It'd be helpful to track down where the wealth goes. It seems to be broken down between the care provider, hospital, pharmaceutical companies and possibly the insurance company. Has anyone fully tracked down averages on where the money tends to go (possibly different for different types of cancer?)

nowarninglabelon libssh authentication bypass

Github did weigh on this now saying they are unaffected https://twitter.com/GitHubSecurity/status/105231733337972326...

nowarninglabelon How Snowflake Rebuilt Its AWS Stack on Azure

It was also cheaper for us than Redshift, of course your mileage may vary.

nowarninglabelon How Snowflake Rebuilt Its AWS Stack on Azure

We've been using it for a couple years and pretty happy. Every once in a while there is a bug that takes a while to fix, but really it's been pretty great compared to what we were using before.

nowarninglabelon Priority Queue on Ethereum with a 15 ETH Bug Bounty

That's true of just about any technological innovation though. Even look at recent examples with space, self-driving cars, etc. I'd posture that we are currently somewhere in the Trough of Disillusionment [0] and that it'll another year or two before there's more mass use/adoption.

[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hype_cycle

nowarninglabelon On Cash

Samaritan is doing good work and making it easy to get digital credit or other credit to people rather than directly handle cash. Where things really shine though I think is with surfacing the stories of the people you are giving to.

nowarninglabelon Stellarium Web: Online Planetarium

What's the data store? And apologies if this is a dumb question, but given the number of astronomical objects in the universe that we might identify, is there some special consideration given to how large the amount of data stored might grow to?

nowarninglabelon Introduction to Augur, an open-source, decentralized betting marketplace

I participate in Good Judgment, but I think it will be great to compare Augur's results on certain questions to GJP's results (whenever there is a question that overlaps at least).

nowarninglabelon Launch HN: MAC'D (YC S18) – Fast-Casual, Build-Your-own Mac and Cheese

Is there anything to learn from the experience of "The Melt"? It seemed they started with a grilled cheese focus, didn't do so well, and pivoted to burgers. Now they seem to be doing well (however this is only through observation, I have no idea of their finances). It would seem Mac & Cheese would find a similar issue of being too narrow / too niche. Granted, if you don't intend to have in-person location ordering be a big piece of the business, then maybe that is irrelevant.

nowarninglabelon Women Die More from Heart Attacks Than Men Unless ER Doc Is Female

There are numbers, linked to in the article: http://www.pnas.org/content/early/2018/07/31/1800097115

nowarninglabelon Venezuela President Maduro 'survives drone attack'

Do you have some verifiable information on that?

The government narrative is it was a drone attack, but there doesn't seem to be any footage to show that. Has anything been released to verify the attack as being from drones?

nowarninglabelon The Four Thieves Vinegar Collective

It's not saying the RAR file is that. It's saying you can only get access to the file through a password-protected website on the dark web.

nowarninglabelon Coin ShakeDown – CryptoCurrency Ratings in a Glance

This is a nice idea, but F for every coin asides Bitcoin for technical development seems...suspect (D- for Ethereum I'm counting as basically an F by your ratings)

nowarninglabelon Launched smart agriculture project in Syria

I think it would help if you talked more about the need to start with a GSM circuit for communication. For instance, could you instead consider starting with some bluetooth devices?

Also, what does "smart agriculture" mean to you?

nowarninglabelon A man who paves India's roads with old plastic

They need 3 machines specifically, one is for heating the material, one for pressing it, and one for forming it. I'll see if I can get the listing of the machines as she has already found the ones available for purchase locally.

nowarninglabelon A man who paves India's roads with old plastic

If anyone could help, I'm working with a company led by a young woman in Kenya who is actively creating paving bricks out of used plastic bottles. They need about $25k-$50k for machinery to help scale out the operation, and we're trying to find some people who can help secure this funding. Contact me if you'd like to help with doing something good with them.

Her company website: https://gjengemakers.wixsite.com/mysite

nowarninglabelon Utah voting system fending off 1B hacking attempts per day

Where is 'here'?

Also, voter fraud is incredibly rare in the US, and we didn't need ID cards to accomplish that.

nowarninglabelon Project Oasis: Voice Terrarium

I didn't see a link to a video in the article, but here's one: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yyjN_ZwJr8Y

nowarninglabelon Plastic recycling is a problem consumers can't solve

I'm working with a plastic recycler in Kenya that may be solving issues in a novel way: https://make-it-initiative.org/africa/cpt_startup/gjenge-ent...

Contact me if you want an intro to them, they are seeking grant and equity funding to grow their ability to recycle plastic bottles into building blocks

nowarninglabelon Root Cause Analysis of a Non-Deterministic JavaScriptCore Vulnerability

Great read, and nice-follow up to the array.reverse() exploit from last year which I hadn't ever seen fully explained.

nowarninglabelon Mumbai bans plastic bags, bottles, and single-use plastic containers

Agreed, this is great, though I'm in Nairobi and they have banned plastic last year, setting a great example.

nowarninglabelon Ask HN: "Creative" ways to handle abusive http traffic?

We use PerimeterX and it's generally worked well for us https://www.perimeterx.com/ (and more cost-effective than spending our own time on it, at least for us)

I do share your desire though to try to direct the traffic towards some entity that could be better equipped at cutting it off at its source. It's automated traffic for the most part, so perhaps a clever automated solution could be effective at stirring a bigger or more well-equipped entity to cut if off. Past attempts at FBI reports and such have not amounted to anything for us.

nowarninglabelon Launch HN: Dharma (YC S17) an open protocol for borrowing/lending cryptoassets

Yes, I whole-heartedly agree, the user should own their PII and who has access to it, but the KYC and AML checks still have to happen. Having a provider do it is also great, but Civic (as one of your examples) has explicitly stated they can't do it in international low-income contexts, and they are unlikely to ever be able to in a way that makes financial sense.

That's why folks in this space need to be thinking about how to solve this problem. There's not a clear, easy answer (or if there is it has not been communicated out enough otherwise everyone would be using it).

nowarninglabelon Launch HN: Dharma (YC S17) an open protocol for borrowing/lending cryptoassets

Congrats on getting to this point! Been following Dharma closely for a little while now as we (Kiva) have an interest in trying to increase financial inclusion and decrease lending costs for the world's poor and have been hoping Dharma may end up being one piece to the future of our work.

Could you possibly speak to how you intend to enable KYC (Know Your Customer) / AML (Anti-Money Laundering) to work with Dharma? The best bet so far has seemed to be trying to incentivize it through providing automatic fees to external parties to perform these actions and holding the money in escrow until it goes through. However, it would be great if you could share if you'll have discussed this problem at all.

I'd love a world where we didn't have to deal with KYC & AML, but we do, and the sooner we figure out how to make it work in an efficient and inexpensive manner for the world's poor, the sooner we can reach the UN Sustainable Development goals around financial inclusion.

nowarninglabelon Does Clean Laundry Have Germs?

> I don't see the point.

>If you have some specific condition or disease, then just take targeted measures

Did you even read the article? That's exactly what she says she is doing. When there's a stomach flu or other harmful bug going through the household, she is using targeted washing methods to rid those germs.

nowarninglabelon BlackRock Backs a Startup to Find Out What Young Investors Want

This is one of those interesting knee-jerk HN reactions that miss the entire point. Acorns built a product that people love.

As to "why couldn't any major bank or credit card company implement this and blow them completely out of the water", why not ask instead why they haven't successfully done so? They've certainly tried and failed, and for the most part seems like they are turning to investments/acquisitions of companies in this space since they can't build something successful on their own.