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How To Talk to Investors About Your Competitors - Cmccann7
http://www.bothsidesofthetable.com/2010/12/26/talking-to-a-vc-about-your-competitors/?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=feed&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+BothSidesOfTheTable+%28Both+Sides+of+the+Table%29
======
lionhearted
Love this quote, a great reminder:
> Remember: being too early is the same as being wrong.
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
Today – Quantified self and habit tracker app - baronetto
https://neybox.com/today
======
gherkin0
That looks neat. Is there anything similar (and good) for Android?
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
Microsoft Machine Learning Algorithm Cheat Sheet - breck
http://azure.microsoft.com/en-us/documentation/articles/machine-learning-algorithm-cheat-sheet/
======
ColinWright
It would be interesting to compare this in detail with the SciKit-Learn chart
that we've seen before here. It's not the same, so the question is whether it
varies in significant detail. These previous submissions were, of course,
specific to the SciKit-Learn libraries.
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9064068](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9064068)
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8251710](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8251710)
(16 comments)
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5915737](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5915737)
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5831512](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5831512)
(23 comments)
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5122409](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5122409)
(8 comments)
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2679288](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2679288)
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2592797](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2592797)
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2583913](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2583913)
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2515612](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2515612)
(13 comments)
Anyone care to do the comparison? I wonder how this information is most easily
packaged for use. Is this kind of flowchart really the best way to present it?
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
How to Make Mistakes in Python (Free EBook) - Garbage
http://www.oreilly.com/programming/free/how-to-make-mistakes-in-python.csp
======
maweki
Even here, in a O'Reilly(!) textbook from 2015(!), we get python2.7 advice.
No, since python 3 you (sensibly) can't "True, False = False, True" since True
and False are now keywords and can not occur as a name in any case (not even
an object property).
~~~
ben-schaaf
As much as I like python 3 I don't think it really matters in this case. Other
than the common python pitfalls everyone already knows about, the rest of the
book can be applied to most OOP Language. So its really less python 2.7 advice
and more general programming advice.
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
Ask HN: Is it a good idea to sell my startup? - gamebak
I have been running my startup for a while, no seed funding and still was able get around ~$500 (ish) monthly profits.<p>Yet I was thinking that if I could sell it I would have more money to start something new plus to help me with my college.<p>I would like an advice from someone with more experience, should I sell my startup and attempt to create something else or focus more on my product?<p>Url: http://skyul.com
======
jpetersonmn
I actually would be in the market for your product. It's not so much the web
design turning me off, it's that a 1 day trial costs me twice as much as it
would to sign up for the service.
$2/day = $60/month.
I would suggest a way to get a free trial, for at least a week that's linked
to a credit card or paypal account or something to keep people from just
signing up for tons of free trials. Kind of like how Netflix or Hulu does it.
------
brokenbeatnik
How many hours a month would it take to run if you weren't focused on
improving the product, just keeping the site running?
If the answer to that is a decent hourly rate, do that and then just start
doing something else.
If it's not, and you aren't able to figure out growth, you may want to shut
the doors, as I think it's not likely that you'll see a lot of buyers looking
for $6K annual revenue, even at high margins.
I'm not that good at marketing either, but I'm having to figure it out. We
programmer types think that "if you build it, they will come", and that a
better mousetrap will trump any need for a sales and marketing strategy beyond
a good checkout page. The truth is, if you don't figure out some of the
marketing basics for yourself, at least enough to know what type of marketing
experts to use, you'll be likely to have the same problems with your next
venture. You might get lucky and stumble into a hot market, but if you don't,
marketing will be the difference between being in the top tier making a double
digit percentage of the available revenue in the market and being an also-ran
making a pittance.
~~~
gamebak
Thank you, this really put me on thinking. The good part is that I always like
to work hard and automate most of my products even if it takes me more time,
and in this case it's ~97% automated. The problem with marketing is that I
couldn't find my buyers when I tested, most of the success was with forums but
at a low volume. So I assumed that I picked the wrong niche where to do
business :)
------
benologist
What have or are you doing to grow that revenue?
If you've done your best and you can't get past that $500 barrier then move
on. But getting from $500 to $5000 should be a shorter path than starting a
new product from nothing.
~~~
gamebak
I tried different approaches but I'm not that good when it comes to marketing.
From what I saw the proxy industry is pretty big with over 1 mil searches
monthly, just that I don't know how to get to my customers. Recently I tried
to get more exposure and it has a slowly growth, but yet I don't feel that I
can get much out of it.
~~~
fractallyte
You could probably secure more customers with a better landing page. It's too
wordy, gramatically awkward, and there are several spelling errors
('ressource' -> 'resource'; 'recieve' -> 'receive'; 'paypal' -> 'PayPal'). The
crucial 'Subscribe' button is semi-transparent, overlaid on a busy background.
The menu is not 'balanced' vertically. Also, I don't particularly like the
name, either; but that's just a random point-of-view.
Basically, considering that you mention the proxy industry is pretty big, your
offering is just not competitive! Yet with a few simple cosmetic changes, the
look (and thus the impact on first-time visitors) could be improved hugely. It
might make all the difference...
------
thenomad
FYI, I'm in the target market for your product and after reading the sales
page, I'm not entirely sure what your product does.
So there may well be some potential improvements to be made there!
~~~
anotheryou
this :)
------
gamebak
Thank you guys for the great feedback, I never considered that my dirt looking
design could be the source of my problems, plus the embarrassing typo errors.
~~~
benologist
I think you're making a mistake writing this off as an issue you can solve by
working more on your website and perhaps most importantly using only your
existing skills that you are comfortable with.
Your design and the improvements and optimizations don't mean anything until
_after_ you find a way to reach your market. If you can't reach your customers
nothing else matters. You have some paying customers so apart from typos your
website is good enough at least for now.
------
mattm
Web apps generally sell for about a year's worth of profits. So you'd probably
get around $6000 if you sold it. Is that worth it to you?
If you are serious about selling, I'm currently looking at acquiring products
in your profit range. Please email me if you'd like to discuss.
------
michaelbuckbee
I took a look at your site and you could probably double signups if you bought
a $20 theme (or even just used default Bootstrap) and fixed the typos.
~~~
gamebak
Thank you, I prepared a new design for my newest product
[http://seo.skyul.com](http://seo.skyul.com) and I will implement that in the
main domain as well and see how people are reacting to it.
~~~
Gustomaximus
Marketing guy here, once cleaned up that will be a massive 'trust'
improvement. Though I'm a little confused, you seem to have a proxy scanner on
one page and a kw tool on the new site... what are you doing? If your focusing
on search volume and KW cost, Google have a very good tool for this so not
sure why I would use you? I cant see a USP.
In general, the new website will help but probably less than most people
think. The most important thing for a product is distribution channels until
they build their own brand. For a product like yours (either) you need to get
a view on what your expected customer life value is, what margin you expect to
retain and then look at distribution channels you can fit. An obvious one is
Adwords. Test using social as a knowledge point. Also look to resell your
product via other seo 'experts' as you might get fast recognition through
this.
I'm not kidding about the distribution focus. As a young marketer I was so
concerned about a perfect website and content. Experience has taught me I will
take a weak product & sale point coupled with good distribution over a great
product/website with weak distribution any-day.
------
rolyatyasmar
How much would you consider selling it for?
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
Famed Apple engineer rejected for job at the Genius Bar - Overtonwindow
http://www.businessinsider.com/jk-scheinberg-apple-engineer-rejected-job-apple-store-genius-bar-2016-9?yptr=yahoo?r=UK&IR=T
======
wott
Wrong title. He _was_ rejected.
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
Liquid breathing - zacharyvoase
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Liquid_breathing
======
augiehill
Reminds me of The Matrix
[http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IojqOMWTgv8&feature=playe...](http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IojqOMWTgv8&feature=player_embedded)
~~~
StavrosK
That's a tube with air so the human can breathe _even though_ it's submerged
in liquid.
------
silvajoao
This reminded me of the Lost Symbol book (which is also mentioned in the
article. For reference, it's from the same author of The Da Vinci Code).
I recall reading this in the book and regarding it as junk science, but it
really exists after all. The other "science" mentioned in the book though...
I never imagined my "bogus science" detector to fail me in this unexpected
way. I guess I have to check not only for "bogus" science, but also for
fantastic yet _real_ science!
------
danielle17
reminds me of the film Abyss
------
lizzard
Neat, thanks. I just learned the word "aliquot" from that article.
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
WebCL – Heterogeneous parallel computing in HTML5 web browsers - matt42
https://www.khronos.org/webcl/
======
kevingadd
Relevant Bugzilla bug for Gecko:
[https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=664147#c30](https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=664147#c30)
An interesting spec, certainly, but no traction so far. A bit unfortunate. It
sounds like on desktops the ARB_compute_shader GL extension provides a lot of
the functionality you'd get through OpenCL with less new feature surface (it
can piggy-back on WebGL), while on mobile there is currently not common access
to OpenCL. Interested to see whether either of those situations change.
~~~
lmeyerov
Close, but it looks like the pipeline for WebGL extensions will get feature-
wise, in 5 years, where OpenCL was upon release ~6 years ago.. if even. Basing
webgl standards on already obsoleted mobile opengl standards is bad for the
web.
(Our startup is deep in this space, and after using both WebCL and WebGL, are
going a third way.)
------
just_bytecode
One one hand I'm happy to see the web able to do more and more. On the other
hand, I worry that as we turn the browser into a platform with all these
client side capabilities, browsers will become big complicated messes.
~~~
vezzy-fnord
They already are, to one extent or another. Browsers are rivaling monolithic
kernels and entire operating systems with userspace applications in size.
~~~
Rusky
I wish we would see more browser features (cross-browser standards, app
deployment style, ability to run random 3rd party code relatively securely,
app interoperability) moved into the OS, rather than more OS features moved
into the browser.
~~~
pjmlp
We already have them, it is just web devs tend to blindly ignore them.
~~~
Rusky
I can't quite yet make a native, cross-OS app I can deploy by clicking a link
and that anyone will trust not to eat their computer just by running it. It's
also a lot more work to implement things like networking.
~~~
pjmlp
JNLP deployment of Java applications.
Click once deployment for .NET applications as another example.
~~~
coldtea
Only nobody likes Java desktop applications. Including me, and I've programmed
professionally in the language since 1998.
And they are non starters for demanding multimedia work, which is some of the
most interesting stuff you want to do in the desktop as opposed as a web app.
.NET feels better (because MS didn't screw up as much, as Java did with the
overengineered uncanny valley mess that is Swing), but it's not cross
platform.
So, still, not comparable to deploying in the browser sandbox.
~~~
pjmlp
> So, still, not comparable to deploying in the browser sandbox.
That much is true, I haven't yet used so brain damaged set of programming
tools as the HTML/JavaScript/CSS gimmick required to make the so called web
applications in all browser versions required by our customers.
------
jnbiche
Why was this posted now? It's been around since 2011, and since then hasn't
seen any significant browser penetration as far as I know.
Have there been new developments?
~~~
randomfool
Last I see on the Blink front is
[https://groups.google.com/a/chromium.org/forum/#!topic/blink...](https://groups.google.com/a/chromium.org/forum/#!topic/blink-
dev/xy_ExyPCN1I), essentially: 'No'.
------
Hydraulix989
Embedding computationally hard problems into users' browsers and leeching
users' computing hardware to solve these problems for you? I can't think of an
actual application's use case for this that's not nefarious.
Reminds me of the MIT Jersey kids who were about to try doing in-browser
Bitcoin mining using WebGL.
~~~
ryderm
folding@home? hardly nefarious
~~~
kllrnohj
Why would you want F@H in a browser instead of as an app?
~~~
morenoh149
atwoods law
------
IvanK_net
WebCL is already running on Tizen:
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TurCVdaUTMY](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TurCVdaUTMY)
So that is going to be my next cellphone ;)
~~~
pjmlp
If you can _ever_ get one.
------
Joyfield
Imagine Facebook/Google renting out capacity on its users computers for
companies and giving money to people for being able to do so.
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
Output of Dutch solar bike lane exceeds expectations - Rafert
https://translate.google.com/translate?sl=nl&tl=en&js=y&prev=_t&hl=nl&ie=UTF-8&u=http%3A%2F%2Ftweakers.net%2Fnieuws%2F102994%2Fopbrengst-fietspad-met-geintegreerde-zonnepanelen-is-boven-verwachting.html&edit-text=
======
meric
Roads are quite a good place to place solar panels, logistically speaking. Yes
they are 30% less efficient, but they are also closer to where the electricity
will be used, and the marginal opportunity cost of real estate is zero since
road use is retained. You don't need new land and you don't need to worry
about transporting power at great distances. I'm glad such experiments are
being conducted to see how well this idea performs in practice. It's good they
started with bike lane as opposed to truck roads. It will give them
opportunity to iterate on the panels resiliency.
~~~
guiomie
Not sure why you are being downvoted, but I thing your comment makes a lot of
sense, and I'd like to know why some think otherwise.
~~~
hoopd
Logistically speaking, there's a nightmarish level of complexity introduced
here. Put a country's food distribution network on top of its energy
production system? Put solar cells where you know they'll be constantly driven
over by heavy machinery? Replace some of the most durable materials known to
man (asphalt and concrete) with glass encased electronics?
These things aren't impossible, but it's such an uphill battle that I wouldn't
hold my breath. ([http://jalopnik.com/why-the-solar-roadway-is-a-terrible-
idea...](http://jalopnik.com/why-the-solar-roadway-is-a-terrible-
idea-1582519375))
~~~
Retric
Thick pices of tempered glass are vary durable and could easily outlast
asphalt as a road surface. Right now the decreased efficiency makes this a non
starter, but long term if solar keeps getting cheaper it may become a
reasonable supplement to the power grid.
PS: Bullet resistant glass is surprisingly clear dispite how thick it is.
~~~
ljf
I wonder what the stopping distance is on this glass?
~~~
dogma1138
Not as big as wet glass or icy glass ;)
------
dorfsmay
I'd love to see some financial analysis:
1) cost of producing the same amount of electricity with Netherlands' most
common electricity production
2) cost of building this vs. a normal bike path, and time for recovering the
cost considering #1
3) expected life of this system + anual maintenance cost
4) cost of a typical roof installation for the same surface
~~~
quchen
5) Cost of a normal bike path with ordinary solar cells of equal area next to
it
~~~
ghshephard
5.1 Cost of a normal bike path with ordinary solar cells on _top_ of it
(providing shade, and shelter from the rain, with presumably greater
efficiency)
~~~
mod
This is actually what I envisioned before I looked up some pictures (if there
were any in the article, they didn't load for me).
It seems more practical, in particular for a bike path.
~~~
greglindahl
That's already well-studied, for parking lots with shade structures.
I'm astonished how many people are weighing in to trash a small project
researching something new that might be interesting!
~~~
ghshephard
I'm definitely not trashing it - I'm enthusiastically interested in whether
it's viable. What I'd love to know is what the expected cost structure, at
scale might be, in comparison to other options.
------
hoopd
Really? On their website[0] they claim their _glass surface_ doesn't require
snow removal because the heating elements melt it and as such asphalt roads
have a cost of snow removal that apparently comes for free with these.
However, it takes more energy to melt snow than to push it to the side[1]
which they simply ignore and that makes me question what other things they're
leaving out in order to tell a good story. I'd really like to see the numbers
crunched for how many snowy days a year will cause the system to consume as
much energy as it produces.
[0] -
[http://solarroadways.com/snow.shtml](http://solarroadways.com/snow.shtml) [1]
- [https://what-if.xkcd.com/130/](https://what-if.xkcd.com/130/)
~~~
woah
It takes moe energy to melt snow than push it to the side? This is
northwestern Europe, where the snow never gets more than a few centimeters
deep, and the temperatures never go more than a few degrees below freezing. I
could definitely see heating a surface by a few degrees being cheaper than
bringing a plow or other snow clearing machinery out to some path.
Now, northern Canada would probably be a different story.
~~~
onnoonno
The enthalpy of fusion for water is 335 J/g. The specific heat capacity of ice
at -10C is 2.1 J/(gK). So the major part in melting the water isn't heating it
until it melts - it is the melting itself that is expensive.
That said, I do see some value in solar ways in the space savings.
~~~
stcredzero
Why not awnings over the bike path? This can be done in ways that look awesome
and do not ruin the scenery and the view from the bike path. Thin film
collectors in the form of tarps suspended from poles would make the
installation cost commensurate with installing light poles. You'd need
significant R&D in the aerodynamics, etc. However, you already need
significant R&D for collector roadways, and you're starting out with an
inherently disadvantaged design.
------
Someone
The FAQ of the project at
[http://www.solaroad.nl/en/faq/](http://www.solaroad.nl/en/faq/) is worth
reading. Among others, it explains that the €3.5M spent wasn't only used to
produce this stretch of road (unfortunately without going into detail), and
that covering _all_ rooftops in the Netherlands would only cover 25% of Dutch
_electricity_ demand.
Given European clean energy goals, more square meters are needed. Those are
hard to come by in a densily populated country such as the Netherlands.
Is this a sure win? No, but if it works, it can be a useful part of the energy
mix. Also, if it works, I guess scaling it up will not meet much nimby
resistance, unlike he alternatives of huge wind parks or sacrificing land or
water area for solar arrays.
------
invisible
Sounds like the first comment hit the nail on the head: there being 25% more
sunlight hours than expected.
------
stephengillie
Interesting points:
1\. > _That is more than the upper limit calculated on the basis of laboratory
tests._
Does this mean the panels generated more than they were tested to generate?
2\. Part of the purpose of the project was to beta test the suitability of
their glass surface treatment as a biking/walking surface. (I'm imagining it's
textured like a truck bed liner, but transparent.) They did have an incident
early on with a bicyclist slipping, related to a stick-on surface, so they
switched to a spray-on surface.
3\. Commenters slinging arrows at a Conservative strawman for the high price
and comparatively low (factor of 500) energy output vs government building
rooftops.
~~~
Rafert
1\. No, it means that the panels generated more than the predicted upper
bound. As a commenter on the source article mentioned, this year's April was
one of the most sunny in recorded Dutch weather history, which might have
contributed to this fact.
------
jimrandomh
Numbers from the article:
3000 kWh in six months = 684W average
70 kWh per m^2 per year = 8W per m^2
As a comparison point,
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Photovoltaic_system#Solar_arra...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Photovoltaic_system#Solar_array)
gives a typical output for a square-meter panel as 0.75kWh per day, or 31W.
~~~
jsnell
That's the wrong 6 months though, since it's including the whole winter and
none of the summer. Looking at the graph, April accounted for as much power
production as the other 5 months combined.
------
suls
Could this be the missing link to make electric cars winning the battle? No
need for plugs at gas stations, inductive charging [1] while driving on the
road will do it.
Am I being too futuristic?
[1]
[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Inductive_charging#Electric_veh...](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Inductive_charging#Electric_vehicles)
~~~
dredmorbius
No.
And no. The fault isn't Futurism but fantasy.
------
gus_massa
> _The cycle path was opened in November as a pilot project for three years
> and was followed with great interest, also by foreign media._
I'm not following this new very closely. "Open" means that they allow cyclist,
pedestrian (and dogs) to use a small 70m pilot segment, or that they have a
70m segment in the middle of nowhere?
~~~
panarky
Here's a photo. It's a bike path between two towns, and about 2000 cyclists
per day ride on it.
[http://www.theguardian.com/environment/2014/nov/05/worlds-
fi...](http://www.theguardian.com/environment/2014/nov/05/worlds-first-solar-
cycle-lane-opening-in-the-netherlands)
~~~
ChrisGranger
It cost three million euros but can only power three houses? A _million euros_
to use solar to power a house? Am I missing something?
~~~
fche
Government economics, working as designed.
~~~
learnstats2
>Government economics, working as designed.
You've been downvoted perhaps because it's not clear if you're being
sarcastic, but I agree earnestly.
The primary purpose of government is to organise things that benefit people:
and they only need to do this when business can't or won't. Governments should
act as a balance to the negative aspects of capitalism.
As such, I genuinely believe that governments should be "uneconomic".
------
lotsofmangos
Well, it makes slightly more sense than the solar roads for normal cars and
trucks, if only because it doesn't have to be quite as tough, but I do suspect
that it would be cheaper to install, easier to maintain and far more efficient
in terms of power generation, to put a normal cycle path down and put a roof
of solar above it.
~~~
reirob
Yes, but it wouldn't be as pleasant to ride on the road. Riding a bike with a
roof over your head? I don't know, but I appreciate seeing the sky and the
horizon when riding a bike.
~~~
lotsofmangos
It wouldn't be a roof exactly. Because you can angle the panels and have much
better transmission of light to the panel from not having to have a bike-proof
coating, you wouldn't be completely covering the path and you would get the
same amount of power from a strip that is thinner than the path, angled and
fairly high up, this would cost far less money as it is available off the
shelf, so you have more cash to spend on making more of it. Also, if you
integrate it with lamp posts for your support pillars, you are not increasing
the amount of street clutter either.
------
toast0
Are Dutch bike lanes like US bike lanes? Adjacent to motor vehicle lanes, with
no grade separation, and an expectation that motor vehicles will use the lane
whenever it is convenient, regardless of right of way? If so, this is really
solar panels for the right shoulder, and I would really expect a big truck to
break them
~~~
PhasmaFelis
The title seems to be inaccurate. The test area is a dedicated bike path, not
attached to a standard road.
------
ukandy
Why anyone would pursue such a suboptimal installations is beyond me.
Researchers finding ways to waste grant money I guess..
~~~
Someone
The company leading the project claims commercialization is five years away.
They likely are optimistic or biased, but I am not sure they are outright
lying.
Prices of solar cells drop fast. Extrapolate a few years, and costs of solar
installations will be dominated not by what solar cells cost, but by what it
costs to install them.
In this case, something must be installed anyways to build the cycle path. It
might well be that installing a (cycle path, solar cells) combination will
only be marginally more expensive than installing a traditional cycle path.
Will we get there? If solar cells and the electronics needed to wire than
together (which, in this case, are more complex because the road may see
highly variable shading patterns) get dirt cheap, we might.
~~~
mason240
Do you really believe that it is more efficient to build a bike lane paved
with solar panels, rather than a bike lane paved with asphalt and separate,
dedicated solar facilitates?
EDIT: Looking at the pictures others have posted you still have to use asphalt
(or more likely concrete because you need better stability, which is even more
expensive) underneath, so there really is nothing saved by doing this. What a
waste of money.
~~~
drabiega
How is the presence of asphalt underneath an issue? The deciding factor will
be whether the marginal cost of a solar path over an asphalt path will be
greater or less than building an equivalent solar facility. That seems like it
could go either way.
~~~
IkmoIkmo
Very good point. Plus even if the marginal cost is lower than a dedicated
solar facility, we don't necessarily have that luxury. We do if we want just
5% sustainable energy, not a problem. But if we want 99% sustainable energy,
surface area is a very tricky challenge [0] and so it'd be a matter of the one
_and_ the other, instead of the one _or_ the other.
[0]
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GFosQtEqzSE](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GFosQtEqzSE)
------
Giorgi
Why is it bike lane though? any practical considerations?
~~~
Maarten88
In the video they explain they use a bike lane to learn before going to real
roads. Bikes are much lighter than cars and trucks, and they want to learn
what materials work best.
------
jkot
What were the expectations?
~~~
Rafert
According to [http://www.solaroad.nl/wp-content/uploads/2013/06/Artikel-
So...](http://www.solaroad.nl/wp-content/uploads/2013/06/Artikel-SolaRoad-
BU2013.pdf) it was 50 kWh per square meter.
~~~
fche
(over what unit time)?
~~~
icebraining
Per year.
------
rebootthesystem
Sorry, this is beyond silly. Do they actually have any scientists with some
command of mathematics working on this project?
Other than to screw ignorant government morons out of lots of money I could
not imagine any reputable scientist or engineer not falling to the floor
laughing uncontrollably when presented with the idea of putting solar panel on
a sidewalk/bike path.
The whole thing is so utterly ridiculous that the only possible explanation is
someone is making millions with this project.
~~~
rebootthesystem
The dynamics of down-voting on HN can be interesting. I have this --possibly
flawed-- mental image of emotional impulse voting devoid of any effort to
analyze what is being said.
For the benefit of those who didn't take the time to think before down-voting
my prior comment I'll try to spell it out here.
A few facts:
\- Good commercial cells deliver an efficiency in the 14% to 19% range.
\- This efficiency assumes the cells are aimed at the sun
\- Optimal winter angle for the Netherlands is approximately 76 degrees from
horizontal
\- Peak efficiency also assumes the cells are clean and have nothing
obstructing or altering light from reaching it's surface at the optimal angle
\- In all cases you can Google my claims and verify their veracity
Option #1:
\- Cover the solar panels with glass \- Scuff-up the surface so people and
bikes don't slip and slide all over the place \- As an alternative, apply a
film to achieve the same effect \- Mount them flat on the ground \- Place
trees around it \- Have people, bikes and dogs walk on it
Analysis:
\- The cost of encasing panels in concrete and glass modules and installing
them is monumental
\- The optimal angle for Amsterdam is approximately 76 degrees. Panels mounted
flat simply throw away a significant amount of available energy.
\- Solar cells laid flat will produce between 20% and 30% less when compared
to optimally aimed cells.
\- Glass will create problems based on how light enters. You have reflection,
diffraction and scattering as possibilities. A percentage of the energy will
never reach the cells.
\- A non-slip surface will scatter and absorb a significant amount of energy.
Based on the images I've seen of these road modules I am going to guestimate
that at best 70% of the light entering the road reaches the cells. I base this
on years of working with a wide range of optical diffusers.
\- Dirt and particles on the cells can have huge efficiency effects. From
light scattering to simply blocking and absorption. I'll go ahead and guess
that you can't keep a roadway clean 100% of the time, therefore, you probably
pay a, say, 20% penalty on average for having dirt, leaves and dog shit on the
road. This is entirely a seat-of-the-pants number. It could be 10% or 50%. It
isn't going to be zero.
\- Power generation is now utilization dependent. With more people on the road
more light is blocked and less power is generated. I won't put a number to
this. I will rather make a statement: If nobody uses the road, what's the
point of building one in the first place or building one that is so much more
expensive than simply pouring plain concrete?
\- Depending on angle, trees, buildings and even tall vehicles on the road
will cast shadows on the panels.
A very rough calculation then says that, at best, our solar roadway will
operate at 40% of peak efficiency. If we factor in the constant need for
cleaning this number could very well go down significantly. For example, do we
have a crew of a few people using gas powered leaf blowers cleaning the
roadway a few times a day?
Option #2: Build a light steel structure atop a conventional bike path. Angle
the panels for optimal efficiency at that latitude. You might splurge and add
active tracking.
Analysis:
\- The cost of installation is significantly lower
\- By mounting the panels at the optimal collection angle we ensure converting
power as near to the efficiency peak for the panel in question
\- Angled mounting also aids in reducing surface particulate contamination and
makes cleaning potentially as simple as an automated water sprinkler system
\- The entire system is far less costly and efficient
\- The bike path gets "free" shade as a side effect
So, yeah, the entire idea is absolutely ridiculous if anyone bothers to do a
little math. Someone has got to be lining their pockets or whoever is leading
this project is simply in denial.
Go ahead and downvote, but, if you do, please show your calculations and how
you arrived at the idea that this concept actually makes sense to deploy at
scale. I'll bet you can't.
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
Bacterial molecule trains the immune system to tolerate infection - dnetesn
http://medicalxpress.com/news/2016-10-bacterial-molecule-immune-tolerate-infection.html
======
DrScump
blogspam of:
[http://www.massgeneral.org/about/pressrelease.aspx?id=2001](http://www.massgeneral.org/about/pressrelease.aspx?id=2001)
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
SUSE: More Than Linux - CrankyBear
https://www.zdnet.com/article/suse-more-than-linux/
======
sarcasmatwork
duplicate
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=19548418](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=19548418)
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
US computer science grads outperforming those in other key nations - furcyd
https://arstechnica.com/science/2019/03/us-computer-science-grads-outperforming-those-in-other-key-nations/
======
detaro
duplicate, please check before submitting:
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=19430880](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=19430880)
------
raphaelj
No European?
I'd expect elite US schools to beat EU schools, but non-elite EU school to
perform better compared to their US counterparts.
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
Starting a real business - alexkon
https://stripe.com/atlas/guide
======
markdog12
Previous discussion:
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13180312](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13180312)
------
astraelraen
This is a really bad idea from a tax and legal perspective. As a CPA, I don't
deal with silicon valley startups. However, I do deal with people who want to
start small businesses fairly frequently as well as their needs for legal
advice (which varies). For most of America, a Delaware C-Corp is a horrible
idea for any person starting a business.
Paying Delaware state fees (which are likely not necessary) at best are just
another administrative and cost burden to a new startup and at worse, are just
another function you have to hire out to an advisor, which will then cost you
even more money.
Fun story, I had a client starting a new business (whom I had partially
advised) take a few extra steps we had not discussed. One being going down to
a bank to open a checking account. The client was attempting to do step 5
before step 2 (proverbially speaking) The client did not have an EIN yet and
the bank of course, could not open the business a checking account without an
EIN.
The BANK applied for the client's EIN at the branch and effectively advised
the client on entity structure by choosing their entity type for them during
the EIN selection process. I'm sure the bank has some sort of BS policy where
they can disclaim liability in that they made the client chose the entity
type. I can tell you with 100% certainty, this client did not have any idea
what the entity type was.
And to top it all off, after the bank account was setup. The bank provided no
documents letting the client know what entity choice "the client" (ha!) had
chosen.
Business is complex, I understand people are hesitant to pay (what seem to be)
exorbitant fees to start a business. However, I've found that (nearly) 100% of
the time when you start a business and ask the wrong questions you will always
get the wrong answer, which is always more expensive to fix at a later date
(if its possibly without severe tax or legal issues).
~~~
Bluestrike2
Ouch. The bank's actions seem kind of ridiculous.
The guide doesn't seem to push Delaware C-corp status on its readers, but the
specificity might give them that impression anyhow. Personally, I'd split that
section into two: C corps in general, and Delaware in particular. I'd also add
a paragraph or two that discuss why people might choose _not_ to incorporate
Delaware in favor of another state. That way, it would avoid unconsciously
guiding readers towards a choice that may not be much benefit to them.
Reincorporating elsewhere might be more difficult later on, but it could help
you avoid immediately incurring some additional costs in the interim:
additional reporting requirements, franchise taxes, registered agent, etc.
------
neom
This is awesome! Some of the partners they have selected are pretty intense
for the starting a business stage. We use a boutique law firm (aka one dude
and a desk) and we use a small CFO as a service consultancy here in Manhattan
($250/mth-ish) for the financial/book keeping. Justworks seems fine for HR
stuff.
------
ploggingdev
This guide is a very good introduction to get an idea of what running a
business involves. Great job patio11.
Since running a business is incredibly complicated and involves so much that
founders generally would like to outsource, is there any startup that takes
care of all book keeping, taxes, contracts, insurance and filing for
IP,trademarks? This will resonate with the early tech startups (among others),
who want to spend all their time building a product and talking to users.
~~~
bpicolo
Stripe is definitely aiming to be all of the above it seems, though much of it
is through their partnerships atm. (Though they haven't dipped into insurance
/IP afaik). It would be pretty hard for one small startup to have all of those
things packaged, they're all huge tasks on their own.
------
quickConclusion
>Services, on the other hand, almost always are governed by contracts, and the
contracts get very extensive.
I try to have extremely light contracts. I'd rather have the payment structure
reflect the work and the value over time. If we don't agree, we part ways,
this is cheaper than arguing with lawyers.
Also: trust & repeat clients. Little need for contracts anymore. Then yes, I
can get screwed, but that's the cost of doing business, and they can only
screw me once, protecting my downside. Still cheaper than lawyers.
------
_lex
I particularly like the discussion of LOIs in
[https://stripe.com/atlas/guide#transactions-and-
agreements](https://stripe.com/atlas/guide#transactions-and-agreements).
Should be very useful to new companies, and is rarely discussed.
------
BrentOzar
Once you read the Shatner's Seat post, you'll look at the Stripe Atlas logo a
little differently.
~~~
chatmasta
For anyone else who has no idea what this is referencing...
[https://www.quora.com/I-always-see-this-small-black-
triangle...](https://www.quora.com/I-always-see-this-small-black-triangle-on-
the-inside-of-airplane-walls-What-does-it-mean-or-do?share=1)
(I still don't get it)
------
alexkon
It looks like this PDF is the Orrick Legal Guide that is available to Stripe
Atlas members: [https://stripe.com/files/atlas/orrick-legal-
guide.pdf](https://stripe.com/files/atlas/orrick-legal-guide.pdf).
------
ptrptr
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13284879](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13284879)
\- previous discussion with insight regarding creation of this guide.
------
ijafri
what CMS they are using or theme for their blog? custom?
~~~
patio11
We spell CMS "erb."
------
tuyguntn
I am always amazed by @patio11 writings, how did you become so good at writing
and explaining things with so much detail?
------
_lex
This should have been a series of posts, compiled into a guide. It should be
easy to cut this up into digestible pieces, but it's sort of a massive throw
up right now.
(edit) Ah - now i see- it is a guide. But it's a single page layout, with
navigation on the right. So I guess it just violated a few of my assumptions.
I think I also assumed it was a blog post since the h1 title doesn't call it a
guide (though the html title does).
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
Ask HN:What Learning Management System or Policy Acknowledgment SaaS do you use? - Looter
I'm looking for an LMS (Learning Management System) and Policy Acknowledgement tracking SaaS or software. Can you recommend any?
======
Looter
Not a big response. Bump, cough..
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
Predicting one of 2 characters you will randomly press - aram
https://github.com/elsehow/aaronson-oracle
======
sctb
Recent discussion:
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11824164](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11824164)
------
throwaway2016a
For me it is pretty consistently 50% +/\- 5 even after a minute. It doesn't
seem to work well if you repeat the same key a lot (i.e don't flip to often).
~~~
oneeyedpigeon
I got 52% after a good lot of keypresses (not sure exactly how many). I chose
to not look at the screen at all during that time - I think that probably
helps.
~~~
Forge36
Mine started at 25% and worked it's way up to 54%. Which also involved me
holding down keys for a few seconds. I'm not sure if it works or if Hacker
New's user base is skewed towards people who are slightly better at being
random. (or if that's cause by self reporting, would someone whose best was
80% want to come forward?)
Edit: Interesting tidbit: I pre-seeded at 100% by holding down F and it
trended down to ~68% before I decided I shouldn't spend too much time on this.
Maybe we didn't use it long enough?
------
andrezsanchez
I did something like this a long time ago in a little competition for beating
others' rock paper scissors programs, except I used the other players' moves
relative to my own (e.g. my program could catch on to the other player
choosing the move that would beat my last move) as well as their current
pattern of winning or losing.
------
vorotato
It works if you're trying to be random, however if you're trying to react and
respond to its patterns you can win.
------
rohanprabhu
So, I tried a simple python one-liner:
[os.urandom(1)[0] < 128 for x in xrange(0, 100)]
and typed 'd' for True and 'f' for False in the array, bringing the accuracy
of the predictor down to 53%. Theoretically, I'm guessing doing it for large
enough numbers should make it exactly 50%.
~~~
mikeash
If it _doesn 't_ come down to 50% for sufficiently large numbers, you've found
a break in your OS's urandom and someone is about to be famous!
------
dzdt
Doesn't work from my smartphone. Sounds like a fun challenge though, would
like to try.
~~~
amake
I'm on OS X with Firefox 47.0.1 and it doesn't work for me either :(
~~~
justinsaccount
I'm on OS X with Firefox 47.0.1 and it works fine. It doesn't display anything
until the 6th keypress.
~~~
mikeash
Doesn't work in Safari for me, but it does work in Chrome (after pressing keys
six times).
~~~
justinsaccount
Yeah, it uses this style function definition (ES6?) in a few places:
document.addEventListener("DOMContentLoaded", () => {
Safari doesn't support that.
------
js8
Is there, for a given k, an easy to remember sequence (easy to remember
algorithm with little state) that has all the k-grams with the same frequency?
For k=1: 01 repeating
For k=2: 0011 repeating
For k=3: 00010111 repeating
~~~
justinpombrio
They're called De Bruijn sequences[1], and there's an algorithm for
constructing them. I'm not sure how easy it is to run in your head, though.
[1]
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/De_Bruijn_sequence#Algorithm](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/De_Bruijn_sequence#Algorithm)
------
tokenizerrr
Very cool. Am getting ~50% accuracy so I'm glad to see my free will is still
intact!
------
andrewclunn
40%? Lame.
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
Show HN: Prototyp – FramerJS based free prototyping - chinchang
http://prototyp.in/
======
nstart
On the output side for the demo, this is all I see
<body><script src="../framer.js"></script><script>var imageLayer;
imageLayer = new Layer({ x: 0, y: 0, width: 128, height: 128, backgroundColor:
'lightgreen' });
imageLayer.center();
imageLayer.states.add({ second: { scaleX: 1.4, scaleY: 0.6 }, third: { y: 430,
scaleX: 0.4, scaleY: 2 }, fourth: { y: 200, scaleY: 1.2 } });
imageLayer.states.animationOptions = { curve: 'spring(500,20,0)' };
imageLayer.on(Events.Click, function() { imageLayer.states.next();
});</script></body>
that can't be right can it?
~~~
chinchang
Can you please let me know your browser version?
------
chinchang
Unlike FramerStudio, Prototyp works on pure JavaScript.
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
Carpooling Service Expands Across Europe - prostoalex
http://www.wsj.com/articles/carpooling-service-expands-across-europe-1419538372
======
personlurking
Pretty good service. I very recently took it.
3 pax @ $30 (€25) each for a 5.5h trip, or 250 mi (400km). On top of it, the
driver paid for gas and tolls using an alt route to save money and time. Tolls
and gas = $67 (€54). The main route would have cost him $90 (€75), meaning the
cost to the pax.
It's great if there's not a lot of "bla-bla-bla" always going on (which
happened once, as a driver wouldn't stop talking). Another complaint (on the
driver's side) is that the company has started to request commission in some
countries, and this is causing some drivers to seek out alternative service.
~~~
AndrewDucker
Pax?
~~~
personlurking
sorry, force of habit. In the transport industry 'pax' is shorthand for
'passengers'.
------
lleims
Blablacar's growth in Europe has been incredible to watch. Hard work pays off:
they started building the service in 2006.
It's become the main transportation service for most of my friends (tech savvy
or not) when traveling from one city to another within Spain. It's crossed the
'mainstream' line.
A lot of young people think first about Blablacar, then flying, taking the
train, etc.
~~~
personlurking
I heard the bus services are lowering their fares in response to Blabla,
though AVE (et al) are still expensive.
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
Opensource spreadsheet as a service - fuad
http://extentech.com/index.jsp
======
jmount
Why not OpenOffice?
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
Why Central Banks Will Issue Digital Currency - mathiasrw
https://medium.com/chain-inc/why-central-banks-will-issue-digital-currency-5fd9c1d3d8a2
======
known
You cease to exist as an Independent Nation if you can't print your own
currency
[http://www.radicalpress.com/?p=1389](http://www.radicalpress.com/?p=1389)
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
10 reasons to believe P != NP - arman0
http://www.scottaaronson.com/blog/?p=122
======
jaachan
Article is about believing P != NP, entirely different title
~~~
zidar
I was really confused before I realized that there's a "!" missing.
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
An alternative argument for why women leave STEM - BerislavLopac
https://www.scottaaronson.com/blog/?p=4522
======
thaumasiotes
But this is an argument for why women leave academia, not an argument for why
they leave STEM.
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
Merb Tips II - nickb
http://railsontherun.com/2008/4/8/merb-tips-2
======
jgamman
you spelt MERP wrong.
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
Millennium Falcon's SFX Demonstrated by Sound Designer Ben Burtt (1980) [video] - shawndumas
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8G6RChOLrTA
======
Adaptive
My parents have mentioned the story of how, at an EAA convention, they asked a
couple guys with mics and field recorders what they were doing, and they said
they were recording audio for a movie called Star Wars. I'm betting that's the
biplane.
(I will now imagine that I can faintly hear the ambient sounds of breathless,
curious hippies in the background of that millennium falcon shot)
~~~
enbrill
you mean a movie called blue harvest ;)
~~~
teddyh
That was _Return of the Jedi_.
------
zo1
Wow, this is the same guy that did the sound-effects for Wall-E. I mention
that because I watched a documentary/interview a while back about the sounds
used for that movie. Turns out, it's the same guy.
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TSf8Er2gV_Q](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TSf8Er2gV_Q)
The nice thing about that interview is that it had a few "demonstrations" of
Ben making sounds from mundane objects. E.g. a slinky making "pew pew" sounds.
Or objects making sounds for some of the old Disney cartoons. It's quite
amazing what they were able to accomplish with relatively small
constructions/gadgets.
~~~
Gracana
When I was a kid, I had a little device I bought from radioshack that
consisted of an amplifier and a magnetic pickup that could be stuck to the
back of a telephone handset to give you a speakerphone. I think I bought it
because it was inexpensive and interesting, and boy how interesting it turned
out to be! I discovered the pew-pew slinky sound and many others by playing
around with that little thing.
------
bane
It's often said that the Star Wars idea of a lived-in universe was a unique
thing. And that from models to set design, everything had to look used. I
think that this carries through to the SFX, which were assemblages and mixes
of several _real_ sounds, banged together with analog equipment.
The new trilogy never quite "felt" right, there was always this disconnect of
the visuals and the sound effects. I remember seeing a video going over how
they built up the sound effects for the pod racer scene and, while it was
interesting, I never really felt like the sounds fit the film in the same way
the sounds did with the original films.
------
ericcholis
Passion of the craft is in full effect here. Having an ear to catch mundane
sounds like the water pipes helped create a subtle but recognizable sound.
~~~
TeMPOraL
Reminds me of a guy who was responsible for sound effects in a game we're
writing for Global Game Jam few years ago; he basically showed up in the
middle of the contest (AFAIR he had to stay at work - university radio
station, btw.), took his recorder, went around the building recording some
door hinges and water faucet sounds, and came back few hours later with a
complete set of sounds effects for our surreal fantasy point&click game. I
have a lot of respect for his skills.
------
js2
My favorite part may be watching Burtt operate the 35+ year old mixing
console.
~~~
jevinskie
I now "get" how multi-track tapes were mixed after watching the video.
~~~
joezydeco
You should look up the "Classic Albums" series on YouTube or Netflix. The
musicians and producers behind a number of iconic albums dissect their songs
at the mixing board. It's really neat stuff.
Here's an example from Pink Floyd's _Dark Side of the Moon_
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ENU5dKJvVpY&54m08s](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ENU5dKJvVpY&54m08s)
------
codezero
The biplane starter sound was instantly recognizable, pretty cool.
~~~
NittLion78
You might also recognize it from Temple of Doom when Indy goes to check the
fuel level on Lao Che's plane and the engines shut down.
~~~
codezero
Nice catch! I will have to make sure to listen for that the next time I watch
:)
------
agumonkey
I love how these guys built a canvas of space fantasy out of mundane sounds,
it was so easy to make some cheesy sound, but they always found a way to make
it fit in the universe.
------
shangxiao
I was watching "Five Easy Pieces" the other day and instantly recognised the
sound effect for the garbage compactor from episode IV. In this particular
film it was the sound of the oil pump equipment in one of the scenes at the
oil field!
~~~
at-fates-hands
It's funny because I saw a documentary on all the weird places the sounds come
from and have done the same thing were I associate a specific sound in the
movie to something in real life, not the other way around. I did this with the
Imperial Walkers sound.
Strange how the brain works sometimes.
------
lechevalierd3on
That is so awesome, thanks you for sharing this!
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
Font Awesome 4.1.0 Released – 71 New Icons - fortawesome
http://fontawesome.io/whats-new/?r=hn&v=4.1.0
======
hiharryhere
Thanks for the hard work. It's a great contribution to the community.
One thing, could be my eyes, but is the box on the top of the cab a little off
centre? Am I going mad?
[http://fontawesome.io/icon/taxi/](http://fontawesome.io/icon/taxi/)
~~~
fortawesome
Excellent catch! Want to open an issue?
------
kipple
Still no infinity symbol? Much sadness :'(
[https://github.com/FortAwesome/Font-
Awesome/issues/1647](https://github.com/FortAwesome/Font-Awesome/issues/1647)
------
saltado
There's 3 Pied Piper icons to chose from!
~~~
fortawesome
Well, really just 2. One's an alias.
~~~
saltado
ah yeah, the (alias) appears on the next line on Chrome. Great work on the new
release!
~~~
fortawesome
On it.
------
pzaich
Stanford tree!
------
mkempe
bouy -> buoy
~~~
fortawesome
Nice catch. Fixing.
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
Voting is a Sham Mathematically Speaking - eibrahim
http://haacked.com/archive/2012/11/27/condorcet-paradox.aspx?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+haacked+%28you%27ve+been+HAACKED%29
======
maratd
This is off. Voting is not a system for selecting the best candidate. Voting,
in whatever forms it exists, is a system to avoid violence and conflict.
Each side feels it had a fair shot, regardless of outcome. The purpose of
voting is to leave you with that feeling, to avoid unpleasant behavior from
the losing party. The best person for the job almost never gets it. That's why
we don't vote people in when hiring somebody at a company.
~~~
diego
Yes, and in addition it's also a system to ensure that elected officials and
their parties have accountability. If you win an election and then "betray"
your voters, you won't be reelected. If you can't be reelected, you could
damage the chances of your party. In essence, democracy in its current form is
not so much about choosing the right/best candidate. It's more about making
sure the winner cannot become a despot.
~~~
ontheotherhand
_"If you win an election and then "betray" your voters, you won't be
reelected."_
That ain't accountability, that's a joke. If you pay me 5000$ to do a job, and
I don't lift a finger, and your "punishment" is that we won't do that a second
time, then I have free money and you're a fool. It doesn't hurt the party one
bit either; that's the whole point of corporatism, you can swap out
individuals while the "brand" rolls on, saying "whoops, bad apple" every 5
seconds, with people forgetting after 2.
_"It's more about making sure the winner cannot become a despot."_
Correction: it replaces a single despotic individual with a tag team of people
who basically can do whatever they want - within boundaries, sure, they at
least have to be somewhat slick about it, and know how to make a puppy face,
too; but certainly not within boundaries defined by the actual will of the
people who handed their power as souvereigns over to their representatives.
Having despotic entities control you is not one iota better than despotic
humans, not in the long run.
Despotism is marked by the control going only down, accountability going only
up -- period. Not by angry men on podiums necessarily, and not by bloodshed.
(Not that there isn't plenty bloodshed, but that's besides the point) If you
seriously see a huge difference or improvement there, you've fallen for it I'm
afraid.
~~~
maratd
You know, it's pretty easy to poke holes in something. It's another thing
entirely to come up with something better.
There hasn't been a single political system that hasn't been corrupted.
~~~
ontheotherhand
_"You know, it's pretty easy to poke holes in something. It's another thing
entirely to come up with something better."_
I have no problems with coming up with something better. More like 3 a day
before breakfast; I'd just have problems making people actually go along with
whatever I would come up with. But you know what? If people are so fucked that
even I can't magically solve it, that doesn't mean I can't say they're fucked.
It just means they're gonna pout and roll their eyes, none of which is news or
unexpected.
_"There hasn't been a single political system that hasn't been corrupted."_
What's your point? That therefore criticism isn't allowed? That naive believe
in cynical manipulation is not an issue?
Also, was I talking about a "system"? No, I was talking about specific
circumstances, an actual situation, and individuals and their responsibilitie.
But of course, it's easier to just throw some mud into a completely different
direction, not hitting anything, and then deluding oneself into having dealt
with the issue just nicely, than to actually address any of it.
~~~
maratd
> I have no problems with coming up with something better. More like 3 a day
> before breakfast; I'd just have problems making people actually go along
> with whatever I would come up with.
Perhaps because you don't actually share your "something better"?
Two posts in, lots of words, still no alternatives.
------
mtgx
Approval Voting mostly solves the "strategic voting" part that almost forces
you to choose the "most likely to win" candidate, or if you hate that one, the
one closest to him, while eliminating the spoiler effect, and giving 3rd party
candidates a much higher chance of winning than with current traditional
voting systems.
<http://www.electology.org/approval-voting>
<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Approval_voting>
~~~
DennisP
Plus it doesn't run into trouble with Arrow's theorem, since it's not a "rank-
order voting system," unlike plurality, instant runoff, and various others.
Range voting has the same advantage. In computer simulations measuring how
well the election result matches voter preferences, either range or approval
is as much an improvement over plurality as plurality is over picking someone
at random (or, if you like, monarchy).
<http://rangevoting.org/BayRegsFig.html>
~~~
gus_massa
I'm not sure about the definitions, but if the Arrow theorem doesn't apply to
the Approval Voting sistem them I think that it must not be applicable to the
"majority rules" criterion.
In this two system the idea is that you get very little information from the
voters (best candidate / a set of candidates) and don't know all the
information about the order of preference and the relative strength. So I
don't understand why having less information is better (theoreticaly).
~~~
Empact
> I don't understand why having less information is better (theoreticaly).
A ranked-choice ballot only encodes the orders the candidates against one
another, whereas approval and score votes also encode the candidates'
positions within the voter's range of subjective preferences. That is, if we
have 3 candidates (A, B, C) and a few voters which each voters has a range
from love to hate for each candidate, like so:
Love Hate
|-A--B-------------------C-|
|-A-------------B-----C----|
|-------------------A-B-C--|
|-A-B---C------------------|
Under ranked choice voting, every one of these voters' ballots would look the
same:
1)A, 2)B, 3)C
Ranked choice voting encodes the ordering of the preferences, but the
intensity of those preferences is lost when the ballot is cast. Whereas under
approval and score voting, every one of these voters represents their
preferences differently, because they're reflecting their personal response to
each candidate:
Approval | Disapproval
|-A--B-----|-------------C-|
|-A--------|----B-----C----|
|----------|--------A-B-C--|
|-A-B---C--|---------------|
Of course, some information is lost in the fact that we only have 2 values
approval/disapproval to encode positional preferences. But I would argue this
information is already more meaningful than a fully-expressed ranked ballot.
And if necessary, score voting can capture more of that information by
offering > 2 levels to divide the candidates into.
~~~
gus_massa
OK, this method recollect some information that the ranked choice voting
ignores. But I still don't understand why the Arrow's theorem doesn't apply.
If in a hypothetic population everyone loves/hates each candidate equally
spaced, then in that population it is possible to apply the Arrow's theorem
and prove that for that population this method doesn't work. But the method
should be useful for every population, even the pathological ones.
------
gabemart
I found this article quite frustrating.
>Condorcet formalized the idea that group preferences are also non-transitive.
If people prefer Hanselman to me. And they prefer me to Guthrie. It does not
necessarily mean they will prefer Hanselman to Guthrie. It could be that
Guthrie would pull a surprise upset when faced head to head with Hanselman.
I found this by far the most interesting assertion, but the examples under
"Historical Examples" don't demonstrate this phenomenon at all.
For instance, the author asserts that the Nader spoiler effect demonstrates
nontransitive preference relationships. But from my reading, it wasn't the
case that that group as a whole preferred (Gore over Nader) and (Nader over
Bush) but (Bush over Gore). It was simply that due to the structure of the
election, they happened to elect Bush. While this ties into the author's point
about the "unfairness" of elections, it doesn't demonstrate nontransitive
relationships in group preferences.
Could someone post an example of a group preference configuration in which the
group prefers (A over B) and (B over C) but (C over A)?
I understand the concept of nontransitive relationships in general, but in the
specific domain of fitness for office, I can't work out how this would come to
be.
~~~
Dove
_Could someone post an example of a group preference configuration in which
the group prefers (A over B) and (B over C) but (C over A)?_
Sure, that's easy to construct.
Peter's preferences: A, B, C
Paul's: B, C, A
Mary's: C, A, B
The group prefers A over B, by a 2-1 vote. Likewise B over C, and C over A.
------
saraid216
> Voting is a method that a group of people use to pick the “best choice” out
> of a set of candidates. It’s pretty obvious, right?
And like many other pieces of "common sense", this isn't correct.
Wikipedia says, "Voting is a method for a group such as a meeting or an
electorate to make a decision or express an opinion—often following
discussions, debates, or election campaigns. Democracies elect holders of high
office by voting." This is _very_ different from "picking the best choice".
I realize that the American public has been indoctrinated for the past few
decades that voting is the only way you make yourself heard, but this isn't
true and never has been. I recently learned about Wellstone Action (
<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wellstone_Action> ); I encourage everyone to
look into enrolling. (I haven't done so myself yet. I probably will at some
point, though.)
> On one hand, this seems to be an endorsement of the two-party political
> system we have in the United States.
Actually, what it's an endorsement of is all of our other voting systems where
the choice is between APPROVE and REJECT. You have to endorse the existence of
political parties in the first place before you can endorse a two-party
system, and Arrow's theorem goes nowhere near that.
~~~
bo1024
> _Wikipedia says, "Voting is a method for a group such as a meeting or an
> electorate to make a decision or express an opinion—often following
> discussions, debates, or election campaigns. Democracies elect holders of
> high office by voting." This is very different from "picking the best
> choice"._
I don't see how they are different. The author never said that candidates have
to be people. Substitute the word "alternatives" if you prefer.
~~~
saraid216
> I don't see how they are different.
"I think this is the way we should proceed" is qualitatively different from "I
think this is the best choice".
> The author never said that candidates have to be people. Substitute the word
> "alternatives" if you prefer.
Substitute it in place of what? Where did I require that the candidates must
be people?
------
wam
Learning about Arrow's theorem definitely changed the way I think about
elections in the US. It also changed the way I think about election news
coverage. I used to be an ardent "horse race news" hater. I still am, in terms
of how utterly it dominates election news, but now I see some utility in it as
well.
Arrow and these others have focused how I look at the game-theoretic
underpinnings of elections and the importance of being up to speed on exactly
how candidates and interested parties are crafting strategies around the
complexities built into the game. When people conflate the "message" of the
candidate with the strategy (which is always) I still get irritated. I have a
tendency toward partisanship and that kind of thing clouds my judgment. But
the day-in day-out workings of the campaigns and PACs are more interesting to
me now, because they shed light on what's fundamentally "broken" (from my
point of view) in the underlying system, as opposed to what I simply find
distasteful or disappointing.
Math!
~~~
saraid216
Social choice theory is One Of Those Things which everyone (myself included)
needs to spend more time learning about.
------
basseq
> A voting system can only, at times, choose the most preferred of the options
> given. But it doesn't necessarily present us with the best candidates to
> choose from in the first place.
Reminds me of HHGTTG: "Anyone who is capable of getting themselves made
President should on no account be allowed to do the job."
------
Tloewald
The article confuses two issues, one illustrated by Arrow's Theorem which is
more relevant to parliamentary procedures (where any set of more than two
choices has to be resolved as a series of binary choices, and the voting
population is small and its preferences well understood) and first past the
post electoral systems which are completely hopeless, especially when tiered,
as in the US.
Most of the article is essentially discussing an example of Arrow's Theorem
where if you know people's preferences and can present them with binary
options in an order of your choosing you can obtain any outcome except the
least popular option. This is very artificial and not a real flaw of
preferential and proportional electoral systems where (a) individual
preferences are not known and (b) the entire vote is done in one step, not in
a carefully chosen series of binary options. Great for gaming a committee,
lousy for elections.
As others have observed, the chief purpose of voting is allowing government
transitions without violence and with the appearance of procedural fairness,
but the fact remains voting works just fine when the population has a clear
cut preference ("throw the bastards out").
Well, modulo corrupt redistricting.
Americans who want to talk about voting really need to understand that there
are other voting systems than the horse and buggy system used in the US and
UK.
------
aprescott
_In this case, Hanselman is the clear winner with three votes, whereas the
other two candidates each have two votes. This is how our elections are held
today._
This is dependent on the exact election taking place. With the US presidential
elections, my understanding is that a plurality of electoral college votes is
not enough to win, you need an actual majority. In the event of a simple
plurality win with no majority, the result is decided by the House of
Representatives (which may itself be tied).
~~~
rjzzleep
is it? the actual candidates already get preselected.
even if youre right, which is likely, it doesn't matter, because any majority
was previously generated by pluarility.
------
mmphosis
Mixed Member Proportional (MMP) Representation solves some of the problems.
[http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QT0I-sdoSXU&feature=relmf...](http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QT0I-sdoSXU&feature=relmfu)
The problem with MMP is when the parties choose the ranking of their list of
representatives. I think it would be even better if rather than use a party
generated list, instead the representatives are determined by people's votes.
------
streptomycin
Also, there's this: <http://papers.nber.org/papers/w15220>
------
Noughmad
I find it interesting that in all those discussions about voting systems,
which are mostly focused on USA president elections, nobody mentions two-round
voting, also known as run-off voting.
This is what we have in Slovenia for electing our president. In the first
round, there are many candidates, and each voter can vote for one. If any
candidate gets at least 50% of votes, he automatically wins.
If, on the other hand, there is no majority winner, the two best candidates
compete head-to-head in the second round.
Such a system allows you to always vote for your favourite candidate in the
first round, and if your candidate doesn't make it into the second round, you
can vote for the fallback one.
Details: <https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Two-round_system>
~~~
kscaldef
I don't believe this satisfies the Condercet criterion either. Consider these
rankings of preferences:
20% A ...
20% B ...
15% C ...
15% D C ...
15% E C ...
15% F C ...
In a two-round run-off, one of A or B will be elected, despite the fact that
60% of voters prefer C over either A or B.
~~~
im3w1l
And in the real world, people would second guess this, and enough people would
tactic vote for C that it would't be a problem.
"But then they can't vote for their prefered candidate which was the whole
point"
Well, _some_ people can. D, E, F could still get a few percentage points. More
importantly, I don't think we would see convergence to a 2-party system.
Unless I am missing something, it looks like at least 3 parties could be
sustained.
------
gradstudent
Preferential voting solves all these problems. You vote by ranking the
candidates on order of preference. If your top candidate does not win the vote
goes to next guy down the line until eventually it ends up for one of two
candidates.
~~~
Pinckney
Preferential voting does not satisfy the Condorcet criterion.
[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Instant-
runoff_voting#Voting_sy...](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Instant-
runoff_voting#Voting_system_criteria)
~~~
bradbeattie
To demonstrate this, consider the following.
80 people: A, C, B
50 people: B, C, A
35 people: C, B, A
IRV eliminates C (as it has the fewest first-place votes) and elects B. But
voters on the whole prefer C over B (115 to 50). This is the failure that
Pinckney refers to.
------
hcarvalhoalves
If you look at Brazil, which has multiple parties and plurality voting, the
problems are pretty clear.
In this year's elections, the candidate with 28% of the votes was elected
mayor in my city.
------
nikatwork
I've always thought New Zealand's mixed-member proportional (MMP) voting
system [1] is the least bad solution currently in use.
I'm not from NZ so I'd be interested to hear what the locals think.
[1]
[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/New_Zealand_voting_system_refer...](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/New_Zealand_voting_system_referendum,_2011)
~~~
lmkg
Not a local, but... Proportional voting systems suffer from the problem that
voting "power" is not proportional to representation.
Consider a parliament with 100 members and 3 parties. Suppose the breakdown
is: A has 49 members, B has 48 members, and C has 3 members. Guess what... A,
B, and C all have equal voting power! Any two parties are enough to reach a
majority of 51 votes, and any one party is not. Despite A having, in theory,
over 16 times the representation of C, it does not have any voting advantage.
Keep in mind that any voting system based on parties will tend to have very
partisan voting blocs. Representatives in the US are more independent and
likely to break with the party because they are elected in geographically
isolated elections. Representatives elected directly by a party generally have
about as much independence as the Electors in the Electoral College.
~~~
NickNameNick
I'm from NZ...
To form a government, the party with the most votes, or a coalition of parties
which collectively holds a majority petition the governor general.
For a single party this is quite straightforward.
To form a coalition the member parties agree on a 'Confidence and supply
agreement" This is basically a statement that in the event of a vote of no-
confidence, all of the coalitions members will support the coalition, and also
a broad agreement on the budget. Getting an agreement on confidence usually
involves a certain amount of horse trading about ministerial and vice
ministerial positions. Likewise, the agreement on supply will probably involve
some intense budget and joint-policy negotiations.
If you had a parliament of 101 seats, split into an opposition of 50 seats,
and a government of 51, itself made up of a large party (48 seats) and a small
party (3 seats) what you will probably see is the small party only has the
tiniest influence on the coalition agreement. They probably traded everything
else to get their senior member a ministerial position.
------
fluxon
Wasn't this issue addressed rather well in a recent hackernews-linked item
which mathematically showed both that voting is not a sham, but that the
Electoral College system is more fair than it has been represented? (sorry
can't find the link!)
------
stretchwithme
Winner-take-all elections, no matter how they operate, leave many people
without the representation they prefer. Proportional representation is much
less likely to do this.
Proportional representation can used in the executive branch too. Switzerland
does it.
------
bo1024
This is a very nice summary of/intro to the classic/standard mathematical
approach to voting and Arrow's Theorem.
------
frozenport
This is why we have a 2 party system :-)
------
jQueryIsAwesome
Some of you are forgetting something; that even if you had some form of
"stadistical fairness" (whatever that may be); you still have the biggest
problem of most democracies: Uneducated people; people who think an atheist
shouldn't be president, people who like to reinforce their biases more than
they like to have deep discussions about the nation's issues, people who were
never taught to do critical thinking... and without doing exceptions for their
government, their parents, their religion and the law.
~~~
bluedanieru
That's not really in scope for choosing a voting system that best represents
the people. But yes, point taken.
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
AI-generated fake content could unleash a virtual arms race - kristintynski
https://venturebeat.com/2019/11/11/ai-generated-fake-content-could-unleash-a-virtual-arms-race/
======
echelon
These deep fake articles are becoming a meme. They mostly seem alarmist, and
yet they're not authored by people actually in the industry.
Deep fakes automate what deep pockets and state actors could already do with
Photoshop and other professional tools. The world isn't going to become a
scary place because the barrier to entry got lower and the technology has been
democratized. People are smart. Fakes will be detectable through entropy
measures, corroboration, common sense, etc.
FWIW, I've been working on real time voice to voice style transfer.
[https://drive.google.com/open?id=1zRvJEGJjTpKvvzel-J0agh3fKB...](https://drive.google.com/open?id=1zRvJEGJjTpKvvzel-J0agh3fKBn9aqGy)
There are already a few other (non-real time) players in this field.
I'm hoping to spin this up as a small social app or filter and sell it so I
can fund my capital-intensive film making startup.
I think this tech _should_ be widely available. Not only will it make people
think and question more, but it'll be fun too.
It's also amusing (and terrifying) to see all the anti-1st Amendment
legislation aimed at combating deep fakes. The truth is that there is nothing
to fear except our freedoms being taken away.
~~~
ipython
I don’t think you should dismiss these concerns so quickly. It sounds like you
have experience in this field. Perhaps that would make it easier for you to
spot potential fakes? What about your grandma? How would she fare?
And besides, the end game isn’t to fool everyone into believing a fake. No,
the more insidious goal is to flood the zone with enough dis- and
misinformation to overload our ability to filter it. It’s like gaslighting at
scale- at some point you just stop being able to process information because
it’s so voluminous and of dubious quality that you stop believing any of it.
~~~
bransonf
> What about your grandma? How would she fare?
Grandma’s still falling for the phone and mail scams. No amount of legislation
is going to fix the reality of technological illiteracy among the oldest
adults.
Deepfakes might fool some of today’s adults who don’t quite understand, but we
are raising a generation that has turned into a meme: “Everything you read on
the internet is true” -Abraham Lincoln
I think the real silver lining here is that the internet is an alternate
reality. Many of us refuse to believe that, but social media has created
manufactured people. The only solution is to bring people back to the real
world. The people are real here. Their opinion, no matter how controversial,
comes from a real mouth, and the face you see is the one they were born with.
If anyone forms their worldview based entirely on things they read on the
internet, they probably would be just as susceptible to our real world forms
of propaganda/gaslighting/ whatever you want to call it.
~~~
skybrian
This essentially means the web is too difficult for some users and they need
something else, like maybe an app store. Maybe some company will win big by
providing a safer (or apparently safer) alternative?
Previous examples: Gmail had a better spam filter. Apple and Google did a
better (though not perfect) job of protecting users from arbitrary code
execution, as did the web itself, way back when.
This doesn't happen all that often, but if it succeeds, power users will scoff
at how nerfed the new thing is.
I'm reminded of an old story [1] about an early game for children:
> I found myself unable to reconcile the idea of a virtual world, where kids
> would run around, play with objects, and chat with each other without
> someone saying or doing something that might upset another. Even in 1996, we
> knew that text-filters are no good at solving this kind of problem, so I
> asked for a clarification: "I’m confused. What standard should we use to
> decide if a message would be a problem for Disney?"
> The response was one I will never forget: "Disney’s standard is quite clear:
> No kid will be harassed, even if they don’t know they are being harassed."
But maybe text filters will be better if you throw enough machine learning at
the problem?
[1] [http://habitatchronicles.com/2007/03/the-untold-history-
of-t...](http://habitatchronicles.com/2007/03/the-untold-history-of-toontowns-
speedchat-or-blockchattm-from-disney-finally-arrives/)
~~~
bostik
> _This essentially means the web is too difficult for some users and they
> need something else_
I think you are on the right track, but not going all the way. The bigger
issue here is that media literacy is _incredibly_ hard. You need a wide body
of knowledge, essentially an educated[ß] mind, and an almost unhealthy
skepticism against absolutely everything you read, see or hear.
As a short cut, a good first approximation is to be a cynic. Assume everyone
is pushing their own agenda, and that even at best you can only see half of
it.
(If you are asking yourself what agenda _I_ am pushing with this post, well
done. You're off to a good start.)
ß: The ability to question information, conduct research, cross-check the
results of research, and have the mental agility to identify your own biases -
these are not natural tendencies, but learned traits. We can lump them all
under the "educated" label, even if that's not the optimal term.
~~~
skybrian
Yes, it is hard. But I think it's not just education, but epistemic humility.
We have no direct knowledge of what's going on in other parts of the world.
The past is often not recorded accurately, the future often unpredictable. So
our default assumption should often be that we don't know what's going on.
Highly educated people in the grip of an ideology can dream up conclusions far
beyond the limited and unreliable evidence we get from media consumption. They
are often rewarded for this.
And one of these ideologies is the myth of rugged individualism (or competent
adulthood), the idea that each person can and should figure out what's going
on by themselves. It's obviously not true of children and the elderly, but
most of us outsource a lot of our thinking. Living in modern civilization
inherently means having a lot of trust and dependency on others.
The ideals of media literacy are simply unrealistic for most people. It's not
clear what the alternative is, though.
------
blunte
This pretty much describes the end of the internet as we know it. Even before
AI generated "content", the internet has become lower signal-to-noise as time
has moved forward.
It is already the case that for many everyday searches I do, I am forced to be
very creative in my search phrase in hopes of filtering out the garbage sites
that manage to dominate the first results page.
Watching less tech-saavy people use computers (such as elder family) is
enlightening and frightening. They either cannot tell real content from fake
content, or worse they are satisfied with what they get from obviously
suspicious sites.
Maybe my concerns of polluted websites are less relevant considering the
general population is getting more of their "information" from within Facebook
rather than even going to search engines (of which they use the default for
their browser!).
~~~
seibelj
New companies and technologies will be invented to solve this problem. Every
problem has a solution. You are falling into the same trap that has caught
humans since the dawn of man. The printing press, the car, the internet, and
now “deep fakes” will cause hand wringing but will not destroy us. Just give
it time.
~~~
glenstein
>The printing press, the car, the internet
These all came with real tradeoffs and we've just accepted them. The printing
press and the internet, in their own ways, sped up the world and shortened
attention spans. Cars changed cities. The benefits have been there, but we've
engaged with or ignored the harms posed by changes in different ways, and the
same unconscious trade is going to happen again.
------
Abishek_Muthian
Considering video, audio are accepted as evidence in most courts without any
independent verification; I'm seriously worried about the implications of deep
fake on justice.
There is an urgent need gap[1] on detection of deep fakes.
[1]:[https://needgap.com/problems/21-deep-fake-video-detection-
fa...](https://needgap.com/problems/21-deep-fake-video-detection-fakenews-
machinelearning)
~~~
bostik
Risky Business did a really good interview on the subject early last year[0].
Law profession is already aware of the potential problems.
Me? I welcome the future where audio and video evidence are just another piece
of evidence.
0: [https://risky.biz/RB489/](https://risky.biz/RB489/)
------
lordgrenville
We've had fake photographs for decades and it hasn't seemed to make a big
difference in politics. But I think that's because in the past you had
gatekeepers, like the editors and factcheckers of "respectable" publications,
who would ascertain the legitimacy of a picture before using it. They'd make
mistakes sometimes, but got it right 99% of the time.
Now news spreads horizontally through social media and group chats. It's
common to see, say, a clip purportedly of police brutality right now in
country X, which is actually 7 years old and from country Y. Someone will
correct it, someone will dispute the correction, whatever - the damage is
done. So I don't think deepfakes will move the needle much. The real damage is
the end of gatekeeping, and that's already happened.
~~~
QuantumGood
We haven't had high-velocity media for decades, and information is easier to
make extremely false and get believers than photographs. You can't create a
complete narrative through photos alone. You need associated information.
------
YarickR2
Well, this probably means end of unsigned content ; every line of text, every
article, etc should be / will be signed by living person's key, or it will be
heavily penalized in search engine output; governments will run keystores with
citizens' keys, and content signatures will be checked against such keystores
to ensure content authenticity (or lack thereof) . Time to reopen GPG , I
guess.
------
joe_the_user
I was experimenting with this stuff and you can too here [1]. It's kind of
impressive but not convincing. The main impression it gives is it doesn't know
what subjects affect which objects, what one kind of relation implies about
another relation and so-forth. Still, it gives a sequence of words with a
consistent "feel" which is impressive.
However, I would still only find it's text convincing for producing ... a
marketing blog since such things just seem like a contentless stream of
buzzwords to begin with. If anything, it gives a certain idea of how marketing
speech require something, a stream of words with certain feeling, but not real
logic.
[1] [https://talktotransformer.com/](https://talktotransformer.com/)
~~~
jeffshek
I built [https://writeup.ai](https://writeup.ai) to help with that, but while
it helps, it still feels like it's missing "something" at times.
~~~
joe_the_user
The thing is that I think language over a longer term is about actually
communicating a structure to world - in a way that requires knowledge of the
world. It is just that over a shorter period, a good portion of language isn't
about this communication but about just certain coloring of communication.
Which is to say that I think this lacks more than it seems at first blush.
------
achow
OTOH: I'm pretty excited that these technologies are maturing so that they can
be harnessed for empowering common people, or workers in enterprises to make
their content beautiful, simple & into effective stories.
One example: Pentagon's slide decks.
[https://archive.org/details/MilitaryIndustrialPowerpointComp...](https://archive.org/details/MilitaryIndustrialPowerpointComplex)
------
QuantumGood
The effects of an ever-higher velocity of fake news isn't clear, but there is
no "solution".
Real news not believed, fake news believed has been an unsolved problem for a
long time. For example, the history of medical advances show doctors not
believing exceptionally solid science in many cases.
There are a number of quotes about progress along the lines of "First they say
it's impossible, they they fight it, then they say they believed it all
along".
This is a people problem and a media velocity problem going back to the famous
quote "A lie travels around the globe while the truth is putting on its
shoes."
You can't stop people from believing a lie after it has been released.
Removing the lie doesn't help. "Reputable" sources not repeating the lie
doesn't help.
------
this_was_posted
We shouldn't talk too much about our skepticism on this becoming problematic.
Otherwise believable skeptic text can be generated by malicious actors through
AI once it does become problematic so that they can drown out real concerns
with virtual trolls.
------
shams93
This has been true long before ai. Writing and journalism have always been
weaponized. The opposite could be true in that it's easier to recognize
automated fake news than well crafted hand done human deception.
------
jon_akimbo
People very concerned about this should spend some time reading ${opposing
political group} social media. As you'll discover, people will believe what
suits them. Veracity is of remarkably little interest to a remarkably high
percentage of the population. Most people, and this is not an exaggeration,
would sooner kill/die than change their mind. And if that's true, then
consider the mental acrobatics individuals are willing to go through before
they even reach that point.
------
zahrc
I have personally yet to be convinced of AI generated media content (read
articles, videos, photos) maybe the bias that I know that they are AI-
generated, but to me it’s equivalent buying a cheap knockoff iPhone from
China: it’ll work if you don’t really think about it, or do not know the
difference.
We have to top-up education and teach media-awareness in school, while giving
badly researched and generally toxic content the cold shoulder.
------
hertzdog
I try to take a different direction. Let's suppose some ai generated content
is better than human created content (IMHO we are quite there). Let's go
further: maybe in the future we will trust again only some "trusted sources"
(newspapers? HN?) while everything else will be not taken into account because
the quality will be low (like some comments saying the source is not in the
industry...).
~~~
account73466
>> maybe in the future we will trust again only some "trusted sources"
(newspapers? HN?) while everything else will be not taken into account because
the quality will be low (like some comments saying the source is not in the
industry...)
Do you realize that current conversational NNs are better at making comments
than you?
~~~
hertzdog
Yes. That’s the point :)
------
greggman2
I often wonder if Ranker, Thrillist, Collider, Vulture are all AI based. The
seem to show up in every search
------
nightnight
All tech demos without strong use cases yet. Machine-generated content,
spinning content, etc. are black hat tactics employed for decades in order to
game Google. Works (just look at what crap ranks high) but the foundation for
new huge industries? No.
------
100011
I am going to take the contrary opinion here. AI-generated fake content will
inflate away the informational value transmitted by whatever it is trying to
fake. It's like 'deep fakes', they'll just destroy trust to video.
------
seddin
I might be wrong, but on some social networks as Reddit, many comments or
shared links seem too weird, like if they were not real, and some posts that
get resposted always end up with the same comments or similar words.
------
r0h1t4sh
Looks like this would be the new form of spam we will have to fight.
------
daxfohl
How do we know this article was not generated by a bot?
------
unityByFreedom
Doubtful. It's easier to photoshop fake content and we haven't seen that get
out of control.
------
EGreg
Wow that AI-generated blog text actually made sense! The best I have ever
seen. How did they do it?
------
HocusLocus
muching virtual popcorn
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
A data visualization curriculum using Vega-Lite and Altair - Anon84
https://github.com/uwdata/visualization-curriculum
======
randyzwitch
This is a really comprehensive tutorial, one of better uses of Jupyter
Notebooks
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
Office UI Fabric - BobNisco
https://github.com/OfficeDev/Office-UI-Fabric
======
mbesto
> Does not support IE8. [0]
Thank you MS, this is well-needed ammo.
[0] [https://github.com/OfficeDev/Office-UI-
Fabric/blob/master/gh...](https://github.com/OfficeDev/Office-UI-
Fabric/blob/master/ghdocs/GETTINGSTARTED.md#supported-browsers)
~~~
gtk40
But supports old Safari on Windows and no Firefox on Android?
~~~
acdha
Safari on Windows isn't terribly surprising since it's probably based on a set
of core features they need and there's a long list of things which are in old
Safari but not IE8:
[http://caniuse.com/#compare=ie+8,safari+5.1](http://caniuse.com/#compare=ie+8,safari+5.1)
Firefox on Android seems like it might just be something which they don't see
enough demand for to make it an officially supported browser. It'd be
interesting to see whether it actually works on office365.com.
------
jbrantly
For those looking for examples of what it looks like:
[https://github.com/OfficeDev/Office-UI-
Fabric/blob/master/gh...](https://github.com/OfficeDev/Office-UI-
Fabric/blob/master/ghdocs/FEATURES.md) [https://github.com/OfficeDev/Office-
UI-Fabric/blob/master/gh...](https://github.com/OfficeDev/Office-UI-
Fabric/blob/master/ghdocs/COMPONENTS.md)
~~~
jasonkester
Hmm... Not quite the example I was hoping for. There are some cool looking
components in there, so naturally I wanted to dig in to the source and see how
complex the markup needs to be to pull that off.
Turns out it's actually pretty simple. Just include this IMG tag:
[https://camo.githubusercontent.com/6f327f2c8f7c225358d52bec9...](https://camo.githubusercontent.com/6f327f2c8f7c225358d52bec9155dd5d50cfaa08/687474703a2f2f6f6475782e617a75726577656273697465732e6e65742f6769746875622f696d672f506572736f6e61436172642e706e67)
------
untog
The key part:
_Fabric solves many of the same problems that other front-end frameworks do,
in a way that is specific to Microsoft. We have our own design language and
interaction patterns that all Microsoft apps share._
This is specifically designed for people to make add-ons to Office 365 that
look like they belong as part of the software. While I don't doubt you could
use it standalone, I don't see MS advocating that you do.
~~~
jbigelow76
I don't agree, it seems to be a subtle attempt to spread the Office brand by
means of trying to make it's styling more prevalent. The first line of the
release seems to point at using the UI outside of Office as well as with add
ons:
_Office UI Fabric is a responsive, mobile-first, front-end framework for
developers, designed to make it simple to quickly create web experiences using
the Office Design Language._
~~~
oblio
Well, this is the best kind of promotion: we get quality stuff for free, they
get free exposure and also seem hip, unlike Microsoft circa 2010.
~~~
jbigelow76
Yeah I didn't mean it as a dig when I mentioned the spreading of the Office
brand. I will finally be able to build an app that doesn't linger in default
Bootstrap styling forever :)
------
tajen
How legal is it? Ok it's MIT license, but if I use a UI design, do I infringe
on Microsoft's imtellectual property? Is UI design copyrightable? I have the
same question for another UI framework, which by default comes with the
creator's design guidelines: Is it enough to change the color of the header to
avoid brand confusion and be safe from infringement?
From what I can gather, UI design patents actually exist. However Apple won
against Samsung but lost a case against Microsoft, which demonstrates that
it's still important to patent UI functionnality (such as the bounced scroll)
in addition to the graphical elements.
[http://patents.stackexchange.com/questions/4020/protecting-a...](http://patents.stackexchange.com/questions/4020/protecting-
a-user-interface-design-patent-and-or-copyright)
Any further answer is welcome.
~~~
icebraining
IANAL, but in some jurisdictions, there's something called promissory estoppel
- essentially, if you promise something that is expect to lead people to act
in a certain way, you can't then sue them later for doing so. Microsoft
themselves have successfully used that defense against Motorola Mobility
(though that case was relative to the price of the licenses, not whether they
could use it at all).
------
paulojreis
Looks good and seems well built.
However - like Bootstrap - it has this kind of mark-up that I'm starting to
strongly dislike:
<div class="ms-Grid-col ms-u-sm6 ms-u-md8 ms-u-lg10">Second</div>
I get that this - like Bootstrap - is nice to get a quick start and start
deploying but, as thing grows, it gets harder and harder to maintain.
I'm not all for a semantics panacea but this is hard to read and, I imagine,
harder for the browser to parse. Nowadays, I'd rather be very dumb with CSS
(just one class) and let SASS handle the complexity.
In this case, I'd create a class with an adequate and meaningful name and, in
SASS, do the composition they're doing in the class attribute - @extend the
needed column definitions per media-query. I like the idea of having the
class/style composition duty done at SASS compile time and not by the browser
at runtime.
~~~
zodiakzz
Erm, you are simply misinformed. I use Bootstrap and I never use any
presentational classes, these are just provided for convenience (although a
huge amount of people abuse them).
Bootstrap provides LESS mixins like .make-row(), .make-*column() etc. to keep
your CSS semantic.
~~~
paulojreis
I am not misinformed regarding Bootstrap; unfortunately I have extensive
experience with it. :) Anyway, I should have remarked the fact that mixins do
exist and semantic class names are totally possible with Bootstrap.
I was just pointing out the kind of mark-up which appears in the example I
quoted and, typically, in Bootstrap-powered stuff. It's not a problem with the
framework, of course, but - as you said - people abuse the pre-made classes.
Regarding Bootstrap in particular, I think most people just import the
compiled stylesheet (so, no mixins & other assorted goodies).
------
ckluis
This looks like it could benefit from a parent site explaining/showcasing all
the features. What I could see so far looks like a big step up for many LOB
applications.
~~~
jbigelow76
Agreed. At first I thought it was some kind of UI/scripting add-on for Office
extensions, it took a re-read to realize it was more akin to Bootstrap and
Foundation.
------
gapchuboy
Naming hell again by Microsoft.
Why fabric?
Windows Server AppFabric [https://msdn.microsoft.com/en-
us/library/Ff384253(v=Azure.10...](https://msdn.microsoft.com/en-
us/library/Ff384253\(v=Azure.10\).aspx)
Azure has App fabric and fabric controller.
~~~
SmellyGeekBoy
Maybe a play on Google's "Material Design" ?
------
donutdan4114
Built with LESS...
What's the current state of SASS vs. LESS? It seems like a lot more CSS
frameworks are using SASS and it has more plugins, tools, mixins, etc. But I
haven't kept tabs on it in a while.
~~~
joshuacc
For a long time, Bootstrap was the flagship Less project, but they've recently
switched to Sass. Some of the increasing momentum in Sass is probably due to
libsass, a C-based Sass compiler that can be used without depending on Ruby.
(And is also _much_ faster.)
Just FYI: Neither Sass nor Less should be written in all-caps. See the
respective websites.
~~~
bennylope
libsass is - understandably - a few versions behind the Ruby implementation.
Most of the project teams I've been on working with Sass have opted for the
Ruby implementation as a consequence.
~~~
Flenser
The ruby version is on feature freeze until libsass catches up.
~~~
Flenser
citation now I'm on desktop:
> In fact, Ruby Sass will not release any new features until LibSass catches
> up. Once it does, there will be feature parity between the two moving
> forward. Soon, we’ll have the blazing speed of LibSass with all the features
> of Ruby Sass!
[http://sassbreak.com/ruby-sass-libsass-
differences/](http://sassbreak.com/ruby-sass-libsass-differences/)
------
nailer
I posted earlier in this thread that this looks like the first time you can
use Segoe UI legally in a web app: that's wrong. Fabric CSS doesn't actually
include the webfonts.
[https://github.com/OfficeDev/Office-UI-
Fabric/blob/master/gh...](https://github.com/OfficeDev/Office-UI-
Fabric/blob/master/ghdocs/FEATURES.md#typography)
~~~
gordjw
Seems to be licensed on a "per core" basis from Monotype.
Perhaps I'm missing something, but that makes no practical sense to me.
Typography.com's model of per site licensing is much more understandable.
------
rw2
Why is there no demo website? No front-end framework should be without a
component (listing each component) and a demo section. This is shoddily done
compared to Google's material lite.
------
aaronbrethorst
The fourth and fifth results on Google for "fabric" are:
Fabric - Twitter's Mobile Development Platform
https://get.fabric.io/
With Fabric, you'll never have to worry about
tedious configurations or juggling different
accounts. We let you get right into coding and
building the next big app.
Welcome to Fabric! — Fabric documentation
www.fabfile.org/
Fabric is a Python (2.5-2.7) library and
command-line tool for streamlining the use
of SSH for application deployment or
systems administration tasks. It provides ...
~~~
dragonwriter
> The fourth and fifth SERPs on Google for "fabric" are
A nitpick, perhaps, but SERP is "search engine results page" [0] -- a page of
results from a search engine. Those are the fourth and fifth results -- all on
the first SERP -- not the fourth and fifth SERP.
[0] see, e.g.,
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Search_engine_results_page](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Search_engine_results_page)
~~~
aaronbrethorst
doh, thanks for the correction!
------
urs2102
This would definitely benefit from having a link to a demo or at least to a
webpage implementing the compontents rather than asking users to download and
then go through a process to try out samples to view them.
On the positive side, it's good to see no support for IE8.
~~~
nightski
If you go to the "Features" link there is a screenshot of every component.
------
metaphorical
Any demo link?
~~~
nailer
[https://github.com/OfficeDev/Office-UI-
Fabric/blob/master/gh...](https://github.com/OfficeDev/Office-UI-
Fabric/blob/master/ghdocs/FEATURES.md)
------
toolz
I don't do much front-end work, so maybe I'm just missing something, but are
all of these frameworks really that much different? If this just for people
who haven't learned one of the other frameworks or is there a compelling
reason to switch?
~~~
vukers
I think all the front-end frameworks are pretty similar, but if you are
building Office add-ins, or some other application that lives in that
ecosystem, then there is value in adhering to consistent UI elements.
I think there may be additional insights on their announcement post:
[https://blogs.office.com/2015/08/31/introducing-office-ui-
fa...](https://blogs.office.com/2015/08/31/introducing-office-ui-fabric-your-
key-to-designing-add-ins-for-office/)
------
CephalopodMD
So this is M$'s response to Bootstrap which implements M$'s response to
Material Design? Not bad! also RTL font support is nice.
~~~
daok
Do you really need to use the dollar sign? That looks so childish.
~~~
jbigelow76
Without the dollar sign the potential for error is obviously far greater, for
instance somebody might have thought he was referring to Martin Scorsese.
~~~
jevgeni
Or Multiple Sclerosis.
------
brokentone
I'm having a little trouble figuring out exactly what this does, but while I
do... I'm recalling the wonderful history Microsoft has with web dev --
Frontpage, IE 5.5, IE 6...
~~~
vonkow
Don't talk smack about IE 5.5, unless you think AJAX was a bad idea.
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
Don't Drown in Documentation - rbanffy
https://dev.to/grappleshark/enough-with-documentation
======
daly
Funniest bit of satirical writing I've seen in years.
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
Email Blacklist Check - kevwedotse
https://kevwe.se/blackcheck/
======
kevwedotse
Blackcheck (BETA) helps Mailserver Admins to avoid being blacklisted.
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
Ask HN: Foursquare somehow surpasses Loopt - tempatempatempa
I have researching various mistakes and such that startups make, and in particular I have been looking at location-aware startups. I was recently looking at google trends for foursquare and loopt and noticed this: http://www.google.com/trends?q=foursquare+,+loopt&ctab=0&geo=all&date=all&sort=1 which implies that sometime around the beginning of this year foursquare must have made some sort of significant change, but I don't have a clue as to what. Do any of you guys know what I might be missing in understanding this? Thank you!
======
sabj
I think that you have to remember also that Foursquare, in 2004 on that graph,
is not about Foursquare... it's about foursquare, I suppose, you know - the
game you play with chalk and a playground ball. So I think that that trends
graph is a little bit noisy.
To me, it's a question of 4sq taking off and Loopt failing to do so, more than
foursquare surpassing them when it was a clear neck-and-neck competition.
If we're looking at trends as a buzz-o-meter, it's the kind of situation where
Loopt is not able to leverage its initial boom of interest to transcend its
beginnings.
The seemingly 'obvious' answer is to ascribe the disparity to circumstances
beyond the startups themselves -- 2009/10 sees a significantly greater
penetration of location enabled phones, the effect of Facebook destroying our
notions of privacy has sunk in more (joking on that one), etc. I don't know if
that's the whole deal, but I think there have to be some macro effects
involved beyond just, well, people really like gaming elements and Crowley is
the one and only king of location.
Quick .02 : ) I think Foursquare has done a good job, but haven't followed
Loopt very well to know where they may have stumbled (or merely been unlucky).
~~~
cicloid
Loopt was a service too US centric. At least in Mexico, the current trendy
option is Foursquare. As for Gowalla (My favorite one), didnt do so well in
the beginning.
Maybe, what the trend is showing is more adoption from outside the US.
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
The Future of Developing Firefox Add-Ons - bobajeff
https://blog.mozilla.org/addons/2015/08/21/the-future-of-developing-firefox-add-ons/
======
sonnyp
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10097630](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10097630)
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
Racing at 127mph in a Tunnel Under LA - awiesenhofer
https://twitter.com/boringcompany/status/1131809805876654080
======
ryzvonusef
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VcMedyfcpvQ](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VcMedyfcpvQ)
Youtube video, better quality
------
ryzvonusef
Route:
[https://www.openstreetmap.org/way/633116268#map=18/33.92300/...](https://www.openstreetmap.org/way/633116268#map=18/33.92300/-118.34300)
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
An Unschooling Manifesto - dangoldin
http://blogs.salon.com/0002007/2009/04/25.html
======
tokenadult
Previously submitted:
<http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=580209>
I see what URL difference kept the HN duplicate detector from noticing this
duplicate.
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
Don't Ban “Bossy” - atomical
http://www.newyorker.com/online/blogs/comment/2014/03/dont-ban-bossy.html?mbid=gnep&google_editors_picks=true
======
growupkids
That's funny, I actually heard the word used when I was a military cadet in
high school. It was used to teach the difference between being a a leader, or
just, well bossy. Don't be a boss, don't act bossy, and so on.
Bossy people, we were taught, boss people around by using their rank. No one
wants to follow them, they just have to. That's the worst kind of leader, we
were taught. don't be bossy was good feedback. A good leader inspires, sets
the example, is firm but fair, and through their behavior and actions people
will want to follow them.
Not sure what all this implied sexism stuff is, I only heard it used around
men, and it was and still is a damn fine term for the bad ones. What term
would they prefer be used for someone that's acting bossy?
~~~
calibraxis
In Sandberg-style liberal feminism (which preserves inequality except for the
more well-off white women and therefore doesn't help all women), I can imagine
they want to improve subordination to female bosses. So you should be ready to
follow her imperatives like you would Zuckerberg's.
In corporations, boss subordination is so complete that "bossy" only applies
to someone who isn't actually literally a boss. So I can imagine "bossy" is
used to question the legitimacy of female bosses. However, more serious kinds
of feminism directly attack the existence of bosses, since many more women are
at the bottom of hierarchies than the top.
~~~
hga
In alignment with your observation, this campaign is thought by some to be
battlespace preparation for Hillary's 2016 presidential campaign.
~~~
judk
Oh my. That is brilliant submarine marketing.
~~~
hga
I prefer "cover influence operation".
------
skore
(I didn't even know the "Ban Bossy" campaign existed, so I guess my comment is
more about that and goes along with what the article is saying.)
Looking at the videos - to an outsider like myself, they look massively
ridiculous. So there is a societal problem where girls are either not
empowered to lead or are discouraged from leading by others. To stop that
practice, we will get rid of calling them a specific word.
Words only have the meaning that we put into them. "Bossy" can be applied
correctly or incorrectly. How is the word at fault?
I think "only in America" applies here. Instead of understanding that this is
a complex, complicated issue in society, let's find a catchy campaign title
and rail against intangible things. Oh aren't we all happy we have dealt with
the problem in a format that we can easily post to our facebook wall instead
of, you know, doing the hard work of actually figuring out and dealing with
people on a deeper, personal level.
And yes, I get it, the campaign uses a reductive catchphrase to get a foot in
the door and then deliver a more nuanced message. But I think a campaign set
on a weird, possibly destructive premise may do more harm than good. It may
lead people to think they're doing something when they're actually doing
nothing apart from perpetuating a meme.
How about we all just stop and check ourselves before reducing others to
adjectives in general? Grown-ups and children, women and men alike?
Maybe this tendency to grasp for the simple answer, the quick phrase at all
times is the root of the problem and should thus not be utilized as a
solution.
------
orky56
It's funny but "bully" is more associated with males and "bossy" with females.
Both have negative connotations of forcing someone to do something against
their own will. It seems that the reason behind not banning "bossy" is that
females require this opportunity for leadership development. It seems sexist
that females should be allowed to impose their will on others but males
shouldn't in similar situations. I would argue that females already have a leg
up on their male counterparts with the fact that they mature earlier during
adolescence and perhaps use this to their advantage. As the article mentions,
other ways exist to exhibit leadership. Being bossy though is the worst
alignment of incentives: power & peer acceptance thru fear vs respect.
~~~
loomio
Oh yes, this must be why leadership positions in business, government, and all
areas of life are dominated by women. Oh wait...
------
uptown
"Ban Bossy" Spokesperson: Beyoncé
Beyoncé Lyrics:
Bow down bitches, bow bow down bitches
Bow down bitches, bow bow down bitches
H-town vicious, h-h-town vicious
I’m so crown, bow bow down bitches
Beyoncé's husband Jay-Z Lyrics Excerpt:
My nigga, please - you ain't signing no checks like these
My nigga, please - you pushing no wheels like these
My nigga, please - you ain't holding no tecks like these
My nigga, please - you don't pop in vest like these
~~~
someguyonhn
Firstly, I fail to see how the lyrics from a Jay-Z song from 2002 are anything
other than completely irrelevant to the Ban Bossy campaign. But if you're
going to bring it up, we might as well do it right.
1) Pharrell says those lines not Jay-Z. This is the same person who
wrote/sings/produced the Academy-Award nominated "Happy" song from Despicable
Me.
2) The context of lyrics within a song, the intended meaning of the song
itself, and intended audience of a song should obviously be taken into
consideration. On a site like HN, that so often seems to point out the
ridiculous nature of arguments against video games causing violence, citing
lyrics of someone's husband as somehow a statement about.... well I have to be
honest, I can't follow the logic of the point you're trying to make... is
disappointing.
And finally 3) Here are some lyrics from Jay-Z that seem pretty relevant to
your comment:
"...Rap critics that say he's Money, Cash, Hoes I'm from the hood stupid, what
type of facts are those If you grew up with holes in your zapatos You'd
celebrate the minute you was having dough I'm like f-ck critics, you can kiss
my whole a--hole If you don't like my lyrics, you can press fast forward...
...I don't know what you take me as Or understand the intelligence that Jay-Z
has I'm from rags to riches, ni--as I ain't dumb I got 99 problems, but a
b-tch ain't one, hit me"
~~~
uptown
Why'd you censor the lyrics?
"I fail to see how the lyrics from a Jay-Z song from 2002 are anything other
than completely irrelevant to the Ban Bossy campaign."
We're talking about banning words. If I had to guess, I'd bet more people
would support banning "nigga" than they would "bossy". Personally, I don't
think any words should be "banned" because it's simply not possible. Society
may evolve to not use a word, or shun those that do use a word - but a
campaign to "ban" a word does an injustice to the literal meaning of the word
"ban" because it's just not realistic, or possible.
~~~
someguyonhn
To your question: I censor myself on HN because I don't believe Hacker News,
which is often used by children and is a place that seems to wish to be more
welcoming to women and racial minorities, is the right place to have an
environment where swearing or using racially inflammatory language is okay.
Especially when readers don't know my relationship to the subject matter, or
my relationship to the individual I'm addressing.
To your point about relevance, I'm going to point out to you that zero people
are actually advocating banning a word. They're saying "hey let's stop calling
girls who express leadership skills "bossy" because that has negative
consequences". To which I think the average person would probably be open to.
They are advocating not using a word in the wrong context. Call kids bossy
when they're being brats, sure, but when someone, particularly girls are being
leaders and doing the same things that boys are complimented for, don't call
them bossy.
#WhenSomeonesBeingALeaderDontCallThemBossy is a pretty long hashtag and a
terrible way to quickly market your campaign. #banbossy is memorable, gets to
the point, and can encourage a conversation.
------
jedmeyers
I understand that this is a touchy subject, especially on HN, but come on:
"Avoid editing what you want to say in your head, and try not to worry about
being wrong." This is straight from their Leadership Tips for Girls pdf. They
are encouraging girls to just say whatever comes to mind. What's next -
calling everyone who disagrees "sexist"?
~~~
Tohhou
>What's next - calling everyone who disagrees "sexist"?
If you disagree then you are automatically labeled as one of the obvious
sexist rapist rape apologist pedophile neckbeard supremacist spermjacked nerd
sperglord virgin libertarian losers. They can't possibly be wrong, so if you
disagree you must be one of the hell bound sinners of the most dire nightmare.
>"Avoid editing what you want to say in your head, and try not to worry about
being wrong."
This is very sexist of them. Their implication is that males are stupid and
don't ever censor themselves when they work to be good leaders - that they are
only gain leader status because they say every dumb idea they have, and that
saying stupid things shouldn't have any consequences.
~~~
pigDisgusting
You forgot "creepy stalker", you closed-minded male chauvinist ape.
~~~
Tohhou
That's female chauvinist ape, shitlord!
~~~
pigDisgusting
Well played, Tohhou, well played.
Now if you'll please excuse me, I've just stepped in some of my own doggy doo,
and I need scrape off my shoe.
------
gaius
I love the delicious lack of self-awareness with which these things are
delivered. Like people who pay $50,000/year for college to study a subject of
no practical use telling me to "check your privilege".
~~~
someguyonhn
This is a kind of long response. But I hope maybe you'll read through it. Just
saying "check your privilege" is probably not the best starting point for the
conversation, so I'll try to do a better job of explaining. I don't know if
you are misunderstanding what is meant by "privilege" or not, but the
privilege being talked about when someone says "check your privilege" in my
experience are the privileges that come from being part of the, for lack of a
better term, more socially accepted or socially powerful group. Things like
white privilege, male privilege, heterosexual privilege, you get the idea.
So regardless of your level of income or education, you can be, and probably
are, still privileged in the way society sees and treats you.
For example, as a man, I pretty much never have to worry about being told I
got a promotion because I was having sex with the boss, or that I'm only being
angry or "emotional" about something because it's my "time of the month".
Things that women have to deal with all the time.
Another example would be that I'm never worried wanting to have children is
going to be seen as bad for business, and result in me being denied promotions
or other advancement because of it.(Not to mention I'm statistically going to
be getting paid more than women for doing equal work.)
Hopefully you can see how these are the type of privileges men, or another
group of people in a similar situation, may never notice unless it is pointed
out to them. Or they "check their privilege".
In relation to Ban Bossy, an important example seems to be that I've been
conditioned my entire life to aspire to be a leader: team captain, salesman of
the year, best on the basketball court, you get the idea. And not once was I
ever, or will I ever, be discouraged from asserting my leadership skills as
essentially "not knowing my place" because I'm a man, which can be the outcome
when we tell girls and young women to not be bossy or other similar things.
Maybe a good exercise for you, and for all of us, is to listen to what people
are saying when they describe the privileges we have, or to ask them to
explain better because we would like to understand. Depending on our
situation, maybe we'll gain a better understanding of our heterosexual
privilege and being able to love who we want without having to worry that
their gender will result in violence against us or them. Or maybe we'll learn
about our religious privilege, and that we are able to practice a religion
without inciting fear, being called names, profiled, assaulted, or killed
because of the head covering we wear or for being "different".
~~~
gaius
_Things like white privilege, male privilege, heterosexual privilege, you get
the idea._
What you are talking about, if it even exists, is a _rounding error_ compared
to the massive good fortune relative to the entire rest of the human race that
has ever lived, of being born in the West in the late 20th/21st century.
Perhaps _you_ can see that dropping a few hundred grand on a _hobby_ makes the
speaker incredibly more privileged even within this already privileged group,
and gender is absolutely nothing to do with (as the majority of homeless, etc,
happen to be men, where's the white male heterosexual privilege there? Oops
your whole model of the world just imploded, sorry 'bout that).
~~~
someguyonhn
I can't tell if you're trolling or not. I tried to respond to you in what I
believe was a mature and respectful way.
You've responded with a breathtaking amount of immaturity. And completely
ignored any of the points I made. Perhaps one day you'll be more open to
hearing and responding to what I wrote to you. Maybe that day won't come.
Either way I wish you well.
~~~
gaius
_You 've responded with a breathtaking amount of immaturity_
To a post displaying a breathtaking amount of naivety. I didn't ignore your
points, they are, paraphrasing Feynmann, "not even wrong". And I am not sure
what "troll" even means these days, it seems to be a catch-all term for
"someone on the Internet who isn't a part of my echo chamber".
Likewise, I wish you well, and I hope that one day _you_ will come around to
what I wrote.
------
wyager
I'm immediately extraordinarily skeptical about anything that suggests solving
a cultural problem by changing language.
That's like trying to solve a math problem by changing the value of pi.
~~~
corin_
There is at least a theoretical logic to banning words like this: if being
called bossy is causing girls to lose leadership skills then maybe stopping
this artificially (even if people still think it without saying it) could lead
to less girls being affected, and therefore in the next generation the stigma
has disappeared. Obviously it's not that simple, and I have no idea to what
extent, if any, this actually works, other than in theory.
~~~
Crito
> _" if being called bossy is causing girls to lose leadership skills..."_
I don't think that this particular word is the root cause. More important is
the reason why people are using it. If you ban that particular word without
addressing why people are using it, then those people will adopt a new word to
mean the exact same thing. Creating euphemism treadmills doesn't fix anything.
~~~
jkestner
Yep. Some people are taking this too literally. (Nerds parsing? No!) The
heightened awareness of how word choice subtly undermines behavior we
presumably want to encourage, is the point. This article suggests that instead
of banning, women embrace the word as a badge they're doing something right (a
la 'nerd'), and undermining the undermining would work too.
------
mildtrepidation
From BanBossy.org:
_When a little boy asserts himself, he 's called a “leader.” Yet when a
little girl does the same, she risks being branded “bossy.” Words like bossy
send a message: don't raise your hand or speak up. By middle school, girls are
less interested in leading than boys—a trend that continues into adulthood.
Together we can encourage girls to lead._
So yes, as others have said here, the goal is not necessarily (or only) to get
rid of the usage of the word. But as is very evident from other responses,
that is not immediately obvious to everyone, in no small part because of the
arguably poor catch phrase being used.
I'm also not thrilled with some of the 'motivational' phrases being thrown
around. "I'm not bossy; I'm _the boss_ " (Beyonce) is not constructive. It's
puerile and is more likely to encourage actual bossy behavior (the negative
kind, as defined well elsewhere in this thread) than to help introduce
equality in the way we encourage leadership attributes in all children.
Not, of course, that equality seems to be emphasized here. Which is a typical
problem and one that's unlikely to help this campaign make a real difference,
as it's immediately exclusive to some degree rather than encouraging
_everyone_ to be confident.
------
iterationx
While feminists were busy telling the world about the dire need to ban the
word “bossy,” the Iraqi parliament was considering the implementation of a new
law that would legalize rape, prohibit women leaving home without the
permission of their husband, and legalize marriage for 9-year-olds.
“If passed, the law will apply to Iraq’s Shia Muslims, the majority of the
population. Provisions include prohibiting Muslim men from marrying non-Muslim
women, legalising rape inside marriage by declaring that a husband has a right
to sex regardless of consent, and prohibiting women from leaving the house
without their husband’s permission,” reports Breitbart.com. The law, which has
been denounced by Human Rights Watch as a violation of the Convention on the
Elimination of All Forms of Discrimination against Women (CEDAW), would also
lower the age of marriage to nine years old for girls and 15 for boys. Despite
the fact that the law represents an egregious assault on women’s rights and
wouldn’t look out of place in the stone age, you probably didn’t hear about it
because self-proclaimed feminists were too busy concentrating on more pressing
atrocities being inflicted upon women – such as people using the word “bossy”.
[http://www.infowars.com/new-iraqi-law-legalizes-rape-
feminis...](http://www.infowars.com/new-iraqi-law-legalizes-rape-feminists-
too-busy-banning-words-to-care/)
~~~
chilldream
I agree with the article, but "There are Starving Kids in Africa" is a stock
bad argument
~~~
chongli
Yep, it's a fallacy too:
[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fallacy_of_relative_privation](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fallacy_of_relative_privation)
------
adamnemecek
I saw the video a couple of days ago and it was flabbergasting that someone
thought that this whole thing is going to achieve anything.
~~~
mschuster91
It's just feminists. Western version of the Taliban, if you ask me.
~~~
Ambrosia
yes obviously feminists were the real ones behind 9/11
------
logicallee
Bossy is extremely specific and a terrible style of leadership. I've known
bossy women as well as women who were great leaders. The overlap has between
the two is the empty set.
How about you teach real leadership skills to girls who like to lead? Such as
understanding, empathy, reward, etc. Of course the same goes for men, and
bossy men are just as big a problem.
------
cushychicken
You can see how this campaign of proclaiming "bossy" to no longer be gender
neutral has caused me (a heterosexual white male) some serious gender identity
issues, as I was frequently called "bossy" as a child.
Does this mean I'm actually a woman?
------
droopybuns
"The number one reason that why girls are not turning into leaders is because
they are occupied with posting selfies on your fucking Facebook, Sandberg!"
-Adam Curry
------
theorique
"Bossy" doesn't refer to a person (male or female) who embodies _good_
qualities of leadership.
Instead, it is used to describe someone who takes charge in a rude and
disrespectful way. Examples include: giving others orders, shouting, emotional
manipulation, tantrums, and so forth. Anybody who behaves this way may be
"leading", in some sense, but they are not being a very good leader.
Conversely, a girl who leads her friends and peers in a kind and empowering
way is _not_ being bossy.
It would make just as much sense have a campaign to "ban douchebag" or "ban
asshole", as these terms are disproportionately applied to men. And those
terms don't apply to _being a leader_ , they apply to _being a rude,
disrespectful leader_.
------
jamesaguilar
My brothers used it on me all the time, but that might not be the typical
experience.
------
SnydenBitchy
Wow, the “discussion” here validates every negative stereotype about the tech
community, you troglodytes who I’m embarrassed to call my peers. I wonder if
it’s it too late, at 31, for me to change careers?
~~~
masterleep
Are there no online communities that you can't complain about?
------
wcummings
I'm impressed by how much people are missing the point. It's just about
raising awareness of how young girls are treated, no one is actually banning
any words.
~~~
dkrich
Then maybe they shouldn't have led with the name "Ban Bossy?"
If you create a marketing campaign and it is misinterpreted by what is
presumably largely your target group (men who don't realize their words are
apparently harming girls during their formative years) the fault is yours, not
your audience.
------
nsxwolf
Is there any empirical evidence this word harms girls?
~~~
sp332
It's not about the word "bossy". "Ban Bossy" is just the name of the campaign.
------
stefantalpalaru
I bellyfeel banning words is doubleplusgood.
------
tobehonest
I would rather "slut" gone, than bossy.
| {
"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"
} |
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"
} |
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"
} |
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"
} |
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"
} |
BrandColors – Official color codes for the world's biggest brands - qzervaas
http://brandcolors.net/
======
elasticode
cool resource :) thanx!
| {
"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"
} |
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"
} |
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"
} |
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"
} |
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"
} |
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"
} |
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.
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
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
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
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
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
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Man builds giant computer at home - alan_cx
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/technology-33237863
======
alan_cx
And there is a link to the site:
[http://www.megaprocessor.com/index.html](http://www.megaprocessor.com/index.html)
~~~
teh_klev
And was posted here ~6 months ago:
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9755742](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9755742)
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
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Breaking the Seal on Drug Research - gruseom
http://www.nytimes.com/2013/06/30/business/breaking-the-seal-on-drug-research.html?pagewanted=all
======
tokenadult
The previous submission
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5970873](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5970873)
received minimal attention from the HN new page earlier today.
My thought on the overall implications of this article is that the scope of
the new era of transparency will be much broader than discussed in the
article. Any product or service claim that purports to be based on research
may eventually have to be based on TRANSPARENT research, lest consumer fraud
be suspected. That would apply as much to "alternative" treatments
[http://www.sciencebasedmedicine.org/sense-and-nonsense-
about...](http://www.sciencebasedmedicine.org/sense-and-nonsense-about-
alternative-medicine-in-usa-today/)
as to prescribed treatments ordered by licensed physicians. It would apply to
the claims of automobile manufacturers and to the claims of ergonomic keyboard
manufacturers. It would apply not just to claims by established big companies,
but also to claims by Soylent or DropBox or any other startup that promises
benefits from a new product or service.
And that would be a good thing, on the whole. If the economy continues to
operate on a free-enterprise basis, companies new or old, large or small,
might continue to be able to puff their products and services, and consumers
continue to be able to buy most that aren't actively harmful. People aren't
likely to be required to be rational and evidence-based any time soon. But if
consumers decide to only buy drugs, transportation vehicles, foodstuffs, or
other products or services that have reasonable evidence demonstrating their
safety and effectiveness, that is an exercise of freedom too. I'd be glad to
have a lot more data about what data are out there about how well products and
services I might pay for actually work. All the startup founders who read
Hacker News might well devote some thought to how their business model will
develop in a world in which nearly all product and service claims can be
tested by independently gathered and analyzed evidence.
~~~
Alex3917
Research into alternative medicine is generally less problematic in terms of
transparency because most of it is government funded. So you don't have pharma
companies hiding data they don't like, bribing journals to publish data they
like, etc. Occasionally you'll get supplement makers funding small trials,
e.g. with zinc, but most of these you'd already be ignoring for other reasons
anyway.
------
VengefulCynic
To my mind, this sort of thing is a lot like crypto research. As a workman
programmer, I know next to nothing about crypto algorithms so I can read the
documents, but I can't provide much in the way of meaningful research. That
said, I know that there are lot of interested crypto researchers out there who
can provide meaningful analysis and who have an incentive to speak up if they
find something. But on government-funded closed-source crypto algorithms, I
have to take the NSA's word for it...
------
gwintrob
"results of only about half of clinical trials make their way into medical
journals"
Sounds like an incredible problem not only for bringing new drugs to market,
but also for all of the medication that's currently prescribed.
~~~
kvb
Journals are typically interested in publishing novel results. Why would it be
a problem if studies which find that a drug works as expected are not
published, as long as they are still submitted to the FDA and assessed there?
~~~
gruseom
Because it's bad both for science and for the public interest to keep this
data secret. Also, many of the studies that have been suppressed do not "find
that a drug works as expected".
Nobody's saying that journals have to publish every study, just that the data
should be available for review. That's so bedrock a principle of science that
it's hard to imagine a credible argument against it.
~~~
cup
I think the problem is the fact that pharmaeutial companies are trying to turn
a profit to ensure their survival. If you invest a billion dollars in a new
drug (which is the average cost these days) and its a flop, are you going to
adverise it or is it in your inerest to be silent and hope another drug
company makes the same mistake as you and suffers the same opportunity costs,
therefore minimising your losses.
This is a quintessential problem between public and private research.
------
Fomite
While as an epidemiologist I wholeheartedly endorse the push for making
corporate research data more open, this sentence:
"they relied too heavily on the assumption that the articles published in
journals accurately represented the results of all clinical trials that had
been conducted."
Is a little misleading. Meta-analysis, which is what Cochrane reviews are, are
very conscious of the "file drawer effect", and looking for evidence of non-
publication is a rather fundamental aspect of doing meta-analysis.
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
Skype down? - transburgh
http://www.centernetworks.com/skype-down
======
transburgh
Reports from US and Europe of outages.
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
Matter – Beautiful UI - rhyco
https://www.matterkit.io
======
je42
isn't this just some CSS design or am I missing something ?
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
Single-atom transistor discovered - prakash
http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2009/12/091206085833.htm?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=feed&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+sciencedaily+%28ScienceDaily%3A+Latest+Science+News%29
======
scottw
It was also discovered on Saturday:
<http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=979559>
and again yesterday: <http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=978074>
~~~
prakash
sorry, didn't see those links.
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
Kotlin 1.1 Released with JavaScript Support, Coroutines and more - lynfogeek
https://blog.jetbrains.com/kotlin/2017/03/kotlin-1-1/
======
WkndTriathlete
A few weeks ago I wrote the same application four times in four different JVM
languages: Java, Groovy, Scala, and Kotlin, with a particular focus on the
application using functional techniques and types as well as being reactive. I
also included as goals complete test coverage with a preferred test framework
from each language and complete build tooling, all within a single Gradle
project.
The only significant sources of variance were the following:
a) Groovy's support for functional programming is starting to show its age. It
worked with everything, though.
b) The Scala 2.12 compiler has at least one bug that appears to affect its
interaction with Java 8 lambdas (in particular, in at least one case
expr.method() and (expr).method() will not pass the compiler's typecheck, but
{ val x = expr; x.method() } does. (All three pass IntelliJ's typechecker for
Scala.) Outside of this (aggravating) issue and slower build times, it did
work.
c) Java works well with everything but ends up being quite verbose, especially
in regards to a functional programming style (no surprise there).
d) Kotlin (1.0) works well with everything and is relatively succinct except
for Mockito due to everything defaulting to 'final' \- but it appears that
Kotlin 1.1 fixes this with a compiler plugin.
Based on my experience with all four languages, I would definitely try adding
Kotlin to projects. It seems to be surprisingly mature and stable given how
much less time it has spent in development (relative to the other three
languages.)
~~~
Scarbutt
Curious, if you were aiming at writing in a functional programming style, why
didn't you try Clojure?
~~~
tormeh
It doesn't have compile-time type checking. When many people say functional
code they really mean code that can be and is strictly type checked at compile
time. Clojure is functional, but it's not what most people want when they say
"functional".
~~~
mlmlmasd
Type-checking doesn't really have any bearing on weather a language is
functional. Functional languages can be statically or dynamically typed.
~~~
Sammi
It's one of the big differences between the lisp and ml types of functional
languages I would say. Other than the parentheses that is of course :)
I've never been comfortable doing big projects - multiple files, more than a
few hundred lines of code - in a dynamically typed language. It's the same
reason were seeing the big uptake of typescript. Statically typed languages
give us so many superpowers when we need to do refactoring or any changes at
all to an existing codebase. Just changing a function name in a dynamically
typed language can be hell. Rearranging the parameter order is even worse,
cause you have such trouble finding all of the function uses and where you
need to update. With statically typed languages you get editor support for
simple stuff like this and it becomes automatic and a push of a button almost.
~~~
mlmlmasd
Static typing is great. My point is that whether a language is statically or
dynamically typed has no bearing on whether it is functional.
------
vbezhenar
Kotlin for me is Java made right. It's not complex, it has awesome
interoperability with Java, it uses JDK, not reinventing its own wheels and it
has everything I need from modern language.
But it seems that Jetbrains has its own vision for Kotlin being a completely
independent language. So while it works for me right now, I'm not sure if it
will work in the future. They are going native and it'll bring a lot of
changes, for sure. Honestly I would prefer it to stay as Java enhancer, as I'm
not interested in Native and I need very little JavaScript interoperability,
if any (probably just translating some common code between backend and
frontend).
But we will see, I don't want to sound too pessimistic. Kotlin is the best
language I've used so far.
~~~
afastow
I completely agree.
Kotlin is close to the ideal language for me because it is just Java done
right. If they want to go native and can do it without impairing any of the
JVM usability, I guess go for it. But I don't see the point behind it. I don't
develop native apps so maybe I just don't know enough, but it seems like Go
and Rust have already satisfied the desire for modern natively compiled
languages.
I feel the same way about the Kotlin compiling to Javascript ability. I write
both the frontend and backend of web apps so I theoretically should be the
exact target market for Kotlin to Javascript but I have no interest in it. ES6
and/or Typescript work better there and have an entire ecosystem around them.
And even if they didn't work for me I'd prefer Dart which targets the frontend
first instead of being an extra like Kotlin Javascript.
My advice to Kotlin: Stick with what you do best. Kotlin is on the exact right
track on the JVM but I think all these different modes are going to make
people more cautious about adopting it in any of them because they'll worry
it's a jack of all trades but master of none.
~~~
meddlepal
Personally I'm intrigued by Kotlin Native as a replacement for Python and Go
tools without requiring the JVM.
I find it's a fundamentally better language than both and so being able to
write CLI tools and other smaller stuff in it would be nice while still being
able to leverage Kotlin + JVM on the backend would also be nice.
~~~
jug
Same - a common language for JVM, JS, Native is both unique and intriguing to
me. These are three really big targets. It's not that it would be unique in
being a higher level compiled language or a language making Java development
more fun to me, but being a common languge for among the most popular targets
besides .NET today.
~~~
tutanchamun
Scala already does that with scala.js (production-ready) and scala-native
(don't know if production-ready, probably not since it's only at 0.1 and they
want to implement a better GC instead of relying on boehm like now).
Just wanted to point that out in case you didn't know that already.
------
sandGorgon
Kotlin is not just for android apps.
Kotlin is getting first class support on next generation Spring web framework
with functional programming support -
[https://speakerdeck.com/sdeleuze/functional-web-
applications...](https://speakerdeck.com/sdeleuze/functional-web-applications-
with-kotlin-and-spring-5)
it's almost done with first class support for vert.x which is a high-
performance reactive webframework [https://github.com/vert-x3/vertx-kotlin-
common](https://github.com/vert-x3/vertx-kotlin-common)
The reactor project (erlang for the jvm?) is building first class support for
kotlin [https://github.com/reactor](https://github.com/reactor)
I think its going to be a great year for building backend systems on jvm.
~~~
asitdhal
Kotlin is the best option for Android apps.
There are many languages for backends and tons of libraries. But there is
hardly any substitute of Java in Android(if you don't consider JS solving
every problem in this planet). If JetBrains only concentrate on building an
ecosystem for android, it can become "the real Swift for android".
I built a dummy app for android in Kotlin. It was great. The same thing I
tried in Scala(it didn't go very well).
------
grabcocque
What I like about Kotlin is it's what you might call a "pragmatic Scala", and
could find a sweet spot between Java and Scala where its added expressiveness
allows it to shine, but Scala's complexity and performance issues aren't in
evidence to scare the development managers into staying with Java.
~~~
Scarbutt
_Scala 's complexity and performance issues_
Is Kotlin really faster than Scala?
~~~
grabcocque
Scala's build times are legendarily horrible. Kotlin has similar compile times
to Javac.
~~~
pjmlp
They are working on improving them though, specially with Dotty.
In any case they aren't as bad as C++ (at least until modules arrive).
~~~
smitherfield
_> In any case they aren't as bad as C++_
Speaking as a fan of Scala, I find that scalac takes a noticeable amount of
time even to compile trivial Hello World-type programs. Huge C++ codebases
like Chromium or Boost take ages to compile, but I seriously doubt a
comparable Scala codebase would be faster.
~~~
pjmlp
I only dabbled a few times in Scala, but I do regularly use C++ on some side
projects.
Do Scala compilation times get measured in hours?
Just the other day I gave up compiling Cocos2D-X, after it crossed the one
hour threshold on my humble dual core, 8GB.
~~~
smitherfield
I also haven't used Scala at scale enough to say; the incremental compilation
story is much better than templated C++ but I think compiling a large codebase
from scratch would be quite slow, and slower than templated C++.
I think any design for generics that provides the same guarantees as C++
templates (type-safe, resolved at compile-time, value types aren't boxed) is
necessarily going to cause long compilation times. The only other
implementation I know of that checks all three boxes is Rust's, and so far
generic Rust is even slower to compile than templated C++.
~~~
pjmlp
> I think any design for generics that provides the same guarantees as C++
> templates (type-safe, resolved at compile-time, value types aren't boxed) is
> necessarily going to cause long compilation times.
This isn't true of Ada, Modula-3 or Eiffel generics.
As for Rust, yes their compilation story still needs some improvements, but
they still need to enable incremental compilation and cargo is yet to be able
to handle binary dependencies across projects.
Where I suffered more in C++ compilation times was building the latest
versions from either Swift or Rust, LLVM just takes ages to compile.
Thankfully I mostly use C++ as helping hand for Java/.NET.
~~~
smitherfield
_> This isn't true of Ada, Modula-3 or Eiffel generics._
I'm not familiar with those languages, but it appears that Eiffel and Modula-3
generics only work with boxed (implemented as pass-by-reference) types, and
Eiffel doesn't have pass-by-value types at all.
It does look like Ada generics fulfil those three conditions.
~~~
pjmlp
In Eiffel, a value type is known as an _expanded_ class and it can be given as
default class attribute, or when declaring a variable. So generic
instantiation will do the right thing depending on the class attributes.
Modula-3 supports value types just like any Algol language, you just need to
provide the types you want when instatiating a generic module interface.
Modula-3 generics work at module level.
Here is an example for numeric types, with a generic module for all numeric
operations:
[https://github.com/modula3/cm3/blob/d31f6ca184c66755317ba990...](https://github.com/modula3/cm3/blob/d31f6ca184c66755317ba990a2bd6fb2f0af7f0c/m3-libs/m3core/src/word/GenWord.ig)
Specialized to LONGINT.
[https://github.com/modula3/cm3/blob/d31f6ca184c66755317ba990...](https://github.com/modula3/cm3/blob/d31f6ca184c66755317ba990a2bd6fb2f0af7f0c/m3-libs/m3core/src/word/Long.i3)
[https://github.com/modula3/cm3/blob/d31f6ca184c66755317ba990...](https://github.com/modula3/cm3/blob/d31f6ca184c66755317ba990a2bd6fb2f0af7f0c/m3-libs/m3core/src/word/LongRep.i3)
It is a bit convoluted, but it isn't easy to track down a simple example.
------
mwcampbell
I wonder how Kotlin's JavaScript backend compars to Scala.js in Li Haoyi's
list of fundamental reasons for betting on Scala.js:
[http://www.lihaoyi.com/post/FromfirstprinciplesWhyIbetonScal...](http://www.lihaoyi.com/post/FromfirstprinciplesWhyIbetonScalajs.html)
I have a few concerns about Kotlin's JS backend:
How much can the complete JS bundle be optimized by an advanced whole-program
optimizer like the Google Closure Compiler?
Kotlin for JS has no reflection, and I think JetBrains should _not_ look into
that as they said they are. But is there powerful compile-time code generation
instead, e.g. through annotation processors?
Is there, or will there be, a healthy ecosystem of pure-Kotlin libraries that
can be used with both the JVM and JS?
~~~
bashor_
> How much can the complete JS bundle be optimized by an advanced whole-
> program optimizer like the Google Closure Compiler?
JavaScript backend generates code understandable by static analyzers so it can
be optimized. Anyway, we going to continue works in this area in near future.
> Kotlin for JS has no reflection, and I think JetBrains should not look into
> that as they said they are. But is there powerful compile-time code
> generation instead, e.g. through annotation processors?
Why do you think that reflection is a bad idea? Honestly, we don't have a
final decision about it, it requires investigations and discussions. Note it's
very important for us to have an ability to provide good tools (e.g IDE
support) for features.
> Is there, or will there be, a healthy ecosystem of pure-Kotlin libraries
> that can be used with both the JVM and JS?
We will work on it.
~~~
mwcampbell
> Why do you think that reflection is a bad idea?
OK, reflection isn't necessarily a bad idea. Clearly development tools need
it, including future tools that run in the browser (e.g. an in-browser IDE).
But I think that applications that are not development tools should not use
reflection, because it interferes with static optimization, as the article
that I linked in my original comment explains. So most libraries should
probably not use reflection either. That means we need an alternative to
reflection. For example, chapter 10 of _Kotlin in Action_ uses reflection to
implement a serialization library. I think it would be better to use build-
time code generation for that, even outside the JS use case (e.g. reflection
interfers with optimization of Android app packages with ProGuard).
Edit: By the way, thanks for taking the time to respond.
------
danneu
For fun, I've been working on a simple hobby web server in Kotlin that wraps
Jetty: [https://github.com/danneu/kog](https://github.com/danneu/kog)
I think Kotlin is the statically-typed language I've been waiting for,
especially with the team's interest in native and JS targets.
~~~
Scarbutt
Do you have any opinions on Kotlin vs Clojure? are you liking Kotlin more?
~~~
danneu
I think static typing + solid IDE support is too useful to pass up, and that's
what Kotlin has.
But Kotlin also has simplicity that, for example, Scala doesn't. I tried
Clojure after spending a couple months with Scala and giving up, and then I
used Clojure fulltime for 3+ years.
Eventually, I felt like I was hitting a ceiling with Clojure since it lacked
good static analysis. I moved to Node because I felt like, if I'm going to use
a dynamically-typed language, I might as well use the ubiquitous one. Also,
Clojure was a hard sell to other developers I would meet.
What Clojure does have is an ecosystem of simplicity that I hope the Kotlin
ecosystem will adopt.
For example, compare ztellman's [http://aleph.io/](http://aleph.io/) (Clojure)
to Java's Netty or to the somewhat mind-numbing
[https://docs.oracle.com/javase/8/docs/api/java/util/concurre...](https://docs.oracle.com/javase/8/docs/api/java/util/concurrent/CompletionStage.html).
And compare Clojure's Ring to any Java web framework.
Even Spark, Java's simplest option afaict, doesn't have real middleware, just
before/after "filters". That's why I went with the `(Request) -> Response`
signature over the `(Request, Response) -> Unit` signature.
There's also ClojureScript's integration and tooling which are pretty
impressive these days while Kotlin's JS support is still fledgling.
Though these are the impressions of someone who has only been using Kotlin for
a few months without a Java background. And it's not like anyone should be
using my lil framework in production, it's just a hobby.
~~~
cutler
Clojure and Kotlin are, for me, the brightest stars in the JVM sky. However, I
fear Clojure adoption has peaked at its current low rate probably because it
was never aimed at the corporate Java world as Kotlin is. Clojure appeals more
to the software artisan which is a valuable niche in itself but its syntax,
which is its strength, is so different from Java's that I think it is rarely
seen as an alternative to Java.
------
dep_b
I wouldn't touch Java if I could write something in Kotlin instead. I'm using
Swift on a daily base and while it still has it's issues (compile times,
breaking changes) it's a great language to work in and extremely similar to
Kotlin.
Better type safety means less crashes.
------
meddlepal
I've been very happy writing Kotlin backend code for the last fourteen months
or so.
Definitely excited. It's an awesome JVM language.
~~~
agumonkey
I'm investigating Kotlin. Do you have references, blogs etc to suggest ?
~~~
Larrikin
Through this blog
[https://antonioleiva.com/kotlin/](https://antonioleiva.com/kotlin/) And his
book I was able to become fairly productive in the language in only a few
weeks. I was familiar with Scala however. The automatic conversion of java to
Kotlin in Intelli J's IDEs also helped immensely.
------
afastow
The post specifically mentions using Kotlin Javascript to develop React
applications. Are there any simple examples out there showing this? I'm not
seeing any after a quick google search and look through the docs.
Developing a modern frontend app is complex enough with Javascript or
Typescript. It's pretty hard to ask people to figure it out from scratch in
Kotlin by just saying that it's possible but not showing how.
~~~
Teedee753
It was mentioned on the Kotlin slack that Jetbrains would make some examples
available within a few weeks on using Kotlin JS including using it with React.
------
netcraft
kotlinjs is very interesting to me - anyone have experience with writing
kotlin and typescript and can compare?
------
curyous
Why couldn't they have used "func" for functions, like so many languages do,
instead of "fun"?
~~~
richard_todd
I don't think of 'func' as a standard. Off the top of my head, you can see
"defun", "fn", "def", "function", and on and on in various languages. I don't
see much agreement across the board.
~~~
netcraft
does anyone know of a place that compares syntax like this across languages?
I've found myself often wondering if there is consensus for certain features
or syntax.
~~~
chocolateboy
[http://rigaux.org/language-study/syntax-across-
languages.htm...](http://rigaux.org/language-study/syntax-across-
languages.html#FnctnFnctDfnt)
------
jbmorgado
Does this mean we can now build a full React Native app using only Kotlin?
~~~
bashor_
We going to publish more materials about JavaScript in the next few weeks.
Including with using React.
~~~
swsieber
Will there be anything about angular?
Also, is it possible to set up kotlin source code in gradle to compile both to
JS and the JVM at the same time? I'm specificially thinking that it'd be nice
to "share" code between front and backend for some logic and data model
definitions.... I think that'd be a killer feature.
~~~
vorg
If you can, make sure you write your Gradle build scripts in Kotlin also
(possible since Gradle 3.0 was released 6 months ago) instead of Apache
Groovy, then Kotlin will be the only language you need for anything!
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
A Sampling of Anti-Decompilation Techniques - swalsh
https://blog.ret2.io/2017/11/16/dangers-of-the-decompiler/
======
DogestFogey
I'm surprised the Movfuscator hasn't been mentioned yet. It compiles C code
into unconditional MOVs, and if you watch the author's Derbycon 2015 video
there are ways you can scramble the MOV instructions, truely making it a
decompilation nightmare.
1\. Movfuscator page
[https://github.com/xoreaxeaxeax/movfuscator](https://github.com/xoreaxeaxeax/movfuscator)
2\. Derbycon 2015 video
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=R7EEoWg6Ekk](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=R7EEoWg6Ekk)
~~~
akanet
This is because "movfuscation" isn't a practical option for people actually
trying to ship binaries that still perform well for customers but resist
reverse-engineering. One of the battlegrounds for this sort of thing is the
tug of war between game developers and cheat developers, and games still need
to perform very well. Things the author mentioned, like address-rewriting at
runtime, don't incur a performance penalty.
~~~
doctorwho
Just rebuild the sensitive portions of your code using movfuscator and leave
the performance critical stuff alone. As long as everything is statically
linked and you don't do anything stupid like "if (check) unlock()" that can be
easily patched, it would make life pretty miserable for the RE crowd.
~~~
ttoinou
What's wrong with "if (check) unlock()" ? x)
~~~
emiliobumachar
It can be modified to "if (true) unlock()" relatively very easily, even in
binary. No disassembling needed.
------
krylon
As someone who has only ever written about 20 instructions worth of assembly,
I am kind of torn.
The kind of cleverness needed to thwart the decompiler's efforts is _very_
impressive. A part of me wishes I had been around at a time when assembly was
an acceptable "language" instead of the last resort it is today for most
scenarios. Getting this close to the metal (or silicon) and being able to pull
off such a stunt must be exhilarating.
At the same time, another part of me is very happy I do not have to deal with
such low-level details. Debugging code written in assembly (with assembly
being the main language, not just inline assembly in a C/C++ program or
something like that) must have been exquisite torture.
~~~
Someone
One can also claim that today’s programming is torture.
Back in the microcomputer days, all you needed to write a program was a desk
with a single computer, one or two tools that you knew through and through and
a few reference books.
Nowadays, we sometimes spend days or even weeks choosing our tools and
libraries of sometimes questionable quality and getting them to work together
before we can even start thinking of the problem we want to solve, and even
then, we still spend half our days googling, and being lucky if we get semi
decent answers.
~~~
thaumaturgy
It's six o' one, half-dozen t'other for me.
My most formative years as a programmer mostly involved 68040 assembly on the
pre-PowerPC Macs. Back then, I used CodeWarrior a lot, and if there was a
head-scratching bug in my software (as there often was), I could launch it
from a fully-featured debugger, set breakpoints, skip ahead to a block of
code, step through it line by line, see every single value that existed in raw
hex on the heap, see exactly what was on the stack. If I was wanting to flip
bits in someone else's software, I had MacsBug, which was a stop-the-world OS-
level debugger that did all the same, but even better. [1] Back then, there
was a very definite sense that I _owned_ the computer, that it was my tool,
that it would do precisely and exactly what I wanted it to. In a way, whether
something was open source or not didn't matter; I could modify it anyway, and
often for less effort than it takes to crawl through a modern over-architected
codebase.
However, now I can glue some really impressive libraries together, written by
other people and available on massive centralized code repositories, and
deliver an application to as many people as I want, all running different
hardware or operating systems (within reason) but still all getting the same
software experience (...mostly...), and even charge some money for it without
having to worry about somebody cracking the license check on my shareware.
The effort required to make complicated new software has gone way down. The
effort required to troubleshoot and fix complicated software has gone way up.
Nowadays, when I'm doing the former, I'm happy, and when I'm doing the latter,
I'm not.
I think that might be part of why there's so much churn in the software
industry today.
[1]: MacsBug did this in real-time. Start up an application, drop into
MacsBug, set a breakpoint on a function call, switch back to the OS and
application, trigger the function call, then step through the code in MacsBug.
If you were careful, you could even "rewind" code under certain conditions, so
you could, say, change a branching opcode, back up, go back to the OS and see
if the change did what you want.
~~~
krylon
That is a _very_ insightful reply. Thank you so much!
I wish I could upvote this more than once. ;-)
------
glandium
I don't know if decompilers are able to do something about it, but there's a
"neat" technique where your machine code can be interpreted as two different
sequences of instructions depending where you start instruction decoding. For
a simple but artificial example of what I mean:
The following sequence of bytes:
b8 50 83 ec 10
Decodes as:
mov $0x10ec8350, %eax
if you start at the first byte, and, if you start at the second byte, as:
push %eax
sub $0x10, %esp
Here I essentially hid an instruction in the mov'ed data, because that's the
easiest way to create something like that, but I've seen mind blowing examples
of this technique. I unfortunately don't remember where.
~~~
psykotic
That's an issue for static disassembly, which is step one of decompilation.
Your snippet is a classic example that can throw off naive linear-scan
disassemblers. Recursive disassemblers can handle it easily if (and it's a big
if) they can identify the basic block entry points. If you have top-level
entry points (which can also be a problem), the main problem for a recursive
disassembler are indirect jumps that don't fit standard patterns like switch
jump tables.
All of this gets easier if you can augment your static analysis with control
flow traces from program executions with coverage of the relevant branches, so
you don't miss basic block entry points.
~~~
munin
> All of this gets easier if you can augment your static analysis with control
> flow traces from program executions with coverage of the relevant branches,
> so you don't miss basic block entry points.
That's only true if the traces you can generate do a reasonable job at
covering the states the application can find itself in, which is a big
assumption.
~~~
psykotic
Yes, that's what I meant by coverage of the relevant branches. But the good
news is that all these partial, heuristic sources of information can be
combined. E.g. for detecting function entry points, you can combine
information from ELF/PE export tables (if present), function prologues
detected by a linear scan, vtables, static CALL targets, dynamic CALL targets
from run-time traces, etc.
------
tptacek
This is a really cool post. You can also target IDA itself directly, rather
than the decompiler, making it difficult to even view the disassembly. It's
been awhile since I did any of this kind of work (it's relevant to software
security tokens, games, and content protection), but within the last few years
people have published IDA RCE memory corruption, so I imagine it hasn't gotten
too much harder to hopelessly confuse IDA.
~~~
rjzzleep
Well, same here, it's been very long since I've seen that.
But wasn't what got scrambled imports, polymorphic code nasty anti debugging
the shareware packers? Asprotect and whatnot.
------
munin
There's an interesting vein of research work here in making software reverse
engineering more difficult, and measuring how much more difficult.
A precursor to decompilation is control flow analysis, the production of the
control flow graph you see in the "before" stages in all of the examples in
this post. You can go one step further, on a good day, and make it very
difficult (perhaps very very difficult, perhaps impossible) to recover a
_precise_ control flow graph for a function.
There are a few different ways to do this, and I like these approaches more
than targeting specific heuristics in IDA/Hexrays because, on a good day for
the obfuscator, you can make a theoretical statement about the work effort
required to un-do the obfuscation. If you can make that work effort large,
then you start to have a security guarantee that is a shade of the security
guarantee you get in cryptography. The methods outlined in the parent blog
post are great because you can start using them today, but if they annoy Ilfak
enough, he'll fix them and they'll stop working.
------
amenghra
Reminds me tricks people used to crash debuggers. E.g.
[https://reverse.put.as/2012/01/31/anti-debug-
trick-1-abusing...](https://reverse.put.as/2012/01/31/anti-debug-
trick-1-abusing-mach-o-to-crash-gdb/),
[http://blog.ioactive.com/2012/12/striking-back-gdb-and-
ida-d...](http://blog.ioactive.com/2012/12/striking-back-gdb-and-ida-
debuggers.html) and [https://xorl.wordpress.com/2009/01/05/more-gdb-anti-
debuggin...](https://xorl.wordpress.com/2009/01/05/more-gdb-anti-debugging/)
------
kccqzy
There are also undocumented instructions and prefixes. For example at this
year’s DEFCON someone presented a particular kind of e9 jump prefixed with 66.
That instruction is incorrectly disassmbled by all hitherto known
disassemblers (IDA, gdb, objdump, VS, etc). And since that will change the
length of the instruction, effectively you can make the disassembler produce
garbage.
------
krylon
There is an interesting PowerPoint presentation you can find on the internet
on how Skype used to evade debuggers.
[http://www.secdev.org/conf/skype_BHEU06.handout.pdf](http://www.secdev.org/conf/skype_BHEU06.handout.pdf)
The techniques described in that document are different, but in a way they are
alike - both use dirty tricks to shield themselves from people trying to
reverse engineer them. The only difference is that one takes place "at compile
time", in way, while the other works in a dynamic program as it is executing.
------
ttoinou
What about using UPX ? [https://upx.github.io](https://upx.github.io)
Can it make harder for software crackers to achieve their goal ?
~~~
TACIXAT
upx -d packed.exe
UPX is fairly easy to defeat, but many malicious samples will have their own
packers / loaders.
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
Startup Founder Required - joelennon
https://medium.com/@joelennon/startup-founder-required-635cd816b51d#.megt22xa0
======
nickfzx
lol
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
Show HN: Weekend project: Sticklet: A simple, HTML5 sticky notes application - azylman
http://www.sticklet.com
======
prknight
would make a nice replacement for what is shown on an empty new tab in Chrome.
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
E-Book Price War Has Yet to Arrive - iProject
http://www.nytimes.com/2012/12/24/technology/e-book-price-war-has-yet-to-arrive.html?_r=0&adxnnl=1&ref=technology&adxnnlx=1356382553-nDwmZT11xS/9qZqgGxJmRw
======
johnrgrace
The price war will come in 2013. Contracts have only just been put in place
under the DOJ settlements. Also I suspect that Amazon may be holding since
they've done a boatload of TV ads and I can't see that they raised prices. I
would guess that there is a reasonable chance they'll lose money in Q4.
------
mtgx
I would rather pay more for the hardware, and get cheaper content, than get
cheaper hardware, but then expensive content.
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
Show HN: Arima – A Q&A site for mass opinon - winstonl
http://arima.io/?utm_source=hacker%20new&utm_medium=post&utm_campaign=hn
======
diminish
correct the title, "opinon".
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
Hello ECMA-408, the new official Dart Programming Language Specification … - priteshjain
https://plus.google.com/+dartlang/posts/DnCSv8jrXMF
======
dang
[https://hn.algolia.com/?q=dart+specification#!/story/forever...](https://hn.algolia.com/?q=dart+specification#!/story/forever/0/dart%20specification)
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
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Four year old's commit in linux kernel - xg15
https://git.kernel.org/pub/scm/linux/kernel/git/torvalds/linux.git/commit/?id=690b0543a813b0ecfc51b0374c0ce6c8275435f0
======
jfjfjfkkkfjj
Bullshit,
Just some parents want to be famous.
~~~
omosubi
Way to suck the joy out of a very innocuous change
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
PSA: Apple's $29 iPhone battery replacement program ends soon - Varcht
http://zdnet.com/article/psa-apples-29-iphone-battery-replacement-program-ends-soon/
======
herogreen
PSA = public service announcement ?
~~~
tqkxzugoaupvwqr
Correct.
------
dzhiurgis
Mine broke camera, good luck proving that to Apple.
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
Smart scale goes dumb as Under Armour pulls the plug on connected tech - close04
https://arstechnica.com/information-technology/2020/01/smart-scale-goes-dumb-as-under-armour-pulls-the-plug-on-connected-tech/
======
_Microft
Only half a week ago we had a thread that _Smart homes will turn dumb
overnight as Charter kills security service_. I suppose I could just copy my
comment from there but you might want to look it up as some discussion
followed.
"The manufacturer should never be able to either deactivate or otherwise
disable the functionality of a device they sold in a form that requires a
service to function. [...]"
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22083881](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22083881)
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
We Know Exactly Who Strong Arms a Free Press - MediumCool
https://medium.com/@davepell/we-know-exactly-who-strong-arms-the-free-press-1c8d1d4bbe39
======
MrZongle2
TL;DR: Trump == Hitler.
Edit: don't downvote, _debate_. How is this article not a dog-whistle about
Trump being a democracy-destroying authoritarian?
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
Paradoxes of Material Implication (1997) - olooney
https://legacy.earlham.edu/~peters/courses/log/mat-imp.htm
======
tr352
Let me copy/paste my reply from the same discussion yesterday
([https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=18531650](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=18531650)):
There's another "solution" to this paradox: if we assert something we are
guided by a set of "conversational principles". For example, asserting "X
implies Y" if we know that X is false is inappropriate. If X is false, "not-X"
would be the appropriate assertion.
According to this theory, there's nothing wrong with the truth-functional
meaning of "X implies Y". We just need to take into account what is implied by
asserting "X implies Y", rather than e.g. "not-X", or "X and Y".
Same with disjunction: "X or Y" is true if we know that X is true. However, if
we assert "X or Y", it is implied that we're not certain that X is true,
otherwise we would have used "X", which is the simplest way to convey what
that fact.
This is known as Grice's Pragmatic Defence of Truth-Functionality.
------
foldr
The claim that the material implication analysis preserves the validity of
valid arguments is pretty questionable. Consider the following argument:
No student will succeed if he goofs off
Every student will succeed
|- No student will goof off
Analyzing the 'if' in the first premise of the argument above as material
implication, we get:
For every student x, it's not the case that [x won't goof off or x will succeed].
= For every student x, x will goof off and x won't succeed.
The following argument is valid only trivially, as the premises contradict
each other (assuming the existence of at least one student):
For every student x, x will goof off and x won't succeed.
Every student will succeed
|- No student will goof off
I suspect it's quite easy to construct other similar examples involving
quantifiers where validity is not even trivially preserved.
(It's easier to find examples of the material implication analysis failing to
preserve the invalidity of invalid arguments.)
~~~
a-nikolaev
No student will succeed if he goofs off
=
Forall x: (GoofOff(x) -> not Succeed(x))
=
not Exist x : (GoofOff(x) and Succeed(x))
~~~
foldr
Sure, but then you're doing violence to the structure of the original
sentence. (How did the negation get into the consequent?) If you're allowed
free reign to paraphrase, then you can always get the right result.
"No student will succeed if he goofs off" is a standard example discussed in
the semantics literature, by the way. What you're pointing out, in effect, is
that this sentence seems to mean "No student who goofs off will succeed". The
problem is that it's unclear how to get to that interpretation given the
actual syntactic structure of the sentence. In other words, you can't get
there just by following a direction to interpret if...then... as material
implication.
~~~
a-nikolaev
I agree that you cannot just mindlessly parse "if ... then ..." as
implication, especially in the context of other things going on in the
sentence and hope it will automagically work out as a correct interpretation
of the sentence meaning.
~~~
foldr
Right, but that means that material implication can't be used as an analysis
of the meaning of "if...then..." in English. If you have to make ad-hoc
adjustments for different kinds of sentence, then you don't have an actual
theory of the interpretation of "if..then..." \-- you just have a toolbox of
techniques for paraphrasing it. Note that it is possible to do much better
than this, so it's not an unreasonable goal to have in mind. See e.g.
[https://dspace.mit.edu/handle/1721.1/95781](https://dspace.mit.edu/handle/1721.1/95781)
for an overview of modern approaches to the semantics of conditionals in
natural languages.
On the preceding point, virtually everyone agrees. I was questioning even the
weaker assertion that analyzing "if...then..." as material implication always
preserves validity.
~~~
olooney
Trying to map natural language onto logic is a mug's game, although the
converse - mapping logic _into_ natural language - is possible.
Leibniz was perhaps the first to understand that the solution to this was to
abandon natural language and replace it was an artificial, perfect language,
where connectives and grammar had one and only one clear meaning: the calculus
ratiocinator and the characteristica universalis. Although Leibniz didn't
succeed in his lifetime, he inspired Frege to write the Begriffsschrift[3]
which was an early and very complete presentation of what today we would call
predicate calculus.
One of Frege's insights was that quantification ("there exists x such that..."
and "for all x...") needed to be explicit and could only be made unambiguous
if the exact order and name of each quantification was used consistently -
hence the idea of "bound variables." Without explicit quantification, it is
impossible to determine the meaning of a statement such as:
"All mice fear some cat."
Does this mean that for every mouse, there is some nearby cat which that mouse
fears? Or does it mean that there is some kind of King Cat, feared by every
mouse in the world? Natural language is ambiguous on this point. (Note also
that this particular example is one which _appears_ to be a syllogism, but
which cannot be fully analyzed using Aristotelian logic.) However, if we use
explicit quantification, we write either:
∃x ∀y My ∧ Cx ∧ yFx (1)
∀y ∃x My ∧ Cx ∧ yFx (2)
Or, in the stilted yet precise jargon of mathematicians:
There exists a cat x such that for all mice y, y fears x. (1)
For all mice y there exists a cat x such that y fears x. (2)
The __only __difference between (1) and (2) is the order of quantification,
and this is not something English or other natural languages is careful about
tracking. This is why you feel like you have to butcher sentences to rewrite
them in this form, and also why this re-writing cannot be done by rote but
requires human judgement and understanding: because this critical information
is in fact missing from the original natural language sentence!
These are not particularly contrived or unusual examples, by the way. One of
the fundamental notions in real analysis is that of the limit, which is
defined as follows:
the limit of the sequence a_n as n goes to infinity is C if and only if for every delta > 0, there exists N such that |a_n - C| < delta for all n > N.
Such a thought cannot even be precisely _articulated_ unless one has the
necessary language to talk precisely about statements involving multiple
quantifiers and bound variables. Which is why early presentations of Calculus
(Leibniz, Newton) relied of unsatisfactory notions of "fluxions" and
"infinitesimals"[4] while later mathematicians (Weierstrass, Cauchy,) armed
with a more sophisticated mathematical language were finally able to give a
satisfactory foundation to calculus.[5]
We see the same category of problem when we try to interpret "if... then..."
as the material implication of formal logic. Not only do we have the problem
of conversational implicature[6] but we have the so called paradoxes described
in the original article. Similar problems exist for common words like "or"
which is often taken to mean "exclusive or" rather than the inclusive "or"
favored by logicians, and even simple words like "is" don't necessary map
purely onto the Law of Identity[7] the way logicians and philosophers would
like them to.[7]
The way I see it, the fault lies fully on the side of natural language, which
is too squishy and imprecise and overloaded to be useful to convey precise
formal arguments. But that doesn't mean you have to learn an artificial
language like Lojban[8]. Mathematicians do quite well by speaking in a kind of
restricted subset of English (or whatever native language they're used to)
simply by giving exact and precise meanings to certain words and formulations
like "if and only if" or "implies."[9] When a mathematician says "implies" in
a paper or lecture, you can be quite sure he or she is speaking of material
implication.
But as for pining down the meaning of natural language in the wild, as it is
actually spoken... well, that's a rather more difficult problem, don't you
think?
[1]
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Characteristica_universalis](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Characteristica_universalis)
[2]
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Calculus_ratiocinator](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Calculus_ratiocinator)
[3]
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Begriffsschrift](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Begriffsschrift)
[4]
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_calculus#Newton_and...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_calculus#Newton_and_Leibniz)
[5]
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Limit_(mathematics)](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Limit_\(mathematics\))
[6]
[https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/implicature/#GriThe](https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/implicature/#GriThe)
[7]
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Law_of_identity](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Law_of_identity)
[8]
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lojban](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lojban)
[9]
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_mathematical_jargon](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_mathematical_jargon)
~~~
foldr
>Trying to map natural language onto logic is a mug's game
Not really. Modern linguistic semantics has done a pretty good job. Check out
the link to the overview article that I posted in the grandparent, or the von
Fintel & Heim textbook here: [http://web.mit.edu/fintel/fintel-heim-
intensional.pdf](http://web.mit.edu/fintel/fintel-heim-intensional.pdf)
(sections 4.3-5 in particular). It's possible to give precise logical analyses
of natural language conditionals to a pretty significant extent. It's just the
material implication analysis that doesn't work.
> because this critical information [about quantifier scope] is in fact
> missing from the original natural language sentence!
You're moving a bit too fast there. The information can't be recovered from
the sequence of words, but that doesn't mean that it isn't present in the
structures that underly interpretation. A precise logical analysis can be
given for each of the possible interpretations of an ambiguous sentence.
Semanticists treat quantifier scope ambiguities using such mechanisms as
quantifiying in [1], quantifier raising [2], type shifting [3], or even
continuations [4].
No-one is suggesting, by the way, that formal logical analyses of the meanings
of English sentences are useful _for the purposes of doing math or logic_. But
the "paradoxes" in the original article relate to the use of material
implication to gloss the meaning of "if...then..." in English. This naturally
raises the question of whether there might be better analyses available.
[1] [http://www.coli.uni-
saarland.de/projects/milca/courses/comse...](http://www.coli.uni-
saarland.de/projects/milca/courses/comsem/html/node96.html#sec_clls-scope.qi)
[2]
[https://dspace.mit.edu/handle/1721.1/16287](https://dspace.mit.edu/handle/1721.1/16287)
[3] [http://lecomte.al.free.fr/ressources/PARIS8_LSL/Hendriks-
TCS...](http://lecomte.al.free.fr/ressources/PARIS8_LSL/Hendriks-TCS.pdf)
[4] [http://www.nyu.edu/projects/barker/barker-
continuations.pdf](http://www.nyu.edu/projects/barker/barker-
continuations.pdf)
------
dwheeler
I created the "allsome" quantifier to reduce the risk of some of these
confusions. Details here:
[https://dwheeler.com/essays/allsome.html](https://dwheeler.com/essays/allsome.html)
------
leoc
Graham Priest's book is great:
[https://www.cambridge.org/ie/academic/subjects/philosophy/ph...](https://www.cambridge.org/ie/academic/subjects/philosophy/philosophy-
science/introduction-non-classical-logic-if-2nd-edition)
------
gus_massa
Original title: " _Paradoxes of Material Implication_ "
~~~
pierrebai
About the example given with teh number 3, I prefer this even more absurd
form: if the number 3 is not the number 3 then the number 3 is the number 3.
It's true!
------
ninegunpi
Descendants of Aristotle still find limitations of the system amusing, that’s
amusing itself.
I hope to live to the day when philosophical advancements of 20th century (or
re-discovery of 2500-old Indian logic, if you like), formalized in accessible
forms, get widespread acceptance, could leave plenty of people who’se job it
to juggle limited abstractions with the need to pick more useful jobs.
No pun intended, these are terribly useful abstractions we’ve built our world
on, but they barely hold up against thorough reality check and leave out a lot
as ‘paradoxes’.
~~~
myWindoonn
Please add some substance, or I will make your argument for you.
Yes! We all need to get on board with constructivist mathematics [0][1]
already. Construction is very similar to computation, and it is not
inconsistent to take "all reals are computable" or "all functions are
continuous", the same rules Turing discovered, as axioms if we like. We can
therefore move computer science fully onto a foundation that is _more_
rigorous than typical maths.
[0] [https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/mathematics-
constructive/](https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/mathematics-constructive/)
[1]
[https://www.ams.org/journals/bull/2017-54-03/S0273-0979-2016...](https://www.ams.org/journals/bull/2017-54-03/S0273-0979-2016-01556-4/S0273-0979-2016-01556-4.pdf)
~~~
ninegunpi
You've made far better one than me below. Hats off.
| {
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Zurmo, an Open Source CRM - grobmeier
http://www.grobmeier.de/zurmo-open-source-crm-03012013.html
======
raysto
Great article
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
Ask HN: How to handle sales tax for SaaS side projects? - billconan
I just realized how complex sales tax is. It seems to be a huge overhead for small projects. How can I handle it with ease?
======
billconan
I asked this also on Reddit, and got this really nice answer:
Pasting it here hoping it will help others too
[https://www.reddit.com/r/SaaS/comments/brvxgc/how_to_handle_...](https://www.reddit.com/r/SaaS/comments/brvxgc/how_to_handle_sales_tax_for_saas_side_projects/?utm_source=share&utm_medium=ios_app)
I ran into the same issue with my startup.
There are two options:
Use a service like TaxJar / Avalara / Quaderno to automatically calculate
taxes. Keep in mind that there are costs to getting a sales tax ID in certain
countries / states and that you'll be losing valuable time by having to file
returns (autofile isn't supported everywhere).
Also, you'll need to consider that they may not support every country that has
a sales tax implication either.
Use a payment processor that acts as a reseller of your digital products
(Paddle, 2Checkout, FastSpring)
Because they will act as the merchant of record for a transaction, they will
be responsible for calculating and remitting sales taxes.
The disadvantage of this method is that there's much higher fees. For
instance, Stripe charges 2.9% + 30 cents per transaction, while Paddle charges
5% + $0.50.
Not having to worry about sales tax is well worth the added cost in my
opinion.
~~~
davidgh
Agree. When you have a digital product or service, intended or not, you have a
global customer base. Sales tax, VAT is just one of the burdens a company will
face to keep on the right side of the rules. Denied party screening, export
controls, various data protection and privacy laws, to name a few.
By selecting a provider that acts as the “merchant of record” (or reseller of
your product), you offload many of those regulatory burdens to a party that
has the proper economies of scale to provide the service for a lower cost than
you can do it on your own.
Modern platforms that provide you with the option to be the merchant of record
usually provide a host of other features that making running an online SaaS
business much easier. And to your customers, it won’t feel like your sending
them off to some unrelated store to buy your product, you can generally
customize your integration so that the transition during the purchase process
is mostly seamless.
Source: I’ve been in the business of providing a service that acts as merchant
of record for more than 20 years. In the early days, people came to us mostly
to for the online payment processing. These days, many of our customers
express that it was the reduction in regulatory burden that they value the
most.
~~~
alt_f4
Whilst I am happy for you and that your business of providing these services
is doing well, it is a sad state of affairs when small online businesses have
to cough up anywhere between 3%-7% of revenue to deal with the regulatory mess
the governments have created.
~~~
davidgh
I look at this from a different angle. Doing business is always going to be
associated with some regulatory overhead.
Traditionally, the footprint of a small business was the owner’s local area,
where the scope of rules and regulations is small enough that it can be
managed.
With the advent of the Internet, it is now possible for a small business to
have the same reach as a large multi-national. Along with this market
potential comes a massive number of jurisdictions, each with their own
particularities.
I find it quite liberating that a small business has the option to go to the
entire world market by paying a small percentage of their sales (a cost that
can be quantified and factored into their pricing model) rather than being
forced to spend massive amounts upfront, without any idea if their investment
will pay off.
Of course, there’s also the option to simply ignore the regulations, which
many small businesses do (often out of ignorance). But as a business becomes
successful, not following the regulations of the jurisdictions it does
business in becomes an ever-growing liability.
I was a witness to a transaction where a small business was approached by
their much larger (publicly traded) competitor. The larger company made an
offer to buy this small business for many millions of dollars. During due
diligence, the buyer discovered that the small business had not been
collecting VAT in the EU for the digital products it sold there. The small
business asserted that since it did not have an EU presence, the EU couldn’t
force it to do so. The buyer, however, did have an EU presence, and worried
that with the acquisition, it may inherit the large liability of many years of
uncollected VAT.
This nearly wrecked the entire deal. The resolution was that the small
business had to indemnify the buyer that if a claim was made by the EU for the
uncollected VAT, the small business would be on the hook for most of it.
So, to me, paying a very small percentage to an external party to not only
take on the burden of managing the regulations, but also to assume the risk of
penalty for being out of compliance with any one of the thousands of
governmental jurisdictions around the world seems like a very good value.
------
danieka
If you are in the EU remember that sales to companies will have reversed tax,
just make sure to get their VAT number and then you don’t have to apply VAT.
But I think that the invoice/receipt has to say that reversed VAT should be
applied.
Sales to individuals should be declared in MOSS and the VAT of the country
where the customer is located should be applied. But (at least in Sweden)
there is an exception that if your revenue is under 10000€ per year you many
declare all VAT in your country using your country’s VAT.
Also, IANAL.
------
mikeyouse
Most states have sales thresholds to hit before you have to worry about
dealing with it in their jurisdictions. Here's a decent roundup of when you'll
have to start to care:
[https://blog.taxjar.com/economic-nexus-
laws/](https://blog.taxjar.com/economic-nexus-laws/)
Essentially, take care of the tax in the jurisdiction you're in and wait until
you're much further along before worrying about other states or territories.
------
jmhyer123
We ran into the same problem with our SaaS. We haven't gotten to the point
where we need to solve the problem yet but in my research I ran into TaxJar
([https://www.taxjar.com/](https://www.taxjar.com/)) and was confident they
will be one of the easiest solutions to the problem when we get to that point.
This of course assumes a US-based product/users.
~~~
billconan
So I found a service [https://paddle.com/](https://paddle.com/)
Saying that they can handle all sales tax for me, because they are a reseller
of my product. Is this true? Is anybody using it? Any other alternatives?
~~~
jerriep
I use Paddle and so far I am happy with them. The integration was simple
enough and their support has been responsive.
I cannot use Stripe in my country, so I had to look for alternatives. Paddle
is more expensive, but they have many things built in that you would have to
pay extra for on Stripe. One of those is the handling of sales tax. The other,
which I will implement soon, is built-in handling of affiliates.
~~~
techsin101
I think stripe can calculate taxes
------
johnwheeler
I’m not sure I follow. Services are exempt from sales tax
[https://www.alvarezandmarsal.com/insights/sales-taxation-
sof...](https://www.alvarezandmarsal.com/insights/sales-taxation-software-
service-relatively-new-frontier)
The law is murky at best. Doesn’t feel like something a startup should devote
much energy to.
~~~
HillRat
In Texas, if nowhere else, it’s established that SaaS is a “business service”
and taxed appropriately either via sales or use tax. (Texas is unusual in
taxing business services, however.)
------
vebu
I tried to do the sales tax management myself but ended up with incorrect
calculation on some occasions. I would highly recommend getting a professional
tax consultant for guidance. They'll know how to handle tax for your project.
Once you start making revenue, the cost of consultant would become affordable.
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
Global Unicorns ($250mm+ valued startups) - salar
https://global-unicorns.silk.co/
======
ddorian43
at least put a website link so we can know what they do
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
Google pledges $2 million in prizes to hackers who exploit Chrome - evo_9
http://arstechnica.com/security/2012/08/google-pledges-million-in-hacking-prizes/
======
DanielRibeiro
Limiting Daniel J. Bernstein to _the creator of djbdns_ is quite an
understatement. He is a very important cryptographer, to say the least[1].
Specially for a man that has been ulogized[2,3] as _the greatest programmer in
the history of the world._
HN has in the past done a good job telling his great story[4]
[1] <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Daniel_J._Bernstein>
[2] <http://www.aaronsw.com/weblog/djb>
[3] <http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=890034>
[4]
[http://www.hnsearch.com/search#request/all&q=Bernstein+&...](http://www.hnsearch.com/search#request/all&q=Bernstein+&sortby=points+desc)
~~~
casca
So true, djb is a legend in the field. To give an example, he wrote qmail as a
replacement for sendmail and the last stable release was in 1998. There have
been no identified security vulnerabilities in that time. If you want to learn
how to program securely, read ""Some thoughts on security after ten years of
qmail 1.0" - <http://cr.yp.to/qmail/qmailsec-20071101.pdf>
------
casca
Link to the actual announcement: <http://blog.chromium.org/2012/08/announcing-
pwnium-2.html>
If I had a "Full Chrome exploit: Chrome / Win7 local OS user account
persistence using only bugs in Chrome itself", I could sell it for far more
than the $60k on offer. Why not offer $1m?
~~~
mda
Nowadays this sort of exploits in Chrome uses a chain of several bugs,
(remember flash now runs in a strong sandbox as well); I would say it is
probable that your exploit would be obsolete before you find a real buyer in
the market. So I would argue that taking the money on the table immediately
would be the right thing to do. Also added bonus karma of not dealing with
shady organizations, compromising innocent peoples computers, etc.
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
The Busier You Are, the More You Need Quiet Time - happy-go-lucky
https://hbr.org/2017/03/the-busier-you-are-the-more-you-need-quiet-time?utm_source=pocket&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=pockethits
======
11thEarlOfMar
> "the disadvantages of noise and distraction associated with open office
> plans outweighed anticipated, but still unproven, benefits " [0]
I'd say that the CFOs of the world are a bit selectively biased when it comes
to analysis of employee satisfaction and productivity of open office vs.
private space offices.
Other studies discussed on HN have pointed to the importance of a space you
can personalize as well, so even shared private spaces may not be optimal. [1]
Prime office space in SV (Palo Alto) is currently going for $100/sq ft per
year [2]. So an 8'x10' private space would cost $8,000/yr. at premium rates.
If a company is paying $200,000 for a fully burdened engineer, as many do in
SV, it seems a relatively small investment (4% of cost to employ said
engineers) to offer them private offices as an option. Other functional
positions pay nearly as well, so really, at least giving the employees the
option of private vs. open office should be considered.
Outside of Palo Alto, it would probably make even more financial sense.
[0] Previously discussed at some length:
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13373526](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13373526)
[1]
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13668762](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13668762)
[2] [http://www.cityfeet.com/cont/ca/palo-alto-office-
space#](http://www.cityfeet.com/cont/ca/palo-alto-office-space#)
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
Google Signs Deal to Buy Manhattan Office Building - siculars
http://www.nytimes.com/2010/12/03/nyregion/03building.html?_r=1&pagewanted=print
======
siculars
Real-estate postering aside, this deal does not "a rebounding real estate
market..." It is no coincidence that Google's East Coast offices are located
in this specific building. The building happens to be a major internet peering
point for the entire NYC region. So no, I do not see a major rush to buy
entire city block sized buildings unless there are other enormous, industrial
grade, internet peering hubs floating around NYC.
([http://www.nytimes.com/2008/10/01/business/smallbusiness/01h...](http://www.nytimes.com/2008/10/01/business/smallbusiness/01hotel.html?pagewanted=print))
Also, the NYC tech scene is on fire,
<http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1957538>.
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
FreeBSD Bhyve WiFi PCI Passthrough - dddddaviddddd
https://www.davidschlachter.com/misc/t480-bhyve-wifi-pci-passthrough
======
Seenso
That's interesting, but wouldn't it make more sense to have a compatibility
system that would allow Linux drivers to be used? Apparently there's one for
Windows drivers:
[https://www.freebsd.org/cgi/man.cgi?query=ndisgen&sektion=8](https://www.freebsd.org/cgi/man.cgi?query=ndisgen&sektion=8)
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
New Facebook rollout commences - sanj
http://blog.new.facebook.com/blog.php?post=30074837130
======
furiouslol
I guess I'm one of the crazy guys out there who prefer the old design.
The nice Newsfeed aside, i find the redesign unintuitive.
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
Ask HN: When will apple update their native apps? - davidmspi
======
pdenya
Native apps receive updates during OS upgrades.
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
Computing Shortest Path in O(1) time - bjt2n3904
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dLeWBswGgOE
======
meursault334
Is this actually O(1)?
Because the electricity has to to travel the shortest path it seems like it is
at best O(shortest path length). The constant factor is of course very small.
------
8note
if you have to wire thousands of LEDs, it will take significantly longer to
setup the problem, and I think that should factor into the time complexity
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
Pandora and Spotify Rake in the Money and Then Send It Off in Royalties - jamesbritt
http://mediadecoder.blogs.nytimes.com/2012/08/24/pandora-and-spotify-rake-in-the-money-and-then-send-it-off-in-royalties/?ref=television&gwh=0E551F7612AEE5E7D138ABC9DBFC8F3F
======
pvnick
As someone who was entrenched in the music startup world for a while, I've
concluded that the only way to save the music industry is for the major labels
to die or become obsolete and for new, innovation-friendly content producers
to emerge in their place. We need for music what Netflix is trying to do for
movies/tv (see Lillyhammer, new Arrested Development season).
It's that broken.
~~~
willwhitney
I would be very excited for Spotify to start signing artists directly, without
the major label middleman. It could let Spotify turn a profit on those artists
while simultaneously paying out more to the people making the music.
As an insider, pvnick, do you think Spotify could ever pull that off without
burning the bridges of its current label deals?
~~~
rm999
Spotify already lets unsigned artists add their music through music
aggregators like cdbaby: [http://www.spotify.com/us/work-with-us/labels-and-
artists/ar...](http://www.spotify.com/us/work-with-us/labels-and-
artists/artist-page/)
I suppose the music aggregators are a modern day take on record labels.
~~~
k-mcgrady
Not really, a label does much more than get an artists music in a store.
Distributing the content is probably the easiest thing for artists to do on
their own. Marketing, touring and merchandise are more complication and labels
are still the best solution.
~~~
rm999
Well, that's why I said "take" on it. These companies are actually doing quite
a bit that a traditional label would do: they store the media (the digital
version of manufacturing it), distribute it, and market it. I don't think a
traditional label is always the best solution, especially for groups that will
never be big enough to justify the huge upfront costs a label puts in.
These aggregators are really for the tail end of the spectrum: the 90% of
bands who represent 1% of music listening time and don't have much hope of
getting signed.
------
ricardobeat
I wonder how much of that combined $380m ended up in the artist's hands and
wasn't consumed in industry "fees".
~~~
jaylevitt
Some history, for those not in the know:
[http://www.techdirt.com/articles/20110707/03264014993/riaa-a...](http://www.techdirt.com/articles/20110707/03264014993/riaa-
accounting-how-to-sell-1-million-albums-still-owe-500000.shtml)
<http://www.techdirt.com/articles/20100712/23482610186.shtml>
[http://www.salon.com/technology/feature/2000/06/14/love/prin...](http://www.salon.com/technology/feature/2000/06/14/love/print.html)
Spoiler: bands get about 20% of what the label gets. Your album can sell 1
million copies and your band might still owe the label $500,000. Labels take
10-20% off the top for _breakage_ fees. Breakage. As in vinyl records that
broke during shipping.
~~~
ricardobeat
Yes, but that's for the recording/release/marketing/tours side. Royalties
continue to be paid long after the production costs are covered. I imagine
they _should_ go 100% to the artist, but wouldn't be surprised if they don't.
------
Sambdala
"With artists and labels hit hard by declining sales over the last decade,
it’s hard to argue for lower royalty rates."
It isn't really. Changing times sometimes call for drastic measures. What you
were able to charge in one medium might not be the same as you are able to
charge for a new medium.
It might not be fun for the people who were at the top of the heap before the
paradigm shift, but that just means they should have made preparations for
that shift when it was easiest for them to do so.
------
unabridged
As bandwidth increases and hosting gets cheaper, someone is going to create a
nonroyality paying music (and eventually video) streaming site with the
ability to select any song. And it won't even have to be hosted from countries
that don't reliably enforce copyright, as the number of cloud providers and
hosting resellers increase it will become easy to rent new servers to
repopulate their CDN faster than they can be shut down by the government/RIAA.
~~~
ladzoppelin
So wait nobody gets paid for anything? Where does the music come from?
------
stickfigure
_Pandora paid $149 million, or 54 percent of its revenue, for “content
acquisition,” otherwise known as royalties._
What does Pandora do with the other $127 million plus?!? It's incredible to me
that they can't operate a profitable company on that kind of cash flow. I'm
genuinely curious - where does it go?
------
brady747
Still waiting for one of these or Mog or Apple or Rdio to sign artists
themselves...
------
monsur
This is really a shame because these companies are making a shitload of money.
------
paulhauggis
Pandora and Spotify may rake in the money, but they never actually created the
content. It would be like me starting a business that resells Microsoft
software and complaining that it's too difficult to make a profit because I
have to pay Microsoft for the content.
I would be much more impressed if they signed their own artists and made a
huge profit.
~~~
JasonFruit
A popular and easy-to-use medium for finding and listening to music is a valid
product, and they deserve to be paid for it. Spotify is useful enough to me
that I'm happy to pay for it, and I listen to more music than I would without
it.
I hope that labels make enough from these services that they allow them wide
enough margins to stay in business.
------
miratom
Aww, you mean a CEO can't stay rich by giving away other people's creations
for free? What a tragedy.
~~~
timmyd
I don't think that's fair. These 2 companies have done more for music and
promotion of music than anyone in the modern age - from an industry renown for
collusion between the four majors (one falls into line and they all do etc).
They have basically rescued a dying industry that essentially built its modern
day business model on litigating everyone through RIAA and so on. That's not
innovative - that's stupid and idiotic.
Instead, what you have now is two companies who are trying to save a dying
industry through subscription and the music industry trying to milk every
single penny out of them. The dichotomy that creates is that these companies
aren't sustainable long term - they are hemorrhaging cash re-the article:
_Spotify’s accounts for the last year, recently filed in Luxembourg, show
that it lost $57 million in 2011, despite a big increase in revenue, to $236
million ... On top of that it had more than $30 million in salaries, and more
than $30 million for various other expenses. That is how you lose $57 million
on $236 million in revenue._
That's just sad. The only incentive these companies have is to be ultimately
purchased by the recording industry who can then dictate pricing on their own
terms - and that's bad for everyone because then they are going to push prices
up insanely. In fact, if these were purchased by the recording industry - it
might be the worst thing to happen to music because we are all again at the
mercy of the industry. They will want to maximise pricing and I believe, given
their history, they will maximize anti-competitive behavior by essentially
price fixing competing services out the market. By staying out the USA for 2
years, it was evident Spotify pushed (to some degree) the music studios to
capitulate on their pricing - they both gave a little because the industry was
desperate for cash. It's obvious to anyone that's the only reason Spotify
weren't in the USA sooner - it wasn't economically feasible because the model
was _already proven to be a hit_ in Europe.
I don't, for one second, believe that the Music studio's are paying this out
to the artists. They are dumping this straight into the bank - the industry in
that regard is now basically running on live shows and tshirts for artists to
survive. So don't be so quick to judge "giving away for free" - because thats
not what they are doing. They have produced amazing services in my mind - and
there should be some reward for that by the industry in recognizing and
enabling them to create sustainable businesses.
~~~
willwhitney
Not to mention that Spotify and Pandora are making it possible for young, poor
people to be active music consumers without turning to piracy. When I was in
high school, my options were to pay $15 an album, and thus only have access
and exposure to a tiny music collection, or pirate music, hear a lot of great
music, especially from smaller artists, and drag my friends to their concerts
every time they were in town.
Now I'm in college and still broke, but I pony up the $10/month for Spotify,
and I continually encourage my friends to do so as well. They've created an
experience that's dramatically better than piracy (even with nice private
trackers), pays out at least some to the artists along with the moneypile that
goes to the labels, and enfranchises people like me. I've always listened to
an extremely wide selection of music, and now that I can pay to do it, I'm
very happy to.
And I still drag my friends to every good concert in town.
~~~
nilliams
Exactly, I'm proud to pay my Spotify membership and I feel I get my money's
worth... I'd probably pay more. I have now gone over 2 years without
torrenting a single album (the exception being one quite-large Canadian band
who happened to not be on Spotify at the time ... I'd already bought the album
on vinyl so I didn't feel to bad about it).
Before Spotify my best effort at _trying_ to be legal was to splash out every
couple of months on some vinyl copies (nice to own... I still do this
sometimes) of albums I'd already _stolen_ via bittorent.
Spotify, is a music-lover's dream and it's how music distribution should work.
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
Affordable Care Act – Journal Paper by Pres. Obama - krapht
http://ja.ma/29xgcBR
======
baisong
Is it unique for a sitting president to publish a journal article?
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
Tim Cook is stepping down. Apple is looking for a new CEO in Barcelona (Spain) - soci
http://www.jobsbcn.com/offers/apple-ceo-english-ios-mac-osx-d14801?result=0
======
xae
Although he definitely shouldn't be stepping down from his position he
absolutely needs to come to Barcelona and open a development center in the
city. Quality talent at 1/3 of the cost
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
Short, Readable Deep Learning Implementation - jeremynixon
https://github.com/JeremyNixon/oracle/blob/master/convolutional_neural_network.py
======
p1esk
Where is max poooling layer?
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
Machine Reading at Web Scale - njrc
http://videolectures.net/wsdm08_etzioni_mrws/
======
shotgun
Interesting lecture.
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
UK Parliament publishes 250+ pages of sensitive, internal Facebook documents - burtonator
http://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2018-12-05/seized-facebook-internal-emails-published-by-u-k-lawmakers
======
mtmail
discussed in
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=18608658](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=18608658)
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
Court limits liability for using tainted code (innocent customer absolved) - grellas
http://www.law.com/jsp/article.jsp?id=1202457477366&Intel_Off_Hook_for_Buying_Tainted_Software
======
JabavuAdams
Judge: "Seldom have so many trees died for so little."
------
ableal
I was going to ask for your (grellas) opinion on the case, but I guess it's in
the title ...
I remember a similar story with EDA software, back in 2000 or so, with
Cadence's code in Avanti products. Silvaco is a smaller company.
I suppose the point of the suits is that the first baker wanted the customers
to buy his pies, or be paid for the pies they should have bought from him.
The back story linked (
[http://www.law.com/jsp/lawtechnologynews/PubArticleLTN.jsp?i...](http://www.law.com/jsp/lawtechnologynews/PubArticleLTN.jsp?id=1202447616842)
) said that "Silvaco sued 12 semiconductor companies in 2003 and 2004 that
bought CSI software" and seven settled. Don't know how harsh the terms asked
were, but it might have gone the other way - apparently the big guys decided
it was worth fighting.
~~~
grellas
An odd footnote here: I incorporated Silvaco and represented them through
about the mid-1990s, though I have not been connected with any of the lawsuit
activity described in this article. The style of the company can accurately be
described as "aggressive."
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
Track Santa with Google Maps - flowerpot
http://www.google.com/santatracker/#/tracker/dashboard
======
littlemerman
This is pretty fun.
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
There's nothing wrong with making a mistake (2002) - luu
http://denbeste.nu/cd_log_entries/2002/10/ItsOKtobewrong.shtml
======
cableshaft
But HN just told me yesterday that engineers should be held to a higher
standard and should be executed, firing range style, when there are bugs:
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10488991](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10488991).
Now I don't know whether I should kill myself or pat myself on the head!
~~~
vezycash
I think this Chinese quote can summarize the article:
"He who asks a question is a fool for five minutes; he who does not ask a
question remains a fool forever."
In terms of lean methodology, "Fail fast and fail often."
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
Burning Man Seeks to Change ‘Convenience Culture,’ Boots Camp for Wealthy (2019) - masonic
https://www.nytimes.com/2019/02/15/business/burning-man-tickets.html
======
masonic
2020 gathering cancelled:
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22839503](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22839503)
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
Intel can’t supply 14nm Xeons, HPE recommends AMD Epyc - davidgerard
https://www.semiaccurate.com/2018/09/07/intel-cant-supply-14nm-xeons-hpe-directly-recommends-amd-epyc/
======
gumby
I really think Intel lost its way back in the Barrett era and never managed to
find it (and I think AMD is really significantly exceeding its historical
trend line right now) but despite all that I am dubious about semiaccurate.
Looking back at other submissions from that site (
[https://news.ycombinator.com/from?site=semiaccurate.com](https://news.ycombinator.com/from?site=semiaccurate.com)
) it appears many HN readers are too. Based (only) on the submissions, it
looks a bit like an AMD fan site.
~~~
throwaway2048
Semi accurate most definitely has a big bias against Intel, but they are
pretty open with it. They have a ton of insider information that nobody else
does, there is a reason they have an insanely expensive paywall, and people
gladly pay it.
~~~
C7H8N4O2
> They have a ton of insider information that nobody else does
Are you willing and able to elaborate?
~~~
throwaway2048
They have a (slightly out of date) page on the very topic
[https://www.semiaccurate.com/fullyaccurate/](https://www.semiaccurate.com/fullyaccurate/)
Some things since then, they were the first media outlet to talk about how
Intel's 10nm was a disaster, The first media outlet to talk about Zen chiplet
technology and predict AMD had a homerun on their hands.
~~~
mtgx
They also "predicted" Intel's delays and ultimate failure with Broadwell
(basically a 6-month product), too.
------
zachruss92
Honestly, this seems like another instance of Intel dropping the ball, and AMD
is more than happy to pick up the slack. AMD is already testing their 7nm Epyc
chips with OEMs to be released Q1'19.
My takeaway from this is that server manufacturers are starting to recommend
Epyc is a solution which will increase AMD's market share. This will just
create more competition between Red and Blue which will give consumers faster
innovation and better prices.
------
DeepYogurt
Can anyone explain the shortage of 14nm chips? This article simply mentions
that most readers are aware of this fact and I am unable to find supporting
articles.
~~~
tristanj
[https://www.tomshardware.com/news/14nm-processor-intel-
short...](https://www.tomshardware.com/news/14nm-processor-intel-
shortage-9000-series,37746.html)
Because Intel's 10nm process is delayed, their 14nm fab is overbooked leading
to a chip shortage.
~~~
dman
But isnt the positive spin on that they are selling every chip they could
make?
~~~
hajile
No.
Two fabs output more chips than one fab. Intel has deals with other companies
for both 10nm and 14nm production and some of those deals are undoubtedly
based on Intel moving their own chips to 10nm. At capacity and unable to
increase as expected means customers move to other companies that make
compatible, competitive products. Once those companies move, they may not come
back.
This is quite a bad position to be in.
~~~
dman
Are there other companies that are using Intel fabs with real volume?
~~~
chx
[https://www.theverge.com/2018/7/25/17614930/apple-
iphone-201...](https://www.theverge.com/2018/7/25/17614930/apple-
iphone-2018-intel-cellular-modems-qualcomm-legal-dispute)
[https://www.tomshardware.com/news/14nm-processor-intel-
short...](https://www.tomshardware.com/news/14nm-processor-intel-
shortage-9000-series,37746.html)
> That ramp is occurring as Intel is also bringing production of its 14nm XMM
> 7560 modems online for Apple during the second half of this year. The new
> Apple contract, which consists of millions of modems for iPhones, will
> certainly be a top priority at Intel's fabs.
~~~
chasil
I had heard that Apple will be dumping Intel modems after that contract is
complete, with Mediatek the likely new partner. This might have something to
do with the Qualcomm lawsuit over Apple breaking NDAs by sharing sensitive
information with Intel.
Assuming this to be so, Apple may not be allocated the highest priority.
------
acd
Arm chips will most likely replace Intel even for servers. I think we may se
massive core count with lower clocked frequency chips as die shrink will be
come too expensive.
“Rock's law or Moore's second law, named for Arthur Rock or Gordon Moore, says
that the cost of a semiconductor chip fabrication plant doubles every four
years“
[https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Moore%27s_second_law](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Moore%27s_second_law)
~~~
vardump
CPU side channel attacks, speculative execution leaks, throttling and cache
effects, might eventually benefit the ARM server camp.
Maybe instead of virtual machines we'll end up running (some) workloads on
cheap, low power and isolated ARM CPUs, directly on bare metal without
potentially leaky virtualization. Something like 4-16 GB of ECC RAM over 1-2
channels, quad core Cortex A73, A76 or similar.
(Some ARMv8 designs are actually not that far behind of x86 chips in scalar
performance anymore. SIMD (vector integer/floating point) is another matter,
but I guess it's not impossible to slap a few 256 or 512 bits wide SIMD units
in ARM designs.)
~~~
gfody
I wonder if AMD has the fortitude to try again after the premature ejaculation
that was
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/SeaMicro](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/SeaMicro)
~~~
djrogers
SeaMicro wasn’t ARM though- it was X86 (intel Atom to be specific).
------
martin1975
Feels a bit like Apple's resurrection from the dead when Jobs came back to
take the helm after having been 'fired'... now AMD is eating Intel's pie left
right and center.
~~~
xattt
Are there specific people that are back at AMD that had not been there during
the last decade?
~~~
martin1975
the new CEO, her name eludes me, a Chinese lady, she's very much responsible
for AMD's recent success and capitalizing on Intel's mistakes
~~~
dragontamer
Wikipedia says Lisa Su is Taiwanese-American.
Rumor is that she's somehow related to NVidia's chief. Like 2nd cousins or 3rd
niece / something-something removed or something of that nature. Just for some
delicious irony.
EDIT: Found it. Jen-Hsun Huang is apparently her Uncle.
[https://babeltechreviews.com/nvidias-ceo-is-the-uncle-of-
amd...](https://babeltechreviews.com/nvidias-ceo-is-the-uncle-of-amds-ceo/)
> Technically, Lisa Su’s grandfather is Jen-Hsun Huang’s uncle. They are not
> exactly niece and uncle, but close relatives.
~~~
ksec
Jen is 表舅, So it should be Lisa Su's mum ( it has to be on her mum's side and
not her dad ) 's Dad or Mother's ( Grand Pa / Grand Ma ) , and their brother
or sisters's son.
------
ItsTotallyOn
Intel used to keep less important products, like chipsets, on trailing nodes
(right now, that's 22nm). Now the company is fabbing the chipsets on 14nm,
too. That's mainly because of the late move to 10nm. Intel's processors SHOULD
be on 10nm, but they aren't, so chipsets are eating into 14nm production
capacity. Intel has to create one chipset for each processor produced (in most
cases), so this adds up to a lot of chips.
------
LinuxBender
How many server models have HP and Dell switched to using Epyc?
~~~
JohannFlobuster
HPE Solution Architect here -- HPE has 4 lines, 3 public / 1 private. DL385
and DL325 are rack based servers aka traditional pizza box.
DL385 is your workhorse platform. DL325 is a 1P design based for heavy PCIe
connected (read: NVMe) devices.
The CL3150 is a cloudline server and will likely be more consumed in the
service provider space, in my opinion.
The Apollo 35 is available to top 200 volume accounts (which has been annouced
publicly, but is not available to your everyday customer.)
This type [of information leak] is my worst nightmare as someone who works
with resellers, letting these types of documents in the wrong hands or somehow
access is breached like this.
Edit 2: I am a server SA, MASE. I configure servers all the time. If customer
demand shows the swap, you _could_ see the proc move over to other lines, such
as blades and the HPC markets.
~~~
old-gregg
Super-curious: have you seen much customer-driven demand for AMD EPYC, i.e.
for reasons other than Xeon availability? AMD processors have been affected to
a lesser degree to speculative execution exploits, they're cheaper and (if I'm
not mistaken) offer more PCIe lanes, etc.
Also, do you expect 7mm EPYC to do well in your space? Thanks!
~~~
JohannFlobuster
Depends on market segement. I've seen alot of demand for Epyc in workloads
that are sensitive to memory bandwidth. Just so much to offer when you max out
8 channels.
They are cheaper due to fabrication process. The PCIe lane story is stuff of
fanboys. It comes at a cost, power and heat.
Secondly, anyone looking at an NVMe box should be looking at AMD in my
opinion. The trick is if you are doing a VM farm, mixing Intel and AMD aint
the best idea, as you all know.
I see EPYC ticking up fast.
In terms of exploits like Spectre/Meltdown, I'm pretty sure the exploits AMD
claimed were not vulnerable, they ended up pushing out microcode for anyway.
So its a moot point.
I HAVE come across alot of customers who have DOUBLED their core count due to
Spectre/Meltdown mitigations, and they are attracted to AMDs, high core, lower
cost options. But remember, the power draw is different and always test/PoC!
~~~
mmt
> The PCIe lane story is stuff of fanboys. It comes at a cost, power and heat.
Could you unpack this a bit? Specifically, I'm curious if the cost is a
premium per lane (e.g. W/lane greater on AMD than on Intel) [1]. Also, is that
cost at all affected by the I/O volume or merely the CPU being power-hungry
overall?
[1] Of course, that assumes everything else being equal, which it can't be, as
well as equal proprotion of PCIe utilization, which is unlikely.
~~~
JohannFlobuster
Ive had a few customers test AMD and found a higher operating temp and
determined it was due to higher power consumption. On paper, you get more
lanes at a lower TDP w/ AMD. In practice, as always, your results may vary.
Test!
PCIe lanes and counting them is funny math. Do the homework on system boards,
how they communicate, and the tax of moving information between processors.
However, I would say their tests were short, and AMD processors have 3 power
operating modes. There was also a neat blog posted somewhere (I think on
here...) a little while back suggesting that the AMD proc did not need to run
at advertised power on the customer procs. It was about compile times and how
much power still resulted in good times. That was consumer-grade Ryzen chips
tested though.
~~~
mmt
Unfortunately, higher temperature says less about power and more about thermal
design (often of the overall system and not just the chip).
> On paper, you get more lanes at a lower TDP w/ AMD.
I was hoping you (or anyone) had at least some real-world anecdata.
However, the theoretical power cost being lower suggests it's unlikely that if
there's a premium in practice, it's unlikely to be significant.
> PCIe lanes and counting them is funny math. Do the homework on system boards
It's not _that_ funny. Latency "taxes" are certainly a concern for some
workloads, but, ultimately, if there's not enough bandwidth to get the data to
the CPU, such that it might end up idle, that can trump any tax. The
difference between 40 and 128 lanes of PCIe 3.0 in transferring 64MiB is on
the order of 1ms.
Finding a mobo that allows access to all the lanes might be more challenging
when there are 128 than when there are 40-48, but I expect the popularity of
NVMe to reduce that challenge somewhat.
OTOH, it seems Epyc uses half those lanes for communication between CPUs, so
the usable lanes doesn't go up for 2S vs 1S, so perhaps the comparison is
really 128 lanes vs 96 lanes.
~~~
m_mueller
yes, latency vs. throughput, the main idea also behind GPU computing. It
worked there well, and CPUs are incredibly going to sacrifice latency for
throughout as well.
------
tanilama
What is wrong with Intel...Haven't seen this level of inaction from a major
firm for a while.
~~~
beerlord
Like what happens at any big monopoly... sales and marketing are prioritised
over product development.
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_1rXqD6M614](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_1rXqD6M614)
~~~
leadingthenet
I knew what it was before I clicked, but I still watched it to the end. He was
a really smart guy.
------
lolc
This reads like a hit-piece. What are the relative volumes of Xeon versu Epyc?
that would be kinda important to know. Maybe I just didn't see them mentioned
in the article.
------
trhway
back in 2002 it was a struggle for AMD to sign up any big one to offer servers
with Opteron chips. This time it looks different.
~~~
micv
Opteron servers were the absolute business for a few years in the mid/late
2000s. They were a preferred supplier for a few years while Intel wallowed.
2002 was before my time, but that was the era of SPARC in the business I work
in.
------
chx
The actual newsletter is on this page [https://h41360.www4.hpe.com/partner-
news/cat-enterprise.php](https://h41360.www4.hpe.com/partner-news/cat-
enterprise.php)
------
lmz
Very nice of them not to blur out the email recipient's address at the bottom
of the email :)
~~~
exikyut
No, I can't imagine that not being a major goof. SA may have just lost a
source, or at least some goodwill.
It's entirely possible this was deliberate but I call it unlikely.
------
aidenn0
Is it me, or did SA leave Aaron Weston's e-mail address in the image?
------
craftyguy
> The page is marked, “Confidential | HPE Internal & Authorized Partner Use
> Only” but it is quite open and does not require a login. (Note: We are not
> linking it because of all the sites that steal our stories, rip us off, and
> don’t credit)
Oh please.
~~~
TheForumTroll
I don't think you are aware how much background other writers grab from them
and no one credits them, ever. They have a reputation of knowing lots of
insider stuff and there's a reason that they can survive with a paywall while
hardly anyone else can (I can't think of a singe site writing about hardware
that is subscription based?).
~~~
nottorp
And what a paywall! I was reading semiaccurate for the entertainment factor
when it was free, now you can't even think of subscribing unless their info
actually means money to you.
------
faragon
Intel previous technology to 14nm is 22nm (2011 [1])
[1]
[https://en.wikichip.org/wiki/intel/process](https://en.wikichip.org/wiki/intel/process)
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
Why didn't JavaScript adopt the OO model adopted by C++/Java when it was designed? - bootload
https://www.quora.com/Why-didnt-JavaScript-adopt-the-object-oriented-model-adopted-by-C++-Java-when-it-was-designed/answer/Brendan-Eich?share=1
======
bootload
_" If JS didn’t make it into Netscape 2, we’d be speaking VBScript."_
source:
[https://twitter.com/BrendanEich/status/793685578491437056](https://twitter.com/BrendanEich/status/793685578491437056)
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
Bitcoin - The Internet of Money - WardPlunet
http://startupboy.com/2013/11/07/bitcoin-the-internet-of-money
======
vovantics
Testing
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
The Girls Next Door - not_paul_graham
http://www.5280.com/girlsnextdoor/?src=longreads&mc_cid=54948c4afe&mc_eid=99af5e345c
======
reubenmorais
Took me a while to realize: you have to scroll down to see the content.
~~~
fernly
In Chrome, it doesn't scroll. It appears to be only the image and the
headline. (Edit: nope, nor Firefox either, for me)
~~~
jaredsohn
It does scroll in Chrome. However, you have to scroll for a bit before
anything beyond the scrollbar changes.
------
fit2rule
Slavery in America is something that really needs to be discussed openly and
in free society. People believing that slavery doesn't/can't exist in their
modern world really need to be exposed to the truth: there is more slavery now
than there ever was.
~~~
tmerr
When you say there's more slavery now than there ever was I can't tell whether
you're exaggerating or know something that I don't. As far as America goes, it
seems like a stark difference between now and 150 years ago when 13% of the
population consisted of slaves [0]. If you're referring to third world
countries that's more understandable due to the number of young workers
building products for wealthier countries.
[0]
[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1860_United_States_Census](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1860_United_States_Census)
~~~
fit2rule
[http://www.globalslaveryindex.org/report/](http://www.globalslaveryindex.org/report/)
It is estimated that the US has 60,000 slaves _today_ , per definition. So no,
its not over yet in the US.
However, world-wide: approximately 30 million people fit the definition of
enslaved humans.
One thing, though: the US Prison System is considered by some to be
industrialized slavery. If this is included in the statistics, the US
enslavement index goes way, way up.
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
Is There Enough Meat for Everyone? - mhb
http://www.gatesnotes.com/Books/Should-We-Eat-Meat
======
msandford
Joel Salatin is one of the first people that comes to mind after reading the
article. He might not rub you the right way (as he's an evangelical Christian,
etc) but he sure does seem to have some interesting ideas about raising cattle
in a natural way that's also highly productive. His way of farming seems to be
about 4x as land efficient as his neighbors (if you believe him, I tend to)
which is a big deal. It also seems to be relatively low input (not buying lots
of feed) and low capital; he uses mostly cheap electric fence.
If I sound like a fanboy it's because I'm leaning that way. It really feels
like he's "hacking" farming and I have a big appreciation for that.
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mjzvtM-
Wo4c](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mjzvtM-Wo4c)
~~~
have_humility
A BBC Horizons documentary with subtitle "How to Feed the Planet" (popsci--I'm
aware) was posted to reddit a few months ago. The conclusion, IIRC, suggested
that even the best hacks in beef farming don't hold a candle when compared to
approaches that lean more heavily towards transitioning away from beef to
other types of meat, especially chicken.
~~~
msandford
Cattle have a FCR of between 5 and 20 or so. Chickens more like 2ish. If beef
is bad because it takes 20 units of food to make one unit of beef and you have
a way to make 4x the units of food per acre, then your effective FCR (relative
to traditional methods) drops from 20 (at the worst) to 5. If it was at 5 then
your effective FCR could be as low as 1.25 If it was more in the middle at say
10ish then the effective FCR could be at 2.5 which is pretty respectable. This
is made better because you're also getting eggs from the sanitizing chickens
and meat from the broiling chickens that are all making multiple passes over
the same land at different times.
This is of course predicated on grass fed beef with the farmer taking a
substantial interest in raising as much grass as possible (sanitizing chickens
and paddock system). It's not a lot of work, but it does take more effort than
just throwing grain at cows in a feedlot.
~~~
have_humility
I don't know what a sanitizing chicken is, and apparently neither does Google.
I assume from context it means chickens bred to lay eggs?
~~~
msandford
In this case it's chickens which get carted around a few days behind the cows.
Cows eat grass. Cows poop on field. Flies lay eggs in poop. Eggs hatch into
maggots, which eat poop. Chickens dig through poop looking for maggots. This
spreads the poop out and gives the chickens an excellent source of protein.
Cow poop is actually a good fertilizer for grass, but it's too concentrated
normally. The chickens spread it out to a more reasonable concentration and
produce eggs in the process.
------
beat
A basic vegetarian argument is that meat is inefficient compared to grain, and
there just isn't enough resource. But if this were true, then older cultures
with far less resources would never have wasted food on raising meat. Clearly,
they did.
Animals are a way of turning inedible things into edible things. Grass? Well,
you could till it all, or just turn sheep and cattle loose on it. Grain hulls?
Throw them away, or feed them to the chickens. Spoiled garbage? Pigs will eat
it. For as long as we've farmed, animals have increased rather than decreased
the food supply.
~~~
pdx
Exactly. I grew up on cattle ranches in Montana and Wyoming. The short growing
season, rocky soil, and dry conditions would make any attempt at farming
laughable, but the cattle did just fine. Driving them into the high mountains
for summer grazing allowed the mountain grass to also be converted to beef.
None of that land was appropriate to farming, which means that any beef grown
there is extra food for the planet.
What always amazes me about capitalism is how it often manages to allocate
resources efficiently. Nobody is raising large cattle herds down in farm
country. Land that can be farmed is generally farmed, because that provides
the best return. Land that can't be farmed, is ranched. This idea that you
have to give up farming to have meat doesn't take this into account.
~~~
beat
This doesn't mean corn-fed meat isn't wasteful, of course. But it does mean
that meat itself isn't the cause of hunger elsewhere.
~~~
Lawtonfogle
If it is wasteful, I wonder how much is caused by corn subsidies.
------
sremani
The way the US society discourages vegetarianism (even for people who a
traditionally vegetarian) is mind boggling. When you ask for a vegetarian
option, one would be lucky if he does not get stared like a space alien, esp.
in the country.
~~~
ElijahLynn
This is starting to change but yeah, it is saddening how many people think you
need meat to survive and grow. Bill Gates left his intelligence behind on this
one.
All protein on this planet was created by plants via photosynthesis.
~~~
slayed0
Yes, (most) protein on this planet was created by plants, but not all protein
is equal. Most proteins from plants are not complete proteins and cannot
sustain a human being. This is not true of animal protein. Yes you can combine
various plant proteins together to form complete proteins, but the answer is
not as simple as: just eat plants.
~~~
astazangasta
This is incorrect. What, pray tell, is a "complete protein?" There are no
amino acids in animals that are not found in plants. You appear to be wholly
misinformed on this subject.
~~~
slayed0
"A complete protein (or whole protein) is a source of protein that contains an
adequate proportion of all nine of the essential amino acids necessary for the
dietary needs of humans or other animals"
[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Complete_protein](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Complete_protein)
Many plants have "complete" amino acid profiles but one or more amino acids
are too low to be completely adequate for humans. In this case, another
protein source with a supplemental amino acid profile is required in order to
balance out the deficiency in the first.
~~~
astazangasta
Quoting from your own source: >Nearly all foods contain all twenty amino acids
in some quantity, and nearly all of them contain the essential amino acids in
sufficient quantity.
You don't need to eat meat to get your protein.
~~~
JoeAltmaier
But traditional foods in America included beans, corn, squash. Presumably to
get a reliable source of protein. The natives weren't dieticians; they ate
that because villages with that tradition thrived.
So protein quality and quantity can't likely be insured by eating any old
vegetables. Its not as simple as 'don't eat meat'.
------
MrDosu
A personal experience I have made in trying to live off the land a few times
autonomously is that it is quite sustainable when you are hunting animals.
When you rely solely on plants you need to roam HUGE swatches of land in
comparison and extract almost all of the plants you find.
------
GordonS
Another issue is what parts of the animal we eat or don't eat. At least here
in the UK, many wouldn't touch liver, heart, kidneys etc with a barge pole,
despite never having even tried them.
While offal has gained ground in restaurants in recent years, it's still
absent from most homes.
Offal makes up a decent chunk[1] of cattle and pigs, and fresh, well cooked
offal is a delicious thing. There should be more effort by the meat industry
to persuade people to try it.
[1]
[http://www.ers.usda.gov/media/147867/ldpm20901.pdf](http://www.ers.usda.gov/media/147867/ldpm20901.pdf)
~~~
gadders
A lot of UK farmers are now shipping offal (or the "5th quarter") to other
locations such as China and the Middle East. So a lot does get eaten, even if
not locally.
Source for this is Farming Today podcast on Radio 4.
~~~
GordonS
A good point - people are not so 'scared' of offal in some other cultures
~~~
gadders
I quite often eat liver, have eaten heart when a kid and happily wolf down a
steak and kidney pie.
I will not go anywhere near tripe.
------
jasonisalive
As usual, Gates gets the true problem completely wrong. The real issue here
are the numerous and significant unpriced economic externalities associated
with animal flesh production, whose impact is rendered enormous by the scale
of this industry. Animal rearing produces a major portion of global greenhouse
gases, rivers of faeces, pollutes waterways and overtaxes water resources, not
because of a lack of capacity to technologically innovate cleaner solutions,
but because collective interests in these resources are not being properly
acknowledged and protected through the negotiation and enforcement of pricing.
This is a classic economic problem. Bill Gates does the issue no favours with
his starry-eyed techno-optimism or his attempts depict food supply as a
selfless global communal endeavour. No, food supply is a market of profit-
seeking individuals using their resources to generate goods considered
valuable enough to trade by other individuals. There is simply an
overproduction of these goods because they are being sold without their
externalised costs being factored in. Food producers can make their products
too cheaply, so too many are made.
Tackle the pricing problem and technological development to minimise
environmental impacts will naturally emerge. Absent this step, efforts to
develop and promulgate technological improvements will never get far.
~~~
bryanlarsen
This is of course not unique to animal farming. Where I grew up animal farming
is much more environmentally friendly than grain farming. It uses green water
and native prairie, without chemical use or plowing. (Plowing is generally
much more environmentally destructive than chemical use).
In Saskatchewan, higher pricing of externalities would increase animal
production, not lower it.
~~~
sleepyhead
> Where I grew up
Well that is the problem here. Farming has changed. Particularly so in
America. A handful slaughterhouses, heavy corn use, chemically power washed
eggs, all within a framework that is made for economical returns and not
animal welfare or taste. And it is not a US-only problem. Denmark for example
is facing huge issues with pig farming and here in Norway we are seeing
problems with use of antibiotics in chickens.
------
sehugg
The article briefly touches on this, but substituting more efficient (< 2 to 1
conversion ratio) meats like chicken and farmed fish seems like a good idea.
The high price of beef right now certainly has changed my shopping habits, and
I can't say I really miss it -- nor do other Americans according to some
sources[1].
p.s. take chicken drumsticks, pat dry, salt and pepper, iron skillet for 1
hour at 450 :)
[1] [http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2014/01/02/chicken-vs-
beef_n_4...](http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2014/01/02/chicken-vs-
beef_n_4525366.html)
~~~
rotten
20 years ago we were talking about shellfish aquaculture as the answer to this
problem (which was obvious even then). The lower on the food chain you go,
typically, the lower the production costs. Filter feeding mussels, scallops,
and oysters are about as low as you can get and still call it "meat". Many
producers were touting these creatures as the answer to getting protein in the
future. Since then water pollution has seriously curtailed the growth of that
industry. It is still worth exploring as an option though.
~~~
delish
> Since then water pollution has seriously curtailed the growth of that
> industry.
Interesting. I'd like to know more. Do you have a source for that?
~~~
have_humility
The BBC Horizons documentary I mentioned above also looked into mussels as a
source of meat. I don't recall pollution being mentioned as an issue, but it
gave other reasons why even optimistic outlooks could only consider them a
partial replacement, given the numbers we have for meat consumption today (not
to mention decades from now).
------
gadders
I love meat. My neighbours have cows and sheep and pigs and I own chickens.
I've been up close with all those animals and they're pretty cool in their own
way.
I sometimes thing that if meat could be grown in a lab and animals didn't have
to die, I'd be happy with that. But then I realise that arsehole food
scientists from somewhere like Kraft would get hold of it and ruin it.
~~~
ocfx
Meat infused with their yellow cheese powder
~~~
gadders
Yeah, and hydrogenated vegetable oil, food dye, fillers, lego offcuts etc.
------
have_humility
What are the numbers on the chart in the linked page supposed to mean? Average
meat consumption per capita per year, organized by country? And the bigger
question: how do this kinds of charts keep getting made, and how do articles
that otherwise make no hint at their own charts' existence keep being
published?
~~~
diego_moita
It is a good question.
I think it refers to carcass per person. This means that they're counting the
weight of non-eaten tissue (bones, skin, intestines, brains, etc).
The chart sounds odd to me. I am Brazilian and I know that Argentinians and
Uruguayans consume a lot more meat than us, I believe even more than the
Americans.
When it comes to non-carcass, edible meat only we are at 37 kg per
person/year. The Uruguayans are at 60 kg.
------
Rockslide
tl;dr: no (at least not at the moment):
> Returning to the question at hand — how can we make enough meat without
> destroying the planet? — one solution would be to ask the biggest carnivores
> Americans and others) to cut back, by as much as half. [...]
> But there are reasons to be optimistic. For one thing, the world’s appetite
> for meat may eventually level off. [...] I also believe that innovation will
> improve our ability to produce meat. Cheaper energy and better crop
> varieties will drive up agricultural productivity, especially in Africa, so
> we won’t have to choose as often between feeding animals and feeding people.
------
rboyd
I'm grateful Gates and others are funding meat alternatives. He briefly
touched on the ethical issues (by proxy), but we hardly ever do here on HN. I
remember in 2011 Zuckerberg resolved to only eat meat that he killed himself.
I think more people ought to try that. I know I wouldn't be able to hunt and
slaughter my own food, and I respect people that do much more than the status
quo of outsourcing animal murder.
It's pretty hypocritical of this society to elect ~4 species of animals that
we endorse killing. But we think about eating dog or dolphin and rageface.
~~~
beat
Oh, if people get hungry enough, they'll eat dogs and dolphins, all right.
At the end of WWII, rats had been exterminated in Berlin. That was all there
was to eat.
~~~
gadders
I invited my 93 year old gran to a barbecue (she's 97 now) and asked her if
there is anything she doesn't eat or wouldn't like.
Gran: Whale meat
Me: Er, OK. I can do that.
Gran: We had it during the war on rationing. You didn't know if you were
eating meaty fish or fishy meat.
------
gadders
There is also this company: [http://motherboard.vice.com/blog/silicon-valleys-
fake-eggs-a...](http://motherboard.vice.com/blog/silicon-valleys-fake-eggs-
are-better-than-the-real-thing)
that is planning to create synthetic eggs (even though eggs are pretty much
are the perfect food).
------
shusain
Like carbon caps, governments could introduce meat production limits if none
of the other solutions pan out.
------
platz
No
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
Arbitrary Code Execution on Pokemon Stadium for the N64 - pizza
https://github.com/MrCheeze/pokestadium-ace
======
dimodi9
I see a pipeline error message on the bottom left.
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
Are You Lightest in the Morning? [video] - yincrash
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lL2e0rWvjKI
======
yincrash
Essentially a video form of
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9416062](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9416062)
where the host investigates what the public thinks as well as animation of the
actual mechanisms.
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
Follow the White Ball: The torments of snooker’s greatest player - jonathansizz
http://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2015/03/30/follow-the-white-ball
======
sakri
I've been a fan since 1992. Possibly the most beautiful video for me on
youtube :
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bpeBugHSCnU](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bpeBugHSCnU)
Ronnie O' Sullivan Fastest 147 in History - 5 minutes 20 seconds - 1997 World
Championship
(mostly because I watched it live, and still remember how it blew my mind,
still does)
~~~
coleifer
Absolutely incredible the suspense must've been crazy.
------
JacobAldridge
From a timing perspective, O'Sullivan lost overnight - knocked out in the
Quarter Finals of the World Championship.
"I'll go for a run in the morning and sparring in the afternoon. Life has to
go on and will go on."
[http://m.bbc.com/sport/snooker/32524542](http://m.bbc.com/sport/snooker/32524542)
~~~
corin_
Relevant quote from the article about a game 5 months ago:
> _In the semifinal, O’Sullivan found himself 4–1 down and on the brink of
> losing to Stuart Bingham, the ninth-ranked player in the world. “That was a
> match where I just thought, I’m not going to be pushed around by someone
> like Stuart,” O’Sullivan told me afterward. “I’m not ready to accept that
> role yet. I fucking hated that match.” He won, 6–5._
(Bingham being the same player who just beat him)
After this defeat it sounds like he's thinking of quitting again, but I
certainly wouldn't put money on him staying away.
~~~
ed0wolf
He always sounds like he's quitting the game.
~~~
corin_
That was my point. They said, one of these days he actually will quit for
good, but I hope not soon.
------
jonathonf
You could argue he's one of the greats. But the greatest?
"Many wonder whether O’Sullivan can equal Hendry’s record of seven world
titles and officially become, in his forties, the greatest player the game has
ever known."
Not yet.
~~~
jdietrich
When O'Sullivan is on form, he has an ease and fluency that no other player
can match. His maximum breaks are rightfully legendary, and give a glimpse of
his immense talent. O'Sullivan doesn't really compete against other players,
but against his own psyche; For this reason, he is both the most exciting and
the most frustrating player to watch.
~~~
jonathansizz
There was a nice passage describing O'Sullivan in an article [1] posted on
r/snooker recently:
"For years, the main frustration for the keen snooker fan was the apparently
immutable dichotomy between the monotonous winners and the flamboyant losers.
It seemed that we could either have the unflappable resolve of a Steve Davis
(six-time World Champ) or the charismatic fragility of a Jimmy White (six-time
runner-up), but we couldn't have both in one player. By only self-destructing
either before the start of a tournament or after winning one, O'Sullivan has
cleverly defied this convention. He doesn't fall apart in the crucial stages
of a match; he plays consistently throughout, either like the greatest player
in the world or only, say, the twelfth best. It all depends on which Ronnie
shows up."
[1] [http://www.ianbgibson.com/on-snooker](http://www.ianbgibson.com/on-
snooker)
------
gadders
As a Brit, it seems funny to see Ronnie O'Sullivan profiled in the New Yorker.
Who are they going to cover next? The Crafty Cockney? [1]
[1]
[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eric_Bristow](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eric_Bristow)
~~~
thorin
I'd prefer Jockey Wilson.
~~~
gadders
I was going to suggest him, but he has the disadvantage of being dead.
------
jbrooksuk
> O’Sullivan is frequently described as a genius. But he does not see how this
> can be so.
Ah Imposter Syndrome, we meet again.
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
Ask HN: Which companies are working with/on the coolest technology? - cjbarber
Also any thoughts on how I could capture this in a website?
======
lanna
You have to start with a proper definition of "coolest technologies".
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
Jeff Dean on Large-Scale Deep Learning at Google - charlieegan3
http://highscalability.com/blog/2016/3/16/jeff-dean-on-large-scale-deep-learning-at-google.html
======
hartator
It seems to work fine for me, a link to the actual talk on YouTube:
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QSaZGT4-6EY](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QSaZGT4-6EY)
Jeff Dean - Chuck Norris for us nerds - fact as a bonus: "The rate at which
Jeff Dean produces code jumped by a factor of 40 in late 2000 when he upgraded
his keyboard to USB2.0."
------
return0
Tangentially, watching the pace of papers coming out in machine learning is
insane. It's so fast, people may literally cite powerpoint slides when the
paper doesnt exist yet. The culture of openness seems to have fostered this
insane pace. Contrasting that with the reclusive culture of life sciences
explains why there is slow progress there.
~~~
hackuser
If someone with technical expertise wanted to keep up on this field, but it
wasn't their profession - i.e., they don't need to know every detail and don't
have time to read a lot - what would be a good source?
~~~
p1esk
Follow Yann Lecun's posts on Facebook.
------
milesward
If you like this talk, come see him talk about what's even beyond that at GCP
Next:
[https://cloudplatformonline.com/NEXT2016.html](https://cloudplatformonline.com/NEXT2016.html)
Disclaimer: I will be there freaking out because I work at Google on Cloud and
Jeff Dean is rad.
------
YeGoblynQueenne
>> If you’re not considering how to use deep neural nets to solve your data
understanding problems, you almost certainly should be. This line is taken
directly from the talk
And this is exactly why Google's hype of their tech is getting dangerous for
everyone else, who is not Google. Because they advocate, nay, they preach,
that everyone should abandon what they're doing and do what Google tells them
works. And, oh, look, we just released those nice, free tools you can use to
do it like we do!
Which is insane. Google is a corporate entity. It has financial interests. The
purpose of its existence is to sell you its stuff, it doesn't give a dime if
you'll solve your problems or not.
This piece of advice is like Bayer, back in the day, selling its Aspirin as
the cure of all ills: "If you're not considering how to take Aspirin to solve
your health problems, you almost certainly should be".
~~~
dekhn
Although Google is a corp and has financial interests, I think it's in
Google's interest to share these ideas in workable form with the world. It can
(and I hope it will) contribute a lot to improving a number of things that are
wrong with the world.
When I was an academic scientist in the mid 2000s, I ended up with more data
than I could deal with, and none of the computing systems in academia at the
time dealt well with that (they were tuned for HPC/supercomputers). The
bigtable, mapreduce, and GFS papers were huge to me, because they provided a
nicer framework for data processing. Although Google made those tools for
Search and Ads (and profited greatly from them) they also published them, and
Doug Cutting and others incorporated them into Hadoop. A similar thing is
happening now, but Google got better at releasing their codes as open source,
which reduces the time between publication of a good idea, and replication of
that work by others outside the corp.
(eventually, I went to google to get direct access to its infrastructure;
built Exacycle, gave away an enormous amount of free computing time that cost
Google rather than profiting it, the leadership _loved_ it even though it cost
money, and I even managed to get Googler to apply machine learning to academic
problems I cared about).
So I don't think Google solely acts in its own short term financial interests.
Also, aspirin has turned out to be amazing at solving a wide range of health
problems, so I think bayer was probably right (if not for the right reasons)
on that one.
~~~
YeGoblynQueenne
>> So I don't think Google solely acts in its own short term financial
interests.
I think what your experience shows is that on the one hand individuals within
Google (or any big corp) can and do align their own personal interest with
that of the corp and on the other hand that the corp can benefit the community
as long as it is making profit and serving its own purposes. Nothing
surprising there.
As to releasing its tools, here's my Thought for the Day: There's no such
thing as a free lunch and the only people who pretend there is are the ones
who want to steal your lunch money. Google releases its tools when it is in
the interest of Google to do so, not when it's in the interest of anyone else.
Yes, they're doing better now than in the past in open-sourcing stuff and I
can't know what's on their mind. But I can tell that it doesn't hurt them to
get people adopting their tech even as Google itself develops it further and
further to something that can only be used by a corp with Google's resources.
In short, I'm pretty sure that their friendly offer of, frex, TensorFlow is
just some trick to get people roped in to their technology, in the same way
that other corps have tried to do before- except that they also made you pay
for the privilege.
^
~~~
dekhn
Did you really say that making TensorFlow open source is a trick to get people
roped into Google technology?
That doesn't make any sense to me.
Another big point I think you missed is those individuals within Google
influence the decisions about what gets open sourced. We have an entire team
that facilitates taking Google-written code and opensourcing it.
~~~
YeGoblynQueenne
OK, with the hindsight of a good night's sleep I admit that the bit about
giving away TensorFlow does sound a bit tinfoil-hats on.
Let me rephrase that then: I can't possibly hope to know why Google is giving
away free stuff. I can certainly know that they don't do it out of the
kindness of their hearts though.
That said, I am indeed very concerned that Google is trying to shape, not only
the market, but the science also, to suit its own interests. That could be
really bad for everyone, including Google; if research stagnates, they too
will find themselves unable to deliver on their big promises about ever
speeding progress.
------
return0
He gave a similar talk at stanford a few days later:
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=T7YkPWpwFD4](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=T7YkPWpwFD4)
------
yeukhon
Nice. Forbbiden. Did we manage to crash the site? highscalability.com supposed
to be pretty high-volume site.
~~~
toddh
Sorry about this. It means Squarespace has black listed your IP for some
reason. Unfortunately I can't do anything about it. If you can try from
another address it will probably work.
~~~
yeukhon
Wow :-) I am working from corp office. But thanks!
------
goc
I am very interested in AI that can teach itself(sounds too great). Where can
I learn up about such AI(related concepts and the whole 9 yards) to start
reading papers in the field? I am just looking for comprehensive
sources(preferably textbooks).
~~~
knn
AI by Russell and Norvig. Machine learning by Murphy, Elements of Statistical
Learning by Hastie et al. Just a few good ones out of many!
~~~
gnahckire
AI by Russell and Norvig is one of my favorite textbooks of all time.
------
sounds
I wish I had more than one upvote for this article. Read the article. If you
have the time, just watch the video.
------
unexistance
you need to understand the data before it can be made to good 'use'
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11272473](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11272473)
------
giardini
From the article
_"...it seems like an excellent time to gloss Jeff’s talk..."_
"gloss" a talk? WTF?
~~~
npalli
To gloss is to annotate some text (or talk)[1], the word glossary comes from
that. That meaning is overshadowed by the more modern association with
shininess but the annotation meaning seems appropriate here.
[1]
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gloss_(annotation)](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gloss_\(annotation\))
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
How mosquitos deal with getting hit by raindrops - davi
http://phenomena.nationalgeographic.com/2015/06/24/raindrops-keep-falling-on-my-head-a-mosquitos-lament/
======
developer1
Of course the video doesn't show anything interesting, the mosquito's leg is
hardly even grazed. I was definitely hoping for the version where a drop
smacked the insect dead on target. Fairly strange for a lab result - if that's
the only video that was captured, it really doesn't seem to divulge much at
all. Where's the cool video? :D
~~~
e2e8
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LQ88ny09ruM](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LQ88ny09ruM)
~~~
lucb1e
Direct hit just after the minute mark:
[https://youtu.be/LQ88ny09ruM?t=1m3s](https://youtu.be/LQ88ny09ruM?t=1m3s)
~~~
mordrax
Watching it several times, it looks like only the left most mozzie came out
unscathed. The other two took it hard and went down... definitely didn't 'walk
off the bus' :\
------
upofadown
>A study says a mosquito being hit by a raindrop is roughly the equivalent of
a human being whacked by a school bus, the typical bus being about 50 times
the mass of a person.
That is not a sensible comparison. When you scale something mass changes as
the cube of dimension. Strength changes as the square of dimension. So small
things are inherently stronger with respect to their mass.
~~~
abandonliberty
[Citation Wanted]
Very believable; how does the math work out?
~~~
troymc
Galileo. _Discourses and Mathematical Demonstrations Relating to Two New
Sciences_. 1638.
It's known as the square-cube law.
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Square-
cube_law](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Square-cube_law)
~~~
abandonliberty
Thanks - I hadn't realized that muscle strength was proportional purely to
cross section.
------
dgemm
> But because our mosquito is oh-so-light, the raindrop moves on, unimpeded,
> and hardly any force is transferred. All that happens is that our mosquito
> is suddenly scooped up by the raindrop and finds itself hurtling toward the
> ground at a velocity of roughly nine meters per second, an acceleration
> which can’t be very comfortable, because it puts enormous pressure on the
> insect’s body, up to 300 gravities worth, says professor Hu.
Interesting article, but in the span of one paragraph here we have confused
velocity, acceleration, and pressure - and there are similar errors in the
following one. For an article about physics, I would expect this to at least
be proofread.
The Gell-Mann Amnesia effect:
[http://harmful.cat-v.org/journalism/](http://harmful.cat-v.org/journalism/)
~~~
joncameron
From your link:
> In any case, you read with exasperation or amusement the multiple errors in
> a story, and then turn the page to national or international affairs, and
> read as if the rest of the newspaper was somehow more accurate about
> Palestine than the baloney you just read. You turn the page, and forget what
> you know.
Which is of course intriguing, since cat-v.org hosts frothing-at-the-mouth
vitriol about topics like women in tech and gay marriage in the always
trustworthy and well reasoned medium of reposted reddit and slashdot comments.
And presumably I'm supposed to click over to the technical stuff with a
straight face.
~~~
roghummal
It's telling that you'd apply a derogatory label and attack the source medium
rather than say anything of substance about the content that offended you.
cat-v is chock-full of food for thought. You don't have to agree with any of
it and in fact disagreement is a large part of the site.
"Other than total and complete world domination, the overriding goal is to
encourage and stimulate critical and independent thinking."
------
daniel-levin
From an io9 article on the same research:
>> [Hu] and Dickerson constructed a flight arena consisting of a small acrylic
cage covered with mesh to contain the mosquitoes but permit entry of water
drops. The researchers used a water jet to simulate rain stream velocity while
observing six mosquitoes flying into the stream. Amazingly, all the mosquitoes
lived.
The researchers used _simulated rain drops_ on _six_ mosquitoes. There are
more than six species of mosquitoes. They controlled for wind effects (which
are part and parcel of rain). So they excluded horizontally travelling
raindrops. My immediate reaction to the conclusion that mosquitoes can fly in
rain was "Really? Not always". Here is a methodologically lacking and wholly
unscientific anecdote: I have lived in Johannesburg my entire life, where
mosquitoes are quite prevalent during the summer months. When it is raining
heavily (it is usually quite windy as well), the local species of mosquito
that feeds of humans do not present a problem as the number of airborne
mosquitoes tends to zero.
~~~
joeyspn
^This
I live in a mediterranean zone near a huge lake and during summer mosquitos
are your every night companions (specially if you're working during late night
hours). But when a summer storm brews the mosquitos disappear for two or three
days. Why? This has been for me a recurrent question, and the answer has been
always obvious: few of them survive being hit by raindrops.
You can make 1000 theories about how our tiny vampire friends deal with
raindrops, but it's pretty clear that intensive rain (>3hours) wipe out
mosquitos population for several days...
~~~
soneca
I also agree.
> _" And yet (you probably haven’t looked, but trust me), when it’s raining
> those little pains in the neck are happily darting about in the air, getting
> banged—and they don’t seem to care."_
I have looked and I don't trust you. I live in Brazil where mosquitoes are
present all the time, even in the city (obviously, on a smaller scale than
places closer to nature). I do notice that whenever is raining there is a
sharp drop in mosquitoes number flying inside our homes. They don't completely
disappear, but is notorious they are in much smaller numbers. As this is
common knowledge over years and years, across basically all the people, I
don't consider it anecdote, but empirical observation.
I cannot answer if that is because raindrops kill them, or they just preserve
themselves sheltered in their nests, or they breed less in rainy days, or
whatever. But the article (not sure about the research) is based on a false
premisse.
~~~
daniel-levin
Well, no, it's not empirical until we design some experiments to test the
theory, make predictions, test them, come up with potentially observable data
that would falsify our hypotheses, publish our results and let them be peer
reviewed, reproduced elsewhere etc... The jump from anecdotes to empiricism is
a large one that is not to be undertaken lightly.
------
nippoo
"Had the raindrop slammed into a bigger, slightly heavier animal, like a
dragonfly, the raindrop would “feel” the collision and lose momentum. The
raindrop might even break apart because of the impact, and force would
transfer from the raindrop to the insect’s exoskeleton, rattling the animal to
death."
Has anyone actually done any research on dragonflies being hit by raindrops,
or is this just speculation?
------
chrismorgan
The drawings in this article tend to be absurdly large, with the outcome that
the document is, transferred, around 23MB, for no good reason. _Sigh._
~~~
Jgrubb
Because editors.
------
Kiro
> In most direct hits, Hu and colleagues write, the insect is carried five to
> 20 body lengths downward
> If you want to see this for yourself, take a look at Hu’s video
What? Nothing like that happens in it.
~~~
dasmoth
Are you confusing wing span with body length?
In the right hand panel of the video, the insect certainly moves several body
lengths, and is still moving downwards at the end of the clip.
~~~
Kiro
No, it says "20 body lengths downward, and then [...] gets up and “walks” to
the side, then steps off into the air". In other words 20 body lengths while
being in the raindrop, which doesn't happen in the video. In fact, the
raindrop barely touches it.
------
ebbv
If it wasn't for the cute child like drawings this would be a truly terrible
piece of link bait. As it is it's still pretty and, and I expect better from
NatGeo.
Anyone who lives in a mosquito heavy area knows that mosquitos (like almost
all airborne insects) go into hiding during heavy rain and/or wind.
------
jbert
Does this places a reasonable selection pressure on the kinds of flying
insects we can have?
Big enough to shrug off a raindrop hit, or small enough to surf along the
surface tension until it can slide off?
~~~
baddox
Butterflies just seek shelter.
[http://www.scientificamerican.com/article/what-do-
butterflie...](http://www.scientificamerican.com/article/what-do-butterflies-
do-wh/)
------
theVirginian
It would appear they haven't yet evolved to deal with being hit by cars quite
as gracefully.
~~~
whoopdedo
I think this can be approached the same as the "ants can lift 50 times their
own weight" bit of trivia. It doesn't translate to "if a human were as strong
as an ant he'd be able to lift an elephant" because size doesn't scale that
way. Ants and mosquitoes get away with larger forces relative to their mass
because the skeleton and muscles needed are still within reasonable material
and fuel costs. A human-sized animal that wanted to survive being hit by a car
would need to spend much more energy per mass than the insect does.
~~~
eru
I think theVirginian was commenting about mosquitoes getting smashed on a
car's windshield, not about cars and humans.
~~~
whoopdedo
Oh, right. I thought it was a reference to "the equivalent of a human being
whacked by a school bus" from the article.
------
rokhayakebe
I just realized how making things fun and funny can help to teach anything.
The drawings and the comical tone made this seem so approachable. I wish they
had a series of 1000 of such lessons I could read.
~~~
KnightOfWords
Here's his old blog on NPR:
[http://www.npr.org/sections/krulwich/](http://www.npr.org/sections/krulwich/)
Probably not 1000, but perhaps getting on for it.
~~~
rokhayakebe
Thank you for sharing.
------
jokr004
Not really important but.. "nine gravities _(88 /m/squared)_"
I don't get it, the scientificamerican blog that they are quoting has the
right units, where did they come up with this?
------
mordrax
> But because our mosquito is oh-so-light, the raindrop moves on, unimpeded,
> and hardly any force is transferred.
So if the mosquito's weight is insignificant compared to that of the heavier
and denser water drop and that's what keeps it from having the force
transferred, would this equally apply to hailstorms? (Where our mosquitoes are
pelted by small hail balls the size of raindrops)
~~~
acyacy
You don't really find mosquitoes where you're likely to find hailstorms.
~~~
RBerenguel
In Spain we definitely have mosquitos, and most Augusts we have these summery
storms, sometimes bringing also hailstorms (sizze varies though between drop
sized ice and golfball sized ice)
~~~
acyacy
You find them in these areas. When it gets cold there tends to be far fewer of
them.
And compared to the equators its nearly incomparible.
~~~
Dove
Cold isn't required for hailstorms. The ice forms at altitude. We have a lot
of hailstorms in the spring and summer in Colorado, and while it isn't the
mosquitoiest place I've _ever_ lived, there _are_ mosquitoes.
~~~
acyacy
Compared with where its mosquito haven like by the Equator?
I suppose raindrop vs hailstone is a reason is one of the reason's the density
issues are so different.
~~~
Dove
Yeah. Mosquitoes are densest in the tropics where hailstorms are rare, but
just about everywhere on earth short of Antarctica has _some_ mosquitoes. I'd
think mosquitoes would meet hailstones occasionally, though I can't really see
the mosquito surviving it.
------
mleonhard
The article embedded a short video. Here's longer video with explanations:
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LQ88ny09ruM](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LQ88ny09ruM)
------
state
Can't help but immediately notice: "Drawing by Robert Krulwich"
~~~
sohkamyung
Yes, Robert Krulwich has joined the Nat Geo Phenomena blogging platform [
[http://phenomena.nationalgeographic.com/blog/curiously-
krulw...](http://phenomena.nationalgeographic.com/blog/curiously-krulwich/) ]
~~~
k_brother
I think the commenter meant that Krulwich actually illustrated the piece too.
Who knew Krulwich could draw!
~~~
sohkamyung
Ah, I see. My bad.
Yes, Krulwich does draw pretty well.
------
dharma1
if you like watching slo mo videos, recommend this channel:
[https://www.youtube.com/user/theslowmoguys/videos](https://www.youtube.com/user/theslowmoguys/videos)
------
bnolsen
so if mosquiotos are oblivious to rain is there some way to make artificial
rain with different properties that could destroy mosquitos en masse?
~~~
chinathrow
Yes, it's called poison and it's being done a lot.
[http://www.local10.com/news/plane-to-spray-for-mosquitoes-
ov...](http://www.local10.com/news/plane-to-spray-for-mosquitoes-over-south-
fla/27244642)
Ah you mean different mechanical properties ;)
------
stillsut
Send this to Bill Gates, that guy _HATES_ mosquitoes.
~~~
Kluny
A man who thought, "When I'm a billionaire, I'm going to dedicate my life to
getting rid of those nasty fuckers (mosquitoes)" and then _did_ it.
------
cJ0th
very interesting article. It is a pity that his column has no rss feed.
------
blumkvist
A commenter on the site says that some type of mosquitoes (Texas) are used in
oil drilling. I tried googling "texas mosquitoes oil drilling" and variants,
but didn't find anything.
>"Why, one species even secretes an enzyme to dissolve the organic matter in
blood leaving only the iron in haemoglobin. Then another enzyme causes the
iron atoms to join to form biological drill pipe! These structures are known
to be as much as 6 inches in diameter and to extend a mile deep."
Is there something to it or he just went to on the internet to tell lies?
~~~
coconutrandom
That is a joke that makes more sense once you've been bitten there.
~~~
briandear
In Texas, we'd call that a tall tale.
~~~
dalke
Up north a few winters back the weather was so cold that words froze up as you
talked. People had to stand around a fire to have a conversation. When spring
thaw finally came the sound of all the melting conversations was deafening.
Then there was the time that Pecos Bill lassoed and rode a twister, but that's
a tale for another time.
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