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The revival of sensory deprivation tanks (2014) - dnetesn
http://nautil.us/issue/16/nothingness/postcards-from-the-edge-of-consciousness
======
Kristine1975
The headline is click-bait, the article itself interesting. As it says,
sensory deprivation is nothing new (there was even a Simpsons episode about
it; Lisa in an isolation tank). The difference, of course, between the titular
yoga studio and a CIA's torture site is that in the former, the person being
deprived of stimuli is in control, while at the CIA it's the torturer.
~~~
Apocryphon
I figure that used in torture, sensory deprivation forces the subject to fear
the unknown future. Used in therapy, sensory deprivation allows the subject to
focus on the certain present.
------
Artistry121
I went into a sensory deprivation tank in Phoenix twice. Many of the people I
met there had enjoyed it but I found it difficult to reign in my thoughts.
I felt like I was moving very fast at some times though - in the complete
darkness and enclosed tank.
~~~
adrice727
The experience changes over time. I didn't particularly enjoy my first session
in the tank, but by my fourth or fifth time, I became a lot more comfortable
and started to better understand how to use the space. At this point, I've
probably done around 150 sessions.
~~~
atom-morgan
I've done it a few times myself as well. Do you find that your mind is much
more single threaded than you would have expected beforehand?
~~~
adrice727
Single threaded, meaning more focused? Also, during or after the float?
------
hackuser
I find the title disturbing. Maybe my sense of humor is off today, but the
whole issue of the US government torturing people, and getting away with it,
sickens me. Using the issue for humor in a title implies it's inconsequential
at this point; it's too soon and maybe will be too soon until the perpetrators
are brought to justice.
~~~
mfoy_
It's black humour and has it's place in our culture.
>The purpose of black comedy is to make light of serious and often taboo
subject matter; some comedians use it as a tool for exploring vulgar issues,
thus provoking discomfort and serious thought as well as amusement in their
audience.
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Black_comedy](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Black_comedy)
~~~
Dylan16807
Black humor has to still have a joke in it.
~~~
mfoy_
Would you like me to explain the joke?
------
aruggirello
Fascinating subject. Reminded me of Ken Russell's Altered States (1980):
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Altered_States](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Altered_States)
------
etep
Waiting for someone to write the article that includes a reference to Tom
Clancy's "The Cardinal of the Kremlin" \-- a great read; that was Clancy at
his peak.
------
jqm
I've done two sessions in one of these and can't recommend them highly enough.
For me, two hours is the appropriate minimum time (and I'd like to try
longer). The first hour seems to be getting settled down and in the zone, the
second hour is much more enlightening.
It wasn't exactly what I expected going in but was actually much more
revealing. I found myself coming to head with some very powerful emotions...
gut level instinctual emotions that reside in more than just the brain. After
getting settled in well, these seem to come up on their own with no connection
to external thoughts. It was quite an exhilarating experience seeing what it
really is that drives me (us) around. It definitely helped change my attitudes
on some things and let go of some negative feelings that had been pestering
me. For a couple of days afterwords I felt so aware, so present and I got a
whole lot done.
I have done yoga off and on for 20 years or so and engaged in meditation with
about the same intermittent frequency, so I think maybe that helped the
experience. IDK. I understand everyone doesn't get something out of it, but
for my part, I highly recommend trying a float tank if you can.
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
Ask HN: What do we do about the leap second? - briandear
Really basic question: do we need to do anything about the leap second coming up on June 30? I am specifically referring to typical web apps running on platforms like Heroku, etc. Does it make sense to just put our apps into maintanence mode for that particular second to prevent any catastrophe with our data? I am exceptionally ignorant in this subject; I appreciate any enlightenment!
======
mtmail
The operating systems can already handle leap seconds. It's not the first time
it got added.
Some background on when it failed
[http://www.somebits.com/weblog/tech/bad/leap-
second-2012.htm...](http://www.somebits.com/weblog/tech/bad/leap-
second-2012.html)
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
A/B test case study: call to action button increases conversions by 62% - paraschopra
http://visualwebsiteoptimizer.com/split-testing-blog/cta-button-increases-conversions/
======
courtneypowell
I find it hard to believe that adding a CTA that resulted in an increase in
conversions would come as a "surprise" to an even mildly sophisticated company
today. A CTA should be a standard feature on any page from which you wish to
see conversions.
~~~
machrider
Some people need reminding, and this is a good example of the principle in
action.
------
arnorhs
I'm not really surprised since control didn't really have a button at all.
It's actually a good example of where you don't need to A/B test something at
all.
~~~
geoffw8
Yeah exactly, it's kinda like saying "62% more people open door once we add
door handle"!
------
84Bliss
this is spam
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
Show HN: Releasy is a semver CLI tool to release versions - gadr90
https://github.com/vtex/releasy
======
gadr90
It's based on the also excellent grunt-release.
[https://github.com/geddski/grunt-release/](https://github.com/geddski/grunt-
release/)
It was kinda abondoned, though.
------
uchoa
Good work.
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
How to Delete Your Data from 23andMe, Ancestry, and Other Sites - pfarnsworth
https://www.consumerreports.org/health-privacy/how-to-delete-genetic-data-from-23andme-ancrestry-other-sites/
======
IfOnlyYouKnew
As some recent stories showed, the problem (if any) isn’t so much your DNA, as
that of relatives. Deletion requests aren’t going to be much help here, unless
you can convince a rather large majority of people to follow along.
Fundamentally, this seems to be one of those “negative externalities” that you
cannot protect yourself from with individual action. Nor can I think of any
technological fixes that would allow these companies to continue offering the
same features without storing this data. Although they could obviously offer
stripped down versions where you get an analysis one and data is erased
afterwards.
The only promising route I can see here is a political / legal framework
establishing a transparent process with high hurdles to the use of this data.
I believe other medical data is already protected in such a way, i. e. with a
higher standard, and more oversight than, say, a plumber’s files or even
financial data. Genetic data seems to creep people out across all typical
political boundaries, and this should be an easy sell.
~~~
OkGoDoIt
They already offer the option to not store raw data and just get a one time
analysis. I believe the terms say they store it for 3 months, although I don’t
remember exactly. That’s what I did with 23AndMe. I also falsified all the
personal information I could except for approximate age, gender, and ethnicity
since I figure that affects the readings. Doesn’t help me if my extended
family decides to use the kits, but it seemed an acceptable middle ground to
satisfy my curiosity of trying the service myself with my paranoia about how
they would use my data.
------
bitxbitxbitcoin
I would rather them never have my data in the first place.
~~~
pfarnsworth
All it takes is for someone in your family tree to submit their data, and your
data is partially in there.
~~~
stallmanite
Exactly. Thanks for submitting this link. The fact that it is aimed at non-
techies and is published by a mainstream source gave me the confidence to
forward it to two of my grandparents who have submitted such dna samples and
basically beg them to have their (and mine and my children’s) data deleted. I
have been aware of these issues for a long time and you can imagine how
displeased I was to find out that 1/4 of my DNA had been signed away for
little benefit.
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
Software Predicts Which Companies Are an Easy Sell - jacobscott
http://www.technologyreview.com/news/514111/software-predicts-which-companies-are-an-easy-sell/
======
sjg007
Proud to be the 4th comment on team jacob's HN posts.
------
xynny
lawl
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
Former MUNI mechanic proposes sailwing engine design to replace windmills - waster
http://www.sfweekly.com/2013-06-19/news/mike-cheney-muni-sailwing-san-francisco-examiner/
======
waster
What I'd like to see is a review of his plans, i.e., is this truly feasible?
And also, I'd like to see the critique balanced against that of windmills: Is
the noise comparable? (Sounds like this design would have a greater noise
factor because of the hydraulics.) Is the threat to wildlife comparable?
(Sounds on the face of it like birds would see the moving sails more easily
than the thinner sails of Altamont Pass-style windmill sails, but I'm no
expert.) For the hydraulics, what's the cost/distance effectiveness ratio?
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
James Altucher: Claudia Is Worried I Will Be Killed For Posting This - kanamekun
http://jamesaltucher.quora.com/Claudia-Is-Worried-I-Will-Be-Killed-For-Posting-This
======
patio11
Apropos of nothing: One of the classic elements of successful frauds is making
the mark believe that they are pulling one over on the fraudster. (Take a look
at those loan terms.)
~~~
loumf
Even better is if you make the mark think they are complicit in the fraud.
Then, they cover it up.
------
jgalt212
How is this story notable? Seems like a garden variety 419 scam to me--except
for the bit where the scammer gave up the $15,000 legal fees as ante.
[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nigerian_scam](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nigerian_scam)
------
scotty79
How naive are people with lots of money.
They got fax of the shares supposedly worth $25mln and they got some pieces of
paper with ink on them.
And that was all they needed to irreversibly transfer $10mln to unknown
individual.
------
gohrt
Killed, I don't know, but now I know never to do business with James Altucher,
who lets any anonymous person get their hand halfway into someone's pocket for
$10million
~~~
wikwocket
He just referred a potential client (referred to him by a friend of a friend)
to his colleague. It was the colleague's responsibility to vet the client,
which they did a so-so job at. Of course everyone should be cautious of deals
that are too good to be true, but I don't think James Altucher is at fault for
referring a possible lead to a friend.
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
Ask HN: Share your audio programming knowledge? - eagerNewb
Hello Hacker News,<p>I have been learning programming for 4 years now, primarily involved in the field of web development. Have some decent knowledge working with php, javascript, ruby, css and html.<p>I'm self taught. The main disadvantage of this is having unstructured and chaotic know-how.
After 4 years I decided to branch in a field of programming I don't know much about - Audio programming. My research concurs that I need a new set of tools, mainly revolving around C++
When I started programming I had a mentor. He is an experienced software engineer who eased my initial frustration with programming. I will be grateful for the rest of my life, he gave me a chance to learn.
What I'm saying is basically: When the student is ready, the master will come.<p>The time has come. Will YOU be my mentor? Share your audio programming knowledge.<p>No need to say I love music. Play the bass and love a solid groove!<p>Have a great day!
======
fundamental
It's a pretty big area and there's plenty of open source projects in this
space (and a decent crowd of people working on linux audio development). I'd
say a great way to learn a new domain is to help out existing open source
projects (though I'm biased towards that as that's how I learned).
Let me know what you're specifically looking for (via a few examples if
possible) and I might be able to direct you to some resources.
~~~
eagerNewb
What I decided to do is use [https://developer.mozilla.org/en-
US/docs/Web/API/Web_Audio_A...](https://developer.mozilla.org/en-
US/docs/Web/API/Web_Audio_API)
I know it's javascript and that it's definitely not the best choice for sound
manipulation, but I'll learn a lot from practicing. C++ has a very steep
learning curve and even if I understood music theory( which I dont, just a
bass player ), I wouldn't be able to express myself in C++. So, decided to
learn some music theory and implement this theory in javascript code.
~~~
fundamental
If you have decided to stay in javascript then I wouldn't be of much help.
Most of my focus is on hard-realtime audio generation and processing and
languages like javascript are unsuitable for that task. C/C++ introduce a
variety of new concepts which may lead to a steep learning curve, but the same
can be said about learning many other languages for the first time.
Additionally I would like to say that audio programming and music theory are
very separate areas when it comes to learning each topic.
------
jventura
> Will YOU be my mentor?
Sorry, not knowledgeable enough. But if "written" music is your thing, you can
check [https://musescore.org/](https://musescore.org/) and try to ask someone
on their forums?
~~~
eagerNewb
Thanks for the link! Looks great. Gonna give it a whirl :)
------
bythckr
Sorry, kindly do explain what is Audio Programming? I assumed it was something
that the composer & arranger does.
~~~
eagerNewb
What I mean is creating sounds programmatically. Representing musical notes
and chords in code.
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
Pilots reveal safety fears over Boeing’s fleet of Dreamliners - truemilk
https://www.theguardian.com/business/2019/jun/15/boeing-dreamliner-b787-safety-fears
======
nwmcsween
> ...900 quality control inspectors with smart technology.
Does Boeing just think people are dense? Considering the various news articles
with Boeing QA people voicing their concerns after being fired for doing so
with the company. And somehow magical technology that many other larger
manufacturing companies don't have Boeing just had sitting on their doorstep.
------
ncmncm
Really, the only thing now that could restore trust in Boeing would be for the
entire top tier of management to resign. Probably the board should eject them,
and then follow.
~~~
neximo64
Would this solve the problem, or get people who are just a tier below in and
suddenly you have people who could be less capable at running the company
~~~
ncmncm
How could anybody be less capable than this crew?
Their replacements would be more aware of their true responsibilities.
------
ricardobeat
How can the said switch have “failed in a small number of instances” and “no
engine fires for a 787 have been recorded” both be true?
~~~
lightgreen
The switch failed at routine inspection probably.
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
A general technique for automating NES games - milesf
https://www.cs.cmu.edu/~tom7/mario/
======
madethemcry
Wow! Thanks! Watched the video, glimpsed through the source and now reading
the paper- so entertaining!
------
jstanley
This is really awesome! Thanks for sharing.
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
Read your Standard Libraries - bcjordan
http://blog.codingforinterviews.com/reading-code-standard-libraries/
======
unwind
This is great advice, since in general you would like to assume that the
standard library is implemented well, i.e. by people who know the target
language.
Unfortunately, for C this is pretty hard to do, at least for the GNU libc. I'm
not trying to critique the implementation, but every time I dive in (generally
to help someone on Stack Overflow) I'm confused and get to spend a lot of time
searching the code.
It's obviously optimized for a great deal of other parameters before ease of
reading, which I totally understand yet still am a bit sorry to see.
~~~
chubot
Yeah, a lot of good programmers have alternatives to libc, either for reasons
of history or taste.
I was just reading DJB's daemontools (less than 6K LOC, very tidy!), and he
doesn't use libc. Actually his code has been collected in libdjb, which seems
quite nice:
[http://www.fefe.de/djb/](http://www.fefe.de/djb/)
And also the Plan 9 / Go guys don't use ANSI libc as far as I remember.
Those are two examples of people who don't even use the ANSI libc interface.
But there are plenty of people who don't use GNU libc, and use uclibc or
various other source-compatible alternatives. I think Debian switched to
eglibc awhile ago.
~~~
burntsushi
Just FYI, I believe that by default, binaries compiled with the standard Go
toolchain _do_ link against your system's libc (which is probably GNU libc on
Linux). However, I believe that can be disabled by compiling the Go toolchain
with `CGO_ENABLED=0` set. But you might lose some functionality.[1]
[1] - [https://groups.google.com/forum/#!msg/golang-
nuts/H-NTwhQVp-...](https://groups.google.com/forum/#!msg/golang-
nuts/H-NTwhQVp-8/i5vhUB5dZ5QJ)
~~~
chubot
So I'm actually talking about what the Go compilers _themselves_ use for libc,
not Go programs. From what I can tell it is:
[http://code.google.com/p/go/source/browse/include/libc.h](http://code.google.com/p/go/source/browse/include/libc.h)
Which is definitely not ANSI libc. Go programmers won't care about this,
because it's an implementation detail, but we're talking about reading source
code.
~~~
burntsushi
Ah! Mea culpa. I completely misunderstood your initial comment then. You're
absolutely right.
------
arielweisberg
Excellent advice. Reading other people's (good) code is one of the best ways
to learn how real world problem solvers solve real world problems.
The Java standard library is interesting and easy to jump into if you work
with it every day. Guava is another good library to study.
I personally spend a lot of time looking at Riak, Cassandra, Hadoop, and
Postgres since developing databases is my day job. I also follow mailing lists
for both developers and users to understand the real world outcomes of their
design choices and use that to inform how I think rather then going into every
problem a blank slate.
------
pmr_
I mostly live in C++ land and the story is different there. The standard
library implementations are a place of magick, mystery, and obscure defect
reports. They provide plenty of insight what can go wrong if you are writing a
generic library and how difficult correctly programming with templates
actually is, but all the technicalities of the language make it hard to see
the algorithms. They are definitely worth reading, but only if you have
mastered a large amount of C++.
Not to mention the horrible naming conventions (leading double underscores
everywhere).
I often think about a C++ standard library written for educational purposes
with proper naming, focus on readability instead of optimization, and maybe
multiple possible implementations of certain specs.
~~~
maaku
No one would use it. It's a design flaw of C++ that performant, generic
libraries require arcane magic and hideously obfuscated code.
~~~
pmr_
Please read carefully: "for educational purposes". I'm fully aware that such a
library wouldn't be fit for production but it maybe would be useful for people
learning generic C++ programming. Currently you have to look at Boost or any
of the standard libraries and all you see are #ifdef and all the arcana and
have a hard time seeing all the useful techniques.
~~~
maaku
What I meant was: no one would use it, so it'll never be created.
------
avisk
I always make sure that I attach the source code of the 3rdParty libraries
used in my project to my IDE. The best time to read library source code is
while using them in your code, where we know the context. This also help in
writing better code. I feel that we should make reading source code of APIs we
use, integral part of the development process rather than reading the standard
library source code for the sake of reading it.
------
steveklabnik
This is generally great advice, but the Ruby standard library isn't exactly
the best to read if you want to learn. Don't get me wrong, it works, but the
code is generally very, very old. Nobody knew how to write good Ruby code back
then.
~~~
bcjordan
Ah, will certainly trust your assessment there. :)
In your opinion, what are some good starting points for interested Ruby
readers ?
~~~
bradleyland
If you're speaking of code reading, I find looking at the source code of
Rubinius very interesting.
Ruby has so much utility wrapped up in places like Enumerator, that you don't
see a lot of examples of low-level data structure implementation in the wild.
You could look at MRI Ruby, you'd be looking at a lot of C, which tells you a
lot about how Ruby works, but doesn't show you much actual Ruby. That's where
Rubinius is really great. You get to see how a smart team would implement
Ruby... in Ruby.
[https://github.com/rubinius/rubinius](https://github.com/rubinius/rubinius)
~~~
netghost
I have to second this, if you use Ruby at all, Rubinius is quite fascinating
to read, even if you still use MRI on a day to day basis.
------
fit2rule
I'm kind of surprised this isn't "a thing". I mean, I'm surprised its 'a
thing'. Because, isn't this standard practice - I mean, isn't just a part of
the coder Creed that you read the code, anywhere and everywhere you can?
------
edwinnathaniel
This is where Java ecosystem shines the most:
1\. Easy access to standard libraries
2\. Most (not all, re: java.util.Date) of the standard libraries are well
thought-out and the documentation is top-notch
3\. Tools like Maven + Eclipse/IntelliJ can provide insight to Java libraries
source code easily (Maven has built-in capabilities to download the javadoc
_and_ the source code from the designated Maven repository if the author
publish them correctly).
Access libraries (3rd party or well-known ones) are a shortcut away.
PS: NuGet had this capability recently, which is great, but I rarely use it so
I don't know how easy and to what extend NuGet can replicate what Maven has.
------
emilv
This is extremely useful, not only for inspiration and learning, but also so
you actually know what is happening under the hood. This is great for
troubleshooting and for reasoning about your own code. This is one big pro for
open source in development!
I learned a lot by reading the source code for Python dicts (which also comes
with a lengthy motivation for why it was implemented that way) and any Haskell
library (Hackage links from the manual page directly to the source code for
the respective function, which makes it very easy to see what is happening).
~~~
sg47
Is the Python dict source code available in the link provided in the article?
~~~
bcjordan
Raw source:
[http://svn.python.org/view/%2acheckout%2a/python/tags/r266/O...](http://svn.python.org/view/%2acheckout%2a/python/tags/r266/Objects/dictobject.c?revision=84293&content-
type=text/plain)
Walkthrough of the implementation: [http://www.laurentluce.com/posts/python-
dictionary-implement...](http://www.laurentluce.com/posts/python-dictionary-
implementation/)
~~~
dalke
And a PyCon video: [http://pyvideo.org/video/276/the-mighty-
dictionary-55](http://pyvideo.org/video/276/the-mighty-dictionary-55) .
~~~
sg47
Thanks both of you!
------
bcjordan
In case my Wordpress-on-DreamHost-unlimited-plan blog goes down, here is a
gist copy:
[https://gist.github.com/bcjordan/8242593](https://gist.github.com/bcjordan/8242593)
~~~
bradleyland
Looks like you had the good sense to install WP Super Cache. I don't know how
much traffic you're seeing, but my blog has held up under some HN traffic
using the same setup (Dreamhost+WP+WP Super Cache).
~~~
bcjordan
Hah! The WP Super Cache "Activate" button was actually giving me 503 responses
the first few tries. Now it's nice and speedy.
------
dinosaurs
I think this is great advice and something I've been meaning to do for Ruby.
However, what in the case of JavaScript/Node.JS developers? What could/should
they read to help them understand their language/frameworks better?
I've been reading through the Express source code lately to understand the
module better. I'm wondering what other source code I could read to get a
better grasp on Node/JS.
Thoughts?
------
drblast
I always liked Common Lisp for this, since you could so easily inspect data
structures like hashes at run time.
I think CMUCL had a really interesting and unique hash implementation that
relied on two identically sized arrays, one for the keys and data, and another
for a "next" index that showed you where to go for a key collision.
------
mail2vks
Completely agree. Java collections and threads package well written code.
Infact I ask interview questions based on API implementation
------
yawboakye
I dig into Rails by accident. Most of the time I don't have internet and don't
remember exactly how a certain API is used. So I jump into the code with
`source_location` or `bundle open ...` and get what I want. I usually see
something new. That's how I discovered Dir[]
------
TazeTSchnitzel
PHP's Zend and /ext/standard are unfortunately unreadable and undocumented.
~~~
alextingle
You read them if you want to regress, as a programmer.
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
What is a good book for learning math from the ground up? - felipellrocha
http://math.stackexchange.com/questions/69060/what-is-a-good-book-for-learning-math-from-the-ground-up
======
Iamahippie
A school book, like holtz, or something, i have a few books from highschool,
like math books
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
Static presentations of sorting algorithms - RiderOfGiraffes
http://www.hatfulofhollow.com/posts/code/visualisingsorting/index.html
======
RiderOfGiraffes
I've picked this out of the item on animated presentations of sorting
algorithms because I think it's right on the money. The static presentations
give you real information that the "Gee Whizz!" animations don't.
Much more valuabe - my thanks to the author. You've given me a great tool and
much to think about.
~~~
brown9
I agree - the animations are a cool novelty but these static images give you a
lot more information. Kind of an interesting commentary on how you
present/visualize data.
------
kurtosis
These remind me of Doug Hofstadter's "Parquet Deformations" in metamagical
themas. Good stuff.
------
nikron
One thing I have always wondered is, how often do you really need to sort
something? It always seems to me that the best way to go about getting sorted
input is to constrain your inputs in such a way that you will always have a
sorted array. Also, how often does one need something to be sorted. Not as
much as we talk about sorting algorithms it seems.
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
Storm courts I/O lovers with 96GB, 32-core cloud server - bbr
http://gigaom.com/cloud/storm-courts-io-lovers-with-96gb-32-core-cloud-server/
======
swombat
At over $986/m, it's a damn sight more expensive than a Hetzner box.
Granted, Hetzner's €89 servers only have 24GB of RAM, not 96, but you can
basically have 7 of them and some change left for the same price. This adds up
to 168GB total RAM, with a total of 28 cores. (
[http://www.hetzner.de/en/hosting/produktmatrix/rootserver-
pr...](http://www.hetzner.de/en/hosting/produktmatrix/rootserver-
produktmatrix-eq) )
Which one is best will no doubt depend on what you want to do with it, and
certainly there are some applications where only a single, 96GB machine will
do, but those are rare.
~~~
salsakran
True, but the I/O characteristics of one 96GB box is drastically different
from running 7 in parallel. It's kind of a silly comparison.
------
maxdemarzi
I would compare against the specials on WHT. Like here's one for WebNX
<http://www.webhostingtalk.com/showthread.php?t=1063117>
48 core Monster, 4x 12core 1.7ghz, 256gb ram(wow!), 16x 73gb 15k SAS raid 10
This is likely the fastest server offered on WHT. This beast has an impressive
256gb ram (perfect for ram drives, or caching heavy accessed content) 4x AMD
6164 12 core cpus, total of 48 cores at 1.7ghz each 256gb ddr3 memory (wow!
tons of ram, perfect for db cache, file cache, etc) 16x 73gb 15,000 rpm SAS
drives w/ hardware raid 10 Almost 600GB of FAST Disk I/O 1x 2TB sata for
backups $999 with 10TB bandwdith
------
Zak
The price and specs are great compared to EC2, but there's a problem for some
use cases: you're charged for a month as soon as you create a server. The
credit remains available as long as you have an account, and any remaining
credit is refunded if you close your account, but you can't just spin up a big
server for 3 hours and pay $5. Instead, you have to pay $1000, then close your
account if you want your $995 back.
~~~
Zak
To follow up: I talked to sales today and they confirmed that there's a
hackish workaround for this use case:
Spin up a small server. You'll be charged about $35 (the exact amount will be
shown). Use it if you like, or shut it down right away. You can then start
servers of any size using the ~$35 credit you have. It is important that you
not be running a large server when the billing cycle rolls over, or you will
be charged for a month of that, and this may result in an effective $35/month
usage minimum (though credit does roll over). It's a small hassle, but it may
be worth it for access to that 32-core box.
If you, like me want EC2-style billing, they have a suggestion to that effect
on their uservoice:
[https://storm.uservoice.com/forums/23166-general/suggestions...](https://storm.uservoice.com/forums/23166-general/suggestions/1785147-bill-
at-the-end-of-the-month-for-service-used-rat?ref=title)
------
ajdecon
We've got some servers similar to this in one of our compute clusters. Four
12-core AMD Magny-Cours processors, 128 GB RAM... they are a thing of beauty,
let me tell you. Actually very good for certain bioinformatics codes,
especially wired up to each other with Infiniband. :-D
~~~
alok-g
Can you point to the product page and give an idea of the price?
~~~
ajdecon
It's not exactly the same system, but... ICC (Supermicro) 1042G-T with 48
cores (4x 12-core Opteron 6174, 2.2 GHz), 128 GB RAM, 2x 3TB SATA disk and 40
Gb/s QDR Infiniband, $10.6k. Subtract $300 if you'd rather have 10GbE instead
of the IB. All in 1U. <http://www.icc-usa.com/amd-4p-1u-6100.asp>
~~~
alok-g
Very helpful too. Thanks!
------
asharp
Hmmmm. I couldn't find this server on storm's cloudharmony.com benchmarking
page (It only goes up to the 48GB model), but it's interesting comparing
nonetheless.
An OrionVM 16 gig of ram server gets an aggregate disk IO score of 156.79 vs.
their 170.5 and an IOPS score of 159.79 vs. their 159.99.
And that's with redundant network backed hard disks in a visualised
environment with all of those benefits and overheads.
What's also interesting is that this is a pxecloud with local 8 disk SAS raid
10 (Not san storage/etc.)
Overall, very interesting offering.
(NB: I work with orionvm a company that makes IOtastic servers)
------
latch
I run mogade.com on 2 1GB bare metal web servers, and 2 1.7GB mongo/redis
replicas. It's been rock solid for about 8 months. Initially picked them
because we ran unixbench on it, linode and EC2, and they were significantly
better (2x+ if i recall) and cheaper. They are also quick to answer support.
There's been no downtime (that wasn't caused by me!).
But there are some downsides. First, their web management portal sucks, it's
like whoever built it discovered ajax and jquery for the first time. But you
hardly spend any time there, so no big deal.
Load balancing is expensive (at my cheap scale), and they don't have the API
to do it yourself (remap an ip type thing). Also, they aren't innovating. When
they first started, they were already quite behind AWS and when you compare
what amazon has done the last couple years (email, dns, beanstalk...) they've
only fallen farther behind. I already use S3 and I'm looking at using SMQ
-having a split infrastructure sucks.
Finally, they advertise way too much. Surely I'm not the only one who has seen
it. It's annoying especially when you consider how stagnant they are. Feels
like a very short sighted use of money.
~~~
cschmidt
> Finally, they advertise way too much.
Don't worry about that, they're just retargeting. I went to their website
yesterday for the first time, and now every website I visit has their ads
(which I'd never seen before). If someone is interested enough to hit your
site, then you want to show them lots of ads. That's usually very cost
effective.
------
makmanalp
I wonder what the national republican senatorial committee was doing with one
of those?
------
tlack
It seems like their bandwidth costs are a bit high, though, which would
mitigate the savings in many cases. Anyone know if they'll play ball and
include free bandwidth? This would be a great machine to host Destructoid.com
if so.
------
benologist
Damn that's a big server... we've got 6 boxes that don't even _add up_ to
that.
~~~
sciurus
Not by today's standards; you can buy a PowerEdge R815 with thirty-two 2GHz
cores and 128GB of RAM for $8,000.
~~~
ApolloRising
Are you sure that price is right, Dell is showing that box at quite a bit more
on their site right now.
------
salsakran
Hmmm.... the pricing looks tempting.
Anyone know of any history of their uptime?
~~~
jread
Check out <http://cloudharmony.com/status> We've been monitoring Storm for
over 18 months and never once experienced an outage. They are one of only a
few providers with no downtime (we monitor over 100 different cloud services).
------
tibbon
Damn. I wish I could somehow actually upload video fast enough to do my 1080p
video processing on those.
------
RyanKearney
I was interested up until I read this little number in the newsletter I got
from them:
>In addition to 96GB of RAM, each of these servers contain __32 cores (at
2.0GHZ each, _64.0GHZ total_ ), writes at over 3 Gbit/s and reads at over 4
Gbits/s. __
You would think a company like Storm would know you don't just add up the
cores to get 64Ghz.
Also, for what it's worth, we just ordered 3 physical servers from Dell, 96GB
of RAM each, dual xeons for a total of 32 cores, and dual 10Gbps fiber
channels to hook up to our SAN. So yeah, the price seems pretty high...
~~~
alok-g
Can you point to the product page at Dell, and give an idea of the price?
~~~
ssmoot
IIRC our R610's (96GB, 12 Cores @ 3GHz) were around $7K a piece.
256GB/32 Core/1.8GHz R910s are around $22K last I looked. This stuff really is
stupid cheap in comparison to renting.
You'd need to talk to a Sales person to get that kind of pricing, but the
general rule is to discount MSRP by _at least_ 30% when you're working with a
major vendor.
~~~
alok-g
Very helpful. Thanks!
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A Conversation about Artificial General Intelligence - dchacke
https://soundcloud.com/doexplain/11-a-window-on-intelligence-with-dennis-hackethal
======
dchacke
Full disclosure: I'm the interviewee. I'm interested in critically discussing
the interview.
| {
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Pareto Principle-Based User Research - adamfard
https://uxmag.com/articles/pareto-principle-based-user-research
======
helph67
Anyone operating any business should be aware of the importance of this
principle. It's also relevant to those of us merely trying to survive `normal'
life.
| {
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Show HN: LeanSentry - Better Monitoring for Windows Server Apps - ivolo
https://www.leansentry.com
======
btb
Interesting product, considering trying it out. A few questions
1\. I gather from reading the How-it-works pages that the monitoring service
is not invasive. How about the optional agent, how invasive is that and does
it carry extra performance impact? I cant see anywhere explained what it does,
and how much of the functionality that depends on it
2\. On your demo site, in one of the alerts you slow causes of slow queries.
It says "SQL query "dbo.spSlowNumbers" caused slow responses on
"/Profile/Save". How does your service know the name of the stored proc? Does
it hook into SQL server calls or?
3\. Is it safe to install on a production webserver? Was thinking we would try
it out on one of our 5 webservers.
4\. Is it easy to remove the monitoring service+agent again if we dont like
it?
Thanks
~~~
mvolo
Hi, founder here.
1\. You are absolutely right, the agent is an optional component. Without the
agent, you get most of LeanSentry's monitoring features without having to
install ANYTHING on your production servers.
2\. We know the name of the stored procedure/SQL query from monitoring ADO.NET
activity externally via ETW, the high speed event tracing in windows. We do
not actually connect to your SQL server for this.
3\. We worked hard to make sure LeanSentry is safe for production environments
(thats what its for). We also designed it so it can be completely sandboxed in
production. Most importantly, it will never load anything into your
application directly, unlike debuggers or profilers, and has no chance of
crashing your application.
The agent adds some deeper diagnostic capabilities, including SQL query/IIS
module/REST call monitoring, CPU profiling, etc. It does have a bit more
overhead since you have to install it on the actual production server, but we
worked hard to make sure it keeps a low footprint (and even shuts itself down
if something goes wrong causing higher utilization).
4\. You can remove the monitoring service and the agent anytime. We provide
the configuration script for servers as a batch file so its easy to see the
changes we make.
These are great questions - if you have more, hit us up on chat on our
website!
Best, Mike
------
meaty
A few comments:
1\. We're probably not going to use it unless we can host it ourselves because
we can't possibly risk information leaking out of the infrastructure and being
thrown god knows where.
2\. If all it does is IIS/ASP.Net applications, the utility is limited.
Everything is about holistic tools which can aggregate everything in one place
from all systems. In our situation, we monitor piles of SQL Servers, nearly
100 IIS servers, MSMQ, NServiceBus, Routers, Switches, Disk array IO
throughput. One tool to rule them all there.
3\. I doubt you could actually handle the load of a mid-large site where this
would be valuable. What are your guarantees on that front?
Not wishing to trash your efforts, but that's how us architects see it and
we're the guys with the credit cards :)
~~~
jolt
1\. We use GA but this is still my main concern. This kind of data seems to
sensitive to be hosted by someone else.
2\. There seems to be some SQL stuff in there - IO would be a nice addition
though.
3\. This could be a problem. Let us host the app our self, and we might be
able to handle it?
With that in mind, i would love to have this as a part of my daily toolset.
~~~
mvolo
hi jolt,
I hear your sentiment re: hosting LeanSentry yourself. We actually started
this way, but over time realized that in order to support our data processing
and analysis needs, we needed to host this in our own data center. The
majority of our customers didnt think twice - they just install it and done.
This model has been proven by New Relic as well - just look at their growth
numbers over the last few years.
Certainly there will be people that are more concerned about security, and we
get a fair share of them talking to us. The best we can say is, we've done
everything we can to make LeanSentry safe (see my earlier comment) while still
preserving the value we provide.
Best, Mike
------
geraldomagella
Hi there, Just a quick comment, we're using LeanSentry to monitor 50 servers
and it's being great! We are a brazilian e-Learning SaaS solution provider and
the information that we're getting is helping us polish our application and
ensure our customers a great service level. We find new uses for it on a daily
basis. Our Product manager, sales, developers CEO, CIO, CFO... everyone uses
it as the information is "readable" to everyone, not just tech gurus... As you
can set things up in matter of minutes it's definitely worth a try.
------
wingspan
Looks cool, certainly seems to provide value above and beyond typical
monitoring tools.
It would be great if there was a simple calculator on the pricing page, to
give a really quick and rough estimate for how much we'd be paying, especially
considering the volume discounts and prepay. E.g. 30 large Azure instances for
one year. By my calculations that would work out to ~$2300/mo when prepaying
for a year (ouch!).
~~~
mvolo
Hi there wingspan, founder here.
We are making the pricing page more accessible, should be live later tonight.
Re: the pricing for 30 servers.
1\. If you use our Core plan, which gives you all our features except the
automatic troubleshooters and expert insights, you will pay about $610/month
on an annual plan.
2\. If you use the Advanced plan, that means you are finding enough value in
us automatically resolving your problems and giving you proactive guidance. On
that plan, you are paying 2295/month on an annual plan.
I know this might sounds like a lot, but its actually reasonably lower than
some of our cheaper APM competitors. The bottom line though is, if you are
professionally running a web application, this is chump change compared to the
time this saves you:
\- If you are a 1 person shop with 5 servers lets say, you may be paying
~150/month. If we just saved you 3 hours this month, you paid for it already.
\- If you are a company with 30 servers, you probably have a lot more at stake
in making sure your servers run well. But also, you probably employ several
full time developers and ops people who manage your servers. You get my point
I am sure.
This all depends on whether we are able to truly generate huge time savings in
your work day by eliminating the time consuming investigations and
troubleshooting. And thats exactly what we are shooting for!
We also have a promotion right now with a 20% off rate, free upgrade to our
Advanced plan for 2 months, and great prepay and volume discounts. More
pricing information here: <https://www.leansentry.com/Pricing>.
Best, Mike
------
mijustin
How would something like this compare to a product like New Relic?
~~~
mvolo
Hi mijustin, founder here.
LeanSentry is somewhat similar to New Relic in that we provide server and
application performance monitoring.
However, we are 100% focused on the Windows Server/IIS/ASP.NET stack (that's
our background), and as a result provide deeper analysis and diagnostics for
those applications.
Best, Mike
------
maslam
Go Mike! I really like this product, can't wait to try it out.
------
kylered
Good luck guys. Good choices for your UI/UX.
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Philosophy of Ghost in the Shell - MichaelAO
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Philosophy_of_Ghost_in_the_Shell
======
MichaelAO
Of particular interest is the Stand Alone Complex:
"Stand Alone Complex eventually came to represent a phenomenon where
unrelated, yet very similar actions of individuals create a seemingly
concerted effort.... It is presented as an emergent phenomenon catalyzed by
parallelization of the human psyche through the cyberbrain networks.[2] A key
point is that due to the electronic communications network that is
increasingly permeating society, more and more people are being exposed to the
same information and stimuli, making the overall psyche and responses of large
groups of people increasingly similar; the result is an exponential increase
in the potential for copycat behavior that forms a Stand Alone Complex. There
is no original Laughing Man, no leader. Everyone is acting on their own, yet a
coherent whole emerges. There are people who employed the copycat behavior
before others, but what started the coherent whole is uncertain."
------
hellomoto998
This is awesome.
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Death to Javascript Rock Stars - riklomas
http://jquery.com/blog/2008/08/29/death-to-javascript-rock-stars/
======
rglullis
To me, this is just to show how nerds are kind of hypocrites when it comes
about looks vs substance. They want to believe they are not affected by
marketing and focus on actual value, but it all goes down with a simple front
page that doesn't state what they want to hear. Or, as in this case, decided
to state something that didn't want to hear, because it would make them feel
less of part of a elite.
The whole "Ninja" and "Rockstar" thing has become annoying, but only because
_everyone_ started using that as a symbol to indicate "programming skills",
rendering the expression _meaningless_ in the process. Thing is, Resig and the
developers of jQuery _are_ skilled. They have code to show. They have
experience developing things with Javascript. Other people are using their
code successfully. Those are the only things that really matter.
I don't care if they want to associate their product with "Rockstars" or
"Squashed cockroaches stuffing a baked potato", as much as I don't care about
the label in my clothing. And if you actually think that what you consume does
not define what you are, you shouldn't either.
~~~
river_styx
I don't think you quite get it. Many people who would like to use jQuery have
to justify it to a client and/or manager first. That's not very easy to do if
the they go to jquery.com and see such a silly and puerile display.
As a developer, I don't give a shit. If they want to put a collection of the
world's smelliest cheeses on their front page, that's a-OK by me. But these
marketing artifacts absolutely _do_ matter to most of the business types
making decisions out there that I have to answer to.
~~~
KirinDave
Wait, wait, wait.
Who on earth has to justify a javascript framework to their boss? There's so
much competition and, unlike in the C++ or Java world, there's no agreement
about what's best. Even Microsoft and Google haven't hammered down "the
solution". Many projects use 2-3 frameworks.
I've worked at (and am now working at) some pretty big companies, and I've
never heard of such a practice moving over to web development. There is
usually just a license audit and that's it. And if you're a consultant
justifying your use of jquery to your client, you are doing it wrong. They
don't care what you use, they care about what licenses you use and how it
works when you're done.
I think the complaint itself is "puerile" and pretty darn shallow. The
illustration may have been ugly and as one of the original people to have an
official job title of "ruby on rails rock star" I'm kind of tired of the
metaphor. But I'm not about to throw a giant multi-venue tantrum and poop on
the jquery guy's fun.
~~~
dmose
I had to justify it to my boss and my fellow developers because everyone has
their preference. Some want to use YUI, some want to use prorotype. In the
end, the boss makes the decision and the availability of an MIT license comes
into play, so he's going to the homepage either way and the last thing I want
him to see is some cheesy rockstar shit for a framework that's going into a
massive line of business SaaS application.
~~~
KirinDave
> Some want to use YUI, some want to use prorotype.
Well, the nice thing about jQuery is that it is not exclusive. But I'm really
surprised that you haven't gone and talked to the other engineers on the
project and come up with a unified plan. If the majority of people want to use
prototype and you can't show them why they shouldn't, then you probably don't
have a good argument against them.
You have to justify jQuery to other engineers, and then your boss's opinion
becomes largely immaterial unless he's utterly terribly at his job.
> last thing I want him to see some cheesy rockstar shit for a framework
> that's going into a massive line of business SaaS application.
If you really do have to justify it to him...
The _first_ thing you want him to see is an unbiased assessment of the
library's features and capabilities (not the least of which is its ability to
play nicely with other libraries). The _second_ thing you want him to see is
other engineers agreeing to use it. That way when he saw the _last_ thing, the
rockstar, his mind would probably already be made up.
You make it sound like you have 0 influence over the course of the project
you're involved with. If a silly graphic has the power to derail your
framework choice, you didn't do your homework in the first place.
------
jfarmer
I'm about 95% certain this was how they wanted it to play out. I'm sure
yesterday was their highest-traffic day in a long time, possibly ever.
------
sofal
I used to work for a corporation whose only concern was with image. They were
much happier to pay thousands of dollars to terrible software vendors simply
because the vendors projected themselves as corporate-friendly "professionals"
with "enterprise-ready solutions". I had an extremely hard time justifying
using software written by Zed Shaw for obvious reasons. "It's all about the
image," said a co-worker to me, "how long have you worked here and you haven't
figured that out yet?"
I hope I never have to work at a place like that again.
The bigger problem lies in the artificial culture of "professionalism" that
permeates so many workplaces to the detriment of things with real substance to
them.
That being said, I think the jQuery people are wise to listen to the community
about things like this.
------
swombat
Fantastic and healthy reaction. Glad to see this turnaround on a horrendous
initial decision :-)
------
martythemaniak
I'm curious where this meme is heading. First it was ninja, then a rockstar,
then what? Be a Q Quarterback! Looking for ActionScript Astronauts and C
Cosmonauts! We need Ocaml Olympians and Tcl Titans!!!
I had a phone interview a few days ago where the other person used a line like
"we're looking for ninja developers". I mean, its silly when you see it
written, and its 100x more so when someone says it out loud.
------
goodkarma
I can't believe they had to change this.
------
ChaitanyaSai
Now all the whiners should be asked to wear three-piece suits and bow ties to
work because their stained jeans and t-shirts aren't liked by the bosses who
work three thousand miles away and will probably never even set eyes on them.
------
maximilian
This is some terrible inside joke I'm totally not getting. I went to the site
yesterday, and it totally looks the same as it did today. What exactly was the
easter egg?
~~~
wayne
For the easter egg, go to the jQuery homepage and type in the Konami Code (up,
up, down, down, left, right, left, right, b, a). Pretty awesome... I love
easter eggs.
~~~
vnorby
That's actually a pretty solid idea. Skirt music copyrights by using YouTube
music videos for an online Guitar Hero clone...JamLegend, take note.
------
anamax
What about Pirates?
------
hs
along with jquery.ui-1.6b
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Founders: Stop Pitching, Start Engaging - ccrystle
http://diggingintwo.blogspot.com/2012/12/founders-stop-pitching-instead-of.html
======
dmor
I agree, and I'd add that if you have some common ground (e.g. Your company is
in a sector that is the investors expertise) say so. There is an initial
"should I care" filter to get through. Also, meeting in person is always
better.
~~~
ccrystle
so much more is communicated in person--facial expressions, tone, body
language. Can make a real difference...
| {
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Yishan Wong hypothesizing(?) on the Reddit saga - ub
https://np.reddit.com/r/AskReddit/comments/3cs78i/whats_the_best_long_con_you_ever_pulled/cszjqg2
======
AndrewKemendo
Archive in case these guys recant:
[https://web.archive.org/web/20150711233921/https://www.reddi...](https://web.archive.org/web/20150711233921/https://www.reddit.com/r/AskReddit/comments/3cs78i/whats_the_best_long_con_you_ever_pulled/cszjqg2)
How is this not a bigger deal?
Edit: Just to be clear, there is a real chance they are all just trolling -
especially considering if that were true, then that would have been the
dumbest thing possible by all parties, especially if there was documentation
that was discoverable.
However even if they are trolling all of those comments are SUPER
UNPROFESSIONAL considering all that has happened in the last week. "We all had
our part to play", "Other than that, child's play for me." "Thanks for the
help. I mean, thanks for your service as CEO."
~~~
ub
Yeah, I think they could be trolling. And, yes, if so the whole thing does
seem flippant, given that real people have lost jobs and had their names
splashed all across media. But I guess that's part of what it means to be a
redditor.
------
ub
Sam Altman's response
[https://np.reddit.com/r/AskReddit/comments/3cs78i/whats_the_...](https://np.reddit.com/r/AskReddit/comments/3cs78i/whats_the_best_long_con_you_ever_pulled/cszwpgq)
------
rezistik
This is fascinating, would this be considered a crime if it were a public
company?
~~~
ub
Not a crime per se but he could have been sued for maligning the company/board
I think.
~~~
rezistik
Interesting. It's an odd thing, to me the immediate story is heroic founders
and VC conspire to save company. I wondered if there was a negative or victim
in this case, at worst it would be Conde Nast, but even they win in this
scenario if Reddit becomes profitable which I think they might be able to make
happen. It does paint the entire Ellen Pao saga in a really interesting light.
------
fensterblick
This thread has to be a joke. Conde Nast's strategy from 2005+ was to acquire
internet brands and communities. They acquired Wired and ArsTechnica. They
almost acquired certain other internet communities. It looks as if their
strategy didn't quite work out.
Edit: Here's an article from 2014 that might shed light on their strategy:
[http://digiday.com/publishers/conde-nast-social-
ads/](http://digiday.com/publishers/conde-nast-social-ads/)
(I have no inside knowledge of this. I'm just an outsider looking in)
| {
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Sell to Teachers - Jarred
http://blog.jarredsumner.com/2011/09/18/sell-to-teachers/
======
patio11
As kind of an omnibus response to this and the comments:
1) A portion of teachers will spend money on software. Reports of teachers
being universally poor and stingy have been greatly exaggerated. You may know
a stingy teacher. I do, too. I also have credit card numbers willingly given
by thousands of her coworkers.
2) Average sales cycle for districts is 9 to 18 months. You can close a
teacher in 9 to 18 minutes a non-trivial portion of the time.
3) There exist many, many businesses which have sold more $$$ to teachers than
BCC. 5,000 paying customers is rather modest, as there are over three million
teachers in the US. I'm always happy to be mentioned but please don't think
I'm the upper bound for success here.
4) Contra article, making money is a perfectly valid reason to go into
education. Teachers get paid on Friday, too. Also, some judicious capitalism
would help redress the severe resource misallocation between education
software, which is probably societally important, and mobiphotosocialgames.
(We could also quibble with the misallocation between education software and
education salaries, but that will not endear you to the main customer group
here.)
~~~
joe_the_user
Teachers may not be universally poor _but wait a few years_ \- at least in the
US.
If we're talking about teachers as a consumer group perhaps we could at least
think for a moment where that group is going...
I will admit that I don't know for certain that total disposable income of all
US teacher finally reach zero in N years. But if a person is thinking of
getting a teacher to buy their product out of the teacher's own pocket as a
sales strategy, that person should keep in mind the number of US politicians
who essentially say all public servants should be fired or live on starvation
wages.
~~~
robertk
What? Can you expand? I'm a graduate math student looking to go into academia.
:/
~~~
_delirium
Academia is a bit different than K-12 education, though not without its own
set of issues. The main problem there is the move towards a semi-freelance
"research manager" model, where technically you have a research position,
which also comes with responsibilities like teaching classes and serving on
committees, but _also_ the university expects you to bring in external money
to pay for at least part of your own salary, plus ideally a lab of students
and post-docs. So the prof-job is really more about the management &
grantwriting than about the research (the research is what the people you pay
do). Math is probably a bit less far along on that transition than other areas
of the sciences & engineering, though. The actual existence of the jobs
(outside humanities, which is under more pressure) is probably stable for the
medium-term future, though.
~~~
impendia
Math professor here. We are definitely expected (or at least encouraged) to
write grants, but this is not such a big deal and most of my time is, as
promised, devoted to teaching and research.
IMHO the most two important drawbacks are (1) you will make less money than in
the private sector and (2) unless you are really outstanding, you will
probably eventually have to move to whatever random city to happen to find a
job in. A large proportion of tech jobs are in places like SF Bay Area,
Austin, Seattle, Boston. The same is not true of academia.
~~~
_delirium
Interesting; I'm a CS prof., where you can _sometimes_ get away with that, but
increasingly the expectation is really that you'll be funding several students
out of your grant money, and at some schools, funding a portion of your
salary. Baseline to get tenure at a research-oriented university seems to be
about $500k-$1m of grants during the 6-year assistant position (i.e. enough to
fund an average of 2 PhD students per year over that period out of non-TA/dept
money).
It could be less in math because there isn't the same "lab" concept, where to
be considered a "successful" professor you're supposed to oversee a lab of 3+
(better if it's 5+) PhD students, a post-doc or two, research scientists,
etc.?
~~~
impendia
Yeah, thankfully this lab concept is absent, although it is always good to be
advising grad students and postdocs. Most universities have tons of students
who need to brush up on mediocre math backgrounds, which makes for a lot of
paying work for math grad students.
------
hospadam
While I can get behind the general sentiment of this (marketing towards the
people who will make the purchase) - I think it overlooks one unique problem
with teachers: traditionally they don't have money for purchases like this. My
wife is a teacher in a fairly good school district - and she was only given
$100 for _all_ of her purchases for the whole year (paper, supplies, etc.) We
have an iPad that she occasionally uses in the classroom... and even with the
relatively cheap apps (<$5 range) - she sometimes second guesses purchases and
is quite hesitant to buy an app.
I just think the primary and secondary school system is a very rough market to
target a paid app/software towards.
~~~
Jarred
I'm suggesting that teachers will pay for it out of his/her own pocket if it's
done right.
Just like any other purchase (i.e an iPad)
~~~
podopie
I taught for a few years in a fairly-sized school district. Even the best
teachers I knew in my department--ones who were very internet savvy and
technological proficient--admitted they wouldn't pay for an application in the
classroom. They just didn't have the money. They constantly look for free
things, such as Google Docs for teaching students how to collaborate and edit
papers together.
Target to teachers, yes, but there are other ways to do business with them
than to take from their tiny bank accounts.
~~~
tinyrock
We have found the opposite - teachers will pay for software if it is made well
and makes their life easier. The price point obviously still needs to be set
appropriately.
Life was very busy when I was teaching, anything that saves time on busy work
is appreciated.
~~~
dhimes
My experience and market research echos yours, just to get another tally mark
here. Differenct schools allocate discretionary budgets differently, and there
is some variance also between elementary, MS, and HS in the same district. A
good time to reach for discretionary $ is near the end of the school year,
after they've spent 7 months being frugal but don't want to "underspend," in
part for fear that they won't get the full budget the next year if they don't
spend it this year.
------
pflats
I teach math at a high school (and have taught CS in the past, before budget
cuts got rid of the program). This article is good advice, but a couple things
from my own experience:
1\. Anything to be used in-class is a _much_ harder sell than out-of-class.
The cost of a wasted lesson is much higher than the cost of your product.
2\. As in #1, the most important thing to a teacher is time. We'll probably
trade some of our own money to save time. We'll definitely try to convince our
bosses that the department needs a subscription to "Bob's Keyboard
Accelerators" if we think it is a good product. On the other hand, though,
that means you have a daunting design challenge. What's fast and easy for a
25-year-old teacher isn't necessarily fast and easy for a 55-year-old teacher,
although we do help each other out.
3\. Do it out of altruism, do it to reduce stress in people's lives, and do it
for the students, but please do it for the money also. If you make a good
product, I'd like to keep using it.
I'll try to answer questions downthread when I have a few moments between
tasks, if it helps people.
------
forgot_password
If the author sees this as a way to get product market fit, his points make
sense. If a teacher with such a limited budget likes the software enough that
he / she is willing to pay for it, then you are probably on to something.
However, banking on teachers spreading the word and having a sales force
focused on teach outreach seems like a terribly unscalable sales strategy.
------
kolektiv
Wow. That sounds a lot more positive than my experience of investigating the
market here (UK) - I presume this article is US focused.
Here school IT is generally centrally managed by an IT team who are not
generally receptive to ad-hoc software installs. SaaS models fail due to
firewalls and network access restrictions. Preferred/accepted bidder lists are
rife. Teachers have NO budget for software.
I looked at selling to teachers here and decided that it was more hassle than
it was worth - the market barriers to entry and borderline
corruption/incompetence just made it a non-starter.
~~~
Jem
My experience of working in 3 different UK schools:
IT teams in schools are normally small, over-worked, and underpaid (as is the
default in education generally). Machines tend to run from a single source
image rolled out once or twice a year. The time and resources it takes to
create, roll out and support departmentally-customised builds is not worth it.
Software is generally dictated by overpaid IT managers who are disconnected
from both the teaching staff and the IT team. It's not uncommon for tech teams
to have a small percentage of the IT teaching budget rather than their own, so
decisions are based on that too.
I'm glad I got out of educational IT.
------
Abundnce10
'Selling to Teachers' is important because they are the ones who will be using
it, so ultimately they should appreciate/approve of the product prior to
purchasing it. However, very few teachers actually shell out their hard-earned
cash - whether they're too poor, too cheap, not tech-savvy enough, etc. can be
a long-winded debate in itself. I feel we should be having technology related
discussions in the education field on a National level. We need to keep the
big picture in mind! We are being outpaced by the rest of the developed world
<[http://www.usatoday.com/news/education/2010-12-07-us-
student...](http://www.usatoday.com/news/education/2010-12-07-us-students-
international-ranking_N.htm>); and we are reticent to address the fundamental
causes of this issue: our under-paid workforce of non-technical teachers are
forced to teach in stressful environments and our solution is to inject
standardized tests
<[http://bigthink.com/ideas/40118>](http://bigthink.com/ideas/40118>); into
our Public Education System, letting the test results determine whether a
teacher is rewarded or fired. We hope this will stop us from falling behind
the rest of the world... (shaking my head)
What we should be doing is getting technology into the hands of our children
as soon as possible. They need to be exposed to it at an early age; not only
will computers be a huge part of the rest of their lives but we are also
beginning to see the overwhelming effects of technology-designed solutions to
education problems
<[http://www.wired.com/magazine/2011/07/ff_khan/>](http://www.wired.com/magazine/2011/07/ff_khan/>).
The sooner we embrace this idea and make efforts to accommodate a rapidly
changing world, the quicker our students (soon-to-be workforce participants)
will be capable of contributing in this ever-increasing, high-tech society.
We need to be thinking outside of the box when discussing technology and
education. It's time to revamp our National Education System, embrace the
benefits of technology, and design software intended to make teachers more
effective. So, you're right when you say 'Sell to Teachers', however, I think
we need to take it a couple steps further and address the fundamental issues
in the Technology & Education domain if we want substantial progress.
------
tonypace
Teachers indeed very often spend their own pocket money to buy things that
they feel are useful for class. Paid Dropbox is quite popular among teachers
these days.
Very few of the sites that I've seen tackle my key pain and time points. These
are test correction, writing correction, and parent communication.
Why isn't there a cheap smartphone OMR program? Of course we all waiting for
the Internet and fairies to take over testing, but until then I'd like to have
a decent way to make, grade, and store data for paper quizzes. There's not
really anything designed for teachers to buy out there.
Writing correction is a hard problem (since handwritten work is privileged in
K-12) but perhaps not impossible with OCR advances. If I could unload some of
the more mechanical aspects of this it'd be wonderful.
There is a cute and secretly useful free utility called Teacher's Report
Assistant. This is the sort of thing that teachers will pay for, and for
anyone who plays with things like chatbots its a natural extension. Huge
masses of teachers all over Asia are churning out this sort of blather weekly.
We could use help.
It's worth mentioning that there are masses of private schools in Asia and in
the western world that have much more open policies about reimbursing for
software and the like. It's not a bad path to bigger things.
Schools almost universally have overloaded and unreliable networks, so you
have to have a reasonable offline path.
------
japhyr
An interesting piece of ed tech to think about is lesson planning software.
Most teachers put a tremendous amount of time planning their lessons, but
still write their lesson plans using word processors. There are all kinds of
problems in effective lesson design that stem from relying on word processors.
Good lesson planning software would lead a teacher through a strong design
process, letting them choose which pieces to include, and in what order.
Lessons would be easy to revise. A teacher could change the format of their
lessons, and instantly have all their previous lessons available in the new
format. The use of word processors for lesson planning is like an architect
using ms paint to design a building.
Yet every example of lesson planning software I've seen has a serious flaw. It
might have a bad ui, it might not be based on sound pedagogical principles, it
might promote vendor lock-in. It's hard to do it right; to do it well and for
profit you would probably have to charge too much to get a significant
percentage of teachers using your product.
You can sell a niche product in the ed tech market. You can build a piece of
software and convince a bunch of districts to buy in, and rake in some cash.
But making a piece of software that truly makes education better, and doing so
in a way that does not contribute to the already huge education gap between
those with resources and those without, is tremendously difficult.
~~~
2arrs2ells
I don't think "Lesson Planning Software" offers anything useful beyond Word,
until it has a useful, curated bank of starters/activities/homeworks/etc
attached to it. There are a few of those kinds of "marketplaces" (some with
money involved - i.e. teacherspayteachers, and some that are free - i.e.
TFANet, BetterLesson) - and I think a better version of one of those needs to
be the backbone to any truly successful lesson planning tool.
~~~
japhyr
I agree that good planning software would offer the ability to tie into a
curated bank of resources. The ones I have seen are spotty, and understandably
so. Wikipedia works, in part, because there can only be one article about any
given topic. But in a bank of lessons, you'd have to allow multiple lessons
about the same topic, if they approach the teaching in a different way.
Curating such a bank is an interesting problem, and I have not seen it done
well yet. I would argue it has to be free to be done well - any such bank that
sits behind a paywall would not build enough lessons to be complete, and it
would not reach enough people to make education better overall.
Tying in to a bank of resources is not a requirement, though. You have to
think in terms of unit planning, rather than just lesson planning. A unit
might consist of three investigations. So on the first page or screen, a
teacher gives a title, unit description, and one-sentence description of the
three investigations. In a word processor, the teacher has to copy those
descriptions onto separate pages to describe each investigation in more
detail. Planning software would do that automatically for you, so changing the
description of the investigation in one place would change it everywhere in
the unit plans.
I am still trying to decide how I feel about the role of non-profit and for-
profit organizations in education. People should definitely be paid for their
work. So a team should be able to propose a solid solution to this issue,
gather funding from public resources, and make the final product available to
everyone while paying themselves a fair market rate.
------
philfreo
Our strategy at Quizlet.com has been similar... make something that teachers
and students both directly want to use, and they naturally spread it to each
other.
------
hhorsley
Education is like enterprise with crapy cycles and the lack of pressure from
public market ownership.
What Jarred is getting at is the education corollary to the consumerization of
enterprise.
This shift is propelled by two recent developments:
1) Internet services often offer a free "single-player" or freemium option. \-
This reduces the value of the procurement person/intermediary in negotiating
price \- This increases the propensity of individuals to try a service
themselves because of decreased financial risk.
2) SaaS: these services are now hosted and can be initiated immediately, no
longer requiring time spent acquiring a physical license or installing \- This
reduces the value of the intermediary in "setting things up" \- This this
reduces the time expense in trying something
I think relevant differences between enterprise and education are budget,
average age, and different incentive structure.
There is definitely opportunity in pursuing this bottom-up approach to
distribution in education and I think at the moment it is a largely unexplored
path.
Would love to discuss more - best way is @hhorsley or [email protected]
------
hkarthik
I like this strategy. To me it's reminiscent of someone writing a software dev
tool, book, or screencast and pricing it low enough for an individual to
purchase it themselves rather than try to get their employer to purchase it
for them.
While this strategy may not be as profitable as selling to entire districts at
once, it'll have a more passionate user base and hopefully much shorter sales
cycles and selling overhead.
------
2arrs2ells
If you haven't read it already, the 2007 paper "K-12 Entrepreneurship: Slow
Entry, Distant Exit" by the founders of Wireless Generation is excellent. It
lays out the barriers to selling to districts, as well as some ways around
them.
<http://www.aei.org/docLib/20071024_BergerStevenson.pdf>
------
ansy
I don't know why anyone would doubt this could work. It worked for patio11
[1]. His empire was pretty much built on selling bingo card software to
elementary school teachers. In fact I'm surprised for all the author's
citations he doesn't cite Bingo Card Creator [2].
Granted, patio11's overhead was extremely low. But who isn't trying to
validate businesses quickly before dumping unnecessary money into them these
days?
[1] <http://news.ycombinator.com/user?id=patio11>
[2] <http://www.bingocardcreator.com/>
~~~
wdewind
It really depends on what you're doing. Blackboard is notorious for patent
trolling companies who try to enter the education space. Patio makes a product
that teachers happen to use, but it's not exactly in the education space.
------
neonkiwi
I've been thinking about this exact approach for a while, so it has been
immensely useful to read the discussion taking place in this thread.
There's obviously a lot of value in word-of-mouth sales; but I'd like to know
more about about approaches to advertise directly to teachers in the first
place. There must be schools where no teacher is looking at tech news sites :)
Any advice about advertising to teachers?
------
jeffreymcmanus
This makes as much sense as saying "it's really difficult to sell shoe polish
to corporate CEOs, so you should sell to their receptionists instead."
~~~
lazerwalker
I don't think that's quite an apt metaphor. At the end of the day, the CEOs
are the ones who use the shoe polish. Maybe their secretaries do the
polishing, maybe not, but at the end of the day the CEOs are the ones who have
to cope with a mediocre polish.
The entire point of this article is that it's the teachers, not the
administrators, who have to deal with educational software on a daily basis.
~~~
jeffreymcmanus
This is exactly my point. Teachers don't have purchasing authority for very
much besides construction paper and glue sticks (and then, they're
increasingly paying for that stuff out of their own pockets). You can't sell
stuff to people who can't buy (even if they do happen to be the end users of
your product).
------
tinyrock
We focus on this strategy for Termites (<http://termitesapp.com>) and it works
well.
The purchase process at the school or district level can be glacial slow.
~~~
pbhjpbhj
Is this short-termism though (sp?).
If you sell to the district then you've got an order of thousands of units
likely to repeat for several years. If you sell to individual teachers then
you're selling units at a time and probably having to resell those units (or
face more competition) if you've got a good product.
------
ericmsimons
Worth noting: many teachers are given budgets from their school to spend on
technology, so there is a good chance that the money they spend won't be
coming out of their own pocket. Win - win situation.
------
skmurphy
Parents who are home schooling are another great entry point for educational
software. This approach also passes the same set of checks and balances as
selling to teachers.
------
MaxGabriel
"My former Spanish teacher buys chocolate regularly for the class. She gives
them out to people answering questions. A single bag of chocolate doesn’t cost
much, but giving out a few chocolates per period, with five periods in a day,
over the course of 180 days adds up to several bags of chocolate."
hilarious
~~~
prawn
Made me wonder about a website handling student incentives for teachers. A
modern equivalent of the gold star sticker. Little cards with short URLs or QR
codes on them. (That's as far as I've bothered wondering for now...)
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
Mobile phones 'more dangerous than smoking' - gibsonf1
http://www.independent.co.uk/life-style/health-and-wellbeing/health-news/mobile-phones-more-dangerous-than-smoking-or-asbestos-802602.html?r=RSS
======
tptacek
The best medical evidence is _always_ published "exclusively in the
Independent on Sunday".
~~~
whalliburton
DH1
~~~
KirinDave
Perhaps, but the Independent has a long history of posting spurious health and
environment articles (e.g., "Mobile phone threat to honeybees", which was a
massive press misunderstanding because CCD was such a headline-grabber at the
time). Guilt by association is a real and valid reason to dismiss a news
article about a complex scientific subject. Even the article itself mentions
the general line:
> Late last week, the Mobile Operators Association dismissed Khurana's study
> as "a selective discussion of scientific literature by one individual". It
> believes he "does not present a balanced analysis" of the published science,
> and "reaches opposite conclusions to the WHO and more than 30 other
> independent expert scientific reviews".
People talk about the dangers of radiation, but electromagnetic radiation
isn't the same kind of radiation we generally worry about. Anything that uses
electricity and wires creates this kind of radiant energy, including
pacemakers and implantable defibrillators.
That doesn't mean there is no potential for health risks, but thus far the
science suggests no significant increase in risk. What's more, the mechanism
for such health risks is likewise unclear as the wavelengths for cellphone
radiation are quite long. It's also unclear why cellphones would cause
problems but people living near radio transmitters wouldn't (and we'd have
probably seen these effects by now, radio isn't exactly new).
Unfortunately, it takes a lot of work and a lot of time to build up long term
clinical studies. In the meantime, all we can do is wait.
~~~
whalliburton
Dismissing a news article based on association is, for me, not a very good
method. Following the link that it provides is a useful method. In this case
to the actual paper in question:
<http://www.brain-surgery.us/mobph.pdf>
If the Register ran an article on a startup company, would that invalidate
what is really presented?
"Mobile Operator Association" sends up red flags for conflict of interest in
this argument. Not that I dismiss, but would hope for a more independent
assessment.
"the science suggests" is, to me, an appeal to the authority of a select
number of papers and implies that the paper in question is not "science". I do
not see a conflict on interest or false scientific reasoning in the paper in
question. If anything, this paper could be considered "newer science with more
data" with its 2008 publish date and recently cited studies.
The author directly contests the assumption that the long wavelengths used by
cellphones result in less risk to the users. He also mentions a report of an
office in the top floor being closed due to the "seventh working in as many
years" being diagnosed with brain cancer that he attributes to a cell phone
tower directly above the office.
~~~
KirinDave
The current body of medical literature is at best ambivalent about the risk of
long-term exposure. That's not an appeal to authority, that's just checking on
the state of the literature.
Science is always open to revision, and so I don't think it's impossible that
this is true (indeed, I use a handsfree religiously to minimize my potential
risk). But there isn't any hard evidence, and one study does should not a
panic take, especially given the profound and subjectively positive social
implications of mobile computing and mobile communication.
The article has nothing new for me, except sensationalist rhetoric and
carefully worded (and carelessly paraphrased) "Mobile Operator Association
points to these studies", when really that's the gross body of the current
medical literature. It's not cherry-picked literature, the bulk of the
literature suggests it is not true. That's not a conflict of interest, that's
just pointing to the independently funded science.
As for the story about the top floor of the tower, why would only their heads
be getting cancer if they're being universally exposed? The plural of anecdote
is anecdotes, not data.
Whenever we have a somewhat difficult to reproduce condition with less-than-
certain explanation in terms of the physical method, I demand more solid
evidence before taking drastic action. I also think that news outlets like the
register should take more responsibility and demand more evidence before
pulling out the dramatic horn kicks and warming up a headline like this one.
People have been expressing fear over EMF for a long time now, and in general
these fears have been dismissed and unsupported by scientific examination.
Until I see some hard evidence, I consider a cellphone is about as harmful as
a microwave. That is to say, there are small potential risks (particularly
with damaged units), but I'm more likely to be struck by a car while commuting
to work.
------
goodkarma
When you put a device that transmits energy right next to your head, you're
taking a risk that the transmitted energy interacts with the matter in your
head/brain. The longer and more often you put the device up to your head, the
more opportunities there are for the interaction.
Everything else is just a mathematical probability.
~~~
mrtron
When you put a device that contains chemical potential energy over your legs,
you're taking a risk that the energy is released and interacts with your
legs/groin. The longer and more often you put the device over your legs, the
more opportunities there are for the interaction.
Everything else is just a mathematical probability. Let's stop wearing pants.
------
groovyone
Oh god. I bought an iphone and my landline went off for two weeks. I started
getting a 'numb' head and my head 'tingled' from its use. I have tried to
limit it and have also started to put back in Ethernet rather than the 3 wifi
routers I currently have. This might sound stupid, but what scan would you
need from the hospital to detect if you have a tumour?
~~~
gibsonf1
I have an Iphone too, and it seems to be the least shielded device I've ever
had (as much as I can't live without it). It is the only device I have that
interferes with all my electronics within a few feet whenever it interacts
with a cell tower. (I hear a buzz on all my computer speakers).
~~~
nickb
>(I hear a buzz on all my computer speakers)
Was your previous phone GSM-based? That buzz is not specific to iPhones. All
GSM phones have it (to a certain degree). Search for 'gsm buzz'.
------
eusman
good link bait, clueless article.
"Mobile phones could kill far more people than smoking or asbestos"
I am surprised by the ease of spreading panic. Really bad taste of them.
There is not even a link to a a url of the research. the quality of YC
submitted stories are in downhill.
If everybody has a mobile phone, then it's impossible to limit the cause for
their health failure to a mobile phone, so no study can proove anything...
for every study that "proofs" the negative effects of a mobile phone there is
another that does the opposite.
Until there is one that proofs the problem either use a hands free or limit
the use...
~~~
whalliburton
I would not say that this is a clueless article.
The doctors website and the article in question: <http://www.brain-
surgery.us/mobilephone.html>
The doctor appears competent to me, but I haven't actually performed any brain
surgery so cannot rate his work, but at least he claims "success".
<http://www.brain-surgery.net.au/c_a.html>
Another similar article: [http://www.brain-
surgery.net.au/media/MobilephoneCT27-3-08.p...](http://www.brain-
surgery.net.au/media/MobilephoneCT27-3-08.pdf)
~~~
tptacek
The notion that brain surgeons are automatically qualified to conduct and
evaluate complex biomedical research in oncology and neurology strikes me as
approximately as valid as the idea that skilled software developers are
automatically qualified to evaluate cryptosystems, compression algorithms, or
semiconductor process technology.
~~~
mechanical_fish
But I _am_ qualified! I designed a cryptosystem just last week, and nobody's
broken it yet!
Moreover, the PDF that I published on my personal website sounds very erudite,
and doesn't contain any obvious spelling errors. I have over fifteen years'
experience in the lab [1], have authored nearly a dozen scientific
publications in prestigious journals such as _Physical Review Letters_ and
_Cancer Research_ [2], and have seven years' experience as a semiconductor
process technologist. [3] So I don't see how you can dismiss my work out of
hand, particularly since you, as a security professional, have an obvious
conflict of interest. [4]
[1] At least two years of which involved making photocopies, washing
glassware, and ordering pizza.
[2] This is actually true, for reasonable values of "nearly" and
"prestigious". You must also remember that being Nth author counts as
"authoring".
[3] Also true. And so relevant, too!
[4] Notice that "the desire to toot your own horn" never seems to count as a
"conflict of interest".
~~~
tptacek
While noting that nobody else is going to toot your horn _for_ you, I'll say
that cryptography was just the first thing to come into my head, for obvious
reasons. I can't tell from the tone of your comment, but if you've worked in
semiconductors, cancer research, and cryptography, let me be the first to
proclaim that you have a bad-ass resume.
~~~
mechanical_fish
Oh, I totally lied about the cryptography. :) I have a copy of Schneier on my
shelf that I occasionally put under my pillow at night... does that count?
All that I know about cryptography is that anyone who claims to have written
their own unbreakable system, but hasn't had that system vetted by other
cryptographers, is nearly 100% likely to be completely full of it.
The semiconductors and cancer research are true. It sounds so much more
impressive than it actually is, though, which is kind of my point. Yeah, I've
worked in several fields, and I like to think I learned _something_ from all
of that time, but if I wrote a crypto paper I would still be talking out of my
ass. Hell, if I wrote my own cancer research paper I'd be talking out of my
ass -- my role in the cancer lab was mainly "physics guy who knows how to
change the light bulbs on the multiphoton microscope".
~~~
tptacek
So then, I made a half-assed analogy:
programmer : semiconductor engineer :: surgeon : researcher
Was I talking out of my ass? Because of the three CS fields I mentioned, I
_barely_ work in one of them. =)
~~~
mechanical_fish
Well, I want to avoid insulting, e.g., my former co-author, a neurosurgeon who
also does oncological research... but I don't think your analogy is bad at
all.
It's generally true that the skills, the approach, and the techniques of
surgeons and researchers are completely different. Surgery is a specialty. For
example, I've had the head of surgical oncology at a very prestigious hospital
tell me that he doesn't know much about chemotherapy -- there are other
experts for that. And none of those clinical guys are necessarily experts in
the _causes_ of cancer, nor in its rate of incidence.
The stereotype, of course, is that every surgeon thinks that being a surgeon
makes you an expert in everything. Sometimes that mold fits: Tremendous self-
confidence is almost a requirement for being a great surgeon, and the side
effect can be... an excess of confidence. And sometimes the mold is unfair.
The field I briefly worked in -- antiangiogenesis -- was founded by the late
Judah Folkman, a famous surgeon who did his even-more-famous research as his
second job. Folkman had to spend a lot of years gathering data before other
researchers were convinced that he wasn't just another surgeon with delusions
of grandeur. But, as it happens, he wasn't.
In the end, you've got to show the data, and it has got to survive real
criticism. That's the metric.
------
iamelgringo
I guess it's time to start wearing my tinfoil hat:
<http://tesladownunder.com/TeslaPoolTinHat.jpg>
------
michaelneale
Ionising radiation, and non-ionising radiation - I assume the general public
still does not know the difference?
------
JBiserkov
Might seem like offtopic, but it's not: Have you seen the movie "Thank you for
smoking"?
------
dhimes
Gee, guys. Just go hands-free!
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
PlayPozz makes any game educational - jamesntoy
http://www.playpozz.com/
======
jamesntoy
PlayPozz launches today! Solo non-technical founder and YC W13 reject, but
rolled with it. Would love to know what everyone thinks.
------
ludicast
I think it's a fantastic idea, congrats. My son is 1.5 yrs and loves playing
with the ipad, though I am careful he doesn't use it as a tv. when he puts on
another .5 yrs I'll definitely use your app.
~~~
jamesntoy
I'm really glad you like it, and thanks so much for your feedback! Much
appreciated!
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
If Women Were More Like Men: Why Females Earn Less - makimaki
http://www.time.com/time/nation/article/0,8599,1847194,00.html?xid=rss-topstories
======
mkn
The difference in pay between FTMs and MTFs was 1.5% in this study, and the
article seems to suggest that this explains the 29% difference in pay between
biological men and women. That's just staggeringly disingenuous. If anything,
it means that discrimination is responsible for 5% of the pay difference
between men and women, and the rest is due to pregnancy, child-rearing
choices, intermittent employment, and so on. Note that this is not what I'm
arguing. I'm just saying that the data in question better support that
conclusion than the one the article mentions.
Further, fta:
_Also, it's harder for MTFs to pass than FTMs: men who become women still
have large hands and bigger frames._
If ever there was a case of absolute symmetry, it's this one. Unless, of
course, women who become men don't have small hands and small frames! This
article is mind-bogglingly vapid.
I know. Someone was wrong on the internet. I should just relax.
~~~
zasz
RTFA. The difference in pay was much greater than 1.5%. Men who became women
took a 32% pay cut, while women who became men got a 1.5% pay raise. Assuming
two trangsender people were earning the exact same amount beforehand, then the
new women were earning only two-thirds the pay of the new men. That would
explain the difference in pay between biological men and women.
I agree though that the study probably doesn't explain everything. I imagine
transgender people look a little funny, and people who look funny won't get
paid as much.
~~~
mkn
Looks like I missed a sentence from the article. However, the difference for
FTMs was only 1.5%. I'd have to presume that there was a job change involved
for all these people, as anyone who received a 32% pay cut in the same job for
going MTF would certainly have a winnable case for discrimination.
Aside: "RTFA?" Seriously? I mean, despite the clear evidence that I'd at least
(mis)read the article from my post? I thought I needed to relax because
someone was wrong on the internet.
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
Ask HN: Dialogue system – books to read and some advice for Python developer - frankyy
Hello,<p>Me and my team were given financing for the project of building a system of dialogue assistant (narrow domain, non-English language, text communication). We have extensive experience with NLP from previous companies, and we have also read a lot of articles about assistants. We are still looking for some useful resources to help us design, create and test it. One of the items I found:"Designing Interactive Speech Systems: From First Ideas to User Testing" from 1998, I wonder if it is up to date - maybe you suggest some newer books?<p>The last question is rather a technical one - our stack is based on Python - I wonder whether to use Django or perhaps Flask (I have a bad experience with it)? Flask is certainly lighter, and probably faster, it will be easier to "pack" machine learning models. Django, on the other hand, gives me a lot of functionality (without additional work) which can be useful in later stages - admin panel, logging, middlewares etc. - but in my opinion Django will be "overengineered"for this purpose, and will be hard to "pack" machine learning models.
======
PaulHoule
Sounds like a fun project, I'd love to chat about it.
Many people run multiple web servers. Using Flask to run "web services" and
Django to serve up more complex applications could be a very good idea.
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
AT&T updates firmware to block access to 1.1.1.1 - antoinefink
https://www.dslreports.com/forum/r31901625-New-BGW-210-700-Firmware-1-5-11
======
jaas
I'd say there is a 98% chance this is a bug in some firmware and a 2% chance
AT&T is intentionally trying to block Cloudflare DNS.
I get why people are paranoid about ISPs blocking content and net neutrality,
but let's not cry wolf prematurely. The technical details here strongly
suggest a bug rather than intentional blocking of 1.1.1.1 DNS traffic.
~~~
jjeaff
Then the odds appear to not be in our favor.
CF CEO tweets that 1.0.0.1 is also blocked.
[https://twitter.com/eastdakota/status/991718955021623296](https://twitter.com/eastdakota/status/991718955021623296)
Others have confirmed that the ipv6 address belonging to CF appears to be
blocked.
~~~
samstave
Just curious - can cloudflare blackhole all of Att traffic?
~~~
BlueGh0st
Could they physically? Yes. But they'd be screwing over their own customers
who rely on that traffic.
~~~
stingraycharles
Isn’t AT&T screwing their own customers by blocking 1.1.1.1 as well ?
~~~
tekknik
AT&T isn’t blocking 1.1.1.1, just tested it on my uverse connection. As much
as I hate AT&T their internet is pretty solid with the exception of datacaps
------
mabbo
I wonder if anyone has considered some sort of legislation whereby internet
service providers are not allowed to block or disrupt service to certain parts
of the internet in order to promote their own business model.
~~~
bb88
The argument I've made is that if they're blocking certain parts of the
internet, then they shouldn't be allowed to call themselves an Internet
Service Provider.
~~~
sjm-lbm
I've made this argument before (and it does make some sense), but I also doubt
that enough people will understand this nuance for it to really matter.
~~~
raquo
Maybe not-really-ISPs should be made ineligible for certain privileges /
rights given to real ISPs. Like not-really-doctors can't do everything that
real doctors can (grasping for a better analogy).
~~~
ForHackernews
Other entities could punish them by revoking peering agreements. Or if
CloudFlare wanted to play hardball, they could deny access to their CDN from
AT&T IP ranges. That would be punishing AT&T customers further, but it would
get their attention quickly and they'd complain to their ISP.
~~~
colechristensen
It would also be punishing CloudFlare customers quite a lot.
Taking a moral stand is honorable, but using your customers to do it isn't.
------
AgentK20
Cloudflare's CEO confirms:
[https://twitter.com/eastdakota/status/991718955021623296](https://twitter.com/eastdakota/status/991718955021623296)
~~~
noobermin
How is this not illegal?
~~~
bb88
Because as it stands right now, AT&T sells you access to their network. What
happens on their network is for AT&T to decide. With the FCC striking down net
neutrality [1], AT&T is probably testing out the waters.
[1] According to google, it's defined as:
"the principle that Internet service providers should enable access to all
content and applications regardless of the source, and without favoring or
blocking particular products or websites."
~~~
stefan_
If you can construe some horizontal where Cloudflare and AT&T are competitors
it could of course still be illegal for AT&T to block the others services
simply under antitrust law.
~~~
jjeaff
I'm sure ATT has cdn or similar services.
------
netsec_burn
This isn't malice. AT&T has an internal IP they assigned to 1.1.1.1 because it
was unused and they used it as an image caching proxy so it browsing the
internet would feel faster on early phones. I've seen it when I was reverse
engineering on Android a while back.
~~~
masklinn
So it's not just malice but doubly so: they used an IP they didn't have the
rights to _and_ they're now blocking proper users of it.
~~~
netsec_burn
They used an IP that was originally reserved for what reserved IP's are used
for. Now that Cloudflare convinced 1.1.1.1 to be released, I'm sure AT&T wants
service continuity and had to make this decision, which is well within their
rights as an ISP. I dislike AT&T so if this was entirely opinion-based, I
would be against them here. But this is a knee-jerk reaction to a well
justified decision.
~~~
qmarchi
Except that it wasn't classified as a private IP address. They should've use
something like 10.0.0.0/8, 172.16.0.0/12, or 192.168.0.0/16.
The 1.0.0.0/8 range was owned by IANA from _1981_ up until 2010, when it was
transfered to APNIC. (The 2.0.0.0/8 range was also owned by IANA until 2010,
thentransfered to RIPE NCC).
If you want to get technical, use of the space could be construed as theft.
As for the continuity issue, it was stated that it was an old device, so they
have no responsibility to continue supporting it, and considering the age of
the device in question, it may not be able to connect to the existing network.
~~~
nickysielicki
They should be using 100.64/10
[https://tools.ietf.org/html/rfc6598](https://tools.ietf.org/html/rfc6598)
------
mstaoru
Shanghai. One of the largest Chinese data-centers with direct peering to all
major national networks. I'm inside, testing a new colocation unit we just put
there. Pinging 1.1.1.1 in 4.2ms, wow! Putting it in resolv.conf. Nothing
works. WTF? Turns out they route 1.1.1.1 across the whole DC to one of their
internal services "for engineers' convenience". Not gonna change. TIC.
------
xtf
From
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1.1.1.1#Criticism_and_problems](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1.1.1.1#Criticism_and_problems)
:
Technological websites noted that by using 1.1.1.1 as the IP address for their
service, Cloudflare created problems with existing setups. While 1.1.1.1 was
not a reserved IP address, it was and is used by many existing routers (mostly
those sold by Cisco Systems) and companies for hosting login pages to private
networks, exit pages or other purposes, rendering the use of 1.1.1.1 as a
manually configured DNS server impossible on those systems. Additionally,
1.1.1.1 is blocked on many networks and by multiple ISPs because the
simplicity of the address means that it was previously often used for testing
purposes and not legitimate use. These previous uses has lead to a huge influx
of "garbage" data to Cloudflare's servers.
~~~
rbanffy
What kind of demented person uses 1.1.1.1, a routable public address since
2010, for internal addresses. What's wrong with 10.0.0.0/8 or 192.168/16?
~~~
jdironman
I'm gonna guess they valued the aesthetics over the problems / conditions.
~~~
slenk
10.10.10.10?
~~~
rbanffy
10.11.11.10?
~~~
jdironman
10.00.00.01?
------
techjuice
I always thought it was strange to see the example loopback address listed as
1.1.1.1 or 1.xxx.xxx.xxx in many of tutorials and official network
certification guides and why they did not use a private. This is more than
likely why many users are having problems because they are being routed to a
loopback address on their router or another router. Hopefully network admins
and engineers will choose a non public ip space as their loopback address to
resolve the problem.
~~~
codetrotter
Indeed. I wish most people used TEST-NET-1, TEST-NET-2 and TEST-NET-3 in
documentation and training material.
RFC 5735:
> 192.0.2.0/24 - This block is assigned as "TEST-NET-1" for use in
> documentation and example code. It is often used in conjunction with domain
> names example.com or example.net in vendor and protocol documentation. As
> described in RFC5737, addresses within this block do not legitimately appear
> on the public Internet and can be used without any coordination with IANA or
> an Internet registry.
> 198.51.100.0/24 - This block is assigned as "TEST-NET-2" for use in
> documentation and example code. It is often used in conjunction with domain
> names example.com or example.net in vendor and protocol documentation. As
> described in RFC5737, addresses within this block do not legitimately appear
> on the public Internet and can be used without any coordination with IANA or
> an Internet registry.
> 203.0.113.0/24 - This block is assigned as "TEST-NET-3" for use in
> documentation and example code. It is often used in conjunction with domain
> names example.com or example.net in vendor and protocol documentation. As
> described in RFC5737, addresses within this block do not legitimately appear
> on the public Internet and can be used without any coordination with IANA or
> an Internet registry.
[https://tools.ietf.org/html/rfc5735](https://tools.ietf.org/html/rfc5735)
------
fastball
That's so crazy, I actually experienced this today.
I've been using 1.1.1.1, and today went to the library for a quick work break.
I pulled out my laptop and tried to connect to the wifi, and it wasn't
working. After a few minutes of troubleshooting, I tried deleting my custom
DNS entry in my network settings and that did the trick.
I guess the library uses AT&T routers.
~~~
j605
No, they use that for captive portals or broadcasts.
~~~
icelancer
Exactly. This is why 1.1.1.1 won't work on Airplane WiFi either.
------
bvinc
How are they going to spy on your DNS traffic and sell it to advertisers after
you secure it?
~~~
ddtaylor
For most people who aren't configuring DNSec or TLS can't the ISP still see
all of the plain-text domain names in port 53 traffic?
~~~
tptacek
DNSSEC doesn’t encrypt DNS traffic; it only signs it.
~~~
ddtaylor
Derp, good point.
------
chrissnell
Some folks use a Ubiquiti EdgeRouter and a user-space proxy to forward EAP
(authentication) packets to the AT&T router but otherwise use the EdgeRouter
to route LAN traffic out to the ONT (fiber to Ethernet translator) and the
internet, thus bypassing the shitty AT&T router for most stuff. This would be
sufficient to ensure that 1.1.1.1 is reachable.
It's not a good solution for me, however, because I run PFSense, which is
FreeBSD-based and lacks the PF_RING socket support to filter out those EAP
packets. As far as I know, PFSense's PF packet filter cannot strain them out,
either. Traditional libpcap is available on FreeBSD (slow) and netmap (fast),
too. I looked into writing an EAP proxy in Go using a special netmap-enabled
libpcap but it was way too much yak shaving and I eventually gave up. I should
take another look, or maybe learn enough C to do it natively with netmap. My
goal is native EAP proxy support for PFSense that can support filtering EAP
out of a wirespeed gigabit fiber connection.
------
tuna-piano
Here is the original Cloudflare post on what 1.1.1.1 is [1]. For those who
don't know, 1.1.1.1 is Cloudflare's privacy focused DNS service. That means
that when you type in www.google.com, that URL can be sent to 1.1.1.1, and
then 1.1.1.1 resolves that URL an IP address and send the IP back to the user.
All user requests are then sent to the IP address, not the URL. Supposedly
this is better than using the DNS server of ATT+Comcast, because ATT+Comcast
want your browsing history while Cloudflare does not.
What I don't understand is how this really helps user privacy much. If AT&T,
Comcast, etc want to know your browsing habits, can't they still see the IP
addresses you're browsing and figure out the URL from the IPs? I can't see
that as too big an impediment, but maybe someone with more knowledge can
share.
[1]
[https://blog.cloudflare.com/announcing-1111/](https://blog.cloudflare.com/announcing-1111/)
~~~
ben174
Got a link to the original hacker news article by chance? I’d like to see the
comments
~~~
jessaustin
Use the search at the bottom of this page:
[https://hn.algolia.com/?query=announcing%201111&type=story](https://hn.algolia.com/?query=announcing%201111&type=story)
------
js2
This is likely due to incompetence, not malice.
FWIW, it’s possible to bypass AT&T’s router:
[https://github.com/jaysoffian/eap_proxy](https://github.com/jaysoffian/eap_proxy)
That said, I tried 1.1.1.1 and found I had to switch back to Google DNS since
Cloudflare intentionally doesn’t support EDNS Client Subnet which was causing
my AppleTV’s to have trouble loading content.
~~~
ReverseCold
I don't know much about networking, but I do have that router. Can you please
explain what this does/why someone would want this?
~~~
js2
It allows you to completely bypass AT&T's router, so you can use your own
router talking directly to the ONT. The AT&T router is then necessary only to
authenticate to the ONT. So the proxy, running on your own router, sends
authentication packets (and their responses) from the ONT to the AT&T router,
but otherwise the AT&T router isn't handling any packets.
------
sxates
Does this just apply to setting the default DNS on the router, or are the
blocking traffic to 1.1.1.1 from any device connected to it?
~~~
ReverseCold
I'm on ATT right now and I can't go to [https://1.1.1.1](https://1.1.1.1)
right now.
It works fine when I disable WiFi on my phone (Verizon).
~~~
city41
I have AT&T internet and also can't get to [http://1.1.1.1](http://1.1.1.1).
but I can on my phone using AT&T's cellular service. Apparently not all of
AT&T dislikes CloudFlare.
------
kev009
Knowing how bad most telco networks are operated, I blithely wonder if maybe
they were using stuff in 1./8 as PNI or some other privileged internal net and
are going through some oh shit moments.
Hanlon's razor as lots of DNS services are available on not as vanity IP
space, and there is no evidence of blockage.
------
sitepodmatt
It shocks me that there are no AT&T network/sysadmins at the right level and
department on this forum that don't cringe in shame and sort this out.
~~~
gk1
I'm certain there are, but AT&T is a 250,000-person organization with a
bureaucracy to match. Things take weeks to sort out, assuming the right person
is pushing for it.
------
pedrosanta
I would cancel any broadband contract of any ISP that did this when providing
me a service. We need to stand up to these sort of things. (Disclaimer: I live
in Europe though.)
~~~
justherefortart
You wouldn't when you don't have a better alternative.
------
jedberg
My guess is this is just incompetence and not intentionally made to block
CloudFlare.
I have one of those routers, and I couldn't use 1.1.1.1 because it was routing
to an internal interface on the router. I confirmed this with ping, I was
getting microsecond response times from 1.1.1.1.
Under the new firmware, 1.1.1.1 is just dead. So it's probably still connected
to the local interface, and nothing is listening.
~~~
alex_young
They started blocking 1.0.0.1 and CF ipv6 DNS too. This has to be intentional.
~~~
jedberg
Hmmm that's a fair point. But then why not also block 8.8.8.8?
~~~
stonemetal
Everyone has heard of google, attacking them would cause back lash. Non
technical people haven't heard of cloudflare so it is a softer target.
------
PinkMilkshake
This is going to reveal my lack of networking knowledge but how does a company
get an IP like 1.1.1.1? A bucket load of cash?
~~~
y2kenny
Help from / collaboration with APNIC:
[https://blog.cloudflare.com/announcing-1111/](https://blog.cloudflare.com/announcing-1111/)
~~~
utefan001
Geoff Huston is the chief scientist at APNIC. I highly recommend checking out
some of his talks on yourtube.
------
taf2
I’m on at&t lte and this is working just fine... is this a broad band provider
thing?
~~~
city41
I have AT&T LTE on my phone and AT&T DSL at home. I can't get on 1.1.1.1 via
DSL, but can via LTE.
------
Abishek_Muthian
Anyone else facing such issues with their ISP for 1.1.1.1 ?
Cloudflare DNS seems to be down for couple of major ISP's in India as well
according to CF forums -
[ACT] [https://community.cloudflare.com/t/cloudfare-dns-blocked-
wit...](https://community.cloudflare.com/t/cloudfare-dns-blocked-with-act-isp-
in-india/16916/10)
[Airtel] [https://community.cloudflare.com/t/cloudflare-dns-not-
workin...](https://community.cloudflare.com/t/cloudflare-dns-not-working-in-
india-isp-airtel-may-have-blocked-it/16419)
~~~
NoCFHere
I'm on comcast and can't seem to ping em.
------
thetwentyone
FWIW as an ATT Fiber customer, I was not able to (and am still not able to)
access 1.1.1.1. I tried just a couple days after Cloudflare announced the
service, and requests timed out. I can access with a VPN, however.
------
johnvega
If at&t does not provide any official explanation, what's your opinion on how
people should respond. The first thing that came to mind for me is to switch
over to Xfinity on my next contract cycle.
~~~
mr_spothawk
Breaking the contract is a reasonable option, maybe? At scale & among people
who can afford to (ahem, HN) openly refuse I'd argue it could have more
immediate impact.
Frankly, NEVER paying the bill is an option, too. Downloading Netflix is
sweet, maybe you can pool with your neighbor? that's another topic
It's expensive to enforce payment.
If you've never been in collections, it's an experience you might enjoy for
sport.
If you live in fear of not being able to get a cheap interest rate on a loan
for some shit you don't need... well, maybe you'd better not take part in that
type of protest.
------
cottsak
More solid advice regarding home internet/ISP routers:
[https://www.tomsguide.com/us/home-router-
security,news-19245...](https://www.tomsguide.com/us/home-router-
security,news-19245.html)
Try to avoid the cheap bundled cable/fibre/DSL routers that ISPs "throw in"
with their plans/packages.
Disable the remote management/update/TR-069/CWMP/SSH/etc if you can. You don't
wanna trust someone else to secure your home.
------
walrus01
There are an astonishing number of corporate end users also using "unused"
chunks /8 sized of IP space internally. As if rfc1918 wasn't big enough.
------
cottsak
How is the ISP performing this remote update? Is it TR-069/CWMP or an open SSH
port or something? Many routers will allow the user to disable TR-069 even
while it's running. Often a hardware reset will also disable it and then the
user can put the manufactures update on it and prevent the ISP from managing
it in the future. If it's an open SSH port then we all have bigger problems.
~~~
sean8102
AT&T's internet service requires you to use one of THEIR "gateways". Which is
a combination modem and wireless router. When AT&T wants a new gateway they go
to a company (mainly Arris now) and have them build a gateway that will only
be for AT&T to deploy . AT&T completely controls the software/firmware on the
device. There is no site you can go to and download a "manufacturer" firmware.
Even if you could it wouldn't accept it because it wouldn't be signed by AT&T.
And yes AT&T uses CWMP to remotely manage the gateway. That's how they can
send firmware updates, customer service can retrieve signal stats, remotely
reboot the gateway etc etc. And no they certainly do not put in a option on
the gateway to disable CWMP or any of the remote management stuff they use.
You can turn off the Wi-Fi on AT&T's gateway and run your own router behind
the AT&T hardware. But since your router is behind the gateway everything
still goes through it and AT&T still can do all the CWMP stuff to their
gateway.
------
cottsak
This problem has been around for a while and is pretty serious!
[https://www.routersecurity.org/ISProuters.php](https://www.routersecurity.org/ISProuters.php)
------
jacksmith21006
Is there anyone before Google that went after getting one of these marketing
IPs?
First time I saw it was 8.8.8.8.
I personally had one had in my head from the 80s 128.252.120.1. bit it is
obviously not a special one.
------
arriu
While far from perfect, for anyone looking for a temporary solution, run pi-
hole on a remote server and have it use 1.1.1.1 as its DNS. You'll get the
benefit of pi-hole blocking ads.
------
hamandcheese
I really wish Cloudflare would have used a "normal" IP for their DNS service.
That way there would be no confusion whatsoever as to whether this is
malicious or a bug.
~~~
skrause
1.1.1.1 is a normal IP.
~~~
regecks
> The Cloudflare-APNIC experiment uses two IPv4 address ranges, 1.1.1/24 and
> 1.0.0/24, which have been reserved for research use. Cloudflare's new DNS
> uses two addresses within those ranges, 1.1.1.1 and 1.0.0.1.
They had acknowledged to themselves going into it that the IPs weren't
"normal". They could have easily chosen a safer range if that was a priority.
~~~
slenk
1.1.1.1 is a normal IP as it was reserved for internet use. There are already
IP ranges that are supposed to be used for internal use, and 1.1.1.1 is not
one of them
~~~
plopz
This whole thing is like the .dev TLD debacle.
------
aosmith
Is there any reason you couldn't just tunnel / proxy your DNS? I know that
isn't an option for most people but I think that would solve the problem.
------
m-p-3
I'm wondering what CloudFlare response will be to this.
------
aosmith
Is this only DSL? I have ATT fiber, no problems here.
~~~
thetwentyone
I experience this on ATT fiber. ping'ing 1.1.1.1 times out.
~~~
aosmith
Woof that sucks. I'm in the Bay Area, where are you?
------
okket
Sure this is intentional? The headline suggests so, otherwise
"AT&T firmware update blocks access to 1.1.1.1"
would be more accurate IMHO.
------
justinzollars
I'm going to ask for a partial refund every month if they are blocking parts
of the internet.
~~~
robin_reala
They’re blocking 1 of 4,294,967,296 addresses, so I guess they’d argue that
your bill should be reduced by 0.000000232%.
------
_bxg1
Jesus Christ. Fortunately I only have AT&T on mobile and it still works there,
but I will ditch them in a heartbeat if that changes. At least in the cellular
space there's still some consumer choice to be had.
------
akshatkedia
1.1.1.1 blocked in India too on BSNL connections.
------
intrasight
As a consumer, you are free to switch to a different provider. I'm not saying
what they're doing is ok, but let's not neglect the opportunity to vote with
our $$$.
~~~
jedberg
Only if you're in the 42% minority of people who have access to more than one
ISP.
------
cabaalis
What is the likelihood of obtaining net neutrality through the courts? I.E.
Cloudflare sues -> judicial process -> decision that establishes a "right to
access"?
~~~
nv-vn
Likely 0% chance. The court cannot just go off and make up its own laws
because it wants to, all it can do is decide how existing laws should be
applied.
~~~
derekp7
It's true that courts can't make laws, but they have shown a lot of leeway in
the past of creatively interpreting laws (i.e., using the Interstate Commerce
clause to say a farmer can't raise a particular crop to feed to his own
animals). Could existing laws that prevent monopolies from unfair business
practices be applied here?
------
JumpCrisscross
What about AT&T's wireless network?
------
cyanbane
Do they block quad9? Although I trust AT&T about as far as I can throw them,
this may just be a bad config/update.
------
ryan-c
Late to the party, but here's some traceroutes run from AT&T Gigapower with
their router _entirely_ bypassed via an 802.1x MitM:
# traceroute 1.0.0.1
traceroute to 1.0.0.1 (1.0.0.1), 30 hops max, 60 byte packets
1 45-18-124-1.lightspeed.austtx.sbcglobal.net (45.18.124.1) 59.462 ms 61.348 ms 63.373 ms
2 71.149.77.208 (71.149.77.208) 1.304 ms 1.695 ms 1.957 ms
3 75.8.128.136 (75.8.128.136) 1.329 ms 1.682 ms 1.393 ms
4 12.83.68.145 (12.83.68.145) 2.673 ms 2.661 ms 2.648 ms
5 12.123.18.233 (12.123.18.233) 8.877 ms 12.753 ms 8.800 ms
6 192.205.36.206 (192.205.36.206) 6.663 ms 6.375 ms 6.680 ms
7 66.110.56.158 (66.110.56.158) 6.885 ms 6.725 ms 6.436 ms
8 1dot1dot1dot1.cloudflare-dns.com (1.0.0.1) 6.855 ms 6.557 ms 6.662 ms
# traceroute 1.1.1.1
traceroute to 1.1.1.1 (1.1.1.1), 30 hops max, 60 byte packets
1 45-18-124-1.lightspeed.austtx.sbcglobal.net (45.18.124.1) 163.322 ms 163.927 ms 174.243 ms
2 71.149.77.208 (71.149.77.208) 1.346 ms 1.779 ms 2.035 ms
3 75.8.128.136 (75.8.128.136) 1.215 ms 1.214 ms 1.564 ms
4 12.83.68.137 (12.83.68.137) 1.495 ms 12.83.68.145 (12.83.68.145) 2.289 ms 12.83.68.137 (12.83.68.137) 2.283 ms
5 12.123.18.233 (12.123.18.233) 7.783 ms 11.766 ms 11.757 ms
6 192.205.36.206 (192.205.36.206) 6.163 ms 6.160 ms 6.202 ms
7 66.110.56.158 (66.110.56.158) 6.909 ms 6.931 ms 6.423 ms
8 1dot1dot1dot1.cloudflare-dns.com (1.1.1.1) 6.922 ms 6.492 ms 7.075 ms
; <<>> DiG 9.9.5-9+deb8u14-Debian <<>> cloudflare.com @1.1.1.1
;; global options: +cmd
;; Got answer:
;; ->>HEADER<<- opcode: QUERY, status: NOERROR, id: 15100
;; flags: qr rd ra ad; QUERY: 1, ANSWER: 2, AUTHORITY: 0, ADDITIONAL: 1
;; OPT PSEUDOSECTION:
; EDNS: version: 0, flags:; udp: 1536
;; QUESTION SECTION:
;cloudflare.com. IN A
;; ANSWER SECTION:
cloudflare.com. 53 IN A 198.41.214.162
cloudflare.com. 53 IN A 198.41.215.162
;; Query time: 7 msec
;; SERVER: 1.1.1.1#53(1.1.1.1)
;; WHEN: Thu May 03 13:40:52 UTC 2018
;; MSG SIZE rcvd: 75
; <<>> DiG 9.9.5-9+deb8u14-Debian <<>> cloudflare.com @1.0.0.1
;; global options: +cmd
;; Got answer:
;; ->>HEADER<<- opcode: QUERY, status: NOERROR, id: 61685
;; flags: qr rd ra ad; QUERY: 1, ANSWER: 2, AUTHORITY: 0, ADDITIONAL: 1
;; OPT PSEUDOSECTION:
; EDNS: version: 0, flags:; udp: 1536
;; QUESTION SECTION:
;cloudflare.com. IN A
;; ANSWER SECTION:
cloudflare.com. 66 IN A 198.41.214.162
cloudflare.com. 66 IN A 198.41.215.162
;; Query time: 7 msec
;; SERVER: 1.0.0.1#53(1.0.0.1)
;; WHEN: Thu May 03 13:40:39 UTC 2018
;; MSG SIZE rcvd: 75
I'm not going to paste the output, but `curl
[https://1.1.1.1/`](https://1.1.1.1/`) works as well.
Doesn't look like it's anything onn AT&T's internal network.
~~~
criddell
I have AT&T Gigapower as well (I'm also in Austin). Can you give a description
of the 802.1x bypass? What's the advantage?
~~~
ryan-c
See [http://www.dslreports.com/forum/r30708210-AT-T-
Residential-G...](http://www.dslreports.com/forum/r30708210-AT-T-Residential-
Gateway-Bypass-True-bridge-mode)
You can also do essentially the same thing with a userspace 802.1x proxy like
this one:
[https://github.com/SeanMollet/1x_prox](https://github.com/SeanMollet/1x_prox)
Bypassing the router ensures that stupid router firmware does not do stupid
things to my packets, such as special handling of public IPs.
------
waldbeere
hong-kong airport free Wifi 1.1.1.1 not works with this DNS
------
exabrial
File FCC complaints! This sorry if thing will definitely get a response.
~~~
twexler
No it won't. The FCC doesn't work for the the citizenry anymore, just for
lobbyists.
~~~
exabrial
I find the sappy, defeatest, whiney attitude with the FCC useless. File them
if you're affected. They're cataloged and can be used as evidence in the
future. The current administration is certainly against regulation, but
blocking a DNS provider is an escalation. More than likely, this block is due
to incompetence. My guess is ATT was using the IP internally for some purpose
and is now getting DDOS'd.
------
mdip
I'll go on record as saying I am an ardent _hater_ of U-Verse and AT&T due to
personal experience with their service and would like nothing more than for
this to be a purposeful act that would result in backlash on that company...
... that said, I'm going to fall in the camp of stating that this is likely an
unintentional bug. If they truly wanted to block 1.1.1.1 (and it's backup),
doing so via firmware would seem to be the most difficult and unreliable way
of doing so. The benefits of doing so are also limited: (a) If the motivation
was to avoid losing the ability to spy on their customers via DNS requests,
well ... they can still do that. Yes, Cloudflare supports encrypted DNS, but
the half of one percent of folks who have this set up wouldn't be worth the
effort[0]. (b) If there was some _other_ reason to want customers using their
DNS (i.e. redirection to advertising pages when lookup fails), they could
simply do packet rewrites (of non-encrypted DNS lookups) to send them over to
AT&Ts infrastructure -- the benefit of doing this is that it would be more
likely to go unnoticed[1]. (c) There have been several _other_ , far more
popular and just as well publicized public DNS services that they haven't
messed with -- why pick on a new entrant -- why not break 8.8.8.8 or OpenDNS?
More likely is the explanation that 1.1.1.1 was being used as a defact-o
10.x.x.x address for other purposes. It had a few benefits -- it was far less
likely to be used as an internal address for customers (being ... _not_ a
traditional non-routable address) and up until recently, it was unlikely to be
used for legitimate services. Or ... it's something else. Firmware bugs are
_everywhere_ and having had their service and the particular brand of modem
they're using, I'm not the least bit surprised. I had to root my modem to make
my service work reliably[2]. Heck, I worked for a telecom for 17 years, and
the first half of that, the guy who set our network up used 1-10.x.x.x as
internal addresses.
[0] It's not terribly difficult to do, but few take the effort. I've got an
internal DNS server configured (for AD purposes) which forwards to another
internal DNS server that makes all DNS requests out to cloudflare via
encrypted DNS. It was a 5 minute change to my internal setup, a lot of which
was the time it took to download the container, reboot the host for testing
purposes and validation of everything.
[1] It probably would have managed to be hidden an entire _minute_ longer than
this debacle.
[2] On their DSL (re-labeled U-Verse despite it having nothing to do with
their U-Verse TV/Internet -- it's the _old_ DSL limited to 12Mb down _if you
're lucky_), my modem would randomly display the "Internet is down" page for
all requests despite everything being fine. I forgot, exactly, what I had to
do to resolve it, but it required hitting their ping page to trigger a buffer
overflow, allowing me to get console access and running some command. I also
wanted to be able to ping the modem remotely (something they disable with no
customer-facing option to correct) to correlate it with weather so as to prove
to customer service (...and at least a little to myself) that this bizarre
happenstance wasn't all in my head. My next-door neighbors also had this
problem, so I suspected it was something in the wiring (expansion/contraction-
like) up the street, but it was hard to track down _where_ because all but two
people on that street (including us) used those homes as summer vacation homes
and were rarely there in the winter -- many didn't have service and those who
did were unlikely to be around when the weather hit about 40 degrees, so AT&T
wasn't getting reports of outages in enough frequency to do anything about it.
Two years ago, they sent a truck, took everyone down and re-did a pole 8
houses down. Since then, the problem hasn't happened.
------
exabrial
My parent company uses 1.1.1.1 as a captive portal address on the guest
network. Easy to remember, but cloudflare probably needs to stand up some more
conventional DNS ips.
~~~
Klathmon
No your parent company needs to stop abusing that IP.
Cloudflare is using a conventional IP, you are the one that isn't.
~~~
exabrial
I wasn't disagreeing...? They're using an IP that wasn't assigned by IANA.
~~~
fuzzy2
What exactly do you mean by “wasn’t assigned”? According to this article [1],
1/8 was reserved in 1981. Only from 2008 to 2010 was 1.1.1.0/24 ever truly
unallocated.
If, after 8 years, most providers still haven’t moved to either private
networks or officially assigned networks, honestly – they suck.
[1]: [https://labs.ripe.net/Members/franz/content-
pollution-18](https://labs.ripe.net/Members/franz/content-pollution-18)
------
dingo_bat
Good. If cloud fare is allowed to block sites from their hosting service based
on opinions, then att should be allowed to do the same. Also fuck cloud fare
for choosing 1.1.1.1 when any network engineer worth his salt would have told
them it's going to cause problems. There are things like conventions and
traditions, you break them at your own peril.
~~~
24gttghh
>APNIC's research group held the IP addresses 1.1.1.1 and 1.0.0.1. While the
addresses were valid, so many people had entered them into various random
systems that they were continuously overwhelmed by a flood of garbage traffic.
APNIC wanted to study this garbage traffic but any time they'd tried to
announce the IPs, the flood would overwhelm any conventional network.
>We talked to the APNIC team about how we wanted to create a privacy-first,
extremely fast DNS system. They thought it was a laudable goal. We offered
Cloudflare's network to receive and study the garbage traffic in exchange for
being able to offer a DNS resolver on the memorable IPs. And, with that,
1.1.1.1 was born.[0]
[0][https://blog.cloudflare.com/announcing-1111/](https://blog.cloudflare.com/announcing-1111/)
It's _not_ a reserved address like 192.168.0.0/16 or 10.0.0.0/8[1][2], nor is
it one of the other reserved addresses for documentation or testing. So I
think people using it before as test or LAN addresses are actually in the
wrong here. This kind of "tradition" in networking is wrong. That's what
things like RFC's are for.
[1][https://tools.ietf.org/html/rfc5735](https://tools.ietf.org/html/rfc5735)
[2][https://www.iana.org/assignments/iana-ipv4-special-
registry/...](https://www.iana.org/assignments/iana-ipv4-special-
registry/iana-ipv4-special-registry.xhtml)
~~~
dingo_bat
> It's not a reserved address
I know. That's why I wrote "tradition" instead of the RFC numbers. Way to miss
my point though.
~~~
24gttghh
You seem to miss my point, in that Cloudflare specifically chose that IP in
order to share research data with APNIC regarding people erroneously using
1.1.1.1 in the wild.
Just because something is a tradition doesn't make it a right course of
action.
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
How did governments lose control of encryption? - abhi3
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/technology-35659152
======
progressive_dad
What breaks my heart about this "cold war" becoming a "hot war" is it will
probably stifle school age curriculum. If its a hot button political issue
then teachers won't be encouraging little johnny and suzie to show the class
their nifty secret code they made on the playground. We'll hear a lot of
bloviating on how every child should learn to code, but if you point out the
creative minds of children are fertile ground for exploring steganography
you'll get a resounding laugh and a joke about stegasaurus.
~~~
pdkl95
> show the class their nifty secret code
Everybody knows nifty secret codes are the gateway hobby to harder
technologies like assembling electronic clocks.
~~~
progressive_dad
Or worse, Navajo indian sympathizers.
------
ArkyBeagle
The better question is - when did they actually have control of it? They sort-
of did - it took government money to put an Enigma together, but government
money is only a necessary condition because it's money.
------
stegosaurus
This article, this headline, is an excellent example of the BBC's bias.
How did governments lose control of mathematics?
Yes, it sounds absurd, doesn't it? The BBC have an opportunity, some would say
an obligation, to educate here.
------
spiralpolitik
Never thought I'd see Phil Zimmerman and PGP written out of the history books
of the crypto wars but there you go.
~~~
superuser2
I'd say PGP got us to the point where endpoint security matters, and Apple
closed the loop. Allegedly that's why they want the phone so badly: to dump
data from encrypted messaging apps.
The FBI long ago adapted to breaking open general purpose computers that were
encrypted by i.e. keeping them awake and logged in through arrest and seizure.
PGP won't do you any good there.
Apple finally built the walls around the garden high enough (by doing security
at the hardware level) that they put up a fight even when the device is on and
ready to use.
------
greggarious
They never did. Any other questions there champ?
~~~
mollmerx
They never had control or they never lost it?
~~~
pdkl95
Crypto is math. Nobody can monopolize math.
edit:
On the subject of trying to keep powerful and/or dangerous knowledge locked
away from the general public, one of my older HN comments[1] was about the
larger, long-term problem our species' rapid access to new knowledge and
powerful technology.
We need to figure out how to safely integrate new technologies into society
_asap_.
[1]
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8916033](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8916033)
~~~
smacktoward
Governments were _plenty_ able to monopolize math when computing power was
scarce and expensive. That monopoly slipped as computer power got cheaper and
more widely accessible. Now everybody has a computer in their pocket that's as
fast as the world's fastest supercomputers were in 1990, so the monopoly is
well and truly dead.
~~~
pdkl95
They monopolized the _people_ that knew the math, written records that
described the math, and the hardware that implemented the math. The actual
crypto itself cannot be controlled, and in some cases was found by other
through cryptanalysis or independently re-discovered.
That distinction is important - physical things like people or papers or
computers can be controlled and hidden. It's much harder to keep knowledge
itself bottled up, because there is always a risk that someone clever will
discover it on their own.
------
stuaxo
The BBCs coverage of this whole thing has been incredibly biased.
Although there is much talk of BBC left wing bias, it is massively pro
government - and more so in recent years.
~~~
junto
Whilst the BBC is supposed to be non-biased, it is funded by public money. The
BBC has to tred carefully around the government and make sure it doesn't upset
whoever is currently in power.
[http://rightdishonourable.com/2015/10/peter-capaldi-the-
bbc-...](http://rightdishonourable.com/2015/10/peter-capaldi-the-bbc-is-
seriously-under-threat-from-the-government/)
------
CM30
They lost control when encryption became a product sold on the free
market/distributed among communities. The internet only took away that control
even more (and faster).
------
graycat
Since no doubt governments never were able to find a fast way to factor a
product of two large prime numbers, they never did have "control" of
encryption.
------
fweespeech
> Cryptography was once controlled by the state and deployed only for military
> and diplomatic ends. But in the 1970s, cryptographer Whitfield Diffie
> devised a system which took encryption keys away from the state and marked
> the start of the so-called "Crypto Wars".
That is an outright lie and the mere fact that this was published as truth
shows the BBC is just a propoganda arm of the UK.
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Copiale_cipher](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Copiale_cipher)
[http://www.nytimes.com/2011/10/25/science/25code.html?_r=0](http://www.nytimes.com/2011/10/25/science/25code.html?_r=0)
Hell, we are only just now breaking encryption from the 18th century, ffs.
[https://www.sans.org/reading-
room/whitepapers/vpns/history-e...](https://www.sans.org/reading-
room/whitepapers/vpns/history-encryption-730)
> 1500 BC ancient Assyrian merchants used intaglio, a piece of flat stone
> carved into a collage of images and some writing to identify themselves in
> trading transactions. Using this mechanism, they are producing what today we
> know as 'digital signature.' The public knew that a particular 'signature'
> belonged to this trader, but only he had the intaglio to produce that
> signature. Using this mechanism, they are producing what today we know as
> 'digital signature.' The public knew that a particular 'signature' belonged
> to this trader, but only he had the intaglio to produce that signature.
\------
> So what they said is right, if you specifically know they're talking about
> public key cryptography and know the history of it. It could have been
> better written.
> Secondly they're trying to dumb down the history of public key cryptography,
> and what they mean by "once controlled by the state" is that James H. Ellis
> & Clifford Cocks discovered and implemented it in secret for the GCHQ in
> 1970-73. With Malcolm J. Williamson implementing the Diffie–Hellman key
> exchange in 1974.
William Stanley Jevons basically foreshadowed its existence in the 1800s.
There was no way it could be controlled once computers became common.
The fact the GCHQ couldn't keep it secret for even 10 years pretty much shows
that.
They never had control except for the briefest of windows and pretending that
was really control of cryptography in any substantial way is crazy.
~~~
Someone1234
> That is an outright lie and the mere fact that this was published as truth
> shows the BBC is just a propoganda arm of the UK.
First off there's absolutely no propaganda benefit in that supposed lie.
Secondly they're trying to dumb down the history of public key cryptography,
and what they mean by "once controlled by the state" is that James H. Ellis &
Clifford Cocks discovered and implemented it in secret for the GCHQ in
1970-73. With Malcolm J. Williamson implementing the Diffie–Hellman key
exchange in 1974.
In 1976 Whitfield Diffie and Martin Hellman released Diffie–Hellman key
exchange to the non-classified world.
So what they said is right, if you specifically know they're talking about
public key cryptography and know the history of it. It could have been better
written.
------
bekimdisha
depends which government you are talking about ;)
------
xyzzy4
They lost control when they didn't want to legislate anti-encryption laws.
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
Ask HN: How to get a music player to always play in mono? - yesenadam
I recently lost my hearing in one ear..and discovered VLC can play stereo tracks as mono. But you have to manually turn it on for every track, it seems, no preference setting for that. Does anyone know a player that can be set to always play mono, or some way of getting around that? (Besides getting special headphones) Thanks!
======
DanBC
There's a Windows setting (I know you're on a Mac but maybe other people got
here after a search) in:
right click start - settings - Ease of Access - Audio - "turn on mono audio".
Or start typing in the search bar "ease of access" and select audio.
Just double-checking that you've seen a doctor, and had a referral to
audiology for hearing tests, possibly an MRI, and a hearing aid?
~~~
yesenadam
Hehe yes, all that, thanks. Went to audiologist within a few days, specialist,
scans, steroid injections into ear etc. Nothing helped at all. I had no idea
you can just wake up one day deaf in one ear, permanently. Especially annoying
since I'm a jazz musician! It's rare, but not that rare, apparently–caused by
some virus. The hospital I went to sees someone with the same problem every
week or 2, people of all ages. (This was a year ago)
------
phillipseamore
You might be able to configure your OS to sum everything to one channel,
instead of doing it program by program.
~~~
yesenadam
Oh thanks, will look into that. p.s. It's a Mac.
edit: Yes indeed! Thanks again for the idea, I didn't think that would be
possible, I guess.
System Preferences -> Accessibility -> Audio -> "Play stereo audio as mono"
checkbox.
~~~
phillipseamore
That "sounds" good :) Glad to help.
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
MandarineTS. A minimalist, decorator-driven, MVC, TypeScript framework for Deno - ramirez001
https://github.com/mandarineorg/mandarinets
======
ramirez001
Mandarine.TS is a framework that allows you to create applications.
Mandarine.TS provides a range of built-in solutions such as Dependency
Injection, Components, ORM and more. Under its umbrella, Mandarine.TS has 4
modules: Core, Data, Security and MVC, these modules will offer you the
requirements to build a Mandarine-powered application.
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
An appeal for unremarkable women - jgrahamc
http://www.jgc.org/blog/2010/03/appeal-to-unremarkable-women.html
======
davidw
I don't know... these debates seem to go round and round, and at the end of
the day, I grow weary of them. My resolve is to do what is in my power to help
out other people, be they men or women, who are interested in learning
something about programming and maybe need a leg up, and not to discriminate
or make the work environment uncomfortable in any other way. Beyond that,
though, I don't think I can do much more, and it doesn't seem a good use of my
time wondering what a very generic "we" can do to change the status quo.
~~~
timr
They don't tend to go "round and round", really -- what usually happens is
that someone posts something that points out the obvious inequality in our
industry, wonders what to do about it, and the top-rated response is from
someone who is "tired" of the conversation (because we've _clearly_ exhausted
all the options, naturally!)
At least we're consistent.
I have very little patience for people who are tired of the conversation that
we never seem to have. There are no women in this industry. It's unnatural,
it's stifling, and it's a problem. And I think it's a situation where the wolf
is guarding the hen-house -- the chickens keep disappearing, but nobody knows
why! Whatever could it be?
One thing I've noticed amongst my female friends is that while they might get
interviews, they tend to be _rejected_ at a much higher rate than equally
qualified male applicants. Given how _completely idiotic_ and machismo-driven
the interview process is at most tech companies, it wouldn't surprise me at
all to find out that this is an industry-wide phenomenon.
Do I know this is a problem? No. But like most other latent sources of bias,
we'll never know if we stick our heads in the sand every time the subject is
raised.
~~~
JoeAltmaier
Perhaps you are simply younger and haven't been around as often. I am 50; I
have staffed-up multiple teams in the last 30 years; I have never managed to
get many female applicants much less hire them. I've solicited the local SWE
(Society of Women Engineers) chapter head; I don't even get a response. I've
contacted my sparse set of women colleagues from the past; never any interest
in changing jobs. Maybe its just me; but I to am tired of beating my head
against the wall.
~~~
luchak
If you can't hire any female engineers, part of the reason may be that you
don't already have any. This can be a huge red flag. Basically, most women
applying for the job want to have some assurance that they're going to be
respected and their concerns taken seriously, and the best way to demonstrate
that this is true is by having some women on your team. Otherwise, the
question just sits out there: why don't you have any? Is it coincidence, or is
there something wrong with your culture?
(Disclaimer: I'm a man, but I know a lot of female engineers. I obviously
can't speak for all of them, but I've noticed some trends.)
Many women in engineering are wary of situations in which they won't be taken
seriously.
For example: say there's one guy on your team who tends to patronize women,
especially ones he finds attractive. He might not realize he does this. You
have a female engineer who's getting fed up with this behavior, and tries to
gently (because she's experienced this before) point this out. He gets
defensive -- maybe he says she IS different than the other engineers, so it's
only natural, maybe he just gets angry, whatever -- but, whatever he does,
it's not an honest effort to improve. Later, she tries to bring this up with
someone else on the team, look for help, but to everyone else he's always been
a nice guy, so why is she making trouble?
Or let's say someone illustrates a presentation with some unfortunate images
or metaphors. (Where have we seen this before?) Nothing flagrantly
unconscionable, but, you know, kind of skirting the edge of acceptability.
This makes a female engineer uncomfortable -- the presentation marginalizes
her, makes her wonder if the team sees her as a colleague or an object of
desire. Now, she knows it's going to end badly, but she mentions that it made
her uncomfortable, and asks that everyone please try to avoid that mode of
presentation in the future. And suddenly everyone on the team is explaining,
no, he didn't mean in THAT way, the presentation wasn't REALLY about her --
well, if you hadn't marginalized her before, now you definitely have.
It doesn't have to be that way. But in some places, it is. I've talked to
women looking for software engineering jobs, and this is definitely something
that gets considered. Are other women willing to work there? Willing to stay?
Will they have anyone to back them up when shit happens? Because when the
answer is "no", life sucks.
That said, I don't know how you hire the first one. But you've got to be aware
of these things. You've got to make completely sure that you look like
someplace where women will be respected and taken seriously, not marginalized
and undermined. Because, if a good female candidate gets a whiff of that,
she's probably gone.
~~~
JoeAltmaier
I can't "already have any" when I'm hiring a team from scratch. With that
logic, only women could hire women engineers for a new project. Is this the
case? Do women have an easier time of hiring other women?
~~~
luchak
I tried to address this in the last paragraph of my post, but it's a hard
problem, and not one I know how to solve. Some of it, undoubtedly, also comes
down to timing, location, and luck.
But you're right, I should have a better answer to this question. I should
discuss it with my friends sometime and try to get a handle on it.
~~~
luchak
From a recent email exchange with a female software engineer (heavily
paraphrased):
Get to know some female engineers, if you don't already. Not necessarily as
potential hires, but as professional contacts. At that point, they may decide
they're interested in the jobs you have, or they may know women who are. If
they refer female candidates to you, their implicit endorsement will help your
credibility. It will be very hard to hire female engineers if you don't know
any.
------
patrickgzill
My sister was just about the only woman in her engineering classes at Cornell.
She was hired in the 70s (and continued doing consulting through the 90s) by a
designer of nuclear reactors doing programming, since she could understand
both the engineering side (steam valves etc) and the programming side - she
helped program the nuclear reactor control room simulator using Fortran.
Yet now she is a professor at a well-known university. The hours are easier,
pay is as good or better, excellent benefits.
Given that, why beg women to join in something that doesn't pay as well and
expects you to slave away during weekends and holidays when there is a crunch?
(edited to add: I think part of it may be that men (speaking generally) are
more in love with the works of their hands, even if it doesn't benefit them
directly; they can have pride in it years later. I am not sure that women
necessarily have the same attitude towards material objects.)
~~~
Tichy
You mean women typically have the choice between becoming programmers and
professors at well-known universities? Or in general, they don't become
programmers because other jobs they opt for pay better?
"I am not sure that women necessarily have the same attitude towards material
objects"
I suspect 90% of offerings on Etsy.com are from women? Haven't looked it up,
but I am pretty sure it is a large fraction.
~~~
cpr
Perhaps more women than men have the (good) instinct that making concrete
things with your hands is better than making abstract things in your mind?
~~~
Tichy
Better in what way?
------
patio11
An anecdote, make of it what you will: There are more female systems engineers
at in my row of cubicles in Japan than there were in my university (WashU).
(And most of my female classmates at WashU were either Korean, Chinese, or
Taiwanese -- as in, by passport, not by ethnicity.)
~~~
CWuestefeld
One more data point:
The team I manage has 9 people, 5 of whom are female. This was purely chance,
I'd swear that no preference was given based on any particular demographics.
One thing that makes this difficult is that this year and each of the previous
two, I've been one developer short for a significant period due to maternity
leave.
Add to this the extended vacations (2-3 weeks) that developers who immigrated
(from China and India) take to visit family, and it becomes clear that having
a diverse team makes scheduling our work quite a challenge.
~~~
patio11
You apparently share something in common with my boss, and I share something
in common with your employees.
A conversation that I've wanted to have a few times with my boss: Boss, I
understand that you think me taking two weeks off at Christmas is difficult to
schedule. If I can direct you to the calendar, boss, you will see that
Christmas is clearly marked on it in red ink. You see, it happens at the same
time of year... every year. Sort of like, I don't know, Chinese New Year,
Divali, etc etc. As you might recall, I was gone last year, and the year
before, too, always at roughly the same time. You might remember that in those
years, too, I sent you emails six months and six weeks in advance. You might
also recall that, when you asked me if there was anything I wanted added to my
employment contract at our first meeting two and a half years ago, I said
"Yes, I want it explicitly understood that I return home for two weeks every
year at Christmas."
So now it is three days before my annual vacation, the one time per year that
I see my family, and you believe you have discovered an urgent problem in the
schedule... to whit, that you have scheduled a project such that it cannot
possibly be completed without my presence these next two weeks. Ah hah. Well,
best of luck with that. I'll see you in the New Year.
~~~
CWuestefeld
I think you very much misunderstand me. If I was someone who would ask them to
cancel their trip, then the scheduling would be easy.
I like to think that my staff thinks that this is a good place to work, and
that I'm somebody good to work for. I've never asked somebody to cancel a
vacation; the farthest I go is to make sure everyone is aware of when deadline
pressure is _going_ to occur, and let them make their own decisions about
their own priorities. I fully subscribe to the idea "work to live, not live to
work".
And darn it, that's hard for me to do. The real world doesn't observe
someone's wedding on the other side of the planet, so our customers still have
needs, as does the rest of our company.
I make sure my people get their lives, but it costs me headaches and I get
flack when I have to tell others in the company that something will take more
time than they think is reasonable.
~~~
patio11
_Are_ you my boss? I got gruff about taking off three days to go to my little
brother's wedding, too! The new Mrs. McKenzie is a wonderful young lady. She
started dating my brother after I arrived in Japan. I had met her once before
the wedding.
Please continue talking about how the real world is giving you flack for the
grave sacrifices you are making here. I'll be sympathetic.
~~~
CWuestefeld
OK, since this got voted up 7 times, it seems I'm being dense. Can somebody
shed some light on where I'm missing something?
On the one hand, an employee asks if it's OK to take 2 weeks to go to her
brother's wedding in India. I say "sure, no problem".
And on the other hand, I'm getting pressure from the CEO for some new
features, and obviously losing one of 9 developers for 2 weeks impacts that,
so I have to tell the CEO that's she's got to wait a little longer.
Where am I getting things wrong, or being self-righteous or something?
~~~
Tichy
I can only speak for myself, but I find it a little bit difficult to
understand your point. You might as well "complain" (I know you are not
complaining, just stating facts) that employees need 8 hours of sleep, so you
have to tell the CEO that they can't work 20 hours per day on the new feature.
Or that humans can't multitask and work on two projects at the same time
(imagine that, you could get twice as much work done with the same personnel).
Humans have needs, so you have to take them into account. So "it makes it
hard" sounds weird - it just is what it is, it is not being made hard. You are
not losing a developer for 2 weeks, you never had that developer for those two
weeks to begin with. Just as you don't have a developer who can work on two
projects at the same time.
Perhaps employing more people might be an option?
------
JoeAltmaier
My niece entered Iowa State and resided on an all-women floor of the
dormitory. A good mix of freshman majors, medical and engineering and so on.
By the time she graduated, she was the ONLY technical major left (biomed). All
the other women had switched to journalism or Phys Ed etc. Why?
------
gcv
Philip Greenspun wrote a good essay on the subject.
<http://philip.greenspun.com/careers/women-in-science>
~~~
stcredzero
From Greenspun's article:
Having been both a student and teacher at MIT, my
personal explanation for men going into science is the
following:
- young men strive to achieve high status among their
peer group
- men tend to lack perspective and are unable to step
back and ask the question "is this peer group worth
impressing?"
Though, I would say that the ability to impress a peer group is often strongly
correlated with the ability to attract mates. Hence, we have an evolutionary
weakness for wanting to impress our peers. Unfortunately, there are peer
groups whose impression is negatively correlated with attracting mates.
~~~
jgrahamc
Oh yeah. Totally. Being a science nerd at high school made me real popular
with my peers.
~~~
yummyfajitas
I think it's pretty clear that being a science nerd did make you popular with
your peers:
[http://www.jgc.org/blog/2010/01/how-i-got-50000-page-
views-b...](http://www.jgc.org/blog/2010/01/how-i-got-50000-page-views-by-
simply.html)
Greenspun's claim is that you probably overvalue this popularity, whereas
women disproportionately would not.
~~~
jgrahamc
But those people weren't my peers at the time.
------
toisanji
My cofounder is a female with a PhD in computer science.
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
CBP says traveler photos and license plate images stolen in data breach - tlrobinson
https://techcrunch.com/2019/06/10/cbp-data-breach/
======
dang
Comments moved to
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20150688](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20150688).
------
jolmg
more commented duplicate:
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20150688](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20150688)
~~~
munk-a
Granted, that one is a buzzfeed article so :shrug:?
~~~
blairbeckwith
Buzzfeed News is fairly well respected among people who don’t immediately blow
off everything with the Buzzfeed name attached. Arguably more respected than
TechCrunch.
~~~
AtHeartEngineer
Source? I don't really trust either of those sites, I'll read it occasionally,
but usually more skeptically than other news sources.
------
ga-vu
Dupe, ffs:
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20150688](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20150688)
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
In some areas, USPS will soon email you scans of envelopes you get in the mail - cipherkittens
http://www.wired.com/2015/12/the-us-postal-service-will-now-email-you-scans-of-your-mail/
======
Albright
Can I click a button to immediately send junk mail to the trash?
Will the system heuristically learn which mail is junk and eventually start
routing it directly to the trash for me?
~~~
byoung2
[https://www.earthclassmail.com/home](https://www.earthclassmail.com/home)
This service can shred or recycle your mail at the click of a button, or send
it to you unopened. They can also open it and scan the contents, and if it is
a check, deposit it for you.
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
Work has started on the next generation of Apache web server - Tsiolkovsky
http://www.h-online.com/open/news/item/Work-has-started-on-the-next-generation-of-Apache-1203465.html
======
powertower
The 2.3 branch is a testing branch (that was alpha before 2.3.11, now is beta
after 2.3.11).
What we will see is 2.4 (general/public release). And it won't really be
stable / product-ready until about 6 months after: 2.4.8.
<http://httpd.apache.org/docs/2.3/new_features_2_4.html>
<http://httpd.apache.org/docs/2.3/developer/new_api_2_4.html>
The MPM for Windows is really great, it takes full advantage of the threaded
nature of processes on Windows ... You can spin up 100s of threads in 1
process without much of an impact and have each thread do 1 connection (with a
low 1 or 2 seconds keepalive to keep the client).
I'm mostly interested in Apache on Windows and have toyed around with the idea
of including v2.3 in my WAMP distribution (
<http://www.devside.net/server/webdeveloper> ) in the experimental branch,
with also some MySQL replacements such as MariaDB and Drizzle.
------
bnoordhuis
Apache hacker here. AMA.
~~~
kristofferR
Why is apache so slow compared to Nginx, Cherokee, Lighttpd and many other web
server softwares?
~~~
bnoordhuis
Different design goals. Apache is meant to be robust, extensible and portable.
* Robust: that's reflected in its internal API that makes it near impossible to leak resources.
* Extensible: witness the gazillion modules out there.
* Portable: compiles and runs on very exotic or outdated systems. SCO, IRIX, Digital UNIX, VMS, the list goes on.
nginx and such were designed from the ground up with performance in mind - and
with success - but the trade-off is a lack of portability and an API that is
much harder to program to.
~~~
kujawa
Well gee. It's been a while since I've used Digital UNIX, Irix, SCO, or VMS.
Because they've become totally irrelevant.
Seems like a waste of resources when there are more pressing things to do than
worry about the 5 people who (a) use VMS and (b) demand a bleeding-edge
Apache.
~~~
lambda
No need to be so acerbic. They are providing a valuable service to you, for
free. Apache is older, much more ubiquitous, supports more modules, has a more
familiar setup and configuration system for many people, runs on more
platforms, etc. It has more legacy issues, which are why it's so popular, but
also why it moves slower. Nginx is much newer, doesn't have the same legacy
issues, and so could afford to focus on speed.
There's a reason that Apache is installed on just about every random web host
you can find, and has a module for every language or environment you need to
deel with, while Nginx is a bit more of a specialty web server, usually used
for dedicated sites that can spend the time to tune carefully for the highest
performance. They both have their place.
It's great that Apache is still innovating moving towards loadable MPMs as
well as adding an evented MPM. But it's not a bad thing that they're moving
slower than a new server like Nginx; there's room for more than one great free
web server in the world.
------
justincormack
Interesting now lighttpd, nginx and apache are all going to have some degree
of integration of Lua in request processing. Its really useful having a real
programming language built right in.
~~~
brianm
Agreed, and lua is so nice to embed that it makes it easy. The only thing that
compares is tcl, and, well... Yeah, go lua!
------
IgorPartola
Does this mean that apache2 + the Lua support are going to be the next
node.js? On a more serious note, this is super-exciting.
~~~
compay
If you're interested in something like Node.js for Lua, check out Ignacio
Burgueño's LuaNode.
<https://github.com/ignacio/LuaNode>
------
sunkencity
One of the things that impresses me the most with apache httpd (except for
stability and configurability) is the amazing level of integration with perl,
not much of a perl hacker myself, but I've done a little development of C
stuff for apache, and from what I can see all of the C api is also accessible
from mod_perl.
------
megaman821
Apache has a lot of distance to make up. Nginx with PHP-FPM and uWSGI are very
fast and light on the memory. I also save time with my setup by not having to
configure both Nginx and Apache (since Apache is way too slow to serve static
content).
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
Warming Up to the Officeless Office - orky56
http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052702304818404577349783161465976.html?google_editors_picks=true
======
dsr_
Instant reaction: wow, I don't want to work for a company that would treat
anyone that way.
Second thought: why aren't these people working from home? What benefit is
seen from bringing them into a central location where they don't have any
space of their own to work in?
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
Migrated WordGap from Python to Go 1 - voidlogic
http://blog.zmxv.com/2012/03/migrated-wordgap-from-python-to-go.html
======
waterside81
We're going through the same thing right now. Porting a few thousand lines of
Python to Go. It's almost a line for line port, with the odd exception here or
there. One thing I really miss going to Go from Python is using getattr or
dict.get(some_key, default_value). Also tuples. And marshalling from a JSON
blob is kind of a pain in Go.
In fact, I started making a list of things Python devs need to know about when
switching to Go. It's all a tradeoff, you lose some expressiveness for
performance.
~~~
voidlogic
"It's all a tradeoff, you lose some expressiveness for performance."
Not only do you gain performance but I think you gain maintainability and
clarity. I value that when you read Go the run-time complexity of operations
is very clear. In many other languages you often find O(n) or worse operations
that appear to many programs in such a way the uninformed assume they are O(1)
operations. In Go that does not happen- almost always what you see is what you
get. I will gladly write a few more lines of simple code to gain clarity.
~~~
wging
Can you post an example?
------
viraptor
I'd like to see the before and after code. Such difference is not impossible
between languages, but it's possible that a better implementation/algorithm in
the original code wouldn't bring a similar speedup...
~~~
jerf
This is the sort of algorithm that really beats on CPython's weaknesses.
Strings are immutable, so you're sitting there and just creating little tiny
string object after little tiny string object, themselves made out of
characters that are fairly heavyweight. You could hope that PyPy or something
could work out how to optimize it, but I'm not sure PyPy would optimize around
the constant strings.
Meanwhile, since Go has true arrays, and since you can probably just assume
we're in English only and let byte[] substitute for real unicode, you can
write very nearly what you'd write in C, albeit more safely, and not be
creating string objects by the thousands, and it wouldn't be particularly
unnatural Go code. A 12x differential is very plausible. I'd believe you could
even go higher.
This is not to say that Go is awesome or that (C)Python is a bad language in
general. I like (C)Python. But it does have some bad cases in it if you need
lots of performance, fiddly little string algorithms and lots of numeric
computation being two of the big ones. (By which I mean numeric computation in
pure CPython, not with Numeric Python or PyPy.) In both cases the sheer rate
of object creation and destruction work dwarfs the real work being done.
~~~
earthboundkid
This gist of what you said was correct, but you made a few technical errors.
First of all, Go's strings are also immutable. To get around this, you can use
the []byte type, as you said, but Go is built with the assumption that all
text is UTF-8. Frankly, I find the suggestion that ASCII is good enough, even
for Americans, absurd.
Second, Python's "list" type and Go's slice type (what you're calling a "true
array") are almost the same under the hood. Both are variable length arrays.
(I'm not sure why Python calls it a "list" since it's not a linked list.) The
only major difference is that Python's lists are always filled with pointers
to the underlying objects. In Go, you have the choice of whether you want to
use pointers to the underlying objects or to put the objects into a contiguous
block of memory.
Speaking more broadly, there's no reason you couldn't use a lot of different
Go practices in Python and end up with much more efficient Python code: pre-
allocating lists of the proper size, for example, or making sure to use
mutable buffers instead of immutable str objects. However, Go makes it natural
to be concerned with these efficiencies, and Python makes it natural to ignore
them. Each language has its strengths.
------
pjmlp
It seems that Go is killing Python and Ruby projects instead of the languages
the original authors thought of.
While in the enterprise everyone is happy using the available set of
languages, on HN we continuously see posts about migrations from Ruby/Python
to Go.
------
NateDad
And the app engine only supports a single thread for Go, imagine if you could
make it multi-threaded.
~~~
phasevar
Multi-threaded wouldn't help the case of a single request, which is what this
post is reporting latency numbers on.
~~~
Encosia
Assuming he's searching a trie to build the list of anagrams, he could
distribute a single request's work over a thread per letter.
~~~
Evbn
If he has multi core, which is often missing in a VM.
------
tansey
If WordGap was written in pure Python, without the use of any matrix libraries
like numpy/scipy, then I think you could have done better. 7x speedup is
actually pretty low for algorithms that I've rewritten to use numpy.
------
bsaul
Rewriting any code in any language pretty much always show improvements.
Unless we're sure it's not a different data structure or algorithm it doesn't
mean that much.
~~~
kkowalczyk
Except it doesn't, not when improvement is so dramatic.
If he rewrote Python in Ruby, the perf would have been more or less the same.
If he rewrote in C, he would get even better perf but at much bigger cost (in
dev time).
The point of his article is that Go is almost as easy to write in as Python
but gives you 10x perf and that's why Go is attractive. It has the right
perf/coding effort ratio.
~~~
bsaul
i understand what you're saying, but my point is that even rewriting from
python to python would show improvement. i've just coded the same project
three times in different languages last year, and my design is getting better
every time, and it has (almost) nothing to do with the language themselves. a
benchmark is a much more reliable thing if you want to compare relative speed.
or a "pet store" app. but not a "real world" project. altough that's still a
really nice experience to read about.
------
kristianp
It would have been useful if there were some implementation detail. Did he go
from hashes in python to maps in go? Or switch to maps of structs for example?
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
Ask HN: ARM micro server colocation in U.S.? - hoodoof
I would like to buy an ARM based micro server that has a cable ethernet port and a 64GB SD slot and colocate it in the U.S.<p>Can anyone suggest such a machine (not a Raspberry PI please, I would like something with a case), and also if there are any companies that do colocation of micro servers?<p>thanks
======
johng
There are cases for the RPI.
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
Escher Waterfall Machine Solved - finemann
http://www.boingboing.net/2011/02/18/is-this-how-the-esch.html
======
MattJ100
Unfortunately the assertion that "liquid never touches B" is false (see a
surge in the flow at 1:06 that does reach it). Therefore I don't reckon the
break can be where they assume it to be.
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
How Poverty Taxes the Brain - jonbaer
http://www.theatlanticcities.com/jobs-and-economy/2013/08/how-poverty-taxes-brain/6716/
======
ritchiea
I can speak to this. For a while in 2010 I was completely broke after leaving
my first job out of college, which I hated, and having some other employment
opportunities fall through. Having that little money changes your decision
making process about absolutely everything. Obviously every financial decision
is effected, even the tiniest purchases weigh into bigger questions like "will
I have enough money in my bank account to pay rent on the first?" It can reach
a point where you can barely purchase a soda without any stress over spending
money. And at least for me who is fortunate enough that this was not a chronic
way of life, one thing that weighed on my mind was how I was spending my time
and whether I was doing enough to make sure I wasn't so broke all the time. I
could imagine that at some point that sort of thinking goes away and you
believe poverty is a way of life. But I can think of a variety of other meta
concerns stemming from poverty that could plague your thoughts.
Mentally poverty can be an all consuming condition. I've come to think of it
as comparable to programming in a high level language versus programming in a
low level language. If you're financially stable you are like someone
programming in a high level language who has tedious tasks like memory
management taken care of for you. Whereas if you live in poverty before you
can get to some of the really productive work you have some hurdles to
overcome.
Another way of thinking of the difference between being financially stable and
being poor is that if you are poor it is constantly a necessity to think about
short term outcomes first so your mind gets clogged up with them. It is very
difficult to get to think about your long term good because failing to
properly address your short term outcomes could end in complete disaster. This
is why I cannot take seriously comments like this on HN:
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6301856](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6301856)
although thankfully the commenter does acknowledge he is being cynical and
disrespectful.
~~~
msandford
I agree with a lot of what you're saying but one thing that's always bugged me
is how we account for sub-optimal decisions.
What I mean is that if I make 60k per year and I choose to spend very little
of it by driving an un-fancy car and cooking all my meals at home and living
in a small apartment (perhaps with a roommate) I might be able to save half my
net income. Or I could spend nearly all of that income on a bigger place,
nicer car and meals out. And then I would potentially be in the exact same
mental place as the person in poverty.
What if that gets scaled down to 20k instead of 60k? Is there still nothing I
can do to figure out a way to save money? Even if my cognitive load is high
due to being poor, which way does causation go? Maybe I consciously decided to
live in a bigger place and eat more meals out and as a result I now have more
financial worry.
I guess what I'm asking is which way does the causation go? Does being in
poverty cause you to become overloaded or does the inability to prioritize
well or think under stress cause the poverty? To me this question is neigh
impossible to answer because you can't look at a single decision or experiment
to determine the outcome.
My naive thinking about this kind of thing is that it's like a betting game.
With 50/50 odds you might be up some or down some but in the long run little
changes. A hundred $1 bets on a coin toss should leave you with just as much
money as you started with. But if the odds change, even just a tiny bit, the
outcome of a hundred bets gets really different. Having a slight edge on the
house, 51% instead of 50%, can cause you to slowly but surely come ahead of
the house. And similarly, going from 50% to 49% can cause you to slowly bleed
to death.
Now some math. A 50% chance of winning is the same as a 100% payout. For each
win you double your money, for each loss you get nothing. 51% is a 102%
payout. 49% is a 98% payout. We'll neglect the notion of a finite bankroll
since these are small bets; our bankroll is the full $100.
With 50% odds:
1^100 = 1 so you never make or lose money
With 51% odds:
1.02^100 = 7.24
With 49% odds:
0.98^100 = 0.133
Now of course I don't know how this game would scale to real life. Would a
person have only a few chances in a lifetime to make these kinds of "bets" or
do you get these chances several times a day? And what is the quantity of the
bet? Is it how much I spend, or how much I choose to spend versus my other
options of how much to spend?
For example if I feel thirsty I could choose to drink water from a drinking
fountain (free) or buy a soda ($2). Is the bet quantity $2 (how much I spend
or don't spend) or is it $1 because I either "double my money" (which is to
say, I don't spend the $2) or I "lose that bet" buy the soda and spend the $2.
I would tend to think it's a $1 bet.
Anyhow I'd love getting some kind of real feedback on the math here rather
than just "you're an asshole for not thinking those in poverty are victims"
~~~
slurry
If you're curious about causality could have saved yourself the trouble of
constructing these thought experiments by reading the abstract:
"[W]e examined the cognitive function of farmers over the planting cycle. We
found that the same farmer shows diminished cognitive performance before
harvest, when poor, as compared with after harvest, when rich. This cannot be
explained by differences in time available, nutrition, or work
effort...Instead, it appears that poverty itself reduces cognitive capacity."
[http://www.sciencemag.org/content/341/6149/976.abstract](http://www.sciencemag.org/content/341/6149/976.abstract)
Buying or not buying a soda seems like a plausible example arithmetically, but
in practice any personal budget that does not include a few small luxuries is
not a personal budget that anyone is going to follow. If it's not a soda it's
going to be a magazine or something else eventually.
Anyway, even if we concede arguendo that those now presently in poverty got
there by being stupid and drinking soda they couldn't afford or not finding
cheaper lodgings etc., if we somehow removed bad decision makers from the
population it wouldn't mean an end to poverty. It would just mean good
decision makers would find themselves in poverty. That's because we need at
least 5% unemployment to keep inflation at bay, with some number above that
underemployed and some number below that dropping out of the workforce
entirely. While those states could theoretically be transitory for everyone,
in practice they're going to be sticky for a large number. So even in a
population of 100% good decision makers you're still going to have some
poverty just so the central banks don't run up against NAIRU.
And then, if this paper is correct, those new poor are also going to start
having a hard time with congnitive tasks.
~~~
msandford
The argument wasn't that drinking soda caused poverty. It was a thought
experiment about the idea that a person's decisions are cumulative and that a
person could lean ever so slightly towards saving and slowly dig themselves
out of poverty, or ever so slightly towards spending and find themselves in
poverty. And that it wouldn't necessarily take hundreds of year for those
decisions to add up, that perhaps it could happen in a few years or a decade.
I definitely don't understand the link between unemployment and inflation.
Could you elaborate a bit how full employment causes inflation? I'm not being
purposefully dense; I just don't get it.
~~~
slurry
I know I characterized your argument a bit harshly. It's probably true? In
some cases? All? I don't know. The paper doesn't rule it out. It does purport
to show that causality does run the other way [as well].
Anyway, I just think it's important to keep in mind how much the macro
environment affects which bad decisions get punished and how much. The same
mistake that might have got you a nasty email from the boss in the late 90s
might have got you fired in the late 00s. The sorting effect you hypothesize
might happen, but there's significant variability in how harsh it is, at least
a portion of which we have control over.
As for inflation and unemployment, basically all mainstream economists agree
that there is something called NAIRU, the non-accelerating inflation rate of
unemployment. It's the rate of unemployment below which inflation starts to
accelerate. The Wikipedia article isn't very helpful but here it is:
[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/NAIRU](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/NAIRU)
and related:
[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Phillips_curve](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Phillips_curve)
Here are Excel files of historical NAIRU rates targeted by the Federal
Reserve:
[http://www.phil.frb.org/research-and-data/real-time-
center/g...](http://www.phil.frb.org/research-and-data/real-time-
center/greenbook-data/nairu-data-set.cfm)
Here is a paper on NAIRU (opening section is a reasonably good general
introduction) by Greg Mankiw, who is not my favorite economist but very widely
respected [pdf]:
[http://scholar.harvard.edu/files/mankiw/files/jep.ballmankiw...](http://scholar.harvard.edu/files/mankiw/files/jep.ballmankiw.pdf)
The section on why NAIRU exists basically concludes "nobody knows."
Unfortunately this is macroeconomics so there's a lot of just-becausing.
I'm not sure if it's a good theory or not but it's widely believed by
economists, especially central bankers. So if unemployment goes above a given
rate, which changes depending on circumstances (I think the latest estimate is
6.5%), they're going to tighten the money supply anyway so that growth and
especially job growth slow down.
So essentially, it's an unstated national policy in almost every country _not_
to have full employment.
~~~
msandford
Okay I'm glad to see that it's not something you espouse yourself necessarily,
but rather a phenomena that central bankers believe in and thus act
accordingly to. Macro stuff is weird and generally wrong IMO but I didn't go
through any formal economics. That might make me more qualified or less,
depending on your point of view.
At any rate thanks for helping me understand the NAIRU rather than just
calling me an idiot.
I agree completely that the macro environment is hugely influential. Saving
and frugality are beneficial at one interest rate or naive and foolish at
another. It's really strange how the "common sense" idea that you shouldn't
spend money you don't have is 100% true at 10% interest but only about 5% true
at 1% interest. Especially with inflation at a couple percent.
------
astine
This is a very interesting article, but the experiment, as described, doesn't
seem to back up the thesis. They show that people who have less money are more
taxed by financial questions, but that could just as easily be a cause not an
effect of poverty. (ie, it could back the notion that it's trying to refute.)
The article did mention a similar study in India where they tested people who
were seasonally poor, but it didn't mention whether their scores changed after
they received their harvests. That seems like the crucial point.
~~~
alanctgardner2
It totally does mention that their scores changed after they got the
harvest... they went up, presumably because the cognitive burden was gone.
Similarly, the experiment with car repairs of different expenses showed that
the cognitive impact is correlated to how 'bearable' an expense was: rich
people weren't impacted by a thousand dollar repair, but poor people suffered
an impairment that wasn't there when the repair was only $100. This is pretty
clear evidence that they didn't just pick a bunch of dumb poor people: the
poor people started performing worse when there was financial pressure. This
could probably be extended to test the impact of financial pressure on 'rich'
people: propose they're hypothetically unemployed, or disabled and see if this
has a cognitive impact. The problem is that rich people don't deal with that
kind of problem with any regularity, so they might be able to shrug off a
hypothetical situation.
------
dsq
Eric Blair (known to some as George Orwell) wrote two of the most biting
descriptions of the grind of poverty:
Down and out in Paris and London
[http://www.george-
orwell.org/Down_and_Out_in_Paris_and_Londo...](http://www.george-
orwell.org/Down_and_Out_in_Paris_and_London/)
The Road to Wigan Pier
[http://www.george-orwell.org/The_Road_to_Wigan_Pier/](http://www.george-
orwell.org/The_Road_to_Wigan_Pier/)
~~~
kenshiro_o
I read Down And Out In Paris and London and would recommend it to anyone who
wants to read a detailed account of how it was (and probably still is) to be
poor at Orwell's time.
I believe The Road To Wigan Pier must be quite similar although it will most
likely focus on British poverty. I think it is very hard to fully understand
poverty unless one has lived in such conditions for a prolonged period of time
as an adult (I don't know if they are any accurate studies on how it feels
like to be a poor child).
------
victoriap
>>low-income people who were primed to think about financial problems
performed poorly on a series of cognition tests
Wouldn't highly busy people with a lot of stuff to worry about such as startup
entrepreneurs, chief level executives also perform poorly on cognition tests?
Doesn't that prove that when your mind is busy at any level of Maslow pyramid,
cognition tests and other games become trivia to ignore?
So IMO, these results tell more on attitude towards cognition tests than
cognitive power. Au contraire, it can be argued that, people in need focus
more on what matters by ignoring noise including tests. So necessity is the
mother of positive change and maybe of innovation?
~~~
angersock
Have you ever tried to push code after not eating for three days because
paying taxes wiped you out?
It's a very different sort of distraction.
~~~
kstenerud
As a matter of fact, I have. Except that I still owed the taxman a lot of
money, and was hitting up everyone I knew for loans to keep him off my back
just a bit longer, all while working 16+ hour days, 7 days a week in an
incubator, trying to get a new business off the ground so that I could get
some money coming in and eventually pay everyone back. I learned a LOT of
lessons in frugality, and as of last year I'm finally in the clear, hopefully
forever this time.
It's a shitty situation, but it's not an insurmountable problem. Life ain't
fair and nobody owes you shit. You may not be responsible for the situation
you're in, but nobody's going to drag you out, so you have to drag yourself
out. Or just sit there and die. Your choice.
~~~
Daishiman
Good, you had the energy, youth and education to know how to acquire loans
without getting shorted, working 16 hours without preoccupation for other
things aside from your own well-being (your business very much counts as
that), and in the context of an incubator.
Now think of someone with little formal education who has been taught all his
life that there is not way to solve those issues because you don't know
_anyone_ who has gotten out of that shithole.
What motivation would you have?
People seem to underestimate how important is to have a glimmer of hope that a
situation is insurmountable. Sitting in a couch watching TV is not an
irrational response for spending _decades_ under that situation without any
possibility of clawing your way out.
------
padobson
_Now that all of these perspectives have come together, the implications for
how we think about poverty – and design programs for people impacted by it –
are enormous._
So you mean it might be a bad idea to endlessly complicate the tax code and
setup massive, complex bureaucracies all in the name of helping the poor?
There's a chance they might not have the cognitive bandwidth to traverse these
boondoggles designed to help them?
Simplicity will liberate as many or more people from poverty as generosity.
~~~
dragonwriter
> So you mean it might be a bad idea to endlessly complicate the tax code and
> setup massive, complex bureaucracies all in the name of helping the poor?
We don't do that in the name of helping the poor.
We do that in the name of _avoiding_ helping the undeserving (whether the
undeserving poor or others undeserving of the help), and/or in the name of
attempting to influence the behavior of the poor with "help" as an
encouragement for them to accept the influence.
_Accepting_ those kind of bureaucratic structures with those kind of
motivations is often a political compromise made with those otherwise
unwilling to help the poor in order to get some help to the poor, but helping
the poor isn't the motivation for those particular structures.
Its not the people that want to help the poor that oppose simpler options like
Basic Income.
------
tankenmate
This is really interesting when correlated with the arguments over WalMart
wages vs Costco wages; your average WalMart shop floor employee already has a
cognitive load issue "comparable to the cognitive difference that’s been
observed between chronic alcoholics and normal adults."
Makes you think twice about what you pay your employees. Also it guides
thinking on how employee benefits, like food available on campus, can benefit
your company; especially in the information worker realm.
------
heatherph
Isn't this essentially what Maslow's hierarchy states?
~~~
revelation
Who knows, it is made up stuff with no basis in legitimate research.
------
johnfuller
I imagine this could also be applied to startups running out of cash. Not only
do you have the stress of all the implications of running out of cash, but
getting more cash becomes the number one priority, over things that you would
otherwise be doing if you were flush. You might have to take on cash from
sources you would otherwise decline. You might have to start thinking about
doing client work. Fun stuff.
------
morgante
The experiment really doesn't match up with what they're saying. It's
certainly well studied that making difficult decisions taxes you mentally, and
it's not surprising that spending $1,500 is a more difficult decision for
someone with a lower net worth.
Where it falls apart is with the assumption that only the poor have to make
difficult decisions. If anything, wealthier people spend a lot more time
making decisions at work and receive commiserate cognitive load. Not sure
working at McDonalds requires you to make any decisions at all.
Even if we're going to pretend that financial decisions are the only decisions
in life, I still think the poor might expend less cognitive energy. Frequently
they are poor because they specifically avoid making financial decisions.
(Hence that's not a cognitive load.) On the flip side, people with more
significant assets have to make more significant/difficult allocation
decisions, etc.
~~~
ljf
Mental bandwidth is not just purely down to the decisions you make for
yourself, do you think working in McDonald's is not a stressful way to spend
your day? These days I have a pretty high stress job, but I know which rile
I'd rather be doing.
You also have to remember that for many people in a service role, that might
be the only job they could find and they don't have the chances we do to pick
and choose roles based on interesting projects.
------
unono
Poverty is a great opportunity for startups. There's huge pent up demand for
crowd sourcing of the Mechanical Turk variety. There's no real reason a person
shouldn't be able to work anytime, using just a smartphone, and earn a middle
class income. This is going to be huge next year, 2014 will be the year of the
crowd-work.
~~~
tluyben2
What kind of work are you talking about? I live in a village/province/country
with a very high unemployment rate for part of the year; I tried getting
people (esp youth) here in the village to do the work you suggest; it's simply
not possible. They cannot do it; not native English and the jobs which are out
there are either trivial for a computer to do meaning they pay literally cents
or too hard for them to do (correctly) even after training.
Yes, most US citizens with a smart phone (they were poor right, smartphone?)
and a few neurons could get to a level of a few $100/month doing jobs which
are or almost are doable by computers now. Check the HITs on mturk currently;
there are exactly these 2 categories; most of them are already doable (and
very easy as well) by computers and the rest is too hard for someone who is
not native English speaking or who is just not smart enough.
~~~
unono
The crowd-work industry is woefully immature at the moment. However, it's
potential is far greater, 1000000x or more.
The way to imagine it is that all work that gets done in the world could be
split up into pieces and coordinated by software. When there is a lot of this
crowd-work to go around, prices will rise and crowd-workers will earn a
reasonable income.
Much of enterprise software today is already this, the filling in forms and
systemic procedures. However, it hasn't been intelligently designed to be
distributed through the internet, instead having been mostly a transfer of pen
and paper forms into a computer.
Another type of crowd-work is of the physical variety, what amazon, uber,
task-rabbit do. There are complaints that these reduce wages, but I don't buy
that. There is pent-up demand for things that currently don't get done. For
example, I might hire someone to clean my house, but the current mechanisms
are too much effort. If there was an uber-like button to press, I might do it
every once in a while.
I could get carried away and talk about this for hours so I'll stop. But the
essential point is to reorganize all work through web and mobile interfaces,
have human -> computer -> human, instead of the inefficient human -> human
system.
------
Carltonian
I'm witnessing this tax first hand right, but the tax is in a more literal
sense. Some background: Right now my commute is about 35 minutes through
Southern California (I live in Riverside and drive south to the Inland
Empire). On Tuesday, my car was totaled. I was in the middle lane on a 3 lane
highway when I saw someone coming up behind me a couple of miles before my
exit, so I got over to the slow lane. Right as the car behind me was passing
me in the middle lane, their tire exploded, spinning them into me, and
spinning me across the freeway into the center divider.
This crash is an example of just how much money not having money costs. It
wasn't an issue of the driver's unsafe driving, but of the driver's unsafe
vehicle due to poor maintenance. Well, that driver doesn't even have
insurance, let alone money to fix their balding tires. For now I'd agree with
anyone that says it's their fault for driving it, because that's my
insurance's stance and that's the stance that gets me reimbursed for my
vehicle, but I can't help but see how if they wanted to fix the initial
problem of poor maintenance and no insurance, then they'd need money, so
they'd need to drive to work...
But it gets worse. My car handled the crash like a new car should. I was safe.
I got a little whiplash but I felt fine and was back to work that day. Her
car, much older than mine, flipped (exploding tires are about as bad as a car
accident can get - keep up on your treads and watch the air pressure in the
summer folks!) and she left the scene unconscious in an ambulance. Now I don't
know what the statistics are, but my bet is if you don't have car insurance,
you're note likely to have medical either. So this woman, who started too
broke to replace her tires, now has whatever legal trouble one gets for not
having insurance, has no drivable vehicle, huge medical bills, and whatever
suit my insurance files against her.
Me, I'm fine, but I'm without a car (and I opted out of the rental car
coverage, and she has no insurance to reimburse me for one), so in the name of
frugality I start taking the bus. I go against traffic on my daily drive, so
there aren't many routes, but there is one. It makes 93 stops between Downtown
Riverside and my place of work. It takes about 2 hours 15 minutes with walking
time. That's over an hour and a half longer than my commute driving. I'm on
the bus with a few other people who make the same trip. Right now my life
consists of waking up, walking to the bus, sitting on the bus, going to work,
walking back to the bus, taking it home, walking home, eating a small meal,
and going to bed to repeat the process tomorrow. Not to mention last night the
bus was 2 hours late because of flash floods in Riverside. I got home after my
bed time. Everyone this morning was taxed by pretty much all definitions of
the word. Night class? Studying for that certificate to get a promotion?
Reading a fucking novel? Ain't nobody got time for that.
~~~
homosaur
You do have time to read, though. You just stated you have 2 hours on a bus.
~~~
Carltonian
True, and I'm already 10 chapters into Moby Dick, but it's just not the best
environment for that. It feeds back into the article. There's a reason
studying is synonymous with a quiet place, or with people also studying with
you. Doing it under less ideal circumstances than that creates overhead on
your attempts to "get ahead" that people with means do not have to deal with.
Not making excuses for myself, I am of means, but I can definitely see how an
uphill situation quickly becomes a complete vertical situation.
~~~
dllthomas
I've been making some good progress coding on the bus, fwiw... but a new,
light-ish laptop with battery life certainly helps with that, so that's more
an argument for why more people with means should be taking the bus more
rather than any kind of dismissal of your thesis.
~~~
Carltonian
(Sorry for the late reply) I spent too much time over the past few months
putting a budget together, and I'm about to head back to school to finish the
last year of my degree while working, after which I'm likely getting married,
so I'm being frugal. My response to my car crash was, "get through this
spending as little money as possible. Also make going without a car hurt so
that paying for rental car coverage next time is easier". I also thought the
ordeal would be handled by my insurance by last Friday, but the police report
hasn't been finished and is holding everything up.
As for the laptop, I've got a Samsung Chromebook (the small, ARM one) running
Ubuntu and I recommend it. It's ARM, which makes getting things running a bit
hard, and it's not the beefiest, so if you want to wait for the new ones this
year that will likely be x86 and beefier for $250, you can do that too. I
don't take it on the bus though. That was the first bit of advice I got from
someone else on the bus.
~~~
dllthomas
_" Also make going without a car hurt so that paying for rental car coverage
next time is easier."_
On the flip side, I like to make sure I can get by without a car. Of course,
my understanding is that's a whole ton easier up here (Bay Area) than down
there.
Congrats on the impending nuptials!
------
smtddr
This makes perfect sense. If you're all stressed out trying to figure out if
you'll have next month's rent or how you're gonna eat this week, you won't
have the mindset to read a good book, consider how to improve your life in the
long term or just relax your mind with some smooth jazz.
A sorta near-topic question.
How often do people check their bank account balance? I've been told I'm odd
for not checking at least once a week. Do people who have more money not
bother checking it? I only check once a month, when I'm about to pay my
mortgage. Sometimes not even then, which means I don't know what my balance is
for 2 months.
~~~
ljf
I am OK off these days, but have never really considered myself rich, but I go
months without checking my bank account or even credit card bill. I don't need
to as I simply know that I am spending less than I earn. Even at university
when I had £5000 too live on in London, I rarely checked.
I come from a frugal family, so I always consider before I buy something. But
even for larger purchases I just know what's in my savings roughly and go for
it. It helps that while I've not been commanding very high wages, I have been
employed consistently since I left university 14 years ago.
------
nwhitehead
This is a good paper but I believe it is misinterpreting the results. There is
strong evidence that people have a limited capacity for making tough
decisions. This "willpower" or "bandwidth" gets used up as decisions are made.
I think the right interpretation of the results of the experiments is that
fixed price decisions are tougher decisions for poorer people than for richer
people. This interpretation would differ from "poverty impedes cognition" in
the decisions of richer people to bigger price tag scenarios. I would expect
asking richer people about what they would do if their house were destroyed in
a plausible way not covered by their insurance would induce a similar
cognitive impairment.
------
jes
This article made me think about David Allen's Getting Things Done (GTD)
system / methodology.
One of the ideas in GTD is that by getting organized and using a trusted
reminder system, you free up some subconscious processing capacity.
I have found GTD to be helpful.
------
BetaCygni
Doesn't the fact that they scored the same on the first tests actually prove
that being rich or poor doesn't matter in practice?
If you give someone a problem to solve and then another one of course he will
still be busy with the first. For rich people it's a simpler problem so they
solve it quicker.
Of course it's possible to end up in a negative spiral. It's up to society to
provide for people on a sufficient level that they can lift themselves up if
they are able to.
------
rsiqueira
TL;DR: Poor people are 13 IQ points below non-poor because they spend "brain
bandwidth" thinking about their poverty instead of doing other brain
activities.
------
jobu
There was a recent article on LinkedIn that talked (anecdotally) about the
same taxing on the brain for people that have limited time
([http://www.linkedin.com/today/post/article/20130627224702-13...](http://www.linkedin.com/today/post/article/20130627224702-13780238-a-harvard-
economist-s-surprisingly-simple-productivity-secret))
------
ALee
This list by John Scalzi seems to help us figure out the actual aspects that
take away cognitive volume:
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1712493](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1712493)
In general, it makes sense, since a lot of behavioral research shows that
making too many decisions takes away our power to make other decisions and
cognitive power.
------
jrn
I think their experiment may be an example of prospect theory in action. And
relative utilities/loss aversion.
[http://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Prospect_theory](http://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Prospect_theory)
------
bobbinsIII
it might be interesting once it is independently replicated several times.
~~~
bobbinsIII
why downvote this? the rational response to yet another psychologal 'priming'
study is extreme scepticism.
~~~
crusso
Some political/philosophical frameworks are extraordinarily resistant to frank
discussion. Down-voting and shouting-out are the way that proponents of those
frameworks deal with any uncomfortable questions that may at all detract from
their presupposed conclusions.
Even though your comment was really innocuous, it implied that maybe the study
was wrong. Maybe hard work and intelligence are the prime factors in success
vs what happens to be in your bank account at the moment. Some people can't
handle even that implication.
------
joshdance
I think this is related to the research that your willpower and energy is
limited. When you have to make tough decisions over the course of the day you
get run down, and start making worse decisions.
------
GigabyteCoin
Who'd of thought?
Just keep the majority of your people poor/starving/wanting, and they'll have
no time to contemplate how to overthrow your regime.
What a concept.
------
colmvp
I wonder if being ugly taxes the brain too, as ugly people probably have sex
less than average to beautiful people.
------
mabhatter
yeah, they just proved Maslow's hierarchy of needs from another angle.
------
theorique
What is correlation and what is causation?
Is it possible that less intelligent people are shunted (through education,
etc) into lower-paying jobs? Thus, it becomes a self-fulfilling prophecy.
~~~
smallish
You are suggesting that maybe poor people just have lower IQ, but this study
doesn't support that.
It shows that cognitive performance between rich and poor is the same when
they're asked questions which both groups consider easy and/or non-stressful.
~~~
bobbinsIII
the cognitive performance between rich and poor was the same in the sample
they looked at (using their specific test). we know that is not true in
general -- richer people are smarter on average.
~~~
smallish
Good point. What I mean to say is that the question of "who's smarter, rich or
poor?" is not relevant to the study in question, and can't explain the
results.
------
venomsnake
Being poor is a full time job. I have fasted for weeks without problems and
yet on the one occasion in the last 20 years where I was unable to buy food
for three days the hunger was severe and overwhelming - the experiences had
nothing in common.
The cognitive load I have seen on friends struggling with poverty is immense -
they are permanently mentally exhausted of all the hard decisions and
complicated math needed to make the income last longer. When I was with a
friend out buying groceries figuring out the correct amount of baby formula
diapers and detergent to buy took half an hour (yeah I offered to helped with
the bill, was rejected) and the amount saved compared to just throwing stuff
from the shelf in the cart was less that 10% of the total.
Edit: Here is an idea for a product - easy to use program that balances the
budget as good as possible while taking into account the unique challenges
that struggling people are faced with.
~~~
michaelfdeberry
> Here is an idea for a product - easy to use program that balances the budget
> as good as possible while taking into account the unique challenges that
> struggling people are faced with.
It's a good idea, but saving money often has an up front cost and I think an
app to help the poor would fall into that category.
The people that would end up benefiting from such an app would be people that
could afford to purchase a device to run the app.
~~~
mkr-hn
I think venomsnake's choice to use "program" instead of "app" was intentional.
Most people have access to a computer at the library or even an aging
Dell/Compaq that they bought when times were better. This hypothetical program
sounds like something that could run inexpensively on AWS and save to Dropbox
(like fargo.io).
------
amerika_blog
Actual article:
[http://www.sciencemagazinedigital.org/sciencemagazine/30_aug...](http://www.sciencemagazinedigital.org/sciencemagazine/30_august_2013?sub_id=0dfUZ0WPCi6D&folio=976#pg76)
Posting this does not necessarily convey agreement.
------
crusso
It's odd how HN upvotes both articles about learning how to think as well as
articles that claim that people are doomed to their financial circumstances
because of externalities.
It's a strange schizophrenia in a community pursuing entrepreneurialism.
~~~
floobynewb
Where you say schizophrenia you probably mean split personality disorder. I am
not even bothering to re-read your first sentence because of your perpetuation
of this horrendous misuse of language.
~~~
foobarbazqux
Actually you're talking about the medical definition whereas he's using the
colloquial definition. I agree that the mismatch is unfortunate and
perpetuates stereotypes about the medical definition, but he isn't wrong to
use the word like that, according to the dictionaries I've checked.
------
schoper
No it doesn't. I've been poor. There is no 1 standard deviation IQ penalty.
"The finding further undercuts the theory that poor people, through inherent
weakness, are responsible for their own poverty..."
Again, no. The poorer members of our society have more limitations on average.
This is usually IQ, but will often be something like physical disability (ie.,
blindness), ugliness, or poor socialization, inherent or learned. This does
not mean that it is all right to construct a society without full employment
or universal healthcare. But if people trying to help the poor continue to be
taken in by the above belief, they are never going to get anywhere.
~~~
DanBC
> > are responsible for their own poverty...
> no. The poorer members of our society have more limitations [...] like
> physical disability.
I hope I haven't mangled your words too badly. But I'm a bit confused - are
you saying that people are responsible for being blind and thus are
responsible for being poor?
~~~
schoper
It's not a moral calculus, Dan.
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
Run Windows and Linux without virtualization - sant0sk1
http://www.linux.com/feature/131753
======
t0pj
I'm not able to reimage my desktop PC at work due to draconian IT policies
(darned support and compatibility).
I really would love to completely rid myself of WinXP and replace it with
Ubuntu. However, this looks like a good compromise for the time being. I have
administrative access to my PC and can use Ubuntu in "stealth mode".
I am going to download and install this cute little puppy ASAP!
Thanks for the link!
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
Lenovo UEFI Only Wants To Boot Windows, RHEL - mtgx
http://www.phoronix.com/scan.php?page=news_item&px=MTIyOTg
======
Munksgaard
That's unfortunate, but judging from Lenovos tweet[0], it could be a mistake,
and they're looking into it.
[0]: <https://twitter.com/lenovo/status/268962425917816832>
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
Should LOPSA "lead the march" to DevOps? - MPSimmons
http://www.standalone-sysadmin.com/blog/2013/07/a-considered-reply-to-mark-burgess/
======
beat
Wow, that's a lot of different directions all in one discussion!
Anyway, it seems to me that DevOps is more about management than technique. It
starts with management giving permission and direction for development and
operations teams to work closely together. Once the wall comes down, then
technical improvements can be made. But first and foremost, it requires direct
management support, particularly in large, complex organizations where
development and operations are separated by several layers of management.
~~~
MPSimmons
What do you think the right way is to start that transition?
_edit_
I should say that I'm on the Ops side, and in the past, I've been in what
would have been a very good candidate organization for a DevOps environment. I
just always had problems convincing the developers to share information with
me, and I could get them to have no interest in anything that I was doing.
I guess I didn't know how to broach the gap.
~~~
beat
That gets to where I said management needs to give not only permission, but
direction. Most developers have no clue about operational needs, and don't
really want one, and they can be very resistance. And vice versa for ops
staff. So it's not enough for management to just get out of the way - there
will be some pushing to do, and lots of Corncob antipattern issues.
I've spent most of my career as what a colleague called a "one man devops
team", basically serving as a sympathetic liaison to both sides. The root
cause of the problem is organizational walls between dev and ops, but the
industry-wide result is a sort of mutual distrust and even contempt.
------
ke4qqq
If it doesn't, then LOPSA will rapidly become irrelevant IMO. Times are
changing, and just like the move to x86 servers, and virtualization, the
DevOps culture and it's resulting tools are an inevitable shift.
~~~
WDennis
I think you mean "remain irrelevant"... 10 years in and what has LOPSA to show
for itself... Hopefully it can _become relevant_ by taking a leadership
position on something like this.
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
Ask HN: Stripe Atlas alternative that's more suitable for lifestyle businesses? - arikr
For example, one that allows LLC setup in your state so that you don't have to pay Delaware state fees in addition to your state<p>Does it exist?
======
kjksf
It's unclear what it is you think Atlas gives you and therefore what you would
consider an alternative.
If you're in US, you can accept Stripe Payments without a company. You can
accept money in your own name or by registering DBA and using that as a name.
Stripe Atlas automates creating an LLC for exceedingly low price.
If you're in US it would be hard to find a better deal but if you really don't
want to spend $500 on Atlas then you can do all they do manually. It won't be
free, there are fees you have to pay anyway. And figuring out what paperwork
to submit and filling it out (without paying some professional for advice)
will be painful.
Atlas is most attractive for people outside US that want a US identity because
Stripe Payments (and others) don't support merchants in every country.
------
endlessvoid94
Is there anything aside from the Delaware fees for an LLC that you think Atlas
should improve upon?
~~~
arikr
It seems particularly focused on high growth startups, which makes me feel
like it's less suitable for smaller and slower growing cash flow type
businesses. But I may be wrong.
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
Free Hotel Wifi with Python and Selenium - janvdberg
https://gkbrk.com/2018/12/free-hotel-wifi-with-python-and-selenium/
======
danilocesar
There might be an easier workaround for this:
Some hotspots only blocks new TCP connections when that time expires. So I
used this workaround a few times in the past:
You open an SSH connection with -D 1337 so it creates a local SOCKS proxy. You
need to keep that connection opened.
Then you go to gnome/kde/chrome/whatever and define a global SOCKS proxy to
localhost:1337. By doing this, all your new TCP/UDP requests will go through
that connection, and the router won't see them as new TCP/UDP connection.
It used to work for some airports and those 20-minutes-free wifi hotspots. But
honestly I don't remember last time I had to use it. Nowadays I use mainly 3G
on Brazilians airports and, when traveling abroad, I don't remember last time
the airport didn't provide a unlimited free wifi.
~~~
VBprogrammer
Another fun one I discovered that on Virgin trains (UK train company) first
class get free WiFi. By sitting in the nearest standard class carriage I could
manually associate with the access point in first class.
Some hotels have weird setups like free WiFi in the lobby but you have to pay
in the room. That trick probably works there, at least for some of the rooms.
~~~
datanut
It's also worth trying to login to the free wifi in the lobby and roam to the
guest room. Often works a treat!
------
wdroz
With a DNS tunnel, you can achieve "free Wifi" almost everywhere. Iodine[0] is
easy to setup.
[0] [https://github.com/yarrick/iodine](https://github.com/yarrick/iodine)
~~~
IncRnd
Shades of Kaminsky!
How usable is the speed on this?
~~~
cyberpunk
I just did a little test with iperf:
Over my 4g connection to the 'server' box I get this:
[ 3] 0.0-12.4 sec 1.00 MBytes 676 Kbits/sec
Via an iodine tunnel:
[ 3] 0.0-10.1 sec 178 KBytes 144 Kbits/sec
I did try and hit up fast.com from a ssh -D proxy over the tunnel, but it
didn't seem to like that very much.
~~~
IncRnd
Thank you!
------
driverdan
If you encounter paid WiFi that requires a credit card try the Visa test card
number 4111111111111111, cvv 123, and any future exp date. I've seen it work
at multiple hotels.
------
brunoTbear
I thought this was going to be a cool kit for brute-forcing room number/last
name pairs which seems to be an increasingly common hotel wifi auth method.
My guess is most hotel wifi access pages lack anti-automation (I've seen
CAPTCHA on airplane wifi, but never hotel wifi) and there are enough
Smiths/Lopezes/Kims/Lis out there that if you try each of those against every
room number (100-1000) you could reasonably get free wifi in minutes. An
optimization could include changing MAC address between each attempt to defeat
rate limiting on the part of the access point.
~~~
StavrosK
> there are enough Smiths/Lopezes/Kims/Lis out there that if you try each of
> those against every room number (100-1000) you could reasonably get free
> wifi in minutes
_Stolen_ wifi, since someone will end up getting charged for it.
~~~
scrollaway
These gateways almost always let you pay for wifi inline. The name/room guards
are for people who get complimentary wifi.
Honestly though I stopped going to hotels that don't offer complimentary wifi
and breakfast. That means no Hilton or Marriott. All Holiday inn hotels I've
dealt with have been scores nicer than the "high end" crap Hilton pretends to
be.
~~~
moftz
Right, you always get nickeled and dimed more at the higher end places because
they just assume you can afford it. However not all Hilton places suck. Hilton
Garden Inn is pretty good, free breakfast, free wifi, and the rooms are nice.
I've been staying in Courtyard Mariotts for work lately. No free breakfast but
the rooms are nice.
~~~
scrollaway
Thanks for the heads up on garden inn. I will give them a chance next time I
see them.
Courtyard was a bit better but I got a similar experience as the Hilton. 5
dollar water bottles in the room, nickel and diming all over the place.
My understanding is that it's not just that you can afford it, it's that these
places cater heavily towards corporate stays, so the guest is usually not the
one paying.
Holiday inn breakfasts are a bit worse quality but I've always been treated
with utmost respect as a guest there, so they get my business. Room size is
something I don't usually care about as long as there's a desk.
~~~
dahdum
I’m in a Garden Inn now, never been in a bad one but always seem overpriced to
me.
I was pretty impressed with Home2 suites, usually just a bit more than
Hampton. No omelette bar but otherwise nice breakfasts with microwaveable
sandwiches, and the snacks are pretty cheap instead of $5/water.
------
kkarpkkarp
Most of hotels TVs are connected to ethernet cables. Travel always with your
own router, disconnect cable from TV and connect to router. You have free
internet
~~~
Pawka
Wow never thought about that. Have you tried that? Just curious if it is
possible reach servers outside hotel's network?
~~~
Havoc
Yup. The eth often has even less security on it than wifi
------
qwerty456127
The whole idea of non-free hotel WiFi is ridiculous. It's like charging extra
for tap water you use. It can only make sense if the hotel is really really
cheap.
~~~
celticninja
I have found that the more expensive the hotel is to stay at, the greater the
chance they charge for wifi/internet access. At cheap hotels they use it to
attract customers, at expensive hotels they use it to gouge the customer for a
little more. It is usually because expensive hotels know that people staying
there for work will expense it, so there is little cost for the user in those
situations but the hotel gets some extra income.
~~~
qwerty456127
> I have found that the more expensive the hotel is to stay at, the greater
> the chance they charge for wifi/internet access.
A curious observation. Thanks. I'm not really informed about expensive hotels,
almost everything I know is about the middle segment.
> At cheap hotels they use it to attract customers
At the hotel market of the region I know guests wouldn't even consider booking
a hotel that doesn't list free WiFi (unless it's really fantastic in other
aspects and/or unbelievably cheap) and they would put submit a negative review
if they came and there was no free WiFi (even if it wasn't advertised and
they've just didn't notice), it's like if there was no free water in the WC.
> but the hotel gets some extra income.
And the guest gets some extra headache with authentication and billing instead
of just turning WiFi on and using it.
~~~
tertius
Upsell is real.
------
yakshaving_jgt
You can achieve the same thing (minus the Selenium part) on MacOS with this:
[https://jezenthomas.com/free-internet-on-
trains/](https://jezenthomas.com/free-internet-on-trains/)
I would paste the code snippet, but it doesn't format nicely on HN.
~~~
omaranto
Indent with four spaces:
function remac {
sudo /System/Library/PrivateFrameworks/Apple80211.framework/Resources/airport -z
sudo ifconfig en0 ether $(openssl rand -hex 6 | sed 's/\(..\)/\1:/g; s/.$//')
sudo networksetup -detectnewhardware
echo $(ifconfig en0 | grep ether)
}
EDIT: Two spaces is enough.
~~~
majewsky
Two spaces indentation is enough afair.
~~~
omaranto
Let me check:
function remac {
sudo /System/Library/PrivateFrameworks/Apple80211.framework/Resources/airport -z
sudo ifconfig en0 ether $(openssl rand -hex 6 | sed 's/\(..\)/\1:/g; s/.$//')
sudo networksetup -detectnewhardware
echo $(ifconfig en0 | grep ether)
}
EDIT: Yep! Two is enough. Thanks!
------
peterburkimsher
I did the same when visiting Taizé in France, whose free WiFi only lasted for
15 minutes at a time! The Terminal command on a Mac, for WiFi, is:
sudo ifconfig en0 ether xx:xx:xx:xx:xx:xx
At CERN in Geneva I had a different problem: MAC addresses are registered to
staff. My dad retired, and his Thunderbolt Ethernet adaptor was still
registered. When I plugged it into my laptop, I not only got his MAC address,
but also his device name! My shell started calling my computer a different
name!
If you're afraid to use Terminal, you can also install the MacSpoofer
preference pane:
[http://www.macspoofer.com](http://www.macspoofer.com)
~~~
darkarmani
That's because your mac is configured to accept the hostname given to it via
DHCP. You can change that setting if you don't like it.
------
nobody271
Isn't this a felony? No seriously. I believe the law is phrased like "if you
use a network in a way that it was not intended to be used". It's one of those
laws that everyone is guilty of, and people even write blog posts bragging
about doing it, but it will be used to bring someone down when they have no
other charges that will stick.
~~~
tkel
CFAA wording is unauthorized access of a _computer_, not a network.
~~~
wwweston
What network equipment these days might not reasonably be described as a
computer, even a pretty powerful one by the standards of the time the CFAA was
written?
And even if _you_ don't think that's reasonable, how confident are you that a
prosecutor couldn't convince a judge and/or jury it is?
------
pvtmert
if you use linux and network-manager, check "random mac" box for that
connection,
add post-connection-hook to `curl` with post data; use $RANDOM for mail
address, even use [email protected] probably it will
authenticate you.
------
deanclatworthy
If you want to go a step further, you can also use some more nefarious tools
to gather mac addresses of clients on the paid network, spoof them and steal
their connection. Not that I've ever done that.
~~~
bronco21016
I’ve always been curious about this. What happens when that other authorized
MAC is also attempting to connect?
------
conqrr
Cant wait to try this on an international flight of 14 hrs. Emirates only
gives 2hrs of connectivity/20mb, so will have to do a lot of resets and on an
android phone as well.
~~~
sleepyhead
Please don't. Data on the connections that a flight uses is not cheap and
speed is slow. Other passengers would have a worse experience if someone
exploits data usage.
~~~
conqrr
I wasn't thinking about the narrow bandwidth available and actual costs. You
are right, i am changing my mind since it doesn't seem ethical.
~~~
pnutjam
You'll probably run out of it's in the DHCP scope anyway.
------
trishmapow2
Expected something a bit more than a basic MAC change. But I guess simple
things work best sometimes - I used to do this on Wi-Fi trains that had a 20MB
limit.
------
sytelus
This is even more useful on international airports many of which only allow
1hr of free wifi. Are there any macchanger equivalents for Windows as well?
~~~
pizza
You can use Powershell on Windows I think: [https://docs.microsoft.com/en-
us/powershell/module/netadapte...](https://docs.microsoft.com/en-
us/powershell/module/netadapter/set-netadapter?view=win10-ps)
You could just call a process from within python that sets it that way
------
pizza
One time I was stuck in Jomo Kenyatta International Airport for 9 hours for a
layover and wrote a similar script, macchanger and all :)
~~~
mosselman
Writing such a script was probably more fun than what you did with the
internet connection afterwards :).
------
pbhjpbhj
The article links
[https://wiki.archlinux.org/index.php/MAC_address_spoofing](https://wiki.archlinux.org/index.php/MAC_address_spoofing)
Which says that systemd-networkd can be set to spoof MAC but "needs a reboot",
does it really need a reboot or is restarting (or ifdown, reload, ifup)
enough?
~~~
Pawka
ifdown and ifup is enough.
------
cybernoodles
XFinity does the same MAC address-based validation, and it can be changed
relatively easily on Linux or Windows. As for Mac, a simple script like this:
[https://github.com/chrislgarry/XFinityHotspotSpoofer](https://github.com/chrislgarry/XFinityHotspotSpoofer)
------
scarface74
With all of the major carriers offering “unlimited data” in the US, I don’t
even bother with WiFi anymore.
~~~
na85
Question from a non-American. Why did you put "unlimited data" in scare
quotes? Is it not actually unlimited?
~~~
scarface74
It is unlimited but the carriers either throttle the data after you use over a
certain number of gigabytes, meaning they slow your data down after $x
gigabytes or they “deprioritize” your data. Meaning that if you use over $y
gigs and your local tower is congested, your data may be slowed down to
prioritize other users.
For T-mobile, they deprioritize your data at 55GB. I’ve never seen it in
practice. My older son who doesn’t live with us uses his phone as his only
internet connection and easily uses 80GB+ a month. We were at an extended stay
for 6 months while we were waiting for our house to be built, and we were
going through 70GB each between my younger son using tethering for his PS4 and
us using our phones as hotspots for an AppleTV.
~~~
slfnflctd
YMMV. I had one of the old grandfathered AT&T 'unlimited' plans. Within a
short time after they stopped offering this plan to new customers, we started
hitting a _hard_ throttle at around 10 GB or something ridiculous like that.
Once we hit it (after about two weeks at that time), it made the internet
practically unusable for the rest of the billing cycle. Forget about streaming
music or games - let alone video - there was a long wait even for text sites
to load.
We have since changed plans and I have been leery of the u-word ever since.
------
s_luis
Almost 2019 and we still have to fight these abusive charges. Nice, elegant
way to work around it!
------
otobrglez
I built this little script a few years ago if someone finds it useful. Works
for MAC and it changes your MAC address. ~>
[https://github.com/otobrglez/mac_changer](https://github.com/otobrglez/mac_changer)
------
Cenk
For OS X there’s a nice little menubar app called LinkLiar:
[https://halo.github.io/LinkLiar/](https://halo.github.io/LinkLiar/)
------
Spacemolte
I think i expected something more advanced, but in reality I really love how
simple/few lines of code such a task can be accomplished. It's a great
reminder to keep things simple.
------
mettamage
Simple, effective, I'm surprised this works in this day and age.
------
crstin
Under macOS, you can do as follows:
[https://www.crstin.com/en/mac-spoofing/](https://www.crstin.com/en/mac-
spoofing/)
------
imglorp
The macchanger idea also works at other free-ish wifi places like Panera
Bread: your session is limited to about a half hour. New MAC, new session...
------
rootsudo
You don't even need Python or Selenium anymore, Windows 10 includes a built in
MAC changer from Device manager.
------
Beefin
My question is how did he/she know that it was the MAC address that the WiFi
used ?
~~~
Illniyar
"And a router tells devices apart is by their MAC addresses"
There is no other identifiable information a router can get out of a device
without authentication
~~~
pbhjpbhj
That sounded wrong to me (I like a challenge), and of course some clever guys
have already been and got at least 94% success at remote device
fingerprinting.
See p.1702 and use of carrier frequency offset (CFO) for fingerprinting, this
paper discusses other methods and auth of AP/devices too;
[https://www.cs.ucr.edu/~zhiyunq/pub/infocom18_wireless_finge...](https://www.cs.ucr.edu/~zhiyunq/pub/infocom18_wireless_fingerprinting.pdf)
.
------
dpx
Will changing MAC work if there is a password for login for internet for 2
hours?
~~~
LadyCailin
Not if the password is unique for you, and they key it off of use of that
password. Then they just deny ANY mac address using that password.
------
avaika
It's 2000 + 18 and people are still using ifconfig :)
~~~
xfitm3
If it’s still available - why not use it?
------
iMart1n_FR
When I need to access free wifi behind a paywall (get more time, more speed,
more features...), I usually go `arp -a` and try to change my MAC address with
one already present on the network, no reset needed. Works with hotels,
airports, etc... Not very ethical though...
------
suvelx
What is it with Hotels and shitty, restricted wifi in the west?
I can't say I've stayed in a lot of hotels, but of the ones I have stayed in,
it's only ever been an issue in the West.
Perhaps that's a part of the reason I enjoy holidays in East Asia. I get the
feeling wifi there is a just a thing, you get access to it, it works. And
nearly all the hotels I've stayed in also offer a free phone that you can take
with you if you need data outside of the hotel.
Yet, in the west, you're lucky if you get some paltry free allowance. For a
business who's aim is "make your stay enjoyable" they're doing a pretty shit
job of it.
~~~
andimm
My experience is, the more business traveler oriented the hotel, the more
likely you'll be charged for WiFi.
My theory is, often companies have a limit for room prices for their
employees, but WiFi fees count additional other expenses so they won't matter
for the selection of the hotel.
So as a business traveler you don't care to be charged 20$/day for WiFi, your
employer will pay for it. Hotels make nice extra money. Only "normal" guests
who care, will be annoyed.
In medium tier Hotels and especially Hostels all around the world I never
experienced any WiFi restrictions.
~~~
morganvachon
> My experience is, the more business traveler oriented the hotel, the more
> likely you'll be charged for WiFi.
I've had the opposite experience. My wife and I usually stay at Hampton Inn or
Hilton properties on vacation, two star "business traveler oriented" locations
with free breakfast and free low-speed WiFi. It's fast enough for everything
except streaming video in HD, and we always bring a Raspberry Pi with a thumb
drive full of TV shows and/or movies we want to see while on vacation. Most of
the places we've stayed even had free HBO/Showtime for when we want to watch
something random.
Conversely, for our fifth anniversary we stayed at a luxury suite for the
weekend, and we had to pay for any WiFi whatsoever, and for breakfast
(admittedly a much nicer breakfast experience than other hotels).
~~~
flavor8
You are saying the same thing.
It boils down to: Mid-price hotels often have free wifi. Expensive hotels
charge much more often. Cheap hotels are a tossup.
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
A Better Way to Manage CSS and JS (+ source code) - legierski
http://blog.gathercontent.com/combine-and-compress-css-and-js-on-the-fly
======
stinky613
While I don't mind the concept proposed, a few things immediately caught my
eye:
1) How often are changes made to these CSS files? It seems to me that caching
would be far more crucial than any marginal benefit of this practice. Also,
what of allowing multiple CSS files to download in parallel via multiple
<link> tags?
[nitpicking from here out]
2) Why does his minify code remove all whitespace and then remove whitespace
before '{' and after ':'? They're already gone.
3) Removing all whitespace makes the assumption that no whitespace is
necessary. This will completely break, among other things, font-family: "Some
Embedded Font";
~~~
legierski
1) CSS on dev setup changes very often. Limiting number of <link>'s was one of
the goals.
2) It does not. The ' ' is actually a double space.
3) Point 2)
~~~
stinky613
Ahh double space, that makes much more sense. Sorry for not looking more
closely before posting.
------
true_religion
I've done this before and its far from the best way.
Pre-compilation is better and is CDN safe out-of-the-box.
------
Nikkau
So on the fly you open tons of text files to glue them? Seems i/o intensive.
Why not do the same thing on deploy?
~~~
speg
_We’ll introduce server-side caching in the future, but a goal of this script
was to provide users with the latest CSS/JS at all times..._
~~~
inportb
Surely, it would be acceptable to microcache for a few seconds? It's rather
easy, with nginx in front.
------
brittohalloran
Rails 3 asset management / precompiling FTW
------
pie
Better than what? This doesn't mention any of the other asset management tools
out there.
~~~
legierski
Better than using only one file with all css inside
------
prisonguard
out of topic but couldn't help noticing shorthand php tags <?= ?> these make
me cringe
~~~
aasarava
Why? If your server is running PHP and you're not worried about confusion with
some other language processor, then why not use shorthand?
~~~
prodigal_erik
It's no longer a valid SGML processing instruction, which largely rules out
decades of tools for working with markup.
~~~
aasarava
I'm curious as to what tools you're using to work with files containing PHP
code. I mean that sincerely -- if you've got something you really like, it'd
be great to learn something new!
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
Itertools in Python 3, by Example - dbader
======
brettkromkamp
I presume this is the URL: [https://realpython.com/python-
itertools/](https://realpython.com/python-itertools/)
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
Literacy may have stolen brain power from other functions - abraham
http://arstechnica.com/science/news/2010/11/literacy-takes-over-the-brain.ars
======
jerf
"Stolen"? Seriously? I suppose the next article I can expect to read is "Why
Your Ability To Read Is Just An Illusion".
(I dislike the titles that invoke the "The Thing You Suppose Does X Actually
Does Y" like that's a bad thing. The badness is in the supposition, not the
deviation from the supposition. What the brain is "supposed" to do is a human
construction, not universal truth.)
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
The Case for Calling Terrorists Nitwits - inmygarage
http://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2010/07/the-case-for-calling-them-nitwits/8130/
======
GiraffeNecktie
I liked this part of the article "... it’s fair to say that the Taliban employ
the world’s worst suicide bombers: one in two manages to kill only himself.
And this success rate hasn’t improved at all in the five years they’ve been
using suicide bombers, despite the experience of hundreds of attacks—or
attempted attacks. "
It's hard to find suicide bombers with a good resume of successful attacks.
~~~
gaius
Yeah, but you don't just wake up one morning, strap on a bomb and go. Rather
you spend a few weeks or months at a jihad training camp in the mountains
first, and then get sent off to blow yourself and maybe some infidels up.
So there will be suicide bomber training _mullahs_ who have a track record of
training martyrs to be effective suicide bombers, and those whose graduates
more often than not fail.
------
dtf
I was half expecting to see a reference to Chris Morris's recent film Four
Lions. That film has been dubbed "controversial" here in the UK precisely
because its protagonists are portrayed as nitwits, albeit nitwits with bombs.
------
techiferous
"The bombs had been prepared in a Palestine-controlled area, and set to
detonate on Daylight Saving Time. But the confused drivers had already
switched to Standard Time. When they picked up the bombs, they neglected to
ask whose watch was used to set the timing mechanism. As a result, the cars
were still en-route when the explosives detonated, delivering the terrorists
to their untimely demises."
[http://www.speakeasy.org/~mamandel/filks/Darwin-
notes.html#t...](http://www.speakeasy.org/~mamandel/filks/Darwin-
notes.html#timebomb)
------
kyleslattery
That's the trouble with getting someone to be a suicide bomber: you need
someone stupid enough to think that killing themselves is a good idea, yet
smart enough to pull it off.
------
jrockway
It seems that "the terrorists" just don't have careful leadership. With good
leadership, average people can do amazing things, like hijack four planes at
the same time and crash three of them into buildings. Pretty scary.
Also, why does the article call people "perverts" for looking at porn? Really?
People _still_ think that?
~~~
ryanwaggoner
I'm pretty sure they were referring to the sexual encounters involving
barnyard animals. I think that qualifies as perverted.
~~~
abalashov
But the word was used explicitly in the context of the discussion of the
contents of seized laptops.
~~~
roc
Not all porn is created equal.
I don't find it at all unlikely that the same sorts who would resort to the
most intimate form of animal husbandry might have truly perverted pornography.
------
stretchwithme
the dumb and the evil have always had a lot in common. It takes intelligence
in many forms to recognize and practice virtue, to recognize the influence of
the crowd over one's thinking and to resist knee jerk reactions and grudges
~~~
sliverstorm
> the dumb and the evil have always had a lot in common.
As proven by the existence of one of my favorite logical adages- Hanlon's
razor.
~~~
sesqu
to wit, "Never attribute to malice that which can be adequately explained by
stupidity."
~~~
stretchwithme
ha ha. love it
------
philwelch
When your field is "suicide bombing", it's hard to retain good talent.
------
knowtheory
This article really pisses me off.
Who cares how smart your enemy is? You don't need to be intelligent to be
dangerous.
The author clearly doesn't understand the point of asymmetric warfare. Even if
people want to laugh at the fact that 50% of Afghani suicide bombers don't
kill people, 50% _DO_ kill people. Suicide bombers aren't doing a cost benefit
analysis of their efficacy and then deliberating on whether they're going to
blow themselves up or not. Their job is to sow terror, and pierce the idea of
safety.
In spite of any of the points mentioned in the article, it's still possible to
recruit suicide bombers to go blow themselves up for an ideology that's
insane.
\------------------------------------
I do honestly believe that we should point out the absurdity of suicide
bombing. But the absurdity is _not_ a question of their efficacy, which is
undeniably a winning strategy if you've got the man power to throw at it. The
absurdity of suicide bombing lay in the ideology, and the goals one seeks to
achieve by blowing oneself up.
This article is at best naïve, and at worse, dangerously ignorant and besides
the point. Fight ideas.
~~~
petewarden
You're completely missing the point. Terrorism is about spreading terror,
killing people is just a technique. Finding reasons to laugh at these
jackasses makes them a lot less terrifying.
The best way to fight their ideas is to avoid buying into their romantic self-
image as heroic martyrs, and reveal them as the sad losers they really are.
~~~
stretchwithme
and yet, humiliation is the best way to make an enemy
I think its much better to have nothing to do with these people. we need to
stop trying to create the centralized states our DC politicians are in love
with and that are necessarily more fragile, requiring life support from the
west.
I think many people feel very threatened by the west, its technology and its
overpowering media. the more we keep pushing it in their face, the more they
will keep looking for a way to make us regret we ever did
~~~
MichaelSalib
_and yet, humiliation is the best way to make an enemy_
Mockery and humiliation are not equivalent. Humiliation implies some
degradation of people under our control. We should of course avoid such
behavior, but public mockery need not entail humiliation.
I'm pretty sure that folks willing to commit acts of terrorism are already
enemies. But I do agree that this sort of messaging has to be careful to
differentiate the nitwit terrorists and the larger community from which they
might draw support. Mock the former, not the latter.
_I think its much better to have nothing to do with these people._
Alas, this does not seem politically feasible. Governments that fail to
communicate anything to the public about terrorists are at risk of falling
victim to demagogues in other parties.
~~~
stretchwithme
I was referring to our foreign policy, not whether or not we should
communicate with our citizens about threats
------
kmfrk
Someone relay this to TSA.
------
arohann
Only fools underestimate their enemies.
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
Google vs Romney - mikeland86
https://www.google.com/search?q=completely+wrong&hl=en&safe=off&authuser=0&site=imghp&prmd=imvnsu&source=lnms&tbm=isch&sa=X&ei=Grx1UNaxGqPOiwLMi4CoDw&ved=0CAoQ_AUoAQ&biw=1366&bih=679#q=completely+wrong&hl=en&safe=off&sa=X&authuser=0&site=imghp&tbm=isch&prmd=imvnsu&bav=on.2,or.r_gc.r_pw.r_cp.r_qf.&fp=1&bpcl=35243188&biw=1920&bih=1112
======
hrescak
Hilarious! I wonder if this is an organized effort or just sheer coincidence
~~~
esrauch
Almost certainly a Google Bomb.
<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Google_bomb>
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
Why Startups Are Helping The Economy More Than You Think - esharef
http://techcrunch.com/2012/10/14/are-startups-empty-buzz-or-a-way-to-kickstart-the-economy/
======
Sambdala
I don't really like the fact that this article more or less accepts at face
value the metric of "jobs" as being the relevant measure of "helping the
economy." This might have been more or less the case when the output from the
vast majority of jobs rarely deviated more than an order of magnitude from the
average job, but that is far from the case these days.
Instead of an intelligent and creative person joining an assembly line or
becoming a pit trader, they have the opportunity to create something of value
from nothing and give access to it to the entire world.
The fact that paradigm shifts are accelerating isn't a bad thing in my
opinion. Within a few generations, the idea that the world is more or less the
same place when we leave it as it was when we entered it will likely not be an
automatic assumption people will make about the world.
~~~
esharef
Sambdala, I'm one of the ppl who wrote the article. I actually agree with you
that today's jobs have a higher potential to really affect the world.
Technology lets us outsource tedious tasks to computers so we can focus on
more meaningful and creative things. I think people who just say "technology
is destroying jobs" are missing the fact that technology is creating
completely new opportunities (as you say "to create something of value from
nothing and give access to it to the entire world")
~~~
abbasmehdi
I think "people who just say "technology is destroying jobs"" should just be
ignored, like their predecessors were when they decried plant robotics
replacing assembly line workers.
This is the circle of life, just like the newest wave of immigrants takes the
shittiest jobs in the economy, the shittiest (mindless) jobs in the economy
are eaten up by technology. This has been going on in this country (US) since
the beginning of the industrial revolution.
P.S. Great article btw.
~~~
Sambdala
This was basically my point.
I enjoyed the article, but I think arguing against the point without
questioning the underlying assumptions takes effort and attention away from
building the future rather than reassuring those who are scared of it.
------
ippisl
The article claims that "Over 400,000 new jobs have been created by Apple’s
App store.", but that's just shoddy accounting. What about mcdonalds in europe
installing thousands of touch screen replacing cashiers and the tons of other
apps that replace people, does that go into that accounting ?
And what about the intense price competition between workers that online,
global platforms create ?
Will those 2 million needed technical jobs cause more job losses ?
My problem with this article is that it tries to create a rosy picture of a
big change our economy is going throught, while in reality we just don't know
how things are going to turn out,whether we will have enough jobs for
everyone, and how rough and long the transition period is going to be, and it
does so just to sell a product(which might be valuable).
It's just like reading medical research done by pharmaceutical companies.
------
carterschonwald
first:good job Nick (long time friend)! Also Elli, though we've never chatted.
I think the meta pattern of the examples in the article are in some ways
examples of startups that are creating "market-like" mechanisms for more
effectively helping businesses and people. Hireart's doing that from the lens
of jobs/candidate search, and the education startups are allowing people to
spend the coin of time into investing in their own knowledge/skills.
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
Ask HN: Anyone using an iPad Pro as your daily driver? - ethanpil
I'm still not convinced its worth it to shell out $1500-$2000 for "less than a laptop" but perhaps I don't have all the facts. Are there any HN users that have seen the light? Is a 12.9" iPad Pro with keyboard/pen truly enough for power users?
======
seanalexander
Not until there's a native, non-cloud IDE solution.
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
Are birds smarter than mathematicians? - rglullis
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/20175592
======
andrewcooke
That's interesting. Unfortunately the text isn't free. Do they have any guess
as to why?
My guess is that there's some fairly simple heuristic that gives the right
answer, which birds are using but which we, for some reason, are not. Either
we lost / never had the instinctive heuristic or it gets vetoed by confused
conscious thought.
~~~
argv_empty
From the abstract, _Across experiments, the probability of gaining
reinforcement for switching and staying was manipulated, and birds adjusted
their probability of switching and staying to approximate the optimal
strategy._
From that, I'd guess that the birds are making their selection based on
experience about what has and hasn't worked in the recent past.
------
lkozma
I didn't read the full article, but I'm curious: how did they explain to the
pigeons that there was a reward behind exactly one door.
------
spuz
Reminds me of the experiment Lisa does in the Simpsons: "Is My Brother Dumber
Than A Hamster?" :)
------
dbz
Yeah. I believe everything I read even if I see obvious reasons why something
is false.
------
anatoly
No.
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
WebAudioSynth - Web browser based synthesizer application - matsuu
http://aikelab.net/websynth/
======
postfuturist
Very fun, needs a keyboard -> piano key mapping for maximum pleasure. Oh, I
see it's open source, too bad I'm at work right now.
------
kevincennis
Worth noting that this will only work in Chrome, since the Web Audio API isn't
supported in any other browser at the moment.
------
Zenst
Alot of fun. Makes the google minimoog not seem so lonely now.
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
Could Apple become the next Comcast? - 001sky
http://www.washingtonpost.com/business/economy/could-apple-become-the-next-comcast/2015/03/18/a90a8e9c-ccc3-11e4-8c54-ffb5ba6f2f69_story.html
======
yunyeng
Apple is developing really slow after Steve Jobs, but if they play their cards
smartly they will dominant this Online TV industry with their devices in every
people's houses and pockets. They already have the fundamental background as
hardware, only thing they need to do is signing contracts with shows and
channels.
------
joezydeco
_If it succeeds, Apple could become the biggest gateway to online video — the
new Comcast for the Internet._
Um, unless Apple has some means to cancel and overtake thousands of municipal
cable franchise agreements and string millions of miles of coax, Comcast will
still be the gateway to <x>. Comcast will _always_ be the internet, unless
they're broken up by the feds.
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
The Parents Who Give Their Children Bleach Enemas to 'Cure' Them of Autism - middleclick
https://www.vice.com/read/parents-are-giving-their-children-bleach-enemas-to-cure-them-of-autism-311
======
ars
That's what happens when parents are so desperate to help their kids that they
will try absolutely anything if someone even hints it might help.
Doing nothing is not seen as a valid choice. "At least try something!"
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
Ancient “su – hostile” vulnerability in Debian 8 and 9 - l2dy
https://j.ludost.net/blog/archives/2018/06/13/ancient_su_-_hostile_vulnerability_in_debian_8_and_9/
======
tedunangst
For those unaware, ioctl(TIOCSTI) allows injecting characters back into the
tty, where they will be read by the next process to read from the terminal. In
this case, that process is the root shell that execed su.
~~~
_wmd
I guess you're the right person to ask - why hasn't this just been ripped out
of the likes of OpenBSD?
edit: seems it already has! [https://marc.info/?l=openbsd-
cvs&m=149870941319610](https://marc.info/?l=openbsd-cvs&m=149870941319610)
------
_wmd
Another variant of using TIOCSTI with poor permissions. FWIW this exact same
bug impacted Docker and LXC at various points. In the case of lxc-attach, when
stdio is connected to a TTY, it creates a new pty within the container and
multiplexes between them to avoid the issue. I don't think there is a single
legitimate use for that ioctl.. it should just die already
tl;dr passing a TTY with stopped privileged jobs reading from it (like an
interactive root shell) into an unprivileged location is deadly, as the
unprivileged location can use TIOCSTI to load up the TTY's input buffer and
then exit, causing the stopped jobs to read that input when they're resumed
~~~
Dylan16807
"Terminal I/O Control - Simulate Terminal Input" ah okay
------
bcaa7f3a8bbc
PaX/grsecurity has mitigation to this issue, at least for 10 years.
From grsecurity's config for GRKERNSEC_HARDEN_TTY.
| There are very few legitimate uses for this functionality and it
| has made vulnerabilities in several 'su'-like programs possible in
| the past. Even without these vulnerabilities, it provides an
| attacker with an easy mechanism to move laterally among other
| processes within the same user's compromised session.
Has one run a grsecurity kernel, the system would not be affected.
Some independent developers and KSPP people are also trying to submit this
mitigation to the mainline kernel for many years, but so far none of the patch
went into the kernel. Since grsecurity is now a private product, you may want
to check them out and apply this mitigation to the mainline kernel.
[PATCH] drivers/tty: add protected_ttys sysctl
* [https://gist.github.com/thejh/e163071dfe4c96a9f9b589b7a2c24f...](https://gist.github.com/thejh/e163071dfe4c96a9f9b589b7a2c24fc6)
tiocsti-restrict : make TIOCSTI ioctl require CAP_SYS_ADMIN
* [https://lwn.net/Articles/720740/](https://lwn.net/Articles/720740/)
------
im3w1l
I'm increasingly feeling that terminals and bash are just too complex and have
too many edge cases and footguns and that we'd be better of just starting over
with something were security was a focus from day zero.
~~~
lmm
Yep. Unix has zillions of ways for processes to interact with each other,
which makes for an enormous attack surface. The future is something like
unikernels on the server and something like Qubes running them on the desktop,
so that each "process" is properly isolated and can only communicate through
channels that are deliberately designed for it.
We're going to have to rediscover how we do things like pipelines in a safe
way, but the current unix design of small processes interacting via
unstructured interfaces that mingle commands and data is just untenable.
~~~
MisterTea
They fixed a lot of stuff in plan 9 and it's a pleasure to tinker with.
Everything is partitioned in namespaces to isolate processes. Since the entire
system is file system based, you manipulate the process namespace which is
really just a file that lists the mounts and binds which build that namespace
file system. Binds and unions are a blessing and eliminate the headache of
environment variables. Every object is a file and everything is communicated
via the network transparent in-kernel file protocol, 9p. And because of that,
Plan 9 is fully distributed.
For example: I can share the internet without a router or nat by exporting my
internet facing ip stack and mount it on the machines needing net access. As
far as the isp knows, a single machine is talking to it. I can do the same
with file systems, file servers, network cards, sound cards, disks, usb
devices, etc.
It's far from usable in production and 9p is a dog over high latency links.
but the ideas it has are simple yet brilliant. Best distro to check out for
newcomers is 9front (they're silly fellows but don't let that fool you.
serious top notch hackers that lot.)
------
peterwwillis
This explains the problem a little clearer I think:
[https://bugzilla.redhat.com/show_bug.cgi?id=173008](https://bugzilla.redhat.com/show_bug.cgi?id=173008)
~~~
masklinn
So if I understand correctly, the issue is that when su-ing to _more
restricted_ privileges a hostile program (immediately executed via -c) can use
TIOCSTI to inject commands which will escape su and execute as the more
privileged user?
Is that also an issue using `su; ./hostile; exit`?
~~~
tedunangst
You mean su to root? The same mechanism still exists, though root already has
other powers.
~~~
masklinn
No, I mean su to a new shell and execute a command there rather than su -c.
~~~
jwilk
That would be weird if "su -c" was vulnerable but interactive "su" was not.
The former is much easier to fix.
In fact, "su" in Debian (which the subject of the submitted article), calls
setsid() when you use -c, which defeats TIOCSTI.
~~~
masklinn
> That would be weird if "su -c" was vulnerable but interactive "su" was not.
Not necessarily, if TIOCSTI just pushes stuff to the term input buffer, this
is going to get popped on the next prompt of su, so on an interactive su it's
not going to be executed under escalated privileges but is instead going to be
executed as the same user that executed the hostile program, while with a non-
interactive su it's going to get popped on the next prompt of the su _caller_
and thus get escalated privileges.
That's my understanding of it anyway, I could be completely off.
~~~
jwilk
I see what you mean.
Yes, the exploit won't work if the payload is read by the attacker's shell,
rather than the root shell. But it's easy to ensure that this won't happen.
The laziest way is to kill the shell before issuing TIOCSTI ioctls. :-)
------
codedokode
As I remember, `login` program (that asks for your login and password on
terminal) does a "virtual hangup" to prevent such things.
~~~
cryptonector
Well, on *BSD the way this works is that when the session leader exits the
pty/tty will internally call vhangup(2), which in turn does all that revoke(2)
does on the tty FD plus it sends SIGHUP to any processes with that tty as the
controlling tty.
Linux for a long time had nothing like this. It has a vhangup(2), but looking
at its implementation it doesn't seem to do what the BSD vhangup(2) does by
calling revoke(2): replace all open file descriptors pointing to the tty with
one that returns EIO for read(2)/write(2)/etc.
Linux does NOT have a revoke(2), or at least I can't find it. There was a
patch for that back in 2006 and 2007. I don't know what happened to that.
EDIT: Some trivia as well. On BSD SIGHUP is generated by the tty. On Linux and
Solaris/Illumos it's only generated by the session leader process on exit, and
only if it wants to. This is how bash's disown builtin works: it just doesn't
HUP the disown background jobs. The C shell (csh) historically never generated
SIGHUP because it's a BSD shell. Back in the early aughts there was some
controversy where csh users wanted OpenSSH's sshd to close a session when the
pty session leader exits, as otherwise the session would stay open
indefinitely. The OpenSSH developers feared this would lose data, and they
were right. The source of this problem was that csh wasn't generating SIGHUP
on Solaris and Linux, so background jobs stayed alive and held an open file
reference to the pty, which meant that they kept sshd from seeing EOF on the
ptm, so sshd would not terminate the session as long as those bg jobs stayed
alive. This is all still the case today.
~~~
caf
When a tty is hung up on Linux, the file operations of all open file
structures associated with it are replaced with hung_up_tty_fops, which means
all subsequent read(2) returns 0 (EOF), write(2) returns EIO and ioctl(2)
returns ENOTTY or EIO.
This is basically a tty-specific implementation of revoke(2).
Also, when the session leader exits on Linux, the kernel _does_ send SIGHUP
and SIGCONT to session leader's process group and the foreground process group
(this is in tty_signal_session_leader()).
~~~
cryptonector
Oh, that must be pretty new (relative to the early aughts anyways). Sorry I
missed it.
------
erlkonig
Ah, this looks like the old ungetc() exploit, where (back in the 1980s at
utexas.edu) we'd leave a process connected to a terminal, wait for another
user to log in, then push characters to their shell from our program using
ungetc(). Essentially, each character pushed ends up looking like a fresh
input character to the other program. The basic issue is whether all open file
handles that shouldn't be there (our hack program, for example) got closed out
by the new login session. For something like login, the question is easy,
_ONLY_ itself should be connected early on. For su, it's much weirder, since
the user may have created background jobs before running su, and su and sudo
can't reasonably close all other handles on the original tty device.
Further su and sudo can't close all file descriptors of the "sub-session" as
it exits, because that the "sub-session" is created by forking, so su/sudo
aren't around at the end.
Creating a separate pseudo-terminal device to allow for draconian cleanup, and
prevent even having both user IDs connected to the same tty device, seems like
the best place to start.
Hmm, now I want to go update the user-group-setter program I use (which also
can set auth user IDs on Solaris, etc) and try having it do ptty allocation
for the subjob.
In the meantime, try this to get a session and run through the same demo
steps:
setsid -w su - <user>
Won't for _everything_ (no /dev/tty), but it does block the example. You can
add a tty if you have one handy, too, by using redirection in the spawned
process in this general form, but I don't currently have the cluon for how to
create a /dev/pts/<num> from the shell level - if someone can construct the
full command, I'd like to see it :-)
setsid sh -c 'exec command <> /dev/tty2 >&0 2>&1'
~~~
jwilk
> I don't currently have the cluon for how to create a /dev/pts/<num> from the
> shell level
As I recommended in [http://www.openwall.com/lists/oss-
security/2018/06/14/2](http://www.openwall.com/lists/oss-
security/2018/06/14/2) , use screen or tmux:
screen su - <user>
script(1) is more lightweight than screen/tmux, but it can't be easily
persuaded to run arbitrary commands, such as "su". :-/
~~~
yorwba
How is persuading _script_ to run _su_ not easy? I just tried _script -c su
/dev/null_ and it worked as I expected. ( _/ dev/null_ is there to prevent
_script_ from logging the interaction to a file)
~~~
jwilk
D'oh, you're right. I don't know how I missed this option.
------
carroccio
TIOCSTI ioctl
[https://events.ccc.de/congress/2008/Fahrplan/events/2992.en....](https://events.ccc.de/congress/2008/Fahrplan/events/2992.en.html)
------
wilun
Posix TTY and more precisely stdin/stdout/stderr inheritance and internals of
FD have a completely insane design. There is the famous divide between file
descriptors and file descriptions. Hilarity can and will ensue in tons of
domains. I nearly shipped some code with bugs because of that mess (and could
only avoid those bugs by using threads; you can NOT switch your std fd to non-
blocking without absolutely unpredictable consequences), and obviously some
bugs of a given class can create security issues. Especially, and in a way,
obviously, when objects are shared across security boundaries.
Far is the time when Unix people were making fun of the lack of security in
consumer Windows. Today, there is no comprehensive model on the most used
"Unix" side, while modern Windows certainly have problems in the default way
they are configured, but at least the security model exist with well defined
boundaries (even if we can be sad that some seemingly security related
features are not considered officially as security boundaries, at least we are
not deluding ourselves into thinking that a spaghetti of objects without
security descriptors can be shared and the result can be a secure system...)
~~~
caf
There _is_ a model, it's just not particularly well publicised: a file
descriptor is a capability.
That's it.
~~~
wilun
Is it efficient and sufficient though? And can and do we build real security
on top of it?
This issue shows systems have been built for decades with blatant holes
because it was not taken into account in even core os admin tools.
There is the other problem corresponding to the myth that everything is a fd.
Which has never been true, and is even less and less as time passes.
Also, extensive extra security hooks and software using them are built, but
not of top of this model.
Finally, sharing posix fd across security boundaries often causes problems
because of all the features available for both sides, for which the security
impact are not studied.
A model just stating that posix fd are capa is widely insufficient. So if this
is the only one, even in the context in pure Posix we already know this is an
extremely poor one.
------
exikyut
Nobody else has pointed this out (!): whatever platform is running at this URL
doesn't sanitize input.
Notice how the C #includes seem to be including emptiness. Well, <stdio.h> et
al weren't stripped; they're still in the source code, un-converted < > (ie
NOT converted to < >) and all.
------
pjkundert
We used TIOCSTI to attack Unix terminal sessions left open to “write” — in
1985. I was wondering when/if this would show up again!
------
JdeBP
This is old news, that keeps being reported over and over. Part of the
problem, I suspect, is that people keep pointing to the wrong locus of the
problem. Even here, this is being characterized as a _Debian_ problem.
This is a _kernel_ mechanism.
* [https://nvd.nist.gov/vuln/detail/CVE-2013-6409](https://nvd.nist.gov/vuln/detail/CVE-2013-6409)
* [https://nvd.nist.gov/vuln/detail/CVE-2015-6565](https://nvd.nist.gov/vuln/detail/CVE-2015-6565)
* [https://nvd.nist.gov/vuln/detail/CVE-2016-2779](https://nvd.nist.gov/vuln/detail/CVE-2016-2779)
* [https://nvd.nist.gov/vuln/detail/CVE-2016-7545](https://nvd.nist.gov/vuln/detail/CVE-2016-7545)
* [https://nvd.nist.gov/vuln/detail/CVE-2017-5226](https://nvd.nist.gov/vuln/detail/CVE-2017-5226)
Some kernel people take the view that TIOCSTI is of no Earthly use, and there
are other ways to implement line editing, and just make using it an error.
* [http://undeadly.org/cgi?action=article&sid=20170701132619](http://undeadly.org/cgi?action=article&sid=20170701132619)
* [https://github.com/openbsd/src/commit/baecf150995d4609cd1479...](https://github.com/openbsd/src/commit/baecf150995d4609cd147948779361c3152f355d)
Others take a different view.
* [http://www.openwall.com/lists/oss-security/2017/06/03/9](http://www.openwall.com/lists/oss-security/2017/06/03/9)
* [http://www.openwall.com/lists/kernel-hardening/2017/05/15/8](http://www.openwall.com/lists/kernel-hardening/2017/05/15/8)
* [http://www.openwall.com/lists/kernel-hardening/2017/05/17/1](http://www.openwall.com/lists/kernel-hardening/2017/05/17/1)
* [http://www.openwall.com/lists/kernel-hardening/2017/05/29/16](http://www.openwall.com/lists/kernel-hardening/2017/05/29/16)
* [http://www.openwall.com/lists/kernel-hardening/2017/05/30/9](http://www.openwall.com/lists/kernel-hardening/2017/05/30/9)
* [http://www.openwall.com/lists/kernel-hardening/2017/05/30/26](http://www.openwall.com/lists/kernel-hardening/2017/05/30/26)
* [http://www.openwall.com/lists/kernel-hardening/2017/05/30/27](http://www.openwall.com/lists/kernel-hardening/2017/05/30/27)
* [http://www.openwall.com/lists/kernel-hardening/2017/05/30/32](http://www.openwall.com/lists/kernel-hardening/2017/05/30/32)
* [http://www.openwall.com/lists/kernel-hardening/2017/05/31/16](http://www.openwall.com/lists/kernel-hardening/2017/05/31/16)
~~~
AbacusAvenger
Usually when something is reported as being a distribution bug, it's because
they have some patch specific to their packages that causes the issue.
Is that not the case here? Are other distrbutions affected right now?
~~~
JdeBP
I say it again: This is a _kernel_ mechanism.
Every operating system based upon Linux provides programs with this mechanism.
This is not some ioctl() introduced by a Debian patch. This is a mechanism
added to Linux by Linus Torvalds on 1993-12-23.
* [http://repo.or.cz/davej-history.git/commitdiff/9d09486414951...](http://repo.or.cz/davej-history.git/commitdiff/9d0948641495169728d4074f976fd655e30afedf)
Pete French added it to FreeBSD against his better judgement on 2010-01-04. It
might have been in an earlier implementation of the terminal line discipline,
too.
* [https://github.com/freebsd/freebsd/commit/74b0526bbe6326adb7...](https://github.com/freebsd/freebsd/commit/74b0526bbe6326adb72e26dabfe79ab1fe00ca4b)
OpenBSD, which no longer implements the kernel mechanism, _had_ had it since
the initial import from NetBSD in 1995.
* [https://github.com/openbsd/src/blob/df930be708d50e9715f173ca...](https://github.com/openbsd/src/blob/df930be708d50e9715f173caa26ffe1b7599b157/sys/kern/tty.c#L847)
Illumos has it, and has had since at least the OpenSolaris launch.
* [https://github.com/illumos/illumos-gate/blob/9a2c4685271c2f0...](https://github.com/illumos/illumos-gate/blob/9a2c4685271c2f0cb4b08f4cc1192387e67af3f9/usr/src/uts/common/io/tty_common.c#L263)
It was even in 4.3BSD.
------
bjt2n3904
Just tested this out, can confirm it works on Debian 7 as well. Genius little
trick! Not sure about practical exploitation, though.
------
blauditore
I'm not a shell pro; what is happening on the sleep line?
~~~
c0l0
$ (sleep 10; /tmp/a.out id) &
$ -> the end of the prompt of a "normal" (i. e. non-root) user
() -> run everything inside in a forked subshell of the current shell
sleep 10 -> "block"/sleep for 10 seconds via the `sleep` executable in your
$PATH
; -> after the left-hand side terminates, proceed with the next command on the
right-hand side
/tmp/a.out id -> fork and exec the program located at /tmp/a.out with the
literal byte sequence "id" on its argument vector
& -> run this command (the whole subshell that () requests) as a background
job
When the user exits the shell that spawned the subshell, the whole process
group will receive SIGHUP. The backgrounded subshell will still continue
running, and after its `sleep` child process terminates, go on to run
`/tmp/a.out`.
~~~
blauditore
Ah thanks, I didn't understand the subshell forking part before.
------
sandworm101
Lol. Thanks. Work machine. Must have ctrl-tabbed without realizing.
~~~
mikestew
Pretty sure you're in the wrong thread, mate.
~~~
qu4z-2
I guess they ctrl-tabbed without realising it...
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
Bank of America is looking for Ethereum developers - nestlequ1k
http://careers.bankofamerica.com/job-detail/17051863/united-states/us/java-developer-card-and-payments-technology
======
j0e1
I can't in any way see how this ad means they are looking for 'Ethereum
developers' other than it being a desired skill. Please refrain from posting
misleading titles to articles.
~~~
Torai
You have to understand that a lot of people is expecting to get rich with
cryptos, so they need to create a lot of hype, even if that means fabricating
false news from a job posting.
------
russdpale
I don't give a damn how much they would pay, no way I'm working for Bank of
America. They can suck it.
------
davidgerard
> Ethereum - Frontier/Solidity and IBM Hyperledger/Fabric
translation: IBM talked them into a pilot program using Hyperledger Fabric,
which IIRC uses the smart contracts functionality from Ethereum.
------
Torai
No, it's not. It's just a desired skill, not a required one.
------
brawny
I wonder if this coincided with them joining the Ethereum Alliance?
~~~
davidgerard
BofA's been messing around with talk of various blockchainy projects for a
while now, though little visible result beyond overexcited articles in the
Bitcoin blogs.
~~~
MichaelBurge
The COBOL that's been running their systems for the last 50 years doesn't even
have blog articles.
------
coldcode
Lovely work on high tech new technology at an old fashioned Bank. Having
worked at a financial institution with a bank, talk about generation gap...
------
logfromblammo
So... they want to figure out how to cheat at smart contracts like they do
with paper ones?
------
Clee681
What's a midrange developer
~~~
Sir_Cmpwn
A senior dev who's getting ripped off.
------
osmode
5 years of Ethereum development experience is longer than Ethereum has been
around. These boilerplate Wanted ads won't attract developers with bleeding-
edge skills.
~~~
whatok
The ad does not ask for 5 years of Ethereum development experience.
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
Ask HN: How do you deal with managing cocky programmers? - tn_
======
jonny_storm
Adam Savage once said he distrusted anyone that hadn't failed, and I share
this sentiment. It's likely that, if you haven't failed spectacularly, then
you've not had the opportunity to internalize the lessons that come from
failure: humility, caution, compassion, self-awareness, respect for evidence.
If you've already hired talent without this experience, then you'll either
need to carefully craft an opportunity for them to fail or wait for them to do
so all on their own. The latter is, for me, intolerable, and I would rather
provide the proudest among them vague architectural tasks that pit their
design sense against that of their coworkers. Being in charge of a design
that's perpetually torn apart by your fellow implementors is good practice,
and it may even reduce the total hubris of the group.
------
sheraz
Depending on their age I show them the door as I have little patience for
disruptive or disrespectful cockiness.
or, sometimes in the case of cocky interns, I let give them enough rope to
hang themselves. Cockiness at a younger age is just unrefined ambition.
But an arrogant 30 year old that's been in the game for 5 years? Don't let the
door hit your ass on the way out.
------
nomanonn
Give them a task that you know is going to be extremely challenging for them,
and tell them that they are the only one you know can handle something so
important in such an urgent amount of time. Push their skills to the limit and
let them back a sweat over it. It's good for the company and everyone involved
no matter what the outcome. Get creative. They can't possibly know it all,
remind them.
------
whiguwgilug
Confront them. Tell them they're being a dick.
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
Kids using Facebook is an issue, but how can network operators truly verify age? - gkwelding
A good question. Apart from credit card verification methods (I'm sure that would go down like a lead balloon o n Facebook) what other methods are available to organisations such as Facebook (they claim a minimum age of 13 for users of their service).<p>Is asking for a date of birth really fulfilling Facebook's quota of responsibility?<p>What would something like this cost the big social networks, not just in monetary terms, but ease of use and user opinion?
======
wmf
For all its faults, the recently-proposed NSTIC should solve this problem.
Ultimately, any solution is going to require expensive in-person enrollment.
------
gkwelding
problems arise with this though when certain countries, I'm based in the UK
for example, don't buy in to this kind of idea, what then?
~~~
wmf
Centralized Web 2.0 services tend to be based in the US since it's a large
market, and then they end up applying US law to all their users regardless of
location. Think of it as cultural imperialism 2.0. The real solution IMO is to
decentralize.
~~~
gkwelding
Although does the standard model of countries/law stand up in the realm of the
internet. Boundaries no longer exist in cyber-space, should 'cyber-law' evolve
to take this into account?
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
BrandColors – Official color codes for the world's biggest brands - qzervaas
http://brandcolors.net/
======
elasticode
cool resource :) thanx!
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
Google Ventures' Copious Launches Social Marketplace For The Facebook Era - snikolic
http://techcrunch.com/2011/06/15/google-ventures-backed-copious-launches-a-social-marketplace-for-the-facebook-era
======
amac
This is similar to a marketplace website I co-founded, Lifemall.com.
The relationship between social and commmerce is quite complicated i.e not
everyone likes to share their shopping habits with their friends or people
with similar tastes.
I think we've seen that with Amazon only recently investing in this space (and
they have more commerce data than anyone online) that we're still in the early
stages of this.
Which might suggest there's a big opportunity here.
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
The Elements - A Perfect Coffee Table Book for Nerds - 3pt14159
http://zachaysan.tumblr.com/post/315148493/the-elements-a-perfect-coffee-table-book-for-nerds
======
DrJokepu
I thought he meant Euclid's Elements - now that's an awesome book.
<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Euclids_Elements> (the link doesn't work because
HN removes the apostrophe from hyperlinks for some reason)
~~~
3pt14159
I've read that in Grade 12, really opened my eyes on a ton of things.
------
NathanKP
It looks like a very high quality book for only $20, according to Amazon:
[http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/1579128149?ie=UTF8&tag=...](http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/1579128149?ie=UTF8&tag=booksforsa03b-20&linkCode=as2&camp=1789&creative=390957&creativeASIN=1579128149)
------
biotech
There is an interesting piece about Plutonium. It seems that Plutonium
Batteries were used in some pacemakers. Here's the link:
<http://www.periodictable.com/Items/094.3/index.qt.html>
------
wrs
And I guess the perfect companion gift would be found here:
<http://www.element-collection.com/>
------
albertsun
New goal: Collect a sample of every element. =P
~~~
dgordon
After poking around the site posted by wrs, I found:
<http://www.element-collection.com/html/coffee_table.html>
Forget books, here's an element coffee table!
------
sabat
If you like this book, consider looking at The Math Book by Cliff Pickover;
it's similarly awesome and amazingly illustrated. Video review of it here:
[http://www.youtube.com/user/joannelovesscience#p/u/19/BDCFms...](http://www.youtube.com/user/joannelovesscience#p/u/19/BDCFmsl94OE)
edit: P.S., I am not associated with Cliff and am not spamming for him. :-)
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
Ask HN: How to solve remote engineers appearing lazy to other departments? - ngngngng
A recurring issue I've seen throughout my career is engineers wanting to have more remote flexibility. Often the upper technical leadership is in favor of it but concerns throughout the company come up that other departments will think that product/development is lazy and never does anything if they often work remotely. These concerns eventually kill the initiative to allow more remote work and sometimes any remote work at all.<p>How can these concerns be resolved to allow certain teams to work remotely without upsetting other departments?
======
gwbas1c
If upper management is in favor, why are other departments dictating your
workflows? Are you the kind of company that hires people who need babysitters?
If so, then your obstacle has more to do with who your people are than
anything political.
Anyway, just do it and let the results speak for themselves.
One thing to keep in mind: When I went remote, "everyone" in the company was
in the habit of interrupting me for trivial matters. At the time, I was trying
to get my manager to run interference. Me going remote acted as a bit of a
forcing function for my manager to be more aware of the problem.
~~~
muzani
I've worked at companies with hundreds of staff and only a handful of tech
employees. Many of those companies are _exactly_ the type to hire
babysitters/overseers/foremen.
I can't say this is happening for OP, but when the ratio is a hundred workers
to one, the "other departments" are going to determine HR policies.
Tech companies aren't necessarily exempt from this. Many companies hire
thousands of content moderators or tech support, many of whom are uneducated
and lack self-discipline. There are the types who simply don't show up for
work, take 2 hour long cigarette breaks, fake illnesses and weddings to skip
work, steal toilet paper, and bully colleagues into doing the same.
Lots of tech companies bootstrap from there, and it's difficult for them to
change workflow that's their bread and butter.
------
cborenstein
In my experience, remote engineers are often some of the most productive
engineers at an organization.
When any engineer can demonstrate a strong track record of shipping, any idea
of "laziness" goes away pretty quickly.
I think one of the reasons why "laziness" comes up is because remote engineers
aren't physically in the office to be shoulder tapped for questions (though so
many questions now go in Slack anyway).
A somewhat opposite problem I've seen is that when people work remote, they
kind of "forget to stop" and end up working way more than a standard workweek.
A start to solving both of these issues when working remote is to establish a
clear schedule of your working hours and your "availability for questions"
hours. I.e., make it clear 1) when you're working and when you're not 2) when
you're available for answering questions vs reserving your time for working in
flow.
Can use something like a Slack status to remind colleagues.
------
blaser-waffle
Start talking about synchronous-async communication. Most things don't need a
direct, immediate reply and can wait for a little. Like, even in the office
there were days where I only had ~3 hours of actual work + 2 hours of meetings
that I could skip without effecting anything.
There will absolutely have to be pre-defined sync times, and a "mostly
available" synchronous-ish times, but outside of that mgmt and other teams
need to trust workers to do their jobs. This will probably require a change in
communication styles and communication tools.
------
muzani
Progress reports often appease management. Jira is good at showing that
someone is doing work - every time you edit a description or add a photo, it's
marked as a notice.
Another way to look at it is git commits - if remote workers are committing
just as often as local ones, they're doing equal work.
This might end up with more busywork, but such is the side effect of anything
where managers try to monitor work rate.
------
kleer001
"appearing lazy" ... "concerns"...
These are weasel words coming from BS-land. A strong leader will crush them
immediately. Proof should be the only true currency.
Someone complaining about your process? Walk them through every step and
explain every decision until they see they're out of their league and stop
complaining.
That's what I'd do.
------
wayn3
We as a community take a strong stance on the issue and categorically decline
jobs that are not fully remote.
The recruiters I work with know that I don't entertain non-remote work at
_any_ salary.
Do the same. Join the revolution. Succeed.
------
jf22
Time to move on.
The culture at this company must be really difficult if "upsetting" other
departments is the reason to prevent remote work.
------
peteradio
Other departments will continue to sit on IT as long as they are allowed to.
Not sure why they are being allowed to, but probably your upper management
does not have clout.
------
itronitron
Maybe the engineering managers can define and enforce 'no-chit-chat' zones
around the development teams to prevent distraction. After a few weeks or
months of having their social interactions dampened the socialistas will be
begging management to let the developers work from home.
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
Vermin Supreme - mmhsieh
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vermin_Supreme
======
Quequau
This man's positive role in defusing tense stand-offs at political rallies and
short circuiting bad faith discussion derailing with incredibly skilful humour
is tragically underrated.
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
OneWeb about to launch its first internet satellites to connect the unconnected - deanalevitt
https://www.technologyreview.com/the-download/613043/oneweb-is-about-to-launch-its-first-internet-satellites-to-connect-the/
======
deanalevitt
_Today’s launch, scheduled for 4:37 p.m. US Eastern time_
There's a link to watch the launch live in the article.
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
Similarities between Musicians and Entrepreneurs - earbitscom
http://blog.earbits.com/online_radio/5-similarities-of-musicians-and-entrepreneurs/
======
seiji
People struggling to succeed are all the same. Startups, writers, script
producers, musicians, ...
See how much of this write-up rings true with you: <http://matt.io/entry/tz>
(Note: it's a reformatted version of [http://www.dannybarnes.com/blog/how-
make-living-playing-musi...](http://www.dannybarnes.com/blog/how-make-living-
playing-music) because the original is nigh unreadable.)
From a screenwriting point of view, John August has well written success
advice in his ongoing Q&A series: <http://johnaugust.com/answers>
~~~
TeMPOraL
> People struggling to succeed are all the same.
What does "to succeed" mean anyway? I was always wondering, and don't really
know to this day.
~~~
yotamros
If you ask me, "to succeed" is when you do something you believe in, and enjoy
the process, regardless of the outcome.
------
guynamedloren
Though lots of HNers might disagree (or be reluctant to admit it), I find
striking similarities between rappers and entrepreneurs. Behind the flashy
front of a rapper is a guy who has a dream. With enough drive, dedication and
passion, there's nothing stopping that rapper from achieving his dream,
regardless of the naysayers and the obstacles along the way. Entrepreneurs are
no different.
------
bradleyland
I couldn't agree more. A fair number of the entrepreneurs I know have some
sort of background in the arts. I was/am a musician and participated in the
high school marching band. This was, strangely enough, a "cool" activity at
our high school, where our band was openly appreciated by our sports coaches
and student body.
I regularly reflect on the experiences I gained in marching band when looking
at my entrepreneurial efforts. Mastery, confidence, leadership, discipline,
teamwork... The list of attributes developed when taking part in a performing
art is long and strongly correlated with those required to succeed in just
about any setting.
------
oblique63
Glad to see somebody finally put to words what's been knocking around my head
for quite some time now. Although it's not a state that's exclusive to either
musicians or entrepreneurs (as others in this thread have noted), I think it's
an analogy that seems to resonate more deeply with people in general. I know
I've seen it mentioned here that startups are the new 'rock bands' (in the
sense that success/fame-thirsty people are now forming companies instead of
bands to fulfill their dreams), and that's a comparison that everyone
understands, because who hasn't fantasized about being in a wildly famous rock
band at one point?
In fact, I'm not sure why this is even an analogy; in my mind, musicians ARE
entrepreneurs. I'm currently in the process of recording my first album as a
solo musician, and founding a music related startup at the same time
(<http://www.tabrat.com/>), and can already see the similarity of the hurdles
I will have to face on both frontiers. I would imagine this connection to be
painfully obvious to any musician working on a startup though. To elaborate on
this perspective, you could say record labels are analogous to investors in
the startup world (major labels being like larger VCs, and independent labels
being like Angels), where they could potentially approach you, but most likely
you'll end up pitching your product/music to a lot of them with marginal
success, if not deciding to just completely bootstrap as an 'indie' artist.
And there are plenty more 'connections' like that to be made, so I really
think musicians are a subset of entrepreneurs, not just merely their analogs.
------
te_chris
As an indie musician I've found that a lot of the skills I developed over the
years in rehearsing, getting ready to record, deciding which songs were best
for the recording (your product) and promoting shows through any outlet
available have proved invaluable in building my startup.
------
phektus
One can also see many parallels between bands and startups. Both is working on
getting 'signed'. Both start small and usually low budget. Both relies on
creating stuff to make their way. Both has to struggle with small group issues
and drama. So on and so forth.
------
RobMcCullough
Great post. I can relate, and I have always thought the same thing. Starving
Musician === Bootstrapping Entrepreneur.
~~~
yotamros
Totally!
------
pauldisneyiv
A musician friend and I recently discussed the similarities in naming a
startup and naming a band.
------
Djabowski
Very true my colleague was a musician before starting his own (music) related
company.
------
juiceandjuice
Forgot one thing:
Lots of them do similar things and imitate, failing to stand out in the crowd.
------
mtogo
The main difference is you can make a good living playing music.
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
Google is working on a new AI-enabled messenger, its answer to Facebook M - chlestakoff
http://www.businessinsider.com/report-google-is-working-on-a-new-smart-messaging-app-2015-12?op=1
======
thebladerunner
So much hype and confusion in this space!
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
Dropbox handler on Amiga [video] - erickhill
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Qy6lFjQFg-I&feature=youtu.be
======
jeena
The funniest thing is that he uses a fetish s/video/demo with half-naked
bondage women in it to demonstrate running a program directly from dropbox.
~~~
djsumdog
It had a file_id.diz file in the directory. I'm thinking this is a legit 1990s
Amiga program downloaded from some dodgy BBS.
~~~
jeena
Yeah sorry now that read what I wrote I get how it is perceived. Forget the
word "video" in my comment and replace it with "demo"
------
majcherek128
Cool. Now do a port of the latest OpenSSL to A500, and find a way to get good
randomness. That would be something :P
------
mark_sz
This is pretty cool!
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
Airlines Defend Dormant 737 Max Jets from Corrosion, Insects and Time - DamnInteresting
https://www.forbes.com/sites/jeremybogaisky/2019/08/12/boeing-737-max-desert-storage/
======
BitwiseFool
Even after they re-certify the aircraft, stories like this make me want to
totally avoid flying on a 737-Max.
Despite the checklists and procedures outlined by Boeing, I can't help but
think something minor will be overlooked.
Even during short periods of downtime neglecting procedures can be fatal. Just
look at Birgenair Flight 301. The pilot tubes were left uncovered for only two
days. In that time a wasp built a nest inside of it and that lead to the loss
of the entire plane. There were no survivors.
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
The WannaCry Ransomware Hackers Made Some Major Mistakes - taylorbuley
https://www.wired.com/2017/05/wannacry-ransomware-hackers-made-real-amateur-mistakes/
======
draw_down
We can laugh as long as we like, but maybe the next attackers won't make such
simple mistakes. Or maybe this was just a test that got out of hand, etc. In
any case, this thing temporarily being defeated because it checked a domain,
or the failure to use many bitcoin addresses are easily fixed. If we get smug
about this, we do so at our peril.
~~~
schoen
Yeah, the Morris worm had some major mistakes too. Later worm authors with
seriously malicious intent managed to learn from it, and from one another's
mistakes.
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
Audio processing in TensorFlow - dariocazzani
https://medium.com/towards-data-science/audio-processing-in-tensorflow-208f1a4103aa
======
rryan
Anyone interested in machine learning for audio (or any other signals) should
keep a close eye on tf.contrib.signal. I just checked in some code to do
efficient framing, windowing and overlap-add. In a day or so I'll be checking
in an STFT and inverse STFT with GPU and gradient support, so you can make an
STFT part of learning (not just an input pre-processing step). Please file
bugs / feature requests and feel free to CC me (also rryan on github).
~~~
guscost
Just to confirm, this is being developed in the main TensorFlow repo?
~~~
rryan
Yup! The code is here:
[https://github.com/tensorflow/tensorflow/tree/master/tensorf...](https://github.com/tensorflow/tensorflow/tree/master/tensorflow/contrib/signal)
~~~
guscost
Awesome, thanks!
------
gaius
I've been looking for something like this - I want to do some serious research
into my cats meowing. One of them will walk into a room, make eye contact then
emit a complicated sequence of meows, chirrups and squeaks. She is obviously
trying to say _something_ and it's my job to find out what.
------
anigbrowl
I find it perplexing that people are still using a serial text-based IDE to
write code for something called 'Tensor _Flow_ '. It's worth looking into
Reaktor and CoreDSP from Native Instruments to see how audio processing tasks
(and indeed neural nets) can be handled in a flow-based IDE.
The landing page is aimed at musicians but if you dig down there's extensive
documentation on how to do low-level DSP processing. [https://www.native-
instruments.com/en/products/komplete/synt...](https://www.native-
instruments.com/en/products/komplete/synths/reaktor-6/) and
[https://www.native-
instruments.com/fileadmin/ni_media/downlo...](https://www.native-
instruments.com/fileadmin/ni_media/downloads/manuals/REAKTOR_6_Building_in_Core_English_2015_11.pdf)
Yes, there's a learning curve to flow-based programming. But this is what all
IDEs will eventually look like. You shouldn't be writing everything in code
for the same reasons you shouldn't be writing your whole project in assembler:
your reinvention of the wheel is probably not as great as you think; every
time you forsake a standard modular component in favor of your own way of
doing it, you're creating technical debt for whoever has parse your code
later; A lot of the actual work in coding is syntax, glue, and scope checking,
and those jobs are _better done by a computer_ \- making people type out all
that stuff by hand is a distraction from the domain-specific problem to be
solved.
Music software may seem like a toy to non-musicians/sound engineers but for
them it's mission-critical real-time software with an extremely demanding user
base that frequently has advanced domain knowledge of its own. Tools like
Reaktor are built on the foundations of earlier tools like pd and
supercollider, which in turn were built on text-based languages like CSound.
People have been building neural nets and suchlike on these platforms for over
a decade already.
~~~
JosephRedfern
Do you think such tools are mature enough for wide adoption yet? How does, for
instance, version control and collaborative development fit into these flow-
based tools?
> every time you forsake a standard modular component in favor of your own way
> of doing it, you're creating technical debt for whoever has parse your code
> later
I don't disagree that you shouldn't re-invent the wheel whenever possible, but
modularity is absolutely not unique to flow-based programming. Well designed
libraries should provide good levels of abstraction and be highly modular.
Flow-based programming might stop people from shooting themselves in the foot,
but I'm not sure if the cost to flexibility makes it worth it in every case.
~~~
anigbrowl
Yes, look into Flowstone or NoFlow. Tools like this are very common in many
niche domains; it takes some mental effort to pull back and see the
limitations of path dependency in general purpose programming, and frankly an
awful lot of people are ego-invested in their current way of doing things with
no thought to the long term accessibility and maintainability issues.
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
Daniel Kahneman: The riddle of experience vs. memory - j_b_f
http://www.ted.com/talks/daniel_kahneman_the_riddle_of_experience_vs_memory.html?awesm=on.ted.com_8Ads&utm_medium=on.ted.com-twitter&utm_source=direct-on.ted.com&utm_content=site-basic
======
j_b_f
The speaker argues that your memory of an event is based largely on the _end_
of the event itself (such as the pain at the very end of a colonoscopy).
Hilariously, the end of the speech itself ends strong but then there's a
crappy question-and-answer session at the end that sort of ruins it. Or my
memory of it, at least!
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
Arbitrage Discovered (2015) - Tomte
http://www.bloomberg.com/view/articles/2015-02-27/arbitrage-discovered
======
chollida1
If you haven't heard of this contract, its really amazing. It allows the
holder to buy a portfolio of stocks up until the Wednesday of the following
week based on last weeks prices.
So essentially you can invest with perfect hindsight. The counter party,
Aviva, didn't write the original contact but acquired the company that did.
They haven't paid out any money yet and have contested the contract many times
in court, loosing each time.
It's gotten worse for Aviva as their original plan was to delay paying out to
bleed him dry to make him settle, but a few Swiss banks have lent him money to
live off of and lent even more so he can leaver up his bet as he's allowed to
invest additional funds into this contract.
The biggest issue is that you really can't value the contract as the holder is
25 and it pays out until his death. If he lives until he's 75 its worth more
than the company could reasonably find.
If you are wondering why the insurance company would write such a contract, it
was originally designed to be like a savings vehicle back in the 80s. It would
let you swap between bonds and equities as your risk profile changed over the
course of your life.
Back in the 80's it wasn't really considered feasible to sort through all the
markets and figure out in time what to invest in to make this arbitrage. But
with the internet, things changed....
~~~
pmiller2
> If he lives until he's 75 its worth more than the company could reasonably
> find.
I would say that he's got a pretty strong incentive to make sure Aviva doesn't
go out of business. That alone will limit his ability to extract value out of
this contract.
~~~
Bromskloss
And Aviva has an incentive to make him "go out of business". :-|
~~~
pmiller2
He only has to stay afloat long enough to be able to buy the company. ;)
------
arcticfox
Is he the only one holding this contract? Can't all of the other holders also
do the same thing, now that the tactic is public?
In that case, his stake seems like it would be (Aviva's value) / (number of
arbitrage policy holder) as opposed to "100% of Aviva" as posited in the
article.
~~~
laughinghan
According to Footnote 5, most of them have settled:
Except the other holders of THIS policy! Who exist, though most of them
have settled, apparently for relative peanuts.
[http://www.bloomberg.com/view/articles/2015-02-27/arbitrage-...](http://www.bloomberg.com/view/articles/2015-02-27/arbitrage-
discovered#footnote-1425055756515)
~~~
arcticfox
Good find, thanks.
------
hkmurakami
It says something about a writer when I see a TLD and immediately think
"please please please be Matt Levine" as I click the link.
Are there any writers that elicit this reaction from you guys? Would love to
be made aware of any.
~~~
0x0
You see ".com" and think of one guy? :)
~~~
hkmurakami
whoops! you got me. Have an upvote. :)
------
morgante
Does anyone know if there have been updates on this case since then?
~~~
saalweachter
The Google News doesn't have anything more recent than 2015. I wonder if there
was a settlement with an NDA?
------
theseatoms
How is this company worth $12B? Is it hard to short? The $12B equity valuation
would imply slim odds of Max-Hervé George being fully paid out.
If not, what information are we missing?
~~~
ryankupyn
I expect that it's the long time horizon until Max-Hervé (or rather his
estate) is actually paid off. Up until that point, barring any regulations
which require the insurer to steadily accumulate reserves in response to the
rising value of his policy, the insurer will keep operating - and profiting
normally. It's entirely possible that this distant future cost isn't that much
of an issue for most investors! And of course Aviva has 50 years to engage in
legal wrangling as well. It would only take one amenable government in that
period to turn the tables.
For Max-Hervé and his banks there is actually some rather significant risk.
Their insurer could collapse due to some other cause, and policies might not
be paid out. By keeping the policy and not settling, their taking out a
position on Aviva's continued survival for 50 years.
~~~
vasilipupkin
If he is not paid out in the life insurance portion, it doesn't matter. If
aviva collapses, he simply has a portfolio he can no longer rotate out of. So,
his risk is really no different than risk of holding a portfolio of stocks in
the worst case
------
Hermel
That reminds me of the mythical king who agreed to pay "just" one grain of
rice for the first square of a chessboard, two for the next, then four, then
eight, etc. and ended up losing his entire kingdom.
Normally, continental European law protects consumers from their own
stupidity. If a contract contains something in the fine print that is clearly
against the intent behind the contract, it is invalid. Similarly, I would
expect that there is a good chance to render this contract invalid as well,
even tough firms do not enjoy the same level of protection from their own
stupidity as consumers.
~~~
halter73
I don't think this is a case of the contract containing "something in the fine
print that is clearly against the intent behind the contract" though. The
underwriters may not have correctly calculated the exposure of the contract,
but they knew what they were selling.
From the article:
> But Max-Hervé George didn't mess with any expectations. Aviva had to expect
> exactly this. This is nuts independent of actuarial assumptions. Aviva knew
> it was offering an arbitrage at its expense. The name of the thing is "Fixed
> Price Arbitrage Life Insurance Contract." That just means, "We have made a
> horrible mistake, would you like to buy it?" The answer is yes, all day
> long.
~~~
Hermel
> had to expect
But apparently did not. The question is also: what did Max-Hervé expect? If he
knew that the insurance could not have meant the contract the way they wrote
it, it is morally (and maybe also legally) wrong to exploit their mistake
(unless you live in Anglo-Saxon capitalism, where everyone is expected to
screw everyone else given the opportunity).
~~~
morgante
> If he knew that the insurance could not have meant the contract the way they
> wrote it, it is morally (and maybe also legally) wrong to exploit their
> mistake
Why can you assume that? The contract is written clearly and specifically
calls itself an arbitrage contract.
Was it unethical to exploit the fact that the mythical king didn't bother to
calculate exponents? The request itself was stated clearly.
~~~
Hermel
> Was it unethical to exploit the fact that the mythical king didn't bother to
> calculate exponents?
Yes, it is clearly unethical to enter into a contract with someone when you
know that the other person would never agree if he actually understood what
the contract says. Also, in many jurisdictions, such a contract would be void.
~~~
morgante
The law does not protect you from stupidity, just manipulation or deception.
In my view, neither does morality. A fool deserves to be separated from his
money.
If I offer to sell you 10 nickels for a dollar, it's your own damn fault if
you agree.
~~~
Hermel
Actually, the law often protects you from your own stupidity.
Btw, if you think that the words and the signatures on the paper are the
contract, you are wrong. The contract is what you agreed to, and if there is
no agreement, there is no contract.
Here is an example that I actually experienced: we proposed a deal to person
A. That person agreed and sent the signed contract back. We then also put our
signatures onto the contract and put it into a drawer. However, we
unfortunately did not notify A that we signed the contract as well, rendering
the contract void. I.e.: in my jurisdiction (and many others in Europe), it
does not suffice that everyone signed a contract, one also needs to ensure
that everyone knows that everyone signed the contract. Otherwise, it is
invalid because there was no agreement everyone knew about.
~~~
morgante
I'm well aware of how contract law works.
The law requires that knowingly enter a contract and understand its terms. If
this contract had been written such that they didn't _realize_ he could
reallocate investments after the fact, then you might have a point.
The law _does not_ protect you from making bad decisions and entering
contracts you probably shouldn't, provided you understand the contracts
themselves. That would mean a huge majority of contracts are invalid because
people frequently and routinely enter contracts which are inadvisable. (For
example, subprime loans.)
Not understanding a contract and not thinking through the implications of said
contract are completely different things.
------
bhickey
Is he taking investments?
~~~
HappyTypist
He's using his estate as collateral and banks have loaned him boatloads of
money.
------
Bromskloss
Could Aviva pay out all its assets as dividends, or move them to a different
company, and then just shut down?
~~~
maxerickson
The contract puts him in front of shareholders when it comes to the assets.
Whatever the contract is worth, that value is his more than it is the
company's.
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
Choosing Ubuntu Fully Compatible Laptop Is Easier Now - tzury
http://www.ubuntu.com/certification/makes
======
bmastenbrook
tl;dr: don't believe it, at least not for any recent Intel ThinkPads.
I have the ThinkPad T420 with Sandy Bridge graphics that they list as
"Certified" under 11.04. This is at best highly misleading. I bought this
laptop under the delusion that choosing components that were supported by open
source in-tree drivers written by the actual hardware vendor was the right
decision to make. Alas, Natty out of the box hangs quite frequently, and X is
very unstable. The DisplayPort output is unusable, and even non-DisplayPort
output via an adapter didn't quite work.
After quite a lot of fiddling, I've found that the latest upstream kernels
(I'm using 3.1-RC9 at the moment) from the Kernel PPA mostly fix the hanging,
and using KDE with the XRender compositing backend addresses the rest of the
issues I have. OpenGL stability is still a disaster, but I don't really have
any need it for anything. I'm not sure if native DisplayPort actually works
yet; I got a small HDMI adapter to use instead. Using XFCE would probably work
just as well, but don't expect stability from Compiz.
Oh, and if you use dm-crypt (which you should on a laptop) you'll get a stupid
error from Grub on every boot unless you uncomment GRUB_TERMINAL=console in
/etc/default/grub (&& run update-grub). For reference:
<https://bugs.launchpad.net/ubuntu/+source/grub2/+bug/699802>
~~~
jessedhillon
_tl;dr: don't believe it, at least not for any recent Intel ThinkPads._
Counterpoint: I chose the ThinkPad X220 because it was on that list and it
works (nearly) flawlessly under Linux. The only problem I know of is that the
mic mute button doesn't work. That's it.
~~~
bmastenbrook
Which distribution of Linux? Do you use compositing? If so, what compositing
window manager are you using? What's your typical uptime? Do you use multi-
monitor? Have you used an 802.11n AP, particularly a 5GHz AP supporting WLAN
power save (such as an AirPort Extreme)?
Under a different set of circumstances, Natty could have been said to be
flawless on my T420, and indeed I thought it was for the first few days. When
I started using the system more intensively for the tasks I bought it for, I
began to notice the problems.
~~~
jessedhillon
- Distro: Ubuntu, then Fedora
- Compositing: Yes
- WM: Mutter
- Uptime: weeks, currently 15 days
- Multi-monitor: haven't yet, I could try and let you know what happens
- 802.11n: No
I noticed on the notes for your laptop that you have an Nvidia graphics card.
I had an Nvidia on my last laptop and that experience convinced me never to
get a card that requires a proprietary driver. I always had issues with
compositing, resuming from sleep, and artifacts appearing on my desktop
(especially text corruption in terminals).
------
munin
notice how many specify "32 bit".
this is a joke for engineering laptops that need more RAM.
I have a T510, which is listed. it definitely doesn't work out of the box, and
not all of the hardware (nvidia optimus for example) is fully supported.
~~~
schwuk
We have a very large number of systems to test, and it is not feasible to test
every system with both 32-bit & 64-bit. There are also requirements from the
manufacturers to consider. (Please note, I don't perform the testing, so my
knowledge is second hand.)
Personally, I'd rather see lots of 32-bit systems than a handful of 64-bit. :)
~~~
wmf
Why not test 64-bit first and only try 32-bit if it fails?
~~~
schwuk
Desktops, Laptops and Netbooks are certified using the 32bit version of Ubuntu
and Servers are certified using the 64bit version of Ubuntu Server Edition.
This is based on the most common usage patterns we've seen.
Another answer is that it would lengthen an already long process.
~~~
GeneralMaximus
That usage pattern only exists because 32-bit Ubuntu is selected by default
and marked as "recommended" on your download page. People I know regularly
download the 32-bit version even though I tell them to get the 64-bit version.
Why is 64-bit not the recommended option?
~~~
mappu
Why should it be?
PAE [1] is reported to work very well, so there's no RAM problem. Plus, things
like ndiswrapper go a long way to highlighting Ubuntu's famous 'ease of use',
and i imagine it's a huge hassle to get that working on x86_64.
64-bit is a higher number, but it's not instantly better in all situations.
Larger pointers = effectively smaller cache, and the extra registers don't
always make up for that.
_________________
1\. <https://help.ubuntu.com/community/EnablingPAE>
------
schwuk
I'm the maintainer of the application that provides these listings, and it's
great to see them featured on HN. I'll try and reply to some of the comments,
but feel free to ask any other questions.
~~~
davidw
Years ago, I ran a "Linux Incompatibility List". You might consider the idea
of something similar - a list of things to avoid because they're guaranteed
not to work with Linux.
------
reustle
It's showing my laptop (Lenovo x120e) on this list, but my laptop has known
issues with the current wifi drivers which causes kernel panics.
~~~
schwuk
There is an X100e and X121e listed, but no X120e. I've seen enough hardware
listings to know that there's no guarantee of equivalence between models.
~~~
ajross
Not even between devices with exactly the same model numbers. I've seen
batches of "identical" laptops arrive from the factory with a mix of Broadcom
and Atheros wifi, for instance.
~~~
schwuk
Yes. Device substitutions are hard enough, but device revisions add another
layer of complexity.
------
dgudkov
Ubuntu crashes on my T420 during installation despite T420 is listed there.
~~~
schwuk
All systems are tested from a fresh install, therefore the installation is
part of the certified status. Also see my comment about SKUs: a single model
name can cover a multitude of incompatibilities.
Anecdotally, I've managed to crash my MacBook while installing OS X.
------
antirez
what should be done instead is a fork of Ubuntu designed to run well in the
best laptop hardware out there: macbooks.
~~~
schwuk
Ubuntu actually works really well on MacBooks - since Natty I've not had to do
anything OOTB to use it on my MacBook Pro, and only minor tweaks for Maverick.
While you'll never see Apple hardware certified for Ubuntu, I expect we'll see
lots of results on our crowdsourced hardware compatibility listings at
<http://friendly.ubuntu.com>
~~~
samstokes
Is this also the case for current-generation MacBooks? On both of the last two
occasions I researched this - 2 years ago and 1 year ago - the story was that
on older MacBooks it would mostly work, though you might need to tweak to get
some hardware (e.g. sound) working, and that on the current or previous
generation of MacBooks it would require serious surgery to even boot.
TBH, even the tweaking to get sound working is more than I can be bothered
with these days. I use Linux rather than OSX because it's better for my use
cases and I want the _option_ to tweak, not because I actually enjoy tweaking.
Would be great news if the support was better now.
~~~
schwuk
Mine is a mid-2009 15" MacBook Pro. I can't speak for anything newer.
~~~
moreati
Typing this on a late 2010 MBP running 11.10. I started on 10.10 which needed
modules and other bits from the mactel PPA for audio, backlight control,
hotkeys etc to work properly. 11.04 was pretty good - just needed a wireless
driver from the backports repository I think. 11.10 so far is working with the
exception of 3-finger tap to middle-click in Unity. I've switched to KDE which
is good enough, after some theming/tweaking.
From my sample of 1 I'd say Ubuntu Mac/Macbook support is good about 6-9
months after the first release by Apple. Before then it's hunting around
forums, and PPAs.
------
moondowner
Note that there are other fully compatible laptops - but aren't listed due to
not taking the Ubuntu certification.
For example, there is only one HP laptop there, and It's more than obvious
that there are lot more HP laptops which run the default Ubuntu installation
without problems.
~~~
schwuk
Absolutely. Certified means we've got an agreement in place with the
manufacturer to test specific models.
For everything else, we're started Ubuntu Friendly:
<http://friendly.ubuntu.com>
------
samstokes
This is a wonderful move. This would have saved me _so_ much time if it had
been around a year or so ago when I was shopping for a new laptop. (I went
with the Thinkpad T510, which has worked flawlessly.)
~~~
schwuk
That's the whole idea of the listings. :)
------
ericb
Does ubuntu, with 11.10, for any of these models, detect external displays
automatically? Is this a feature that is just not in the current ubuntu, or
something particular to 10.10 and my Dell?
~~~
sp332
It has "support" for this, unfortunately support varies depending on your
driver. e.g. Nvidia Quadro:
<http://www.brighthub.com/computing/linux/articles/31614/p2/> and some
Radeons: [http://niccolofavari.com/ubuntu-10.04-lucid-issues-with-
exte...](http://niccolofavari.com/ubuntu-10.04-lucid-issues-with-external-
monitor-and-ati-radeon-card) and so on.
------
puredemo
Hopefully we'll see some ultrabooks on here in the upcoming months.
------
spinlock
This is just what I was looking for. I was thinking about building an
alienware laptop and duel booting to Ubuntu. My big issue was I didn't know
where the problems were going to come in. Thanks!
~~~
schwuk
Within those listings is the Component Catalog that lets you search for
individual components (contained within the certified systems). There's no
guarantee that individual components will work together, but it's better than
not knowing at all.
------
zacharysjoden
Haven't tried them(yet), but <http://www.system76.com> looks promissing for
fully Linux compatible computers, including laptops.
------
lallysingh
Bullshit.
They're listing "Preinstall only" for quite a few machines (including the
Lenovo W520, which I just bought), but the "preinstall" image isn't available.
In the US, you can only choose windows as your OS. You can't get the
compatibility-tested version of ubuntu anywhere on that page, or anywhere else
I've looked _.
Rather tragic for an open-source operating system.
_ Note: I didn't look too far, I just installed arch instead.
~~~
schwuk
Where can I find a Pre-install/Manufacturer image:
<https://answers.launchpad.net/ubuntu-certification/+faq/1523>
Why can't I buy a system with Ubuntu pre-installed on it?:
<https://answers.launchpad.net/ubuntu-certification/+faq/1717>
~~~
lallysingh
.. and they're full of excuses.
That sort of crap was why _I thought_ Ubuntu was created. No more excuses for
having to go through free & non-free repos, half-assed "it's meant for the
enterprise" desktop configurations, etc.
Look, if I can't get the image that they're saying is compatible, _it isn't
compatible for me._ It's empty sales-speak and has no business in free
software.
------
gtani
Maybe you could list most common failing tests, let people decide what they
could live without:
\- wifi chipset
\- vid cards (GPU set)
\- sleep/resume
~~~
schwuk
That's what Ubuntu Friendly (<http://friendly.ubuntu.com>) does.
------
buster
A shame that Sony is not listed.. hopefully this page motivates Sony to
certify them :)
~~~
spinlock
Yeah. I like the look of the Vaio line a lot but I really want a machine that
will run linux well. Ubuntu seems like it would be the best distro for a
vendor to partner with.
~~~
buster
I have Vaios since quite a few years and they generally worked. Only thing i
wished that would work is the graphics switch from integrated graphics to
seperate one...
Despite a netbook with the horrible GMA500 graphics (stay away from that crap
as far as possible!).
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
Detailed analysis of a star’s orbit near supermassive black hole - furcyd
http://newsroom.ucla.edu/releases/einstein-general-relativity-theory-questioned-ghez
======
idlewords
This is a weird title given the content of the article, which is that
researchers observing a supermassive black hole got a result completely
consistent with general relativity.
~~~
btilly
The title was the best clickbait that they could get, based on an offhand
comment that the theory has to break down inside the black hole.
But if the title was, "General Relativity succeeds again", who would have read
the article?
~~~
hetman
It's unfortunate some people think having their article read is a priority.
Perhaps we need a browser plugin where people can rank the accuracy of titles
from various outlets so the user can decide if an article is likely to waste
their time.
~~~
ngold
That's a good idea, it's basically why everyone checks the comment section
first.
------
agiri
Not questioned, the best approximation we have for now. As for all theories
attempting to describe empirical truth.
------
ddingus
That's science. Hate this headline. Basically, every theory is "standing for
now."
We get understanding, that leads to questions, which leads to greater
understanding...
A predictive theory, finally found to not be predictive, is still valid for
all it can predict. Our understanding improves in some way, or technology
does, and we advance all of those things, being able to predict to greater
detail and depth.
------
ijidak
I have a question relating to black holes. The equivalence principle in
General Relativity says there is no way to devise an experiment to determine
if I am in a craft accelerating due to thrust from "engines" of some g or in
that same craft on the ground being accelerated by the same g due to gravity.
But wouldn't this break down inside of a black hole?
Imagine I fire a beam of light directly at a black hole. It would never been
seen to come out on the other side, because it would become trapped in that
black hole.
But if I fired that same beam of light normal to the path of my craft
accelerating at the same g as that black hole, wouldn't the light be able to
pass right through it?
So doesn't that break the equivalence principle?
~~~
btilly
The equivalence is "local only". Meaning that if you take a small volume of
space, and measure first order effects, it is equivalent. But over larger
volumes of space, there can be second order differences. An example of that is
"curvature".
Once you get to experiments involving the geometry of a black hole, you're a
long ways away from the local equivalence, and it is no surprise that you can
tell that something massive is nearby.
------
luc4sdreyer
The title is pretty misleading. Yes, it's technically correct, but it implies
they found something else that might question it.
~~~
dang
Ok, we've swapped it out for the subtitle.
------
RandomTisk
Does this mean it's at least possible that space and time aren't linked in the
way we think? That General Relativity only makes it appear so?
~~~
wwarner
No the finding is that they tested GR near a boundary, where you might expect
find issues, and found that it held up. The title and the comment Ghez makes
about the interior of a black hole are a bit misleading.
As far as interiors of black holes, I can only guess that she's pointing out
(a) that we can't directly observe anything past the event horizon and (b) GR
doesn't really make claims about what's going on in the very center at the
singularity. From what I've read, it's thought that inside the event horizon,
black holes are almost totally empty until you get to the singularity (or
torus if it's spinning) at the center.
~~~
AgentME
> From what I've read, it's thought that inside the event horizon, black holes
> are almost totally empty until you get to the singularity (or torus if it's
> spinning) at the center.
I can see how this could maybe be true for a black hole that never has
anything fall into it after yourself, but for regular black holes that have
things falling in regularly I think the situation would be pretty different.
As you get closer to the event horizon, the rest of the universe appears to
speed up. This means that as you get closer, the rate of objects / energy
coming into the black hole past you and sometimes colliding into you will
increase. You can imagine that at some point near the event horizon, every
second, 100 years will pass for the rest of the universe, and 100 years worth
of debris and light will enter into the black hole, some of it colliding with
you. As soon as you reach the event horizon, an infinite amount of time's
worth of debris and light will enter into the black hole, some of it colliding
with you. From inside the black hole, it must look like everything that has
ever fallen into the black hole in the history of the universe has fallen into
it at the same instant. (And then I'm not entirely sure how black hole
evaporation fits into this. I'd expect the perspective of someone going into a
black hole must look like you immediately collide with everything that ever
has and ever will fall into the black hole, and then instantly everything is
obliterated into Hawking radiation.)
~~~
wwarner
I'm just a reader, but Kip Thorne doesn't agree with your picture. In his
book, he claims you wouldn't notice passing through the event horizon, except
for extreme tidal forces that would tear you apart. The time freezing and red
shifting reverse so that looking away from the center, distant objects move
faster and are bluer.
His book for the layman is Black Holes and Time Warps.
~~~
shagie
The tidal forces depend on the size of the black hole.
[http://www.hawking.org.uk/into-a-black-
hole.html](http://www.hawking.org.uk/into-a-black-hole.html)
> ... If you fall towards a black hole feet first, gravity will pull harder on
> your feet than your head, because they are nearer the black hole. The result
> is, you will be stretched out longwise, and squashed in sideways.. If the
> black hole has a mass of a few times our sun, you would be torn apart, and
> made into spaghetti, before you reached the horizon. However, if you fell
> into a much larger black hole, with a mass of a million times the sun, you
> would reach the horizon without difficulty. So, if you want to explore the
> inside of a black hole, choose a big one. There is a black hole of about a
> million solar masses, at the center of our Milky way galaxy.
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
How we track customer costs in Mixpanel - tdumitrescu
https://mixpanel.com/blog/2018/06/14/how-we-use-mixpanel-to-put-a-price-on-our-data-usage/
======
donavanm
Nice take on granular cost accounting. Interesting that its per customer
attribution, as opposed to per component. Need the latter to talk about
efficiency and scaling. Would like to hear more about total avg cost (which
they have) vs marginal cost (which the business usually wants).
------
howitworks
Enjoyed this, thank you.
Is this something that the new CEO asked for in trying to improve operations?
------
thewordpainter
love mixpanel, keep up the great work
~~~
marichards
Love? They're a security nightmare. I wonder if they refunded the costs for
slurping user passwords or charged clients to hack them.
[http://web04.theregister.co.uk/2018/02/07/mixpanel_slurped_p...](http://web04.theregister.co.uk/2018/02/07/mixpanel_slurped_passwords_in_library_update_slip/)
~~~
GrumpyNl
Due to my security settings, cant view the page.
------
vishalsharma
Mixpanel often seen on left-bottom in my browser , Thanks to the slow
internet/CDN.
~~~
askl
Use uBlock and the Easyprivacy List. It blocks "/mixpanel.".
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
Show HN: Polar 1.5 /w Cloud Sync. Manage your reading /w annotations and tagging - burtonator
https://getpolarized.io/2018/12/16/polar-1.5-with-cloud-sync.html
======
burtonator
This is a big release for us.
You guys really liked our first release:
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=18219960](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=18219960)
... It's been really exciting seeing everyone dive in and suggest features and
bug fixes.
This release has a TON of fit and finish (bug fixes) but we're also announcing
cloud sync with this version as well.
Cloud sync enables you to keep your document repository and annotations
consistent across all your computers (MacOS, Windows, and Linux).
It's also real-time. If you make a change (add a tag, comment, highlight,
pagemark) it's immediately reflected across all your other devices.
We also released a chrome extension as part of this release:
[https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/save-to-
polar/jkfd...](https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/save-to-
polar/jkfdkjomocoaljglgddnmhcbolldcafd/)
which allows you to save directly to Polar.
...
We have a bunch of ideas for future features for Polar but we're mostly
community driven so I'm waiting to hear back from our user base now that this
is out the door.
Some ideas on the road map include:
\- Document discovery based on publicly shared documents by other Polar users.
\- Mobile support
\- Firefox plugin support (not a ton of work and might already work)
\- Annotation browser so you can manage your annotations as first class
objects like you can with documents.
... would LOVE to hear your thoughts here. Hacker News was very helpful in
getting this out the door and I really appreciate it!
~~~
Fudgel
Really looking forward to the Firefox extension being available, thanks.
------
gexla
This is a great application and I feel it deserves more eyeballs. Early in the
development process is the time to make suggestions which may influence the
direction of the project.
I have always thought it would be great to read articles in an application in
which I could track progress, add annotations and make comments on those
annotations.
Some applications get close, but there isn't much out there for reading AFAIK.
Most seem to not get much love.
Thanks for the great work!
~~~
burtonator
Thanks.. I agree... This is a tool that needs to exist which is why I was
amazed and really really frustrated that it didn't.
It's almost shocking really...
But the community has given an amazing amount of productive feedback. Making
great progress here!
------
Kaylaburt0n
Dude finally! I've been waiting for an app that can store web pages offline.
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
The TikTok War - migueldemoura
https://stratechery.com/2020/the-tiktok-war/
======
kpennell
I'm not sure how I got sucked into Tiktok but I was quickly hooked. There's
something so refreshingly playful, authentic, and raw about so much Tiktok
content compared to Instagram. Instagram (explore/discovery) is generally
pretty people with pretty things in pretty places. That was fun for a while
but it's just not that interesting after a while. I don't need to see more
pretty pictures of women doing yoga. I don't need to see more pretty mountain
bikes I can't afford. I don't need to see anymore drone shots of Milford Sound
in New Zealand.
Tiktok, on the other hand, is playful, diverse, and interesting (at least my
feed is). Once you start liking content, the feed completely changes from
teenage lip sync videos or other teenager-oriented content into such a nice
variety of content. I legitimately laugh my ass off or smile happily at so
much of it. Other content teaches me about food, gardening, dancing, DIY,
media theory, hiking alone, gender bending, etc. etc. The list goes on. Some
of the videos delight me and others inform me.
Instagram, by contrast, just feels so bland now.
~~~
analyte123
Something about Tiktok, whether the algorithm or the sheer volume of content,
seems to discourage the sort of look-at-me envy-bait narcissistic posturing
that is so common on Instagram. To be popular on Tiktok you actually have to
_do_ stuff (even it's fairly banal like dancing or telling stories), not just
_be_ (or pretend to be) someone.
I found it funny that the author of this post is trying to defend liberal
values like the free flow of information on the internet by...making Apple and
Google remove Tiktok from people's phones. He's correct that the primary
political risk of Tiktok is the recommendation algorithm being manipulated.
However, American tech companies manipulate their recommendation algorithms
for political reasons (in the loose sense of the word political) _all the
time_ and I'm sure not everyone in the world likes that either.
This would have been a good chance to really defend free flow of information
on the internet, open and swappable recommendation algorithms, personal data
ownership, and so on, but the conclusion is basically "it's bad because a
China-affiliated company does it". Generally, everything that Tiktok does that
is wrong is also wrong when Facebook does it. The reality is that Tiktok is
(for now) a superior product in many ways to anything from American tech
companies. Why is this?
~~~
sharadov
My naive question is how is Tiktok bad and all other American social media
platforms - FB/Insta/Snap good?
~~~
orangse
My theoretical answer would be that we can regulate American companies more
effectively and have them be held accountable, like when Zuckerberg had to go
before Congress. I doubt you'd be able to get the CEO of a large Chinese
company to do that.
In reality we don't regulate them nearly as much as we can, so the end result
is that FB and Tiktok both invade your privacy.
~~~
esperent
As a non-American looking on, it seems to me like the US government has failed
spectacularly at any kind of regulation, and to the contrary is often actively
trying to undermine privacy laws. Zuckerberg in front of congress achieved
exactly zero, except provide footage for loads of memes of Zuckerberg as a
lizard.
I prefer the idea of a US based social media company to a Chinese one. But
only slightly. I would much rather the company be based somewhere with genuine
intent to create consumer safety and privacy focused laws.
------
netcan
This tiktok "war" is, ultimately, changing the way people politicians think
about media tech.
With Twitter or Facebook, it's a lot easier to dismiss the magnitude of their
influence. After all, they're not in business to influence politics. They just
want to make tech & sell ads and make money. They don't care what becomes
news, who wins elections etc. Benign commercial interests, that's all
With tiktok and the chinese government's explicit approach of combining public
& commercial interest... That argument falls apart. That and the fact that it
is a foreign entity potentially affecting american politics.
Ultimately, the argument will swing back to FB & such... hopefully.
~~~
moron4hire
> After all, they're not in business to influence politics.
Dude, I personally know people who work in Facebook's own lobbying department.
I would be very surprised if Twitter didn't have the same thing.
~~~
xapata
There's a difference between Facebook lobbying and Facebook using its products
to disseminate propaganda.
~~~
agustif
Yeah right, Cambridge Analytica wasn't a thing...
~~~
xapata
That's considered a scandal, and was on behalf of political groups, not the
government itself.
~~~
agustif
You say political groups when there's only democrats/republicans dicothomy on
the US.
Republican interests channelled through russian oligarch friends made TRUMP
possible.
Let's see what happens on the coming elections...
------
jjuel
I recently deleted TikTok from my phone. I didn't have it for too long, and
until the recent press I had no idea it was a Chinese app. Honestly, I
understand companies will mine my data, but I have an issue with those
companies being forced to submit my data to the Chinese government on a whim.
And it was really all the same thing. People doing the same skits or dances.
Most of which were just chicks doing it in bikinis to get more views and
likes.
~~~
chosenbreed37
Are you actually concerned that the Chinese government might get access to
your data or is it a matter of principle? What do you think they want to do
with it? If they really wanted it could they not acquire it by other means? I
ask as I'm genuinely curious. I'm considering install it on my phone to try it
out and see how it compares to youtube. I'm not dissatisfied with my youtube
feed. Just curious as to how much better TikTok would be based on the
descriptions on the article and on this thread.
~~~
scruple
> Are you actually concerned that the Chinese government might get access to
> your data or is it a matter of principle?
Both.
> What do you think they want to do with it?
Absolutely no idea. Much like I had no idea what Facebook was doing, or
planned to do, with my data back in the 00s. I think we've been down this road
enough in the modern era to be distrustful of any entity, especially a
government, especially my own government, and especially the Chinese
government.
> If they really wanted it could they not acquire it by other means?
If they really wanted to target me as an individual, I am sure they could dig
up $THINGS. That doesn't mean I want to do their job for them.
Your line of questioning here, as I've read it, boils down to: "What are you
afraid of if you have nothing to hide?"
~~~
blacksmith_tb
Possibly, but it could be just be pragmatic - if I lived in the PRC, I would
be very, very nervous about sharing some kind of unfiltered feed of my data
with state entities. Living outside of the PRC, it's harder to imagine what
kind of practical use they'd put that same data to - though that might get
more exciting if I traveled to China at some point in the future...
~~~
scruple
Maybe you're right, but I don't think so. For me, personally, it is kind of
personal...
I have visited China multiple times. My wife is Chinese-American. My children
are half-Chinese and will, hopefully, be fluent in Cantonese, Mandarin,
Vietnamese (MIL is Vietnam-born Chinese and a Vietnam War refugee), and
English. A lot of our extended family still lives in China, in Hong Kong and
the mainland (and even Taiwan). I am critical of China, online and off, and I
have been for many, many years.
This isn't even that new to us, specifically. We decided in 2014 that we were
not willing to go into the mainland anymore. Most of my wifes paternal family
left Hong Kong after the hand-off in 1997 -- the writing was on the wall for
anyone willing to pay attention. Given everything that has happened in Hong
Kong in the last year or so, I don't think we'll ever visit family there
again, either.
More on topic, though... It's bad enough that I have this nagging feeling in
the back of my head about what sorts of bullshit the NSA, etc..., (and how
they probably share this data freely, if asked, with the FVEY, allied
intelligence agencies, etc...) are getting up to with my data, but I've
learned how to deal with that without experiencing too much of a chilling
effect. I don't have the mental capacity to fight this on yet another front,
especially when my own understanding of Chinese state politics is so
inadequate. Thankfully, I can easily opt out by simply not installing and/or
using TikTok, or any of the other Chinese state-sponsored spyware, on any of
our devices.
> Living outside of the PRC, it's harder to imagine what kind of practical use
> they'd put that same data to
Their reach doesn't end at their borders. The same can be said of every modern
government / state on the planet today.
If you want a specific example, the Blitzchung controversy is worth
understanding. [0] There's a list of censorship-related issues on Wikipedia,
too. [1]
[0]:
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Blitzchung_controversy](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Blitzchung_controversy)
[1]:
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Overseas_censorship_of_Chinese...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Overseas_censorship_of_Chinese_issues)
~~~
blacksmith_tb
Oh yes, I don't think that sounds overly paranoid to me under those
circumstances at all. I am sure I am on some lists here in the US for having
taken both Mandarin and Arabic as an undergrad (I could only be more evil if
I'd added Russian).
------
fossuser
There’s a lot of false equivalence in these comments along with a focus on the
app itself.
My worry is about CCP influence and their ability to both spread
misinformation and at the same time suppress stories the party doesn’t like.
Easy current examples are the democracy protests in Hong Kong, and the
sterilization going on in the Uyghur camps in China.
On Twitter you can talk about both things, on TikTok they will be shut down by
the CCP and it’s set up in such a way that users wouldn’t even notice.
On Twitter you can also be critical of the USG.
That’s the risk to me, that the CCP turns down the knobs on speech they
dislike and the public is too focused on dance videos to notice.
It’s an even greater risk to people like Joshua Wong, not only would his
speech be suppressed on TikTok, but the company would also hand over whatever
personal or location data they had on him to the government itself.
([https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Joshua_Wong](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Joshua_Wong))
The CCP should not be stewards of the services we use.
~~~
YarickR2
Twitter the company shouldn't be a steward of the Twitter the tool, too - do
you agree with that ?
------
azatris
I absolutely love using TikTok, but would give it up in a heartbeat for a
Western replacement.
It has absolutely brought more positivity into my life. I am specifically
feeding the algorithm with this intent and I get what I asked for. It is a
psychological tool.
~~~
baron_harkonnen
> give it up in a heartbeat for a Western replacement.
It's important to recognized that it's not a coincidence that TikTok exists
and is run by a Chinese company.
In the West that replacement would have been immediately purchased by FB or
Twitter and then summarily destroyed. This is literally what happened to the
closest Western equivalent: Vine.
The Chinese government has many faults, but unlike the US government, the
Chinese government still enforces the idea that Chinese companies should
operate in the interest of the nation.
Facebook did try to buy Musical.ly, the company that became TikTok, and would
have likely destroyed it just like Twitter did Vine.
If the US government was remotely functional it would put a little effort into
challenging the ability of near monopolies to simply destroy any competitor
through acquisition. I agree that it's not ideal that the Chinese government
is tightly connected with TikTok/ByteDance, but the reason there is no Western
TikTok is because our governments (particularly the US) are so deeply aligned
with the interests of larger corporations that a viable competitor to these
cannot exist.
~~~
creddit
Why assume FB would kill an acquisition? They didn’t kill WA, IG or Beluga.
They made them into massive billion+ DAU services.
~~~
brownbat
It may be harder to monetize short video content than short text or longer
videos (maybe that drives YouTube revenue nudges for longer content?).
But people like short videos, so there's a tension there. If you're in ads,
maybe just buy a few short video companies, get their patents to sue their
competitors, and shut them down, so no one gets access to the thing that they
like but is less lucrative for you.
But maybe you're right and they would have followed an IG model just fine.
------
eclipsetheworld
Why is TikTok allowed to gain market share in Western countries? China banned
Google, YouTube, Facebook, etc. while Chinese companies such as Baidu, Sina
Weibo, WeChat were able to capture the entire Chinese market share.
It seems that companies not adhering to censorship cannot expand into China,
however, Chinese companies adhering to censorship (e.g. TikTok) are able to
expand into Western countries. Isn't this anti-competitive?
~~~
rvz
Good question. If you want to get into the Chinese market, you must comply
with its laws and not get in the way of angering the CCP. China is one of
Apple's largest markets due to its access to over 1B+ people and it now has
its hands tied and anything the CCP wants removed, Apple will do it. [0][1][2]
Like you just said, TikTok already compiles with this security law and
censors/bans whatever the CCP requests. By moving outside of China it can
either lose access to the Chinese market and get banned by China or still
comply with its laws and get banned by the US.
The thing is, TikTok has offices out side of China due to the Musical.ly
acquisition (Located in the US) so can still operate there whilst Bytedance
being headquartered in Beijing.
A takedown request can be made to the App Store owner. Apple and Google.
[0] [https://9to5mac.com/2017/01/04/new-york-times-apps-
removed-i...](https://9to5mac.com/2017/01/04/new-york-times-apps-removed-in-
china/)
[1] [https://9to5mac.com/2017/11/21/skype-china-app-
store/](https://9to5mac.com/2017/11/21/skype-china-app-store/)
[2] [https://9to5mac.com/2019/10/10/protest-
app/](https://9to5mac.com/2019/10/10/protest-app/)
~~~
throw57654
TikTok is banned in China.
The company has an isolated version called Douyin that is only available in
China.
------
chvid
As an European I am happy that someone is finally breaking the American
monopoly on social media.
It just feels wrong only being surveilled by the NSA.
~~~
nix23
Install yandex tiktok and facebook and you have the holy trinity ;)
~~~
082349872349872
Eurasia, Eastasia, and Oceania ;)
(by the end of the year Airstrip One will have always been part of Oceania)
------
amadeuspagel
Interesting that only India's decision to ban TikTok made that possible in the
US. Shows how polarized the US is. If one side suggested banning TikTok, the
other side would immidiately defend it, but India banning it can bring it into
the conversation in a way that doesn't force everyone to adopt a view on it
reflexively.
------
Pandabob
I guess the sentiment that TikTok should be sold is gaining ground. It's
pretty clear from a regulatory perspective that Facebook won't be allowed to
buy it and probably Google neither.
The app also seems to be kind of a wonky fit to Amazons, Microsofts or Apples
portfolio (although Amazon does own twitch, so who knows).
I can't make a solid argument for it, but I wouldn't rule out either Netflix
or Disney making a bid for TikTok. Both companies are great with video, and I
think the current CEO of TikTok is the former COO of Disney. IDK.
~~~
esperent
If it does get sold, hopefully it's not to an US company. The web is already
far too dominated by US socal media companies.
------
russli1993
Tiktok's parent company, bytedance is incorporated in Cayman islands. It has a
Chinese subsidiary operating Douyin in China , and a US subsidiary operating
Tiktok in the US. The Chinese national intelligence law is applied to the
Chinese subsidiary but not the parent because the parent is not incorporated
in China. Hence the US subsidiary is not subjected to Chinese law. If Chinese
government demands US data and Bytedance's Chinese subsidiary refuses, the
government can shut down the Chinese subsidiary, but the Cayman island parent
will still operate. Hence Chinese government has no power over the US
subsidiary. Author says that Chinese values and American values are absolutely
opposing and because of that Tiktok's algorithms and product design could
undermine American values either consciously or unconsciously. Right now
Bytedance's US subsidiary is managed by Americans, hires US based engineers,
and the content moderation team is staffed with Americans. The goal should be
that Tiktok and Douyin will be separate, design, operated and moderated
separately. This could be strengthened by having American management at
Bytedance parent, and have Bytedance go public and have American board
directors. I hope that whatever international fears about Tiktok, the
regulatory body/government should make list of rules for Tiktok. Tiktok should
be given a chance to defend its positions, and ability to comply with the
rules. We should not just straight out ban tiktok, like "bam, after today, its
removed from app stores everywhere". that is not in the spirit of rule of law.
~~~
babaganoosh89
"If Chinese government demands US data and Bytedance's Chinese subsidiary
refuses, the government can shut down the Chinese subsidiary, but the Cayman
island parent will still operate. Hence Chinese government has no power over
the US subsidiary."
The issue is the Chinese government can compel it's citizens to do whatever
they want. Having non-Chinese in the management of Bytedance could help but I
can't imagine they could have a truly independent board if Bytedance is
majority owned by Chinese citizens.
------
rhacker
As the instagram teenagers that made it popular are now 22 - 25, it's their
turn to see a new generation overtake what is cool. Don't worry you guys will
see them in 10 years sad-facing when BlopChop is popular with the now 5 year
olds...
------
igammarays
It's interesting that we are beginning to realize the paradoxical nature of
"free speech". It's unfortunate that _free speech cannibalizes itself_. Since
there are other powers with significant influence who can enforce their speech
protectionism, it necessitates a response of the same kind, or risks
collapsing free speech entirely in favor of an opponent. It's a power
struggle, plain and simple.
------
caddie
i personally enjoy seeing young teenagers recording dancing videos on the
beach while prior to tiktok they used to just seat down, heads down on their
phone, absent, non-existent.
~~~
kpennell
Agreed. Yeah, you can make fun of them but they are actually doing something
now.
------
kbenson
> I can’t emphasize this point enough: one of the gravest errors made by far
> too many people in the U.S. is taking an exceptionally self-centered view of
> U.S.-China relations, where everything is about what the U.S. says and does,
> while China is treated like an NPC. Indeed, it is quite insulting to China,
> a great nation with a history far longer than that of the United States.
Culturally, China has a very long history. Governmentally, which is what's
being talked about here because we're discussing trade, they're less than a
century old. We should expect the ruling government of China to behave as they
have in the past, not as previous governments have.
------
codekansas
An under-appreciated aspect of this "war" is how bad US companies have been at
building ML-first products. ByteDance in particular is just fantastic at it -
their products feels designed with the algorithm in mind, as if everyone
involved in the development has some understanding of machine learning. This
exposes some weaknesses with existing social media platforms that were built
before the deep learning boom, as he says in the article. It is probably
worthwhile for American innovators to think about what otherwise-impenetrable
areas this could expose.
------
haecceity
> What is increasingly clear, though, is that China’s insistence that the West
> ignore the country’s “internal affairs” is a sentiment that is not
> reciprocated; the list of Western companies bullied by China for Western
> content is long and growing, the country is flooding Twitter and Facebook
> with coronavirus propaganda, and is leveraging WeChat to spread
> misinformation and to surveil the Chinese diaspora.
None of those are "internal affairs" to any Western country. Those are
international companies that have an interest in not pissing off their cash
cow. If they poured money into the Cascadia independence movement then that
would America and Canada's internal affairs. But the only party doing that is
the State Department and NED.
There's a lot of inaccuracies in this article. He seems to think knowledge in
tech translates to knowledge in other things. Pity.
------
duxup
The scale of information available to an app is potentially huge.
Thus they're automatically involved in some sort of information warfare.
I guess there's two options, either by default the the ecosystem doesn't allow
for them to have that information ... or they're in play for these types of
things.
I don't think there's any other options...
------
nindalf
> the service censored #BlackLivesMatter and #GeorgeFloyd
I feel like this claim isn't well substantiated. TikTok claims it was a bug
where 2 billion+ views were shown as 0 views. That specific number - the limit
on a 32 bit signed integer, makes me think that it was a bug.
------
blackrock
\--yawn--
Another dude advocating for the suppression of a foreign government. Been
there, done that, seen it all, happened before, will happen again.
To think that a little app that promotes a bunch of videos of kids acting
silly, is a national security threat, is ridiculous.
All you need for counter-evidence, is to look at Twitter, Facebook, and all
the American news media sites and outlets. They routinely and actively
brainwash the population, with the same repeated bombardment of information,
even though they claim to be independent reporting agencies.
In fact, all the American news agencies, are increasing the aggressiveness of
the rhetoric, and appear to be drumming up the mood for war against China.
You, as Americans, should be very disturbed by this. Because, if the United
States engages into a war with China, then it is you, and your children, that
will face the brunt of the violence of war. The American elites, and their
children, will be safely kept away from any of that violence; and they will be
benefiting financially from it all, while you and your children die in the
Pacific Ocean.
If you want to ban TikTok, then just ban them. Just say, that you don't want
any Chinese media presence on American airwaves. Simple as that. Begin your
own censoring of the internet.
Don't bother with making some far-fetched reasoning that some fictitious enemy
is out to get you. This is, in fact, what scares Americans the most - the
creation of some fictitious bogeyman.
------
pastaking
Maybe a correction: The article mentions that Amazon asked its employees to
delete the app. But Amazon later retracted that decision.
~~~
mikikikik
this is already mentioned in the article.
------
here4U
I wonder how true Thompson's assertion about a war of ideology between China
and western values is.
Are there any examples of TikTok influencing thinking in a pro-Chinese way via
algorithm tuning or direct curation?
------
greyhair
I am just going to repeat the best link here:
[https://sinocism.com/p/engineers-of-the-soul-ideology-
in](https://sinocism.com/p/engineers-of-the-soul-ideology-in)
Wow.
------
raphlinus
Relevant to the topic of political propaganda and in particular conspiracy
theories, the leftist blogger Digby wrote a good post [1] critical of TikTok
even though she was sympathetic to the punking of the Trump rally in Tulsa. In
particular, she cites reporting from the Daily Beast that Pizzagate conspiracy
theories are circulating widely on the platform. I'm not endorsing this
reporting as fact, but do think it is good food for thought. In any case, the
platform seems to be very poorly optimized for critical thinking, which is
fine for "laughter and dancing" but less fine in other domains.
[1]: [https://digbysblog.net/2020/06/tiktok-isnt-the-answer-
folks/](https://digbysblog.net/2020/06/tiktok-isnt-the-answer-folks/)
------
spinach
It is hardly just Tiktok policing content with an agenda. Twitter, Youtube,
Reddit are particularly bad if you are conservative or have gender critical
ideas.
Reddit recently banned a ton of subreddits that are simply critical of the
idea that men can _literally_ become women (they say it's to stop hate, but
they leave up violent porn subs and other subs that hate women). Even
subreddits like PCOS - a very serious condition that only females have - ran
into trouble because they aren't inclusive enough with their language. Someone
got suspended on twitter for saying only females get cervical cancer (this is
apparently hate speech), Meghan Murphy got banned from Twitter for using the
pronoun 'he' about Yaniv about a profile of his when he was presenting as a
man. People get their videos taken down on youtube for "misgendering" people,
or demonetized for not having the correct opinion.
American companies are absolutely policing content to their own political
agenda.
~~~
Spivak
Reddit banned a bunch of hate subreddits. Full stop. I don't care what you
think about trans men and women but this is not a case of people being overly
sensitive. "Gender Critical" is the spiritual equivalent of "Race Realists"
and their subreddits were nothing other than a safe space for them to express
their overt hate. This was not a place "simply" for people with an opinion.
You don't understand hate speech. Misgendering a trans person isn't hate
unless you do it with the intent to hurt them. Saying that only women get
cervical cancer or that that shit that JK spouts about menstruation is
literally no issue except for the fact that it's said to purposely be mean and
exclusive.
Like FFS, I'm glad we're finally at the point where this bullshit "I'm
speaking in coded language and therefore technically not being a hateful pos
despite everyone and especially my followers know exactly what I mean" is
being called out for what it is an not tolerated anymore.
~~~
jl6
For what it’s worth, I came across Gender Critical a couple of months back, as
a confused neutral trying to understand what everybody was talking about. My
impression was of a community uniting around a common anger at new trans-
rights encroaching on hard-fought womens’ rights. I didn’t see much hate, and
indeed many posters took pains to call out their support for trans-rights _in
principle_. I think the anger was real though, and maybe was mistaken for hate
by whoever decided to ban them.
~~~
Spivak
Yep, that's pretty much what their community says on the tin. If that was what
they actually were in practice I don't think it would have even been an issue.
Sure, the trans community would have probably still disliked them, but like
it's not like trans people are some big cultural powerhouse. There have been
old-school well-respected academics that held similar opinions since the dawn
of second-wave feminism. And don't get me wrong, there has always been plenty
of infighting among feminists along this line -- many impassioned conferences,
books, articles written about it. And it's from these people that GC takes
their heritage and has used it for years to "legitimize" their hate. It's what
allowed them to survive online as long as they did because they knew how to
fly just under the radar.
Then, like a lot of subreddits, GC got bigger and the new influx of people
weren't uhh... so subtle and more and more of the content became insulting,
shaming, and "cringe" directed at specific trans people.
------
ausjke
actually not just tiktok, others like wechat, taobao, all the eCommerce,
messengers, USA is behind China by a few years these days.
in the early days they cloned and studied, now they actually took over and
Facebook etc barely can even catch up
------
babesh
There seems to be a concerted effort from both China and the US to create
sides. It feels like a new Cold War is looming.
Stratechery is playing on one side. The reality is that US companies are quite
willing to censor and manipulate information as well.
Facebook and YouTube censored coronavirus information for the US government.
Facebook is fine with right wing manipulation. These propaganda efforts by US
companies affect people from other countries.
Both sides are just trying to amass and maintain power. The CCP needs to
control information to maintain power. The US is a consortium of entities
amassing money and power and likewise tries to destroy institutions preventing
that. I bet if you look inside the CCP, you would likewise see multiple groups
vying for power.
If you follow Stratechery’s logic, then non US countries should likewise ban
Facebook and YouTube.
The more ethical solution would be worldwide standards on censorship.
------
k__
I don't see the problem.
TikTok will be banned. SV will do a US based replacement. All will be good.
------
ngcc_hk
Tik Tok success as a technology is well argued by the author. That should be
copied and cloned and compete as MANY not as one.
That is this onesness that I try to argue. This is this oneness that get China
and the strategy missing this part of China the problem.
Obviously I would be baised in the sense that the author just gave up my whole
place and my 2m+ liberty loving followers. U people, HK people, TW people ...
is just part of China, we can just dump them (or you can just dump us) because
we belong to a "ONE". The whole idea of human rights are about individual not
about the rights of nation over you or us in Hong Kong. If you let the oneness
grow and ignore that one is evil, you die with us because the evil will
expand. HK is the front of the ideological fight. Not sure why the author not
noted that the play against HK is a play against the promise and contract by
the less powerful China to the future. Read Deng speech in UN, you can see
there is a promising China. But look at today you know nothing in the one is
preventing it. The West look otherwise by letting China grow so powerful it is
near a stat that cannot fail. The west has to feed the hand that is going to
kill them. Just cut the tie is not enough. A more aggressive way of engaging
is needed. Otherwise the world is just another South China Seas.
China has been asserted itself in Internet (speech by Xin please read), UN,
WTO, WHO, ... etc. They have number on their side in the past. Now they have
money, they have the language (so many good English speakers in the elite and
their children), ... There could be millions inside the west and trillion in
the bank. It is like Soviet Union evolve and attack USA soil from underneath.
But the analysis is so well that seems ok? That we have to deal with China as
one. It is partially yes and partially No. The key problem is what we call
one-ness of Chinese thinking. You using that you lost already. What America is
great and Europe in a sense has built-in immunity is that there are individual
(or even the extreme right has the club concept). You do not analysis a world
as a world. A world is nothing but its individual and its links among
individual. Now the problem when you think the whole China is a whole you have
to fight against then you got yourselves a long term problem.
I said long term is from time to time China would group itself together into
one big nasty empire. The best is when it is weak (like in Sung Dynasty) when
the culture of unity does not break human backs. But once they are big and as
oneness is built into the pyshce they just go ahead to transform all
barbarians and uncivilised into one of them. There is no stop. Nothing
internal to the Chinese philosophy has many in mind. Everyone has to be saved
is what they think, and it is what ultimately you got.
What you need to do is to ensure the individual spirit and liberty mind to
survive inside. So the original promise that a great China contribute as part
of many, not force its way as one into the world. Just cut into two would not
help. HK, Taiwan, Japan, Korea, the whole Asian countries are those many.
Not one less! Not just one!
:-) ok back to my debugging of the solitaire of C. gdb tracing of pointer
structure is hard, isn't it. From 6502 (by guessing), 370 (XA to ESA extension
and control block) to now; still you always deal with dump. Sigh. Back to my
cave even though the world is collapsing, that you can hack as an individual
and do what you enjoy is more important. And that is why this all about. We
should have more or one TikTok.
------
norswap
Nitpick, but this man doesn't really seem to understand what "Marxism" means.
------
Schnitz
"the Chinese Communist Party very much believes that Marxism is the means by
which that must be accomplished"
This is BS, the economic system in China is in no way Marxist, nor is it going
in that direction. It's worse, lol. This sounds like someone is simply
rehashing propaganda he heard somewhere that was intended to either smear Marx
or China or both.
~~~
quicklime
It's unfortunate that you were downvoted for this; you're absolutely correct.
No one in China gives a fuck about Marxism, and the CCP certainly isn't trying
to wage some ideological war to establish some sort of Marxist utopia. To
think so is to completely misunderstand the CCP's motivation, which is a
dangerous thing when the tensions are escalating and war could be the result.
~~~
chillacy
This link was included in the article: [https://sinocism.com/p/engineers-of-
the-soul-ideology-in](https://sinocism.com/p/engineers-of-the-soul-ideology-
in)
While China has certainly strayed pretty far from its state-controlled economy
in recent years, it also seems pretty clear that Xi is more ideologically
"hardcore" than his predecessors.
------
Asad445
Tiktok is changing the mindset of our generation
~~~
collegeburner
Current young person here (entering college this fall). I can't think of a
single way it's changed "the mindset of our generation", and it seems it's
used very heavily by a specific type of person but not by others (as opposed
to other social media which is more widely used). How is it changing anything?
------
actuator
Ben is absolutely right and something needs to be done to fight for the values
of liberalism, democracy etc we hold dear but I don't see how this will
happen. The world seems more divided than ever. Just 2-3 countries
unilaterally acting on these issues isn't going to make a difference, how I
wish there were strong leaders in some of the nations who knew how to work
well for those ideals in the long term together with others.
Also, this is not just about Tiktok as Ben mentioned. When American
corporations like NBA start censoring things on their own soil, it is beyond
reprehensible.
~~~
indymike
Everyone forgets that Tiktok bought Musical.ly which was an American product
to get the market traction they have. The issue that seems more real than
political speech is that US social media / internet companies are denied
access to the Chinese market while we allow Chinese owned companies complete
access to the US market. Seems like that is unjust.
~~~
glaive123
Musical.ly is not an American product. Just because it was incorporated in US
does not mean the team and co-founders are from US.
------
euix
In the last century the prevailing line the U.S. was that the U.S. would
change China through economic engagement, I think what is really going to
happen is China is going to change the U.S.
Mainly in the sense that in order to adapt to the competitive threat from
China the U.S. has to become more state capitalism and industrial policy
guided.
Using strong government to guide industrial policy, fend off or cripple
foreign competitors, enact infrastructure. These are the standard tools in
China.
As for China, I wonder in the long term if this is not pioneering a completely
new mode of the human species. What is the logical end of total surveillance
and censorship? Eventually unifying every person into the mind of the state
until individualism dissolves and we are all subsumed into a common entity.
Maybe I am speculating too far but if you could have everyone carry an implant
from birth wired to a single network then you could achieve the common science
fiction trope of an unified collective conscious. Maybe even the leading Party
theoreticians haven't even sought about it this far yet.
------
mchusma
Good article, but I do feel disagree strongly with this statement:
"while I mourn the end of a free and vibrant Hong Kong that I have had the
pleasure of visiting on multiple occasions, I am unmoved by complaints about
China’s promised adherence to the Basic Law; that was an agreement imposed on
China by a colonial power, and Hong Kong is unquestionably a Chinese city,
ultimately subject to Chinese law."
Hong Kong is a unique place, with a unique history, unique government, and
more. Yes a Chinese imperial government leased land to British under duress.
That imperial government no longer exists, period. The British gave it to a
different government under clear terms that were violated. So where does that
put Hong Kong? I think you can argue a bunch of different positions, but not
that it is unquestionably under authoritarian Chinese communist rule.
This is disregarding the liberal traditional opinion in the West (and Locke,
etc ) that people have universal rights period, and that governments that
violate those rights are not valid governments.
I think there are stronger philosophical positions to take, including that
Hong Kong should be Independent by right, and that China violated it's
agreements with the citizens of Hong Kong.
~~~
vincvinc
Hey, I see you've struck a nerve with some people - even talking about the
idea of an independent Hong Kong will send your comment to the absolute
bottom.
Have my upvote.
------
crazygringo
This piece is ridiculous. Mainly:
> _What matters more in an ideological war, though, is influence, and that is
> why I do believe that ByteDance’s continued ownership of TikTok is
> unacceptable._
What's implied but unsaid here is that somehow the CCP is going to fill TikTok
with political propaganda that... a bunch of teens are going to somehow become
influenced by? Sorry, but that's just completely far-fetched. _Facebook_ is
something to be concerned about, with people sharing political stories, memes,
etc. But _TikTok_? A bunch of funny videos? There's nothing that could be
further from ideology.
> _Perhaps the most powerful argument against taking any sort of action is
> that we aren’t China, and isn’t blocking TikTok something that China would
> do?_
Yes, this is precisely why we _don 't_ need to do this. We're better than
China. Things like freedom of speech, democracy, and the free market set a
moral example to the world. Once we start censoring things, we lose that moral
leadership. (And sure you can argue all you want about our declining moral
leadership and the state of our democracy, but let's not make it _even worse_
, shall we?)
> _If China is on the offensive against liberalism not only within its borders
> but within ours, it is in liberalism’s interest to cut off a vector that has
> taken root precisely because it is so brilliantly engineered to give humans
> exactly what they want._
Isn't _every_ product trying to be brilliantly engineered to give customers
exactly what they want? All this boils down to is, it's a good app, so let's
kill it. Again, totally opposite the American values of competition, the free
market, and consumers.
Sorry, but there is absolutely zero logic in this analysis.
~~~
narrator
TikTok users flooded the Trump rally with fake ticket requests.
[https://nypost.com/2020/06/21/tiktok-campaigns-ensure-
hundre...](https://nypost.com/2020/06/21/tiktok-campaigns-ensure-hundreds-of-
unused-seats-at-trump-tulsa-rally/)
The plausible deniability is easy. No one will ever find out if it was
specially promoted. They could just throw up their hands and say that it all
happened all by itself. The algorithm is a mystery and a trade secret!
U.S Teens are making "I Love China" videos on TikTok.
[https://www.recruitmentnewsuk.co.uk/2020/05/28/why-us-
teens-...](https://www.recruitmentnewsuk.co.uk/2020/05/28/why-us-teens-on-
tiktok-are-making-i-love-china-videos/)
The algorithm could interfere to remove any pro-Trump or anti-China TikToks
and noone would be the wiser. There is zero transparency.
The Chinese government can lend these institutions billions forever and
undercut rivals and overpay programmers if it buys them political influence.
Speaking of a free market in ideas. 90% of the U.S media is owned by 5
companies. I think a good idea would be to reverse the Telecommunications Act
of 1996 which allowed for massive TV and Radio consolidation. Local radio was
actually good in the late 80s and early 90s and new music styles were
discovered and promoted by disk jockeys on local stations. After 96, the
conglomerates bought up all the radio stations and IMHO, popular music more or
less froze in place with just the names of the bands rotating.
~~~
crazygringo
And all sorts of nonsense happens on Facebook. But TikTok is almost infinitely
_less_ political than Facebook.
The Trump rally thing was a prank that was widely publicized on the internet.
And the "I love China" videos seem to be a joke too.
You're going to find a little bit of everything on every platform. The idea
that TikTok is somehow pushing Chinese ideology remains completely unfounded
and baseless. It's pure imagination and conjecture.
If it ever _does_ , it will be obvious and action can be taken then. But until
it does, banning something like TikTok is simply blatantly anticompetitive and
stooping to China's types of censorship. Again, _we 're better than that_.
------
flattone
Tiktok could offer to pay your mortgage im still confused and disgusted people
use it
------
ngcc_hk
Save yourselves, please!
A message from Hong Kong.
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
Beyond Red vs. Blue: The Political Typology - jgarmon
http://people-press.org/2011/05/04/beyond-red-vs-blue-the-political-typology/#
======
viggity
Not hacker news
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
A Camera Lens Made from an Iceberg - tbgvi
https://www.mathieustern.com/blog/2018/10/22/l437fjpq58g619vlkm6t1iwhk8s6dr
======
deanclatworthy
> I needed to find pure ice.
No you didn't. You could have done this with warm distilled water, then
frozen, at home and had better results. But I suppose it's a good excuse to go
to Iceland :) (If there was ever a need for an excuse!)
~~~
DonHopkins
10,000 year old glacier ice has much cleaner water memory.
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Water_memory](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Water_memory)
(No Homeo! ;)
[https://www.urbandictionary.com/define.php?term=no%20homeo](https://www.urbandictionary.com/define.php?term=no%20homeo)
~~~
akiselev
Yes and it wants to tell everyone to get off its lawn so that it can melt in
pesce.
------
aylmao
Tangential note that I thought was interesting: I have an eye condition called
Keratoconus. It developed mostly on one eye before I had a procedure done to
stop it from progressing, but my vision on that one eye is affected
permanently.
People tend to wonder why I don't wear glasses, and I tell them it's because
they don't really help since I don't "blurry", I see "smudged". It's as if you
took a picture with a camera with long exposure and moved it, but not quite.
The pictures taken with this lens are a surprisingly good approximation of how
I see with that one eye (perhaps sans the whitewash).
~~~
frostburg
You probably already know about this (especially since you likely had cross-
linking done), but your vision might be helped by a custom scleral lens
(they're unfortunately somewhat expensive).
~~~
aylmao
Thanks for the tip, though yeah I have (: Fortunately, the brain is magical.
It's mostly one eye that saw progression before my cross-linking-- the other
one sees pretty clearly, so my brain has gotten used to it and I guess
stitches things in a way that means most of the time I don't really notice it
at all.
If I close the good eye, or focus on high-contrast, fine-detail things the
effect will be clear, but I can thankfully go on my day to day without much
hassle.
Few people will see this but I'll mention it for good measure. If you notice
your glasses aren't quite right, or you need a new (especially if it's a very
asymmetrical) graduation often, make sure to see an ophthalmologist. The
earlier you detect keratoconus the earlier you can stop it from progressing--
I'm certainly lucky I caught it before both eyes were really affected.
------
runxel
I am somehow disappointed that the lens was actually just "your average lens
size", and not really ... an iceberg infront of a camera.
I don't know what I expected.
~~~
doctorRetro
Yeah, the title is a bit click-baity. I too was expecting some interesting
experimental imagery where an entire iceberg was used as a lens, either
literally or metaphorically.
~~~
trumped
> I too was expecting some interesting experimental imagery where an entire
> iceberg was used as a lens,
it says made from an iceberg... as in from part of an iceberg... do you know
how big an iceberg is?
~~~
jacobush
I thought it might be something similar to the neutrino detector. Where they
somehow used an iceberg to deflect and focus some kind of radiation. The
actual article was obviously in a very different direction but cool too in its
own right.
~~~
doctorRetro
Exactly! It'd be different if the heading said "A Camera Lens Made from a Part
of an Iceberg". But as it stands, I went in hopeful that an entire 'berg would
be used in some creative or ingenious way.
------
m31415
Why is this surprising at all? Any transparent material having a refractive
index larger than air can be made to work as a lens. Pinhole cameras are much
more interesting than this -- there the phenomena isn't refraction. An even
more interesting lens is the Frensel lens [1].
[1]:
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fresnel_lens](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fresnel_lens)
~~~
floatingatoll
I, personally, have never considered shaping a piece of ice into a temporary
camera lens. It's awesome, because someone's done it, and no one thought to
previously. It's surprising that no one's done it, because in hindsight it's
obvious. Why hasn't someone done this previously and posted on the Internet
about it? Because human ingenuity is awesome.
CORRECTION: A piece of _iceberg_, which makes this all even _more_ awesome.
~~~
blcArmadillo
While not a lens shaped from ice there are people who have been working on
lenses made from untraditional materials. For example here is a guy, Prof.
Joshua Silver's, who has been working on eyeglasses for the developing world.
From
[https://www.medicalnewstoday.com/articles/302550.php](https://www.medicalnewstoday.com/articles/302550.php):
> Each lens is made of two flexible membranes that move either inward or
> outward depending on the amount of fluid - a silicone solution - they
> contain.
> The lenses are connected to a small syringe that sits on each arm of the
> glasses, and the wearer can adjust a dial on the syringe to pump fluid in or
> out of each lens. When fluid is pumped in, the power of the lens is
> increased - correcting hyperopia, or farsightedness - while pumping fluid
> out decreases lens power, correcting nearsightedness.
Additionally he gave a Ted talk on the subject
[https://www.ted.com/talks/josh_silver_demos_adjustable_liqui...](https://www.ted.com/talks/josh_silver_demos_adjustable_liquid_filled_eyeglasses?language=en).
Pretty interesting stuff. Granted this is all circa 2009-2015. Not sure what
the current status of the project is.
~~~
dekhn
don't forget people making mirrors using spinning liquid:
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Liquid_mirror_telescope](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Liquid_mirror_telescope)
~~~
baybal2
My favourites are the liquid crystal lenses. Essentially they are micron scale
Fresnel lenses controlled by electric field. No moving parts, very thin, ideal
for something like a camera module.
I'm surprised that nobody managed to commercialise it in that niche yet.
~~~
zeristor
Do you have a link for that? They have used holographic optical elements to
make shorter SLR lenses, although I don't think the image quality was
excellent, but if they went to the trouble it must have been fairly good.
~~~
dekhn
doesn't really seem commercial grade yet: [https://www.imaging-
resource.com/news/2015/10/05/this-smartp...](https://www.imaging-
resource.com/news/2015/10/05/this-smartphone-camera-uses-liquid-crystal-and-
electrical-currents-to-focus)
------
quickthrower2
I wasn't expecting the video to be so professionally made. Before I watched I
thought "prepare myself for grainy, shakey video", then as I started watching
I was thinking "he must have a go pro" and then "hell this is good" and
finally "ah OK seem like he is a professional video guy"
~~~
SiempreViernes
And _artist_ , a video guy likely wouldn't have hastened climate change for
the sake of poetic cred.
~~~
whatshisface
> _a video guy likely wouldn 't have hastened climate change_
I know that it's a fallacy to say that one person isn't enough to make a
difference, but I think taking a lens sized chunk of ice off a multi-acre
glacier is, really, not making a difference.
~~~
noir_lord
Unless he swam he probably flew to Iceland, which I suspect might be what GP
meant by hasten.
------
Brendinooo
Reminds me of my high school photography class, where we made camera obscuras
(pinhole cameras) out of an oatmeal container. Did it make the best-quality
images? No. But it was still one of the more memorable projects I did in high
school.
------
somacert
Making optical grade ice is not trivial. Not hard but I never did get good
results.
Start with good water.
Freeze in a gradient(top down is easiest) half of your ice will still be
garbage.
Explicitly: by gradient I mean put it in an insulated container so that it
freezes starting at the top and ending at the bottom.
~~~
dekhn
BTW, this reminds me of an easy way to make a GRIN lens:
[http://www.laurawaller.com/opticsfun/sugarGRINlens.htm](http://www.laurawaller.com/opticsfun/sugarGRINlens.htm)
~~~
aidenn0
That's neat; a friend of mine made a GRIN lens by letting gelatin set in a cup
on a turntable; the density increased with the radius so it acted as a concave
lens despite being disc shaped.
------
fixermark
It gives a nice soft, watery focus, it appears. :)
------
cromwellian
Couldn't you just make distilled water clear ice at home, or does it need high
pressure to remove aberrations?
~~~
m31415
Chromatic aberrations cannot be removed using a material of just one
refractive index. And as the video shows this lens has chromatic aberrations.
~~~
cromwellian
Some of the blurriness seems related to melting on the surface layer. I wonder
if he had made a metallic lens housing which was supercooled to prevent
melting if the result would have been better.
------
dwighttk
That video is the definition of overwrought
------
hilbert42
Ha, how wonderfully cute (can't say I'd have ever thought of doing it). All he
needs to do now is turn it into a multistage lens with multiple elements and
invent a melt-proof quarter-wave like coating to correct the aberrations. :-)
Apropos the lens museum, I've great difficulty in chucking out lenses that no
longer fit any camera that I now own. To me, lenses are precision instruments
and its their 'exactness' I don't want to see escape off into a world of
higher entropy.
------
fudged71
Beautiful video! I love the idea of an ephemeral camera: custom made parts for
a specific time and a specific place.
------
mirimir
Seriously?
Pinhole lenses can do lots better:
[https://www.flickr.com/photos/130436300@N07/44672960900](https://www.flickr.com/photos/130436300@N07/44672960900)
------
tosser0001
Skip the blog spam:
[https://www.mathieustern.com/blog/2018/10/22/l437fjpq58g619v...](https://www.mathieustern.com/blog/2018/10/22/l437fjpq58g619vlkm6t1iwhk8s6dr)
~~~
pcardoso
It is a blog but I wouldn't say it is spam.
It doesn't just link to the content. Kottke posts are usually as entertaining
and thoughtful as the content it links to.
------
equivocates
The lens is not very sharp.
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
What Does Sound Look Like? - choult
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=px3oVGXr4mo
======
JoeAltmaier
Air currents are not 'what sound looks like'.
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
Panopticlick: browser fingerprinting research - datico
http://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2010/01/help-eff-research-web-browser-tracking
======
samdk
In public browsing (in Firefox) I'm unique. In private browsing I'm 1 in
~17000.
Interestingly, removing some of the non-standard fonts I have installed made
me unique, even in private mode. This surprises me, because I have some pretty
unusual fonts installed.
_edit_ : And actually, now that I test again, it does find one other match
even in non-private mode. I guess that it's counting each me as a new person
each time I do it, even though I'm connecting from the same IP with the same
exact browser configuration.
~~~
blahedo
Not surprising given that fonts tend to come in groups---did you remove _all_
your nonstandard fonts? If five people out of a million install the same
unusual font pack, and one removes all but one font from the pack, that one
will be a unique even though the configuration is "more like" a common one.
------
ntoshev
I wonder if you can identify people using habitual patterns of mouse moving
and pauses between keys when typing.
------
jodrellblank
"Your browser fingerprint appears to be unique among the 45,667 tested so
far."
I use FlashBlock and Ghostery as well.
------
geuis
Hmm, so I understand what they're tracking. But what's the end game for this
experiment?
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
Is China Taking the Lead in AI? - sarapeyton
https://sloanreview.mit.edu/article/is-china-taking-the-lead-in-ai/
======
nick_meister
scary
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
Ask HN: what are some good companies to work for on the west coast? - quietthrow
Looking to hear about innovative companies that take a keen interest in employee development abd have good employee development programs, well funded and stable. Basically what else is out there besides google amazon and Facebook?
======
rd1010
You do realize that the majority of tech companies in the U.S. are on the west
coast? This may be a good place to start:
[http://www.crunchbase.com/search/advanced/companies/1987518](http://www.crunchbase.com/search/advanced/companies/1987518)
You seem to want more established companies, so showing ones with over 500
employees, within 500 miles of the Bay Area. I think you will find that there
is a great deal of depth in terms of the number of successful tech companies
out this way.
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
Novell (yes, Novell) ports Xbox 360 game to the iPhone - technologizer
http://technologizer.com/2010/03/12/xbox-games-on-your-iphone-yes-but-not-from-microsoft/
======
benologist
This is really no surprise, Novell's been working really hard on building a
simple bridge for developers to use Mono and C# for building iPhone apps. It
makes perfect sense for them to be showcasing the capabilities MonoTouch
provides.
<http://monotouch.net/>
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
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Mimesis, Violence, and Facebook: Peter Thiel’s French Connection - simonb
https://thesocietypages.org/cyborgology/2016/08/13/mimesis-violence-and-facebook-peter-thiels-french-connection-full-essay/
======
carsongross
Girard will be looked back on as a Father of the Church:
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LSzF2OG2ejI](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LSzF2OG2ejI)
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BNkSBy5wWDk](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BNkSBy5wWDk)
------
jameslk
There's been some criticism leveled against Girard's work wrt it's scientific
credibility[0]. Has there been any studies on mimetic desire/conflict?
0\.
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/René_Girard#Use_of_evidence](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/René_Girard#Use_of_evidence)
------
johnmarius
“Man is the creature who does not know what to desire, and who turns to others
in order to make up his mind. We desire what others desire because we imitate
their desires.”
But how do these others desire in the first place? Have the first desires
begun with imitating animals?
~~~
danharaj
The most basic desires are rooted in being a social animal. Food, water,
sleep, comfort, shelter, bonding, play.
| {
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Show HN: OhMyBet – AI predictions of professional tennis - samfromshire
https://ohmybet.com
======
samfromshire
OhMyBet! is an information service with AI-driven predictions of the outcomes
of professional tennis matches given by machine learning algorithms not human
experts. The core of the system is a self-improving predictive model which has
been trained on more than 850,000 past tennis matches and is able to predict
the winner in an upcoming match with 85% accuracy. What’s more, it ensures
maximum profitability of its predictions sorting out the tips with low odds.
On a distance, this approach results in 12% ROI. OhMyBet! does all the
analysis for users offering a mathematically-driven yet easy way to earn on
tennis betting.
------
cmbaget
So why sell this service? why not just getting money on a 5 to 6% interest
rate and bet it all and get the difference between the 12% and the interest
rate.
I'm very skeptical of these kinds of services
~~~
samfromshire
The service is built mainly to evaluate the predictive model on the longer
distance. If the ROI and accuracy do turn out to follow the 2015 performance,
perhaps the experiment should be ended and used by the developers only.
Another problem is that the bookies limit max stake amount in tennis to about
$1000 per bet, so it's not a way to earn a fortune unless you use betting
exchange. So now it's a kind of sharing another AI lifehack with the
comminity.
| {
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Robocallers Target Chinese Speakers in Latest Phone Scam - JumpCrisscross
https://www.wsj.com/articles/robocallers-target-chinese-speakers-in-latest-phone-scam-1528128363
======
tonyquart
Well, I can just suggest everybody to hang up or even ignore calls if they
don't know the numbers. I personally always look up the number on Google or
check them on sites like [http://whycall.me](http://whycall.me) just to see if
people have reported them as scam. I will block the numbers without even
talking to them, then.
| {
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Open source, open markets - cadalac
http://www.canada.com/ottawacitizen/story.html?id=39c69e41-bf90-4925-925f-c9dde6e7bfec&p=1
======
rw
The summary at the beginning of the article reads:
"Michael Whitehead is selling the idea of collective software wisdom. The
Goal: be quick and cost-effective. blah"
Notice the final word :D
| {
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Spreadsheet on Google doc to help victims of Mumbai attacks - zalthor
https://spreadsheets.google.com/spreadsheet/lv?hl=en_US&key=tE-okpwwYgQavia5opgZSEA&hl=en_US&f=true&gid=0
======
poojanichani123
Pls let me knw if any sort of help needed .. If short of blood... ready to
donate... my blood group is b+ve... Contact me on 02265766551
| {
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Ask HN: Far UVI breather instead of filter face mask? - bwilli123
Would a portable far-UVI breathing apparatus be a better approach to virus proofing than particulate filter face masks or respirators?
Background info links
https://www.hepacart.com/blog/effective-uv-disinfection-lights-4-benefits-of-far-uv-sterilray
https://fastlifehacks.com/n95-vs-ffp/
======
123user456
no idea why this isn't getting more views - "far-uv" (different wavelength vs
uv c) - seems to be a decent tool to kill virus fast...
| {
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Ray Tracing Jell-O Brand Gelatin (1987) [pdf] - gcv
http://www.cs.northwestern.edu/~ago820/cs395/Papers/Heckbert_1987.pdf
======
kens
This article is by Paul Heckbert, who is also known for writing a raytracer
that fit on the back of his business card.
[http://fabiensanglard.net/rayTracing_back_of_business_card/](http://fabiensanglard.net/rayTracing_back_of_business_card/)
Since there seems to be some confusion in the comments, I'll point out that
the Jell-O paper is 100% not serious. It's a satire of excessively-
mathematical computer graphics papers. (Source: I shared an office with Paul.)
------
gdubs
Famous 1984 distributed ray tracing image [1] remains one of my all-time
favorite CG images. (Scroll to last page.)
1:
[http://www.eng.utah.edu/~cs6965/papers/p137-cook.pdf](http://www.eng.utah.edu/~cs6965/papers/p137-cook.pdf)
~~~
s-macke
Don't forget the first rendered fur.
[http://simulationcorner.net/fur.png](http://simulationcorner.net/fur.png)
The bear looks still so nice. Even nowadays The picture is from this paper
from 1989:
[http://dl.acm.org/citation.cfm?id=74361](http://dl.acm.org/citation.cfm?id=74361)
~~~
gdubs
Great image, hadn't seen that one before. The lighting model is beautiful.
------
kanwisher
I like the part where he needs a room full of Amigas or a Cray to render the
image
------
derefr
Reminds me of a
[http://reboot.wikia.com/wiki/Null](http://reboot.wikia.com/wiki/Null),
somewhat. (1987 graphics tech is about right for a 1994 TV show.)
------
yosyp
What a fun paper, but seems like a cute joke to me. All that the author did
was use the basic wave equation with changed variables to simulate Jell-O. The
article has algorithm and theory tags, but this is neither.
I wish they had gone into detail about the numerical algorithm used to
simulate the wave equation in three dimensions (Runga-Kutta order 4
probably?). As someone with a physics background, this is far from theory, or
even original research.
It's interesting that they mention the necessity of Markov Chains for
intersection calculations. Would anyone know if better techniques have been
devised since the publication of this paper?
------
Someone
Does anybody know more about the joke with the reference to [Haeberli, 1872],
a paper by Paul Haeberli and Paul Heckbert, which is "to appear"?
------
frozenport
WHY DOES HE REFER TO HIMSELF IN THE PLURAL?
~~~
sjtrny
Standard style in scientific literature. Partly due to blind peer review
(using the more general 'we' instead of 'I' to mask the identity/identities of
the author).
| {
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How to Digitize a Graph - jeffmiller
http://bendeaton.me/2010/11/15/how-to-digitize-a-graph/
======
celias
The program is actually named GraphClick. I am a happy user. One nice feature
is the ability to adjust the coordinate frame to work with graph images that
are distorted.
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
Ask HN: Functionnal programming for UI? - yogsototh
Hello,<p>I wanted to make a complete javascript web client. The standard usage with imperative language is to use the MVC pattern.
I used object oriented programming but the javascript syntax for OOP was a really poor experience. I had the feeling that using a functionnal paradigm would had fitted better with js.<p>I know HN was done with Ark a functional programming language. So I wonder if an MVC pattern was done under the hood? May be there is a good recommendation or a known pattern that help making UI under a functional programming paradigm?
======
demallien
I'm not sure what your problem is with the "syntax for OOP". At any rate, I
have just finished building an MVC framework for Javascript without any major
difficulties. Perhaps you could share an example that has posed you problems?
One thing that I will say about functional programming and UIs is that they
can be somewhat antithetical - to get good performance out of UIs, you often
need to cache pre-computed results, which is just another way of saying that
your code is going to have a boatload of state. Incidently, if anyone knows of
a functional solution that overcomes this difficulty, I'd love to hear it.
~~~
yogsototh
There is no _major_ problem, but the syntax can be terrible. May be I'm wrong
but, the main problem for me was to access the current instance of a class.
1st level : use this 2nd level : var self=this; then use self; 3rd level : var
sefl=this; and pass self as parameter.
Typically, when a new view appear, I load dynamically the resources nee: other
javascript files and an HTML template file. I use jquery to handle AJAX.
Here is some code:
ConsumptionView.prototype.show = function(){
var self=this;
var files=[];
var tests=[];
files.push('/static/js/date.js');
tests.push('Date.prototype.setISO8601');
mainApplication.run_after_dependencies( files, tests,
function() {
$('#content').load("/static/html/user_consumption.html",
function(){ self.htmlLoaded(self);});
});
}
the `run_after_dependencies` function will mostly do some getScript only if
needed. The last function will do (mostly):
$.getScript('/static/js/data.js', function() {
$('#content').load("/static/html/user_consumption.html",
function() { self.htmlLoaded(self);}
);}
);
But in the end, I _have_ to pass 'self' in parameter to 'htmlLoaded' function
and I cannot use the 'var self=this;' at the top of the definition of the
function html_loaded.
~~~
demallien
OK, you don't like what is happening at level 3, is that right? Well, I see
only two possibilities - either your htmlLoaded function has different
semantics for its _this_ and the parameter _self_ , or it doesn't need the
parameter. In the first case, repetition is necessary, because you might want
to do this:
view.htmlLoaded(other_view);
in the second case the function should be more like:
ConsumptionView.prototype.htmlLoaded = function()
{
this.doStuff();
}
------
jhuni
Programming in a paradigm that your language is not made for is indeed a poor
experience. JavaScript is not made for OOP or FP, it is made for prototype-
based programming so if you want a good experience that is what you should
use.
As for FP/MVC UI have you ever heard of tangible values?
<http://www.haskell.org/haskellwiki/TV>
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
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Show HN: RSS/Atom Feed Reader in Go - nergal
https://github.com/Lallassu/gorss
======
themacguffinman
Looks like this feed reader is a CLI application. OP, you might want to
mention that in the title to attract the greybeards.
~~~
nergal
True, can't change that now though :/
------
nergal
Just a quick update, I've fixed a lot of small issues and also added support
for XDG configuration/data storage and support for importing OPML XML files to
feed list.
------
zstile
No MacOS app? I can't imagine myself using it, really. But I have to say,
existing readers are mostly annoying and clumsy.
~~~
bsg75
> But there exists prebuilt binaries for Linux and OSX.
What more do you need?
| {
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How I changed the world in 2013 - sherm8n
http://planscope.io/blog/how-i-changed-the-world-in-2013/
======
gexla
> As an example, today my admin dashboard popped up with a notice that Fred
> had closed an estimate for about $30k. I tabbed over to GMail and wrote Fred
> a quick congratulatory note and asked him if there was anything I could do
> to help him close future estimates faster and with less resistance.
I don't know how this application works, but is there an option to opt out of
this? This seems like it could be a serious problem. Fred seemed happy, but
there are a lot of other businesses which I'm sure wouldn't be too pleased to
have their business activity popping up on Brennan's dashboard.
I hate to hit a negative note because I think his articles are helpful and its
great that he is out there building something and making things work.
~~~
bdunn
(Brennan here)
I've thought about this a lot too, especially since I'm pretty much a stickler
about asking permission to jump into a project before checking out a bug or
something for a user.
I've made sure to sanitize my dashboard to just show first initial milestones.
For instance, when someone invites a client and they first sign in, I get a
notification saying "Bob's first client just accepted an invitation", which
will have me then go and say "Hey Bob, saw your client joined. Let me know if
they need any help in getting setup..."
Based on your comment above, I think it might make sense to just notify me
with "Bob closed an estimate", and that's it. Bear in mind, I only get this
notification the first time one of these milestones is reached.
Good comment though, and great food for thought.
~~~
gexla
Thanks for the info Brennan. As you may recall, there was a bit of a stink
over 37Signals posting that X picture uploaded was "cat.jpg". This seems
similar, so that's certainly something to keep in mind.
As I say, I hate to bring any negativity about what you are doing. You are
obviously of great help to people and your post is inspiring.
You were providing value above and beyond by offering more help, which is
great. In this day of privacy concerns, that may be a dangerous road. One
important reason that I bring this up is that I'm more hesitant these days to
sign up for "cloud services" due to the possibility that someone might
possibly have the permissions to look through things that I wouldn't want
open.
In any case, continue kicking tail. I love reading your posts and I may give
your service a test drive in the future.
~~~
bdunn
Thanks! And I totally agree. While I like to think project tasks that say
"make the logo bigger" aren't as sensitive as, like, bank statement data, I
definitely understand the concern.
So far, I've had 0 pushback to these little notes I send, and the good
(helping them close more deals = more money = less chance of going out of
business) has outweighed the thus far non-existant bad, but it's still
something to think about even if it hasn't become a problem (yet?)
If you ever sign up in the future, drop me a note and I can run you through
how Planscope can work for your business over Skype or something :-)
| {
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Tell HN: Moniker increased the price of .tc domains from $28 to $140 - tinyProton
I've a couple of '.tc' domains bought through Moniker. Up until very recently the price for '.tc' domains were only $28. They increased the price of this domains from $28 to $140 without sending any notice. The domain was configured for auto-renewing, and I just got charged for $140.<p>I've nothing but bad experiences with Moniker for the last three years. One of my domains didn't get renewed and was about to get deleted, even though that they charged me and sent me a renewing confirmation. They later tried to charge me extra fees in order to retrieve my domain, despite the fact that it was their problem!<p>Just wanted to let you know about my experience. My advice is to be aware if you're a customer, and stay away if you're not.
======
dangrossman
The company that operates the .TC registry raised the price to $119; that's
what registrars like Moniker pay. Notification of the change would've been
appropriate, but as far as the charge goes, it's either fulfill your renewal
as agreed at the new price, or let your domain expire. If you had known about
the price increase from the registry, would you still have renewed the domain?
------
smartwater
> They increased the price of this domains from $28 to $140 without sending
> any notice. The domain was configured for auto-renewing, and I just got
> charged for $140.
That is most definitely a violation of their merchant agreement. Probably some
consumer protection laws too.
~~~
dangrossman
You can make neither of those definitive statements without reviewing the
contract terms he agreed to during the purchase and creation of the auto-renew
subscription. It is entirely possible to authorize recurring charges even if
prices may change.
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
Ask HN: What are the best marketing resources as a developer running a Startup? - cnivolle
======
quahada
Best resource in my experience is a business cofounder who will do all that
for you.
Marketing is more than just getting the word out, but also who to get the word
out to, want to say, etc. There isn't enough time in the day to really do this
right and write code for your product at the same time.
------
smit
Every startup is different so it's hard to point to resources without knowing
what customer acquisition channels work for you.
| {
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Day 18: Pong - PurpleRose
http://www.nicolewoo.ca/2015/05/day-18-pong/
======
dpcan
Going back to day 1, it looks like she's doing 180 games for 180 days.
I love watching these unfold! My only suggestion is that with every game you
make, try to stray from the norm a bit, and a splash of creativity, or a twist
on the game.
My favorite one of these was 12 games in 12 days at lessmilk.com
[http://www.lessmilk.com/12games](http://www.lessmilk.com/12games)
He not only made a new game every week for 12 weeks, it seemed that week after
week, the ideas became a little more interesting each time, to the point that
I couldn't wait for his next game to come out.
For example, he also made a Snake game, but after you eat about 3 or 4 apples,
the entire board started rotating. It was a genius twist I had never seen
before. You just never expect a Snake game to take a turn like that, and it's
a great experience.
~~~
ryan-allen
I'm currently pegging away doing stuff with trigonometry/geometry for work in
canvas, and it takes time if you haven't done it before and are not a genius!
I think within the scope of a single day, if I had to rush this type of stuff
rather than try to understand it as I go, it'd be less of a learning
experience. 1 week I think is a perfect amount of time for this kind of thing
versus one day.
Either way, it's super cool, and how good is maths!!!
------
nemochev
Love what you're doing here! A friend of mine have been working on a Pong
clone in order to learn Rust and plan on documenting our experience. In
particular, what are the valuable aspects or takeaways from these kinds of
post-mortems? The reason I ask is as a result of using Pong as an example to
learn Rust better, I'm finding a ton of language specific material I could
document as opposed to game mechanics. Trying to find the right balance of
material.
[http://www.github.com/caiges/pwong](http://www.github.com/caiges/pwong)
------
nationcrafting
Back when we still used Shockwave and Flash on the web, I often used Pong as a
quick test to see if designers could program Lingo and Actionscript to a
useful level, and how elegant their code was.
------
kriro
I clicked back to day 1, pretty interesting to follow. Here's a direct link to
the github account:
[https://github.com/Nicole20/](https://github.com/Nicole20/)
C++/CS/JS (Unity Engine)
~~~
M8
Also C#.
------
toxicFork
Great project! I should do something like this too.
It would be nice if you place link to day 1 on each post, so that newcomers
will have a bit more context when they get a link through twitter/HN/reddit
~~~
mikehawkins
Agree, but awesome idea overall for a project! :)
| {
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Subsets and Splits