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Show HN: API Testing for Developers - tadasv http://bluebook.run ====== tadasv Hi! I'm the author of bluebook. I'd love to hear your thoughts on this idea, and any suggestions or improvements you may have.

Cambridge Analytica scrambles to halt Channel 4 exposé - foxh0und https://www.ft.com/content/7ed1572c-2aa4-11e8-a34a-7e7563b0b0f4 ====== neonate [http://archive.is/VfEuT](http://archive.is/VfEuT) [https://outline.com/gdN45D](https://outline.com/gdN45D) ~~~ chillidoor Thank you for this. ------ sabertoothed [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FXdYSQ6nu-M](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FXdYSQ6nu-M) ["Christopher Wylie, who worked for data firm Cambridge Analytica, reveals how personal information was taken without authorisation in early 2014 to build a system that could profile individual US voters in order to target them with personalised political advertisements. At the time the company was owned by the hedge fund billionaire Robert Mercer, and headed at the time by Donald Trump’s key adviser, Steve Bannon. Its CEO is Alexander Nix"]

Budget-Cutting Colleges Bid Some Languages Adieu - tokenadult http://www.nytimes.com/2010/12/05/education/05languages.html ====== tokenadult Perhaps the opportunity for hackers here is providing language instruction at less expense than college major programs. ~~~ zdw Rosetta Stone anyone? Beyond the basics (what you'd learn in a 101 series college course), the best learning method seems to be immersion, either by classes that focus on it or going to a country where the language is used.

Information age tarot deck - blackobelisk http://nettarot.net ====== lelandbatey Gotta say, the dorito taco is awesome: [http://i.imgur.com/gzSyXlT.png](http://i.imgur.com/gzSyXlT.png)

Show HN: I built a 2FA token from a Gameboy clone - afitnerd https://developer.okta.com/blog/2018/08/30/build-one-time-password-token-for-mfa ====== pinewurst I could imagine doing it with a real Gameboy with persistent clock in the cartridge too. ~~~ afitnerd Love that idea. Although, the original Gameboy is a little bulky to carry around ;)

Pop-up Fabrication of the Harvard Monolithic Bee - nealabq http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VxSs1kGZQqc ====== nealabq Related links: <https://micro.seas.harvard.edu/media.html> [http://trvideo.technologyreview.com/services/player/bcpid263...](http://trvideo.technologyreview.com/services/player/bcpid263777539?bctid=1118118784)

Show HN: Tet – A todo app that deletes your tasks at the end of the day - aswinmohanme http://tet.aswinmohan.me/ ====== roughfalls I once read a statement attributed to Steve Ballmer that every six months, he tears his todo list in half and throws the bottom half away. If anything far down that list was actually a priority, it will naturally get re-added (by thinking of it again, in response to a customer, etc.). My implementation of that approach is to do the following each month: 1. Export all my unfinished todo items older than 6 months. 2. Place that export alongside my other backups. 3. Then delete those items from my todo app. I deliberately do not look at any of those items during this process, lest I be tempted to dive back into them. That way, I limit my total mental clutter while retaining some peace of mind, since I know that I can get back to those items (I sometimes attach photos, notes, etc. to tasks) if needed. I never do. ~~~ klenwell That's an interesting idea. I picked up this book, Principles of Product Development Flow, based on some recommendations I think I came across here on HN: [https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/6278270-the- principles-o...](https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/6278270-the-principles- of-product-development-flow) Reinertsen really helps you appreciate the costs associated with queues (of which the TODO list would be a common form) and this seems consistent with the principles he advocates. One key quote related to this that I am still trying to wrap my head around: _Few product developers are aware of the causal links between high capacity- utilization, queues, and poor economic performance. Instead, developers assume that their cycle times will be faster when resources are fully utilized. In reality, as we shall see later, high levels of capacity utilization are actually a primary cause of long cycle time._ ~~~ TeMPOraL > _In reality, as we shall see later, high levels of capacity utilization are > actually a primary cause of long cycle time._ So what's the reason explained by the book? (My guess would be something along the lines of: high level of utilization lead to sudden peaks in load exceeding available capacity, and thus throwing a wrench in the process as you scramble to add capacity.) ~~~ jwhitlark 100% use of nearly anything is over use, not just because of peaks in load, but because it must both be done and perfect. Think of a bookcase. 100% means you can never add more books, and it also makes it very difficult to reorganize anything. ------ monkeynotes This would just give me huge anxiety. One reason I write things down in a todo list is to remove the anxiety of having to remember everything. I am happier with triaging my todo list myself, but everyone works differently. ~~~ weego I like the idea of this as a complement to a more rigorous todo system. Maybe I'm just bad at it but it's easy for my lists to get overwhelming, a system like this demands that more care is put into making choices over what is and isn't achievable in a day. ------ carrier_lost I like the Ivy Lee method for to-do lists: [https://jamesclear.com/ivy- lee](https://jamesclear.com/ivy-lee) Bonus: No app required, just pencil and paper. ------ menacingly I use a shell script called "jrnl" that opens vim with 3 tabs: today, yesterday, tomorrow. It's got a "TODO" section, and if I care enough about something from yesterday, I can bring it over. The files are stored like 2018/2018-02-06.txt, and if I really want something I can just grep for it. ~~~ diggan Guessing it's [http://jrnl.sh](http://jrnl.sh) ? Seems to written in Python though, while you say shellscript. Sounds like a useful script, care to share it here? ~~~ menacingly No, it's mine, although I realized how unoriginal I was when I saw that. It's pretty crappy, maybe if I cleaned it up someone might find it useful. It's pretty much just a handy way to generate the filenames for vim. Oh, and it generates a git commit after vim closes. ------ dvdhnt I'm a fan of Bullet Journaling. It helps to categorize, document, and carry tasks, thoughts, and ideas forward, or remove them while making them available for sourcing. All it takes is a pen and notebook. [http://bulletjournal.com/get-started/](http://bulletjournal.com/get-started/) ~~~ bluesroo As someone who's been trying to pick up a consistent task tracking system, I have a question: Do you just always have a notepad with you? I tried something similar to this with a pocket-size notepad, but it was annoying and didn't fit very well with a pen. So far the closest I've gotten is having a Google Doc, but it doesn't have the same flexibility that a hand-written notepad does (e.g. symbols, indexes, ease of writing/ access). ~~~ keyboardhitter Yes, I always carry a notebook even in non work situations. It's never been an issue for me as far as transportation is concerned, I just slip it alongside my laptop or other books. I also have a Samsung Note phone which is useful in the rare case I'm caught without a notebook or pen. I'll re-write any notes to my work notebook as needed. ------ Joeri I use separate daily, monthly and yearly todo lists. Daily means finish it within 24 hours, monthly within the next 30 days. Items promote or demote based on need and get thrown off the yearly list when it’s clear they won’t happen within the year (which I interpret as “not really needed”). Really helps me focus by removing clutter. ------ dugmartin One of these days I'm going to follow through on an old idea of mine to use flash paper for my todo list. [https://www.dreamlandmagic.com/products/flash-paper- pads-2x3...](https://www.dreamlandmagic.com/products/flash-paper- pads-2x3-inch-size-20-sheets) ------ dnqthao Is the name "Tet" related to the Vietnamese New Year? ~~~ donquichotte That was the first thing that came to my mind, too. It might well be - the Vietnamese like to clean their house before Tết to start fresh into the new year. ------ turc1656 Not all tasks are designed to be done in one day, or the same day. For that reason I won't be using this app, but appreciate and respect its purpose and possible utility to others. However, I think other todo apps could use this as a great April Fool's joke to put people into a momentary panic to get them thinking about all the stuff they should have done. When they logged into the app they it would be blank with a "what happened to my stuff?" link which directs them to an announcement they allegedly received in email about the changes taking place and then after a minute it could revert with the April Fool's message. That might get people thinking about their procrastination. ------ shennyg I agree that automatically carrying over todo's to the next day is a bad idea. You need to be able to trust your todo tracker. It would be helpful to have some sort of history/log of your tasks just in case you need it. It reminds me of [https://complice.co/](https://complice.co/) each day you need to put in your new tasks __but __you get to review yesterday 's incomplete items and pull them in. It has a lot of smarts built in and tell you you've pulled in the same task day after day and suggests you split it into smaller pieces. Nice job shipping aswinmohanme! ------ wruza Another cool idea is to have an app that records your todos with check marks and posts doge memes at the end of the day on your twitter. “I was going to study convolutional neural networks today @ but instead bought milk”. ------ harryf Nice use of "behavioural economics" ~~~ tw1010 Did you mean "psychology"? ------ ronreiter I just write my todos on toilet paper and wipe my ass with it ------ hmhrex Asking honestly, what would be the benefit of this? ~~~ blocked_again Does it make a difference if you were asking it dishonestly? ~~~ hmhrex I guess I should have clarified, I didn't want to sound snarky while asking what the benefit would be, I'm actually curious. ~~~ gnclmorais You mean… the benefit of a to-do list? Asking honestly. ------ Jeaye s/thier/their/g on the home page, please. ~~~ dangoor I spotted this and actually imagined that it was on the todo list to fix... ( _was_ being the operative word) ------ aswinmohanme [https://www.producthunt.com/posts/tet](https://www.producthunt.com/posts/tet) Here is the product hunt link

YouTube launches their iPhone app - kurtvarner http://techcrunch.com/2012/09/11/youtube-iphone-app-ads-exclamation-point/ ====== vpdn I started building ToddlerTube, a YouTube iPad app for kids. The first minimal version is almost finished. Is anyone with kids maybe interested in helping beta testing it? Some more info in the google docs form: <http://goo.gl/nYIGD> Background: We have an iPad first gen and an iPad3 at home. My young nephew would always ask for the older iPad and for a long time, I didn't understand why. After looking over his shoulder for a few days, I came to realize that he loved to watch certain clips on YouTube (other kids singing his kindergarten songs, Mr. Bean, kitten videos). Since he cannot type, his search strategy works as follows: 1\. Start up the youtube app 2\. Go to History (recently watched videos) 3\. Piggyback on the app's history feature to watch existing videos and find new related videos. Since the history of "his videos" were only available on the old iPad1, it makes sense that he would insist on using this device only. YouTube channels were cumbersome to create and maintain. The user experience was so bad and my nephew so insistent, that I believe there is a problem here to be fixed. ~~~ mcobrien Sounds good! I've filled in my details on the form. ------ kurtvarner Direct iTunes link: <http://itunes.apple.com/app/youtube/id544007664> ------ ricardobeat Has anyone ever clicked one of the youtube ad overlays? ~~~ citricsquid Not sure if you mean the actual little ad pop-up boxes, or just adverts in general... I watch* on average 25 Youtube videos per day and I'd estimate around 10 of those have pre-roll adverts, I normally watch 1 or 2 pre-roll adverts (assuming I have not seen them before) per day and click through after. The sidebar adverts I've never clicked and same goes for the little ones that slide in about 10 seconds into a video. * some of the videos I "watch" are in the background (music) so I included those in my count but they rarely (if ever) have adverts (because I listen to independent music on Youtube) ~~~ Swizec Interesting thing I've noticed: At home, no video's got a pre-roll (Slovenia), but when I was in the US almost every video had a pre-roll ... it was so annoying I almost stopped using YouTube while I was in the US even though I watch probably 20+ videos per day at home. Thing is, I watch mostly music videos and it's really really really really annoying to listen to a pre-roll first. ------ Newky I know that this is only for iOS but I would definitely sit through a few ads, if they were to improve the quality of the youtube application for android. 1\. I need to be able to leave it in the background and for the video to still play. 2\. I don't seem to be able to access my likes playlist. This is the majority of what I watch on youtube and it should be available through the mobile phone application. ------ citricsquid I can't locate the application in the app store via my iPhone but can via iTunes, is this normal for newly updated/release applications? ~~~ mattparcher Yes, unfortunately. Apps take time to show up in search results even after they are officially on the store. (The time before visibility, either in search results or even at a direct link, can vary by country as well.) ------ ckurdziel It's interesting that they chose not to include the ability to pull videos being shared on Facebook, Google+, and Twitter (these are all options in the web app). Curious what the HN community thinks about that lack of "social" inflow - I always feel like those networks are better at curating video that YouTube's "recommended" stream. ------ mullr The sidebar swipe animation needs some attention; they tried to add a cute little bounce at the end when the main panel slides in and out, but it just feels weird. Nothing else does that on iOS. ~~~ rheeseyb You mean, except for every other scrolling view in iOS... ~~~ forsgren ...but this isn't a scrolling view. ~~~ mullr Exactly. But this isn't the same as the scrollview bounce. Especially try doing a slow grab and letting go near the edge; the sudden artificial bounce is jarring and strange. ------ therealarmen Nice to see them include Facebook and Twitter (along with Google+) in the sharing options: <http://i.imgur.com/z7fex.jpg> ~~~ fwr Is this something extraordinary? ~~~ speg I think the sharing options were more limited w/ the previous app. (Mail, msg, twitter, ?) ------ 89a 2/10 for effort on that icon

I am a time-traveler from the future, here to beg you to stop what you are doing - SirLJ https://www.reddit.com/r/Bitcoin/comments/1lfobc/i_am_a_timetraveler_from_the_future_here_to_beg/ ====== jraedisch I am slightly more pro Bitcoin, but it is still a great read.

The growing importance of monopoly rents (2013) - bainsfather http://www.nytimes.com/2013/06/21/opinion/krugman-profits-without-production.html ====== bainsfather There's also a meta-summary of this and related articles by others, here: [http://bruegel.org/2014/02/blogs-review-profits-without- inve...](http://bruegel.org/2014/02/blogs-review-profits-without-investment- in-the-recovery)

REST APIs must be hypertext-driven (2008) - dvaun https://roy.gbiv.com/untangled/2008/rest-apis-must-be-hypertext-driven ====== dozzman Most of the APIs I use and build are best suited as RPC systems rather than hypermedia networks, so implementing the entire REST idea has never been immediately useful. Broadly the real consumers of RESTful APIs are not generic hypermedia clients (generalisation of browsers) which are able to traverse your flavour of hypermedia, but the things operating those clients. Most of the time, those “things” are dumb business logic applications that can’t explore the hypermedia to discover new functionality and furthermore are not designed to do anything with it anyway. If it is a human traversing the hypermedia however, they’re able to derive a lot of understanding about the API and its features, as if the API is self documenting, but that generally only occurs during the development and debugging stages. After that the hypermedia is useless to the dumb business logic. Also I’m sure most humans prefer to browse the documentation on the alternative World Wide Web hypermedia network, as any good API would have documentation published there. All in all hypermedia is mostly useful for intelligent consumers, so if that is not the consumer of your API and you suspect instead the consumer will be static business logic (the vast majority of cases) then REST will not be particularly useful. As I mentioned an interesting use case would be bundling up documentation into the API itself and hyperlinking between that and related URLs, however the overhead is generally not worth it since you’re likely to do it better with documentation site. ~~~ rumanator > Most of the time, those “things” are dumb business logic applications that > can’t explore the hypermedia to discover new functionality and furthermore > are not designed to do anything with it anyway. Dumb business logic is not the point. One of the benefits of HATEOAS is that it allows REST clients to be loosely coupled with REST services, in a way that APIs can change freely change (i.e., change endpoints around, break away functionalities into other services, etc.) without requiring clients to be updated under the penalty of breaking compatibility. The main reason why no one does REST and everyone does RPC-over-HTTP is that while REST clients require tracking and updating state to support service discovery, RPC-over-HTTP just requires a single HTTP request to achieve the same purpose, albeit without the resilience and future-proof. ~~~ dozzman > One of the benefits of HATEOAS is that it allows REST clients to be loosely > coupled with REST services, in a way that APIs can change freely change My point is that even though they're loosely coupled, the API actually cannot change freely because the actual consumer of the API, the business logic, is still tied to the API through the client. If your API changes and the client/browser is still able to traverse it fine, but your business logic breaks, does that _actually_ mean that the API is free to change? I don't believe so. ~~~ rumanator > My point is that even though they're loosely coupled, the API actually > cannot change freely because the actual consumer of the API, the business > logic, is still tied to the API through the client. The main promise of REST is that following that particular application style does indeed allow the API to freely change without breaking backwards compatibility. The main drawback of REST is that no one actually follows those principles. With REST, the client is not tied to an API. The client seeks resources, and relies on content discovery processes to determine how to access those resources. The only endpoint that may be hard coded is a home/root endpoint, and all other resources are accessible through it by following hypermedia. With REST you care about the what, not the where. > If your API changes and the client/browser is still able to traverse it > fine, but your business logic breaks This is where you're getting it wrong. REST is all about the interface. The interface has zero to do with the business logic. If you have an interface that allows you to access the same data but for some reason your business logic breaks due to non-opersrional reasons (i.e. extra latency from the content discovery process) you need to have a talk with whoever screwed that up. ------ cryptos There was a great article about the common misconceptions about REST recently: [https://twobithistory.org/2020/06/28/rest.html](https://twobithistory.org/2020/06/28/rest.html) The longer I think about it, the more I come to the conclusion that REST is simply not useful for application development in general. It is no accident that most APIs called "RESTful" by their creators are violating basic REST principles. But REST has some useful attributes even if not used strictly - caching comes to mind. The question is: should we have another "standard" for web application development? Something more like RPC? There are some approaches, but nothing that I would call a broadly accepted standard. How should such a standard look like? ~~~ mathw Yes we should. We should have a standard which is actually a standard and actually makes sense for what people are actually writing APIs to do. gRPC would be a candidate, but the need for dev-side tooling to turn proto files into code is a bit of a downer. ------ fbn79 Does JSON API ([https://jsonapi.org/](https://jsonapi.org/)) follow all this rules? If not what rules is not followeb and why in your opinion? ------ lowercase1 I've never really seen a good explanation of why REST is a meaningful concept. Why REST? Why these requirements? What do you mean stateless? What is bad about deviating? ~~~ dvaun I would suggest taking a skim through Chapter 5 of Roy Fielding's dissertation[0] (where REST came from) to answer some of your questions. As for "What do you mean stateless?", read this quote from the posted article: > ...if the engine of application state (and hence the API) is not being > driven by hypertext, then it cannot be RESTful and cannot be a REST API. Why does he say this? Well, he was explicit about state in his dissertation[1]: > ...each request from client to server must contain all of the information > necessary to understand the request, and cannot take advantage of any stored > context on the server. Session state is therefore kept entirely on the > client [0]: [https://www.ics.uci.edu/~fielding/pubs/dissertation/rest_arc...](https://www.ics.uci.edu/~fielding/pubs/dissertation/rest_arch_style.htm) [1]: From Section 5.1.3 [https://www.ics.uci.edu/~fielding/pubs/dissertation/rest_arc...](https://www.ics.uci.edu/~fielding/pubs/dissertation/rest_arch_style.htm#sec_5_1_3) ~~~ gridlockd This doesn't answer the question as to _why_ this is a good idea. ~~~ dvaun That’s fair. I don’t have a decent explanation supporting why REST is a meaningful concept. Rather, I focused on the other questions that could be answered by the dissertation. The choice to create an API in this fashion, without RPC and other things mixed in, is up to the developer. Others have commented on this with their arguments. ------ solipsism This is equivalent to complaining that rap isn't music. The meanings of words change, sometimes in ways we consider irrational or inconvenient in various ways. Complaining about it never seems to help. I long ago stopped complaining to people in this forum about the difference between "it's" and "its". In response, please stop trying to reclaim the term REST. It's long gone. ~~~ macca321 This is an article from 2008 by the person who invented REST.

Ask HN: When does programming start to make sense? - amorphid How long did it take before you could write code on your own? Every time I try to learn programming, it feels painfully slow compared to other things I've picked up. Maybe I'm the opposite of a natural. I took C++ in college and studied Ruby &#38; PHP on my own. ====== 10ren Alan Turing said that programming would always be interesting because the boring mechanical aspects could be automated (where "interesting" means "you don't understand it" - or else you could automate it.) I daily run into issues that I don't understand. That's what programming _is_ for me, I'm afraid; rather like science. It's a sequence of monsters. The best we can do is to be tackling new monsters, not the same ones. Of course, programming jobs do exist where you do the same thing over and over again. And there's a threshold of skill required before you can automate some classes of things; and you also need a clear understanding of the task, to see precisely which aspects are mechanical, and which aspects are configurable. It pretty quickly gets into compsci research. And sometimes it's not worth the effort (it can take a _lot_ of effort.) But if you've ever called a method twice, instead of writing the code twice, then you have done some of it. I feel that your question "start to make sense" suggests your thinking is all- or-nothing. Does _no_ aspect of programming make sense to you - or do some "trivial" aspects make sense but they "don't count"? Does a print statement make sense to you, to some extent? Does a loop make sense to you? There's a continuum of mastery. If you only acknowledge perfect and complete mastery as "mastery", then you won't feel any satisfaction in mastery of one small bit of it. And without the confidence and encouragement of that success, it's very hard to be motivated to continue. (oh yeah, plus, of course, it's impossible to have perfect and complete mastery of programming anyway, for Turing's reason.) ------ patio11 It took me a long, long time until I became reasonably confident that most problems would eventually succumb to my programming ability. Probably almost twenty years from when I wrote my first program, or a few years after college. I can't write code on my own, though -- unless the problem is trivial and the APIs I'm using I know like the back of my hand, I _need_ an Internet connection to do it. Part of this issue is possibly that competent people are disproportionately stalked by the worry that they're secretly incompetent. ~~~ donaq That is interesting. The experience has been almost the opposite for me. When I first started programming, it did not take me long to start "getting it", and I was very confident that there was no programming problem I could not solve. As the years went by, I've noticed that my confidence has decreased to the point where I am almost certain that there is no problem I _can_ solve (besides the most trivial ones). Maybe I'm just getting dumber. ~~~ sga Absolutely not. As you gain domain knowledge you should feel exactly this way. I'd suggest that you be concerned if you didn't feel this way. When I finished highschool I thought I was pretty damn smart and had a lot of things figured out (clearly not the case). From an academic point of view as I worked towards my Ph.D. I was constantly reminded of how very little I did know. While I did learn new things day by day, my appreciation for how much I didn't know grew exponentially. In fact I think what I'm left with after the whole exercise is not a confidence in my knowledge but rather a confidence in my ability to learn, problem solve and ask questions. ~~~ 7402 "Universities are repositories of learning because students enter knowing everything, and leave knowing nothing." ------ gagi > Every time I try to learn programming, it feels painfully slow compared to > other things I've picked up. It's probably slow because you're not having fun with it. You're probably not having fun with it because you're not solving a compelling goal. Ask yourself whether you're learning "just to learn it" or are you trying to solve a problem and this particular language/api/compiler/implementation will help you achieve that goal. I might be presumptuous here (and I apologize if I'm wrong) but the times I've found myself stuck "learning" have been when I was just going through the lessons for the heck of it, without a real goal in mind, without something to accomplish. Also, have a look at this: [http://railstips.org/blog/archives/2010/01/12/i-have-no- tale...](http://railstips.org/blog/archives/2010/01/12/i-have-no-talent/) I found it inspirational. ~~~ owyn It was no fun when I REALLY learned how to program, it was pure panic. I was half way through a CS degree and got a summer job, and I just had get it done no matter what so I beat my head against the problems and solved them. After that, all the theory that I'd been learning started to make sense, and now I have a more nuanced approach to coding, and a successful career. Just trying to say, learning is not always fun. Get a job doing something you don't know how to do. Maybe that will motivate you. :) ------ InclinedPlane I cannot stress this enough: _learn refactoring_ , [http://www.amazon.com/Refactoring-Improving-Design- Existing-...](http://www.amazon.com/Refactoring-Improving-Design-Existing- Code/dp/0201485672) You will simultaneously learn: \- terminology and models relevant to software design and construction at every level \- principles of good coding and how to tell good code from bad \- the ability to redesign code as needed \- the experience and knowledge necessary to approach coding with confidence All of these are the most critical tools you need to transform yourself from someone who sorta-kinda knows a few principles of coding to someone who groks software construction. If I had to choose between a co-worker who truly groked the principles of re- factoring and a co-worker who had a PhD in Computer Science I would choose the former every time. It's really that important. ~~~ jng I don't think that's good advice for a newbie. To the OP: practice, practice and practice. It will take a long time. Months to start getting it, years to go anywhere. 10+ years to be good. If it's too hard, choose another profession. 99% of folks out there would hate programming. ~~~ InclinedPlane I could not disagree more, refactoring is perfect for a newbie. It's not an advanced technique, it's fundamentals. Any beginner who can write a method can extract a method. But more than that, refactoring provides the mental models and the vocabulary to talk about, reason about, and understand code. It provides well-worn expert advice about the characteristics that make good code good and bad code bad, heuristics to be able to recognize good and bad code, and basic techniques to transform bad good into good safely and effectively. There may be some advanced techniques in the book itself which won't be useful to beginners, but that's true of any programming book, and that's easy enough to skip over and return to later (especially with the organization of the canonical refactoring book specifically). A beginning programmer who has learned even the simplest of refactoring techniques (extract method, insert/remove cached value, etc.) will be able to look at a piece of code and see the ways it can be changed, and will also have a reasonable idea about which changes are more likely to improve the code. They will also have the mental models and vocabulary to talk about, reason about, and understand the code, even if only to themselves. These tools are hugely important for beginners. They can transform coding from a task filled with uncertainty, fear, and irregular advancement born from experimentation to a task filled with confidence, knowledge, and curiosity. Certainly practice a lot, but don't just blindly stumble about on your own, there's lots of good material out there, learn the techniques and then practice applying them, build up your toolkit a bit at a time until you feel more and more comfortable with coding. ------ rmorrison For what it's worth, it took me several years before I really understood programming. I distinctly remember thinking that I wasn't making progress, and that I was wasting my time writing silly programs that didn't do anything useful. However, eventually things start to click (though it took me several years). You'll get to a point where things make sense, and you can fathom how you'd go about writing most of the software you use on a daily basis. ------ sunkencity It took me about 5 minutes to get started writing code. For some people programming can make sense, for others it's just a craft that's in the hands. When I was at the university lots of people struggled with "understanding" programming and they wrote little code, trying to more to come to terms with what programming is rather than trying to do it. The people that succeeded in learning to program wrote lots of code even though it was hard to write the code and to understand. Some of the people that didn't never entered their programs into computers and just ran the code by hand on a piece of paper (to what practical use is that?). For me programming is in the hands. When I learn a new programming language it's total chaos for 1-2 weeks and then the new regime settles and I can understand what I have been doing. After half a year of being exposed to a new programming language even more of the teachings settle and I can begin understanding more, but programming it's a practical art. I suppose it can be different if you are more mathematically minded than I am. I suggest doing ALL the exercises in a programming book - as fast as you can without trying to really understand what is going on behind the scenes. The secret is that you don't have to really understand what the hell is going on behind the scenes, you just have to know enough to stay out of trouble and that knowledge comes from experience. In the beginning of a programming career it'll be impossible to guess what weird bugs might occur so just code and see what happens. In short, _you have to have a lot of practical knowledge of programming to support your theoretical knowledge_ , otherwise you cannot do anything with either. A chicken and egg situation, so it's best just to jump into the deep waters and try to swim to the surface. ------ ajuc I've got C64 and manual in German when I was 10 (I've only knew Polish at that time, but who cares :)). For a few years I only played games, and sometimes entered some example BASIC code and tinkered with constans in code to see what will happen. I remember that my copy of manual had error in some magic graphic system initialization code, so I've never programmed graphic on C64. It was very frustrating. Then I've got PC when I was 15 and I played with Turbo Basic, then Turbo Pascal - then I've understood variables and it all started to make sense. Since then I only feel like I know less, and less :) PS - the most impressive thing I've seen that encuraged me to keep programming was ASCII art adventure game written in windows batch files. I've thought - if someon can do so much witch bat files, I can do everything with my knowledge of Turbo Pascal :) ------ thibaut_barrere Even once you can write code on your own, things are painful from times to times, and I believe that's normal and a good thing. It means you're pushing yourself out of the comfort zone, staying current. But it's also important to detect when you should "give up" or not invest time in something that is just too painful (I personally gave up on EJB, or temporarily on C++ to go back to Pascal, then back to C++ a few years later). ------ csomar Don't worry, you don't become a professional programmer in one day. It's a long process. I started programming (Qbasic) at the age of 12. My first programs were just some combinations of blocks of code taken from the help document. Until 18, I had been always an amateur programmer. Then Things changed. Programming can be flipped from fun to work. I can get paid to have fun, so why don't do it? I was introduced to the real world and I discovered that my knowledge, as huge as it was (a little from everything) wouldn't really help building the smallest application. I also can't write code on my own. I need another application to copy from or re-use the code. My frustrations began, but they lasted short. I started reading books. My target was Visual C#. I read a book about .Net fundamentals and another one about Visual Studio. I become a better programmer. It did took me months to understand OOP, but I finished by mastering it. And yay! I used collections. I left Visual C# and decided to develop for the web. I planned to learn it from scratch. From the start to the end. First, I need a strong knowledge about the Client Side. That is HTML, CSS and JavaScript. The first two are somewhat easy to master and learn. JavaScript is very expressive and can take a while to master. Actually, I felt in love with JavaScript and with it's prototypal and dynamic nature. I'm 19 and I already built 2 scripts that I'm selling on code canyon (I'm working on the third right now ;)) Suddenly while browsing on the web, I found a small niche, that can be valued to $100K/year. It's hidden somewhere and related to JavaScript. No one explored this domain (except low-quality Open Source solutions) I made my researches, grabbed a related domain and making a plan. Learning Programming? Oups! I forgot about it!!! ------ CyberFonic You need to design first - on paper, white-board, etc. You wouldn't build a house without blueprints, so why try to write a big program without sketching stuff out so that you can break down into manageable chunks. If that doesn't help, then maybe you need to take a good CS course. If you have only programmed in C++, then it doesn't sound like a comprehensive background in CS. ~~~ jff Exactly this. The image of the lone hacker sitting down and pouring out a bunch of code straight from his brain is a romantic one, but if you haven't spent a little time deciding what your data structures are going to look like and how you're going to pass stuff around, etc., your code will be crap. "Just coding it" leads to both frustration as you sit wondering what you should be writing and why programming is so hard, and poor code. The poor code comes in when you start throwing in stuff like one-use elements in your structs to keep track of something you hadn't forseen, when a little bit of planning could have alleviated that. I'm certainly not saying you should go write up a design document complete with UML and everything. That would be ridiculous, damn it I'm an engineer not a bureaucrat! Just sit down and think (on paper) about how some of the important stuff needs to look. It'll help a lot. As for the second point, C++ does seem like a weird place to start. Go learn assembly or C. Learning to write assembly is a process of continually solving tiny programming puzzles, as you figure out how to hand-roll a loop and such. ------ wccrawford I've been writing code 'on my own' since 4th grade. My school gave a class on programming the Apple IIe and I loved it. My parents bought me a series of computers, starting with a Sinclair 1000, and I wrote little programs for all of them until they weren't good enough and we upgraded. I taught myself several other forms of basic, then started on other languages like C, PHP and Cold Fusion. Maybe you need to stop 'learning' programming and just do it. Pick a task you want to complete, possibly even a task you've done before, and just do it. I learned all those other languages and language variants starting with the same program: Sierpinski's Triangle. Why? Because I already knew the logic for it inside and out and it was entertaining to watch. Every new language I came across, I wrote another Sierpinski's Triangle program on it as my first program. ------ ajuc By the way, I have other problem with programming. For some time it's not technical difficulty that prevents me from acomplishing my programming goals, but my laziness. I am very good at learning new languages, APIs, programming techniques, etc, because that offers me fast positive feedback. I feel good because I've learned sth new. But to achieve anything I have to sit down to real, boring work, and this I am to lazy to do. I prefer to try new cool languages than do any useful work in languages I already know. I feel worse programmer than I was when I only knew Basic and Turbo Pascal, no matter all the techniques, design patterns, languages, etc, that I now know. Do you have similiar experiences? How do you deal with this? ------ grigy Can you explain how have you tried to learn? I have learned by books. Yes, it took long time, but reading a good book is both fun and productive way to learn. Unfortunately I can't recommend any of my books as they all were in Russian. ------ rndmcnlly0 Programming, as a whole, is far larger than any one person could come to comprehend in a single lifetime (imagine it being 1000x bigger). And to make matters worse, it is continually growing more complex at a rate no person could follow either! Just when you think you've finally gotten a solid grasp on writing CRUD apps in PHP, someone shows you Haskell, or Prolog, and suddenly realized just how little you thought you knew. That said, this all makes for programming being an excellent domain for both a career and a passionate hobby. Easy to learn (a tiny corner) and hard to master (a chunk you can really appreciate 10 years in) -- what more could you want? ~~~ moggie Disclaimer: I am very much a novice when it comes to any kind of programming; I have only been working in PHP, which I know is considered a scripting language and not a programming language, for a few months now. My understanding is relatively limited. "Programming, as a whole, is far larger than any one person could come to comprehend in a single lifetime (...) And to make matters worse, it is continually growing more complex at a rate no person could follow either!" Isn't programming, essentially, the writing of instructions and providing them to systems that act upon them? Reading through that statement I wonder whether it's not _programming_ that is complex, but many problems that exist in various fields of business or study—problems that need a programmed solution. Please—if you don't mind—would you elaborate? ~~~ mechanical_fish _whether it's not programming that is complex, but many problems that exist in various fields of business or study_ Unfortunately, it's both. ;) While PHP is indeed a programming language (the term "scripting language" is a fairly meaningless label) when you work in PHP building web pages you're likely to spend most of your time working on things that are computationally tractable [1], but hard because it's just hard to translate the customer's problems into code within the available budget. Your customer has a problem, it's lots of work to map that problem onto code, it's hard to explain to the customer just how much work it is to turn the "simple" activities performed by (say) their administrative assistant into algorithms, and the result tends to be expensive to document, deploy, and maintain. So, yeah, it's the problems that seem to be hard, not the "programming" -- though, in fact, there is no hard-and-fast distinction there. But then there are problems in programming that are difficult to impossible, all by themselves. The CS folks around here can point you at plenty of them, but here's a famous one: <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Travelling_salesman_problem> which is a member of an entire class of famously hard-to-compute problems: <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_NP-complete_problems> which (I believe) are not particularly rare, but which come up in various disguises, and which must be carefully worked around. On a somewhat more applied level, there are lots of difficult problems in code optimization that you can work on: <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Low_Level_Virtual_Machine> Or you can spend your day exploring a giant set of data-storage possibilities, each of which is right in its own way, and wrong in its own way: <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/CAP_theorem> [http://www.allthingsdistributed.com/2008/12/eventually_consi...](http://www.allthingsdistributed.com/2008/12/eventually_consistent.html) One may suspect, of course, that this distinction I'm trying to draw between "difficult programming" and "difficult problems" is not real; it's just a matter of the degree of abstraction you use when describing the programming. And I think you'd be right to suspect that. Programming is programming, and programming is hard. \--- [1] Though it is very, very possible to put something that is computationally intractable into a "simple" web page. Web pages have no upper bound of complexity. ------ skowmunk If you really want to badly do it, then Be patient with yourself, don't let frustration get the better of yourself, keep trying, get immersed and give yourself some time. For me, it took quite some time of interspersed half-hearted attempts, then accidental and incremental opportunities to do increasingly complex tasks that I could learn and scale (on different environments, SAP, NC, Excel Macros, JMP), then some big time immersion over 4 weeks with David Power's books (his style clicked for me). I am no expert now, but am doing stuff that I didnt' think I could. Would have to disagree about the "Natural" part of your comment. Keep working at it. Good luck. ------ davidw Reading that makes me think I should call my parents and thank them again for putting me in front of a Commodore PET at about 5. I may not be great at it, but programming's always seemed fairly natural to me. ------ kapitalx There are 2 aspects to programming that you might or might not be getting. First is figuring out what the solution to your problem is, Second is to put the solution on paper (write the program). Both of these take practice, but the former is much harder to learn that the latter. Most programming courses will teach you the latter. I wrote my first C program at 11, but I certainly didn't understand what that * meant next to a variable at the time, but I could think of the solution to the problem in terms of a program. ------ bobwaycott I found programming a slow, grueling task until I had an ephiphany one day-- it's like learning any other [spoken] language. Now, I don't know if you're particularly adept at picking up foreign languages, but the moment I realized programming itself was the new language, I began viewing programming languages through the lens of learning a new grammar or syntax or vocabulary, and everything opened up for me. This was the same way things went with learning a foreign language--once I understood that I was still just expressing myself verbally, saying the same thoughts, it was only a matter of vocabulary, grammar, and syntax. Since then, I have picked up new languages that interest me far more rapidly. I don't focus on how it compares to any other language I know or use. I don't focus on it from the perspective of how classes and functions differ. I look at any new programming language from a grammatical and syntactic view--and once I have read enough code & documentation to understand its grammar and syntax, I can start coding productively. That's the point I begin studying classes, functions, built-ins, libraries--the grammar and vocabulary of implementation. I am by no means an expert programmer. I'd never call myself that. But I do find that many would be better programmers if they understood the "language" of programming. Learn as much as you can stand about data structures & types. This is core--especially types. I have so often been frustrated by inherited code that didn't show a solid understanding of data types (e.g., strings, ints, arrays, etc.). Learn about classes, functions, inheritance, etc. These are the building blocks of language, if you'll permit extending the analogy-- it's a bit like knowing how to structure a sentence, capitalize, punctuate, etc. Learn the language of programming before you ever try to learn a programming language. This is, perhaps, what you're missing. You're using a programming language to understand programming. Take a step back and understand programming itself first. Then sit back down with your language and do programming. Regardless of chosen language, the task is the same and the result should (usually) be the same. The chosen language is really just an implementation detail. You can write a program in Ruby, Python, C, PHP, etc., and it's still going to be the same program. Most programmers, I believe, tend to choose the grammar & syntax they like best. But the job of programming remains the same. ------ jasonkester You're not going to like the answer, but: Immediately. Like in the first 5 minutes. When I was seven years old. And frankly, if it didn't happen like that for you, you're pretty much screwed. Every good programmer I've ever known started doing it young and immediately just "got it". Most mediocre programmers I know followed the path you're on, learning it in a class in school, fighting to get things done, eventually coming up with ways to solve particular problems, but never attaining fluency. Try not to feel bad about it. It's just about the way your brain is wired. Good programmers have a specific something wrong with their brain that makes them ridiculously good at logic, and, sadly, not very good at much else. We can overcome the "everything else" part through hard work, though we'll never be as good at it as you. Similarly, you can overcome the programming part through hard work, but you'll never be as good at it as us. Sorry to be the one to break the news. ~~~ cturner Try not to feel bad about it. It's just about the way your brain is wired. No. I spent an entire summer staring at C and getting blocked on ridiculous basic stuff because I had dumb learning techniques and kept being too ambitious. I know a solid guy who did first-year C _three times_ before he passed. What got me through was learning to break problems up into tiny pieces, practicing and learning patterns, and ignoring advice like "if you don't get pointers straight away you'll never be a programmer". For example, a pattern you use all the time is open a file, read some data, close the file. More than half the people I've interviewed as programmers can't do an adequate job of this from memory in their language of choice. Practice just that until you have it memorised and can type it out at speed. Look at programs as collections of patterns, and look for excuses to practice dumb simple stuff (like scales in music). Something I knocked out over breakfast on Sunday morning to price a collection of stocks: I have a file containing a list of symbols. The program reads this data. It splits it into tokens. It uses a yahoo web service to look up prices for them. It collects the data in an object. I pass that to a formatter. Then I print it. I built each pattern independently, and then stiched them together. Some people do test-driven development to force themselves to construct software in this way, and you might find that useful (I just do it that way without formalising the tests). amorphid wrote, Maybe I'm the opposite of a natural. I felt the same for five years _after_ I'd finished my degree. Work towards mastering two things: (1) learn to reduce all problems to triviality. You can use code to feel out a problem but do not ever try to cruise through complexity - that's a path to certain failure. (2) Hone your tools (including your memory for patterns) so that your cognitive load can be dedicated to problems at hand rather than typing or looking up patterns for bread-and- butter stuff like reading the contents of a file. amorphid - I don't know what your problems are specifically but maybe some of that will be useful. Edit: I made a claim at the top that I couldn't reference. Removed. ~~~ jasonkester _I spent an entire summer staring at C and getting blocked on ridiculous basic stuff because I had dumb learning techniques and kept being too ambitious. I know a solid guy who did first-year C three times before he passed._ Sounds like we're just using different definitions for "good". You seem to define it as meaning competent, so yes, you and your friend fall into the category of people who have successfully taught yourself to program computers despite not being wired to do it. I was talking about the Fred Brooks 10X types when I said "good". Those guys didn't drop Comp Sci 101. Again, please try not to take it personally. They're not better people than you. They just took to computer programming like everybody else takes to breathing. ~~~ thereddestruby There's no magic wiring there - humans don't speak computer out of the womb. Some people start programming at a younger age than others. Some move on, some stick, some take it more seriously, some go on to become great. It's like any other thing really. Football, Soccer, Jiujitsu, Ping-Pong, etc. ------ sethwartak Work on something useful, something that has a goal. Beating your head against a problem for hours is the best way to learn something (because you learn all the ins and outs of that thing, not just the part you were working on). ------ spooneybarger Can you define what you mean by 'on your own'? ~~~ amorphid Picked up a few books, wrote basic programs, etc. When it got harder, found ways to ask people questions. I usually get frustrated when it comes to solving puzzles that aren't linear programs. ~~~ spooneybarger What is causing the frustration? ~~~ amorphid I can see the solution in my head as a picture, not words. Maybe I need to practice framing problems more. ~~~ Chris_Newton That's interesting, and actually quite encouraging: it suggests that you do think in terms of abstractions of the problem you're trying to solve, which is arguably the most fundamental skill in programming. If your difficulty is that you haven't got the mechanical process of turning your thoughts into code down yet, that's a much easier thing to overcome. Could you share with us what books and programming languages/tools you've been using? While there are certainly common ideas, different types of language take a different approaches to describing a program. Maybe whatever you've chosen doesn't suit your way of thinking particularly well, and you would find another tool more intuitive at this stage. ~~~ amorphid The book I've had the most luck with is _Learning To Program_ by Chris Pine. There's a question in the book about counting the sections of land on a standard X,Y grid map. That would be a good example of a problem that blows up my brain. ~~~ Chris_Newton Which of these would you say is closest to your difficulty? a) You don't understand what the problem means. b) You can't describe an algorithm that would solve the problem in plain English or "pseudocode". c) You could describe the algorithm informally, but don't know how to code it.

How the Medium Editor Works - tosh https://medium.com/medium-eng/why-contenteditable-is-terrible-122d8a40e480 ====== adamtj > 3\. All visible edits should map onto an algebraically closed and complete > set of visible content. And suddenly I have a common-sense understanding of what the mathematical terms "closed" and "complete" mean. I can now use these ideas. Non-closure is a problem that I've encountered often, but I've never had a name for it. If problems are obstacles, then names are the handles that let you grip them and move them out of the way.

The myth of 'bulletproof' Linux - unstoppableted http://www.itworldcanada.com/news/analysts-linux-security-mystique-dangerous/144662 ====== nodata The article is correct: no system can be 100% secure, and adding an anti-virus layer helps. But the article specifically discusses desktop Linux and Ubuntu Linux in particular. If we were to discuss Fedora Linux with SELinux enabled (+enforcing) I'd argue that the anti-virus part is unnecessary.

Show HN: get location from tweets - abava http://tl.linkstore.ru ====== vbm The background color of the page is irritating my eyes. May be it is happening only to me

House orders Pentagon to say if it weaponized ticks and released them - no_wizard https://www.rollcall.com/news/congress/house-orders-pentagon-report-whether-weaponized-ticks ====== cascom Interesting that this might officially come out - it’s been an open secret for years [https://www.amazon.com/Lab-257-Disturbing-Governments- Labora...](https://www.amazon.com/Lab-257-Disturbing-Governments- Laboratory/dp/0060011416) ------ hairytrog How do you defend against weaponized ticks or mosquitoes? ~~~ opwieurposiu DDT and plenty of it! [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/DDT](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/DDT)

The Book Market Stares At Ubiquity - peter123 http://www.avc.com/a_vc/2009/03/the-book-market-stares-at-ubiquity.html ====== thorax Kindle makes me more excited for the next generation of ebook readers than it does for itself. When I use it, I think how amazing the next-gen readers are going to be. And the great part is that all the tech it needs to Get It Right exists in an affordable fashion. I think my primary issue is with the slowness of the device and the clunkiness of the "5-way". Once they get this part right, perhaps replacing 5-way with a touch screen, they'd be great. I don't need color, though that will come with time, but I don't like feeling frustrated trying to use the device quickly to look up information or move from mode to mode. ------ MikeCapone I'm looking forward to trying the Kindle, but it's not available (afaik) in Canada.

Microsoft shipped Python code in 1996 - znpy http://python-history.blogspot.com/2009/01/microsoft-ships-python-code-in-1996.html ====== teh_klev Repost here with discussion: [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12141311](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12141311)

Google posts Windows 8.1 vulnerability after 90 days - mmorris http://www.engadget.com/2015/01/02/google-posts-unpatched-microsoft-bug/ ====== cheald This story is surprisingly hostile to Google. A 90-day window after which the bug is published is about as responsible as responsible disclosure gets. The headline really rubs me the wrong way, as though Google raced to publish this vulnerability to spite Microsoft. Not talking about the bug doesn't mean it's not there, but talking about it sure makes people aware that they should perhaps take extra precautions until Microsoft patches the bug. The attitude that "you're giving info to the evil hackers and now we're all unsafe!11" is the very essence of the fallacy of security by obscurity - your ignorance of a bug is not guarantee of others' ignorance of it. Pinning blame on Google for putting us all at risk is the exact wrong response; Microsoft is at blame for taking more than three months to fix a critical security bug, which has been there for even longer. This sentiment is very visible in the comment section - the story's suggestion that Google did something wrong here, and the torrent of clueless commenters raging about how evil Google is being is disheartening, to say the least. I wonder how much of that is a result of the story's tone. ~~~ giovannibajo1 On the other hand, project zero publishes kiddies-ready exploits for their vulnerabilities, which is a very questionable practice for vulnerabilities which are still in the wild. Even if patches were available, it would be far better to wait for most devices to be patched before releasing a full exploit. They did this with iOS and now with Windows. We are now waiting for such useful ready-to-use exploits for major Android versions as well. ~~~ cheald Metasploit does the same thing, and we've managed to not have the internet implode yet. Yours is the standard argument against _any_ form of disclosure. I'm not discounting it, because no disclosure has its merits, but responsible disclosure satisfies both an ethical imperative (you can't let people believe they're secure if you know otherwise) and provides pressure on vendors to fix their software, when the vendor might otherwise deem it not worth the time or money to fix the issue, which leaves their customers vulnerable. The basic idea behind disclosure is "we might not be the first people to find this, and we definitely won't be the last, so let's remove all doubt and rob the bad guys of the element of surprise". Responsible disclosure is intended to permit responsible vendors to fix the issue before wide publication, but an uncooperative vendor doesn't mitigate the reality that the bug exists and will eventually be found by someone less benevolent. ~~~ boracay It's still just an excuse. Of course there's no liability in computing so no one actually have to come to terms with that. ------ dragonwriter Why isn't the source's headline "Microsoft fails to patch privilege-escalation vulnerability within 3 months"? ~~~ btian Because that would cause Microsoft to shift their advertising budget elsewhere. Just being practical. ------ DominikD It's more nuanced than article or commenters on HN want it to be. If there's a constant communication channel between companies and there's a reason to believe that patch can't be created in 90 days, sticking to deadlines seems to prioritize the wrong things. On the other hand if MS wasn't responsive enough and upfront about the time it'd take to patch and reasons for that, then sure, 90 days seems more than needed leeway for Microsoft. But I don't know how things worked and I've seen enough to assume that both scenarios are possible. ------ doe88 I think the initial principle of the disclosure policy is good, it is intended to put a bit of pressure on _bad_ vendors to fix their bugs. That said I don't think we can classify MS as a _bad_ vendor. They fix lot of critical issues every years, they certainly have their own internal teams working on security issues, they're _responsibles_. Vendors with a quite good track record should be allowed to have some slip ups. You cannot compare a vendor who doesn't fix anything on time with one that usually fix issues promptly but occasionally shows a delay on a report. The process should take that into account. I think the binary handling by Google on this one is not very well thought-out. ------ lawnchair_larry What a terrible linkbait headline. ~~~ dang We edited the title in an attempt to make it more neutral. ------ mcintyre1994 > It is important to note that for a would-be attacker to potentially exploit > a system, they would first need to have valid logon credentials and be able > to log on locally to a targeted machine. Are Microsoft downplaying or is this genuinely quite minor? The article discusses a disgruntled employee and since all their money comes from Enterprise presumably disgruntled employee can cause major damage is a pretty huge problem? ~~~ scarmig A not-particularly informed take: It means that every user effectively has root privileges. Which means that every user can eavesdrop on other users, view their saved data and files (unless encrypted on disk), intercept their network communications, impersonate them, steal their passwords (system, application, external web sites). How bad that is depends on your particular use case. But for pretty much any setup where security is a concern or there's any sensitive data at stake, this is a very serious issue. ~~~ jenscow However, in the case of Windows, this issue isn't that much severe as it would be on a unix-like, for example. With the set up of Windows servers I've seen, only the admin logs in anyway. It's not really used as a "multi-user" system per-se, where you get different users logging in at the same time. It does happen, but it's not common. ~~~ scarmig Hahah, I figured Windows might be slightly better about this, hence the self- admitted uninformed take. Could you clarify, though: do you mean to say Windows isn't as vulnerable because of cultural reasons (i.e. Windows systems aren't multi-user usually) or because of technical ones (they support something like SELinux out of the box)? ~~~ jenscow The _impact_ isn't as severe, for cultural reasons. ------ dang Url changed from [http://www.pcworld.com/article/2864312/google-discloses- unpa...](http://www.pcworld.com/article/2864312/google-discloses-unpatched- windows-vulnerability.html), which points to this. ------ Siecje This is going to be more common when Windows 7 is no longer supported 2015-01-13. ~~~ _delirium Windows 7 has security support through January 2020 [1]. What's ending this month is "mainstream support", which seems to mean new features, phone support, etc. [2] [1] [http://windows.microsoft.com/en- us/windows/lifecycle](http://windows.microsoft.com/en-us/windows/lifecycle) [2] See point 6 at [http://support2.microsoft.com/gp/lifepolicy](http://support2.microsoft.com/gp/lifepolicy)

Genghis Khan's genetic legacy has competition - benbreen http://www.nature.com/news/genghis-khan-s-genetic-legacy-has-competition-1.16767 ====== slg Maybe I am missing something in the article, but how do they identify the "founders" of these Y-chromosome lineages? What distinguishes the founder from their father's Y-chromosome lineage? Are they just trying to attribute the common lineage back to a historically powerful man who likely was involved in its spread and therefore calling them the "founder"? ~~~ IndianAstronaut This is puzzling to me as well. It may be more a familial thing than just one man. Ghenghis Khan was a member of a very powerful tribe and all the men, who were likely very closely related, would have engaged in the same prolific behavior during conquests. ~~~ Florin_Andrei Yes and no. Genghis Khan actually rose from a modest station in life, unremarkable by that time and place's standards. But you're right that it was a family thing - he had lots and lots of descendants, about half of which were male, and these descendants inherited some of the high status of their father, and therefore also had lots of descendants. And so on over generations, until the status faded. It was a family thing indeed, but it started with one man, and that man was Temujin, a.k.a. Genghis Khan. ------ duaneb For the 850AD lineage, it seems like the formation of the Holy Roman Empire would seem a prime candidate for an "event" in europe that led to the "modern european". Was Charlemagne a profitable pater for his family? ~~~ milesskorpen Sounds like you need a powerful man AND a man who fathered many, many, children. A quick search suggests he had 20 kids, not sure whether that's enough to qualify. ~~~ Raphmedia I doubt 20 kids would be enough to qualify. Most people of my grand parent's generation had around 20 kids. It used to be the norm. ~~~ benbreen Keep in mind that mortality prior to reaching one's first birthday was upwards of 50% in most premodern societies, so the key factor here seems to me to be not only fertility, but the ability to wield social capital over multiple generations (employing court physicians, wetnurses, etc) to ensure that all those kids actually live to adulthood. Hence why I find this study so interesting - it's using genetic evidence to map the flows of social power across generations (like with the dynasties of Genghis and the Qing). ~~~ smallhands 20 kids!?,the man is a serial rapist.please listen to the wrath of the khan podcast by Dan Carlin [http://podbay.fm/show/173001861/e/1343775512?autostart=1](http://podbay.fm/show/173001861/e/1343775512?autostart=1) ~~~ milesskorpen Once again, not talking about Genghis, the thread refers to Charlemagne. ------ ctchocula One glaring mistake I observed was: "In addition to Genghis Khan and his male descendants, researchers have previously identified the founders of two other highly successful Y-chromosome lineages: one that began in China with Giocangga, a Qinq Dynasty ruler who died in 1582." while Wikipedia says Qing Dynasty did not begin until 1644. edit: Looks like a commenter addresses it: "Here is part of the abstract of that paper: "We suggest that the lineage was spread by Qing Dynasty (1644-1912) nobility, who were a privileged elite sharing patrilineal descent from Giocangga (died 1582), the grandfather of Manchu leader Nurhaci, and whose documented members formed approximately 0.4% of the minority population by the end of the dynasty." Giocangga died in 1582 and was in Ming Dynasty. He was the ancestor of Qing Dynasty rulers. His lineage was spread by Qing Dynasty nobility. BTW, It is Qing Dynasty (1644-1912) not Qinq Dynasty." ------ samatman I wonder if it would be possible to use eigenface analysis to produce a 'typical' face borne by men who carry these particular Y chromosomes. That would be interesting indeed. ~~~ samatman This could also be done for lineages of women as well, by following mitochondrial DNA.

Ask HN: Scale of 1-10, how much did you trust Cloudflare before and after ban? - dfps ====== dfps Just curious. Cloudflare published this a while ago: [https://blog.cloudflare.com/why-we-terminated-daily- stormer/](https://blog.cloudflare.com/why-we-terminated-daily-stormer/) What is the temperature, though? Scale of 1-10, how much did you trust them before the ban, and how much currently? ------ matchmike1313 10 before the ban, 4 after the ban.

Show HN: ShelfLife, a social commerce platform for collectors - nickh http://www.shelflife.net/?utm_source=hackernews&utm_medium=post&utm_campaign=showcase_shelflife ====== eterm "Blocked, category games" I think perhaps it's matching on *lflife and making some assumptions? ~~~ nickh What's blocking you? A corporate firewall? ------ nickh ShelfLife co-founder here. We're aiming to document to every collectible ever made, and provide collectors with the best tools for buying, selling, and tracking their collections. ~~~ ToastyMallows Awesome site, I've had this idea many times I hope it takes off. Question: How general will catalogs be? I collect keychains, will something this general be supported? ~~~ nickh Thanks! Nearly anything can be catalogued, provided there's information available for it (E.g. manufacturer, release date, etc), and it's not something like the sweater that your grandmother knitted you. ~~~ ToastyMallows Ehh that might be hard for keychains. Thanks for the info! ------ hoopism Have to check out the Canadian version of DD. Site looks promising but lacked the few things I am interested in. Hope it takes off and I encounter it again. ~~~ nickh What do you collect that isn't on ShelfLife yet? There might be a curator working on it right now.

Rules of Logo Design - jwilliams http://www.tannersite.com/rules-of-logo-design/ ====== neilk Every successful design breaks at least one "rule". Because information is retained when it's distinct from the norm. Talent in design consists not in following rules but knowing when and how a rule can be broken. IBM's logo is way too busy. Apple's original logo has too many colors and isn't serious enough. GE is almost antique. UPS has that dull brown. ------ huhtenberg Hmm .. let's see .. rules demand logo to be recognizable, unique, timeless, bold, confident, surprising in presentation, solid, simple, not distracting and balanced visually. If you are having trouble with memorizing all these cool adverbs, just stick to the rule #42 .. ready ? .. It should be honest in it's representation. A list that is perfect in its complete and utter uselessness. ~~~ apmee Pedantry Corner: They're adjectives, not adverbs. ~~~ huhtenberg Damn right they are :) ------ maxklein His logos suck. A good logo should be recognized from it's outline - like BMW, IBM, Apple, Mercedes, the Nazi Party. Using a nice font and adding a butterfly is not a good logo. So I prefer not to take advice from someone who is not even particularly good. ------ eventhough Too many rules. Examples would work better than a list of rules. ~~~ jfornear I'm sure you are supposed to assume he follows his own rules and that examples are in his portfolio. That being said, after looking at his portfolio, I was not impressed. Some of the logos he created did not seem memorable at all, had unnecessary detail, etc. You can't just follow a set of rules to come up with a nice logo. You kind of need to have talent and an eye for colors, typography, etc. Nevertheless, give him credit for listing out some helpful things to keep in mind for designing things. The one thing I would say differently is that if you really like a certain logo's style, it isn't a crime to adopt similar styles for your own. All art is influenced by others in some way, and don't stick with something that sucks merely because it's 'original'. ~~~ jwilliams Yeah. The most interesting ones were ones of practice rather than design - check it in b&w, scale it, mirror it, etc. All perhaps obvious to many. ------ fjsjex "Use sharp lines for sharp businesses, smooth lines for smooth businesses." What is that supposed to mean? ~~~ whacked_new use vague descriptions for va... ... blog articles. ------ manny Was I the only one who read this as "Rules of Lego Design" only to have my excitement crushed into a fine powder?

Ask HN: Software pricing criteria for startups/freelancers? - asyazwan Can anyone share how do you price your software? As startup/freelancer the software will not be as popular compared to the big players out there, so high price may hurt. Likewise too low will starve you.<p>Is there an effective mechanism to price based on customer? ie. if customer is individual, low price, otherwise, high. But it seems to be easily exploitable.<p>Any insights? It would be great to know <i>exact</i> methods you use to measure LOCs, intangible costs such as time spent, and anything else. ====== aditya Pricing is mostly a dark art / finger in the air analysis, here's what I think you should do: <http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=677396>

Commitment vs. Forecast: A Subtle But Important Change to Scrum (2011) - bradmwalker https://www.scrum.org/resources/commitment-vs-forecast-subtle-important-change-scrum ====== jryan49 I still think it ironic that when looking at the actual Agile manifesto at [http://agilemanifesto.org/](http://agilemanifesto.org/) (which is short and uncomplicated), that the first line is "Individuals and interactions over processes and tools" and these days practicing agile, at least in a big-house corporate environment feels like anything but. ~~~ jt2190 The Agile Manifesto suffers from "the curse of knowledge": The signatories are all very experienced, and deeply understand all of the differences between projects and people and when to be flexible and when to be rigid, and they know that it's important to _not_ specify a method for _every_ situation. But there are many, many people entering the software industry who don't have their years of experience, and who need very clear, basic instructions as a starting point, and hence Scrum steps in to fill the gap. What's unfortunate is that scrum isn't a program for developing software managers from rigid, by- the-book managers into experienced, _agile_ managers: Instead it encourages newbie practices for everyone, forever. ~~~ mistermann > Instead it encourages newbie practices for everyone, forever. I feel like YAGNI is similarly abused, I don't know how many times I've said "You know what, while we're at it we should...." only to be overridden with "YAGNI!", only to be proven right 3 months later, only now the cost of refactoring > value of the feature, and saying I told you so isn't being a "team player", so no one ever learns. I very often wonder if I am the only one that feels this way. ~~~ 0x445442 > I very often wonder if I am the only one that feels this way. You're not. One of the bigger issues I've seen with Scrum is not being able to shoe horn in work that needs to be done because business didn't identify it as a "story". I believe development is there to serve business and any processes used to facilitate this serving should be defined by development. I don't dictate how a general contractor satisfies my requirements for my home build, I leave that to them. I just expect my requirements to be met at or near budget. A lot of these software process issues boil down to managements never ending quest to commoditize developers. ~~~ beat There's an analogy I like to use... you're baking bread. Bread is just flour, water, yeast, and salt, plus maybe decoration ingredients. You mix things in the correct proportions, let it rise, bake at the right temp/time, and you get bread. Easy, right? Then someone wants you to put in raisins. "It should be easy! It's just a handful of raisins, I don't see why you're telling me it can't be done!", they shout, five minutes before the oven timer goes off. Scrum is, at heart, _designed precisely to stop the behavior you 're demanding_ \- that is, the endless stream of "small" interruptions and constantly shifting priorities. The raisins. Why are you trying to "shoe horn in work" for _this iteration_ that you weren't aware was even an issue when the iteration planning happened? Is production down? Is it a hair-on-fire emergency that threatens the business? Or is it just "important". FUCK important. If it's so important, put it in the story backlog and have it done in the next iteration. If it's important enough to disrupt the iteration, it's important enough to cancel the iteration, toss all that iteration's unfinished work onto the backlog, and start over. That's how Scrum is supposed to work, but never does, because _someone_ wants raisins at the last minute and thinks it's not a big deal. ~~~ Nomentatus Yes, I have seen businesses die, both ways. The problem is that YAGNI cashes out to "make the right decisions" \- it's logically a tautology, but an emotional encouragement to drop features. Dropping is usually the correct decision - but too often catastrophic when it's not. If you invoke YAGNI you have to be careful you aren't "picking up nickles in front of steamrollers" \- a great idea until suddenly it's not. Fortunately, frequent iteration gives people a more realistic view of the cost of raisins. ~~~ beat I haven't seen businesses die because they _can 't wait two weeks_ for a new feature, and had to have it _right now_. I have seen businesses die because a development team was so paralyzed by constant interruptions that they were dysfunctional and couldn't get any real work done. ~~~ Nomentatus If it's a better data structure, then two weeks might set the course, alas. It's happened to me. Fact is, one can't get away from judgement calls, slogans might nudge in one direction or another, but it all remains a judgement call what's just a raisin and what isn't. The fatal problem is bosses up the chain who want to demonstrate they matter and are worth their expense by throwing in superfluous raisins; having a crude slogan (misleading or not) to deter them is fine by me. ~~~ beat A "better data structure" is almost never an emergency. And being unable to adapt or extend a data structure in the future is not agile, and it's not the simplest thing that can possibly work. Back when I first started building a startup, I thought "Thank Dog I no longer have to deal with stupid compromised software, and can start writing everything right!" By the time I was getting anywhere, I was well into toss- over-wall methodology. I did things that I knew full well were compromised and would hurt me later, because the work needed done, and needed to "be done". It was a real education. I actually have a lightning talk in mind on this subject, called "Why software sucks", that argues that suckage is the nature of software development, and that "barely works" is the best we can realistically ask for - or even should ask for. ------ justspamjustin My team moved from scrum to a kanban style process a couple years ago. The benefits were immediate. We no longer have drawn out sprint planning meetings where we discuss requirements of features that we never end up working on in that sprint. We don’t waste time debating complexity of features. Everything is now just ad hoc. When we need more requirements definitions, we pull the necessary members of the team together and discuss it. When we see that there needs to be architectual discussions and high level planning, we do it immediately when we recognize the need for it. The idea that you can try and commit to or even forecast how much can be completed for a period of time is pretty absurd. Just identify the minimum requirements of what needs to be done and do it. Retrospective is still productive. But sprint planning is a waste of time IMO. ~~~ jryan49 If you read the actual Agile manifesto, what you are doing now is more agile than scrum :) ~~~ smackay A lot of the artefacts of a process are intended to help teams transition from the old way of doing things and to help teams who have stalled or failed to deliver. Sprints, as far as I understand them, were intended to get the wheels turning and to demonstrate results at regular intervals so the customers for any software development effort could see progress and gain confidence that the team was going to deliver. Once everything is up and running smoothly then it's entirely reasonable to drop all that and just focus on delivering - you don't need a lot of packaging an rituals to do that. ~~~ hinkley But Scrum is working! Why would we ever change? ------ gedy We had Ken Schwaber come in to our shop early on in Scrum when we were struggling to get a new product going, and at its basics Scrum made tons of sense. Get a small group of people together to figure out how to make the highest priority items to ship to the customer (each written in a few sentences), then _leave that group alone_ until the sprint was done. The "commitment" was on delivering the value in the few sentences, not matching mockups, specs or some never-ending chain of tasks. It was a really simple and effective approach, but where it broke down was: there's a lot of people/roles/depts who have no idea how to work incrementally. UX "needs to work ahead", product "needs the whole backlog", Ops "have their own backlog", etc. Scrum didn't work with everyone hawking over a few engineers - then it just becomes task tracking bullshit. ------ qznc Now I would suggest to deprecate "sprint". It is not healthy to sprint continuously. Sane software development is much more like a marathon. ~~~ dudul I don't know if this is meant to be facetious, but I actually fully agree. "Sprint" is a terrible analogy because in reality it is impossible to be sprinting all the time. I usually just say "iteration". ~~~ neltnerb I'm confused, doesn't your statement mean the analogy is good? You can neither "sprint" at work continuously nor constantly sprint in reality. ~~~ dudul Let's say you do 2 week sprints as part of your process. You do a sprint, finish it, and then do another sprint immediately after. How is that viable? Effectively it means that you never stop sprinting. I don't think it's sustainable. ~~~ neltnerb Is that actually what scrum suggests sprints are? Thanks, I missed that, that's silly if so. I assumed by the name that this was like a one week a month kind of thing. ~~~ theptip I think there's quite a lot of getting hung up on the word itself here... According to the Scrum guide, a sprint is just: > a time-box of one month or less during which a "Done", useable, and > potentially releasable product Increment is created. Sprints have consistent > durations throughout a development effort. A new Sprint starts immediately > after the conclusion of the previous Sprint. ([http://www.scrumguides.org/scrum-guide.html#events- sprint](http://www.scrumguides.org/scrum-guide.html#events-sprint)) There's nothing that says you need to "sprint" through your sprints, quite the contrary it's supposed to be a way of measuring your team's steady-state output by making the feedback loop short. If people are really hearing the word "sprint" and thinking "ah, Scum is telling me to work at 110% all the time without stopping", then I put forth that no methodology or change of terminology is going to save them from themselves. However, I suspect there's something about the timebox structure that makes short-term thinking the default unless discipline is applied, and discipline is hard. ~~~ rapala Exactly. The point of time boxing is that you have to stop and reflect on the time spent. It gives you the chance to switch tasks if priorities have changed or to split the current task. Or to go on to the next sprint with the same task. But here lies the problem in many cases. The sprint is taken not as a time box but as a deadline. A sprint should meen: "You can work 2 weeks, 5 days a week, 8 hours a day on this. Then you stop to think." ------ taeric Funny to see this. I thought getting commitment was one of the soft mechanisms of scrum. An annoying one, because power dynamics are always at play. Still a mechanism, though. I think I'm supportive of the idea on removing it. Seems the goal is ultimately to find ways in rhetoric and action to align the teams in working to the end goal. Which, often, might require tradeoffs to reach a timely delivery. And timing is a requirement. ~~~ crdoconnor It probably made more sense to put it in in the beginning when the process was still being sold to senior managers. Now that scrum is much more embedded, taking out for the reasons given makes more sense. ------ bamboo_7 Yes yes yes. It never made sense to me that our ticket sizing was supposed to be an estimate and yet the planning that used those estimates was considered a commitment. Totally insane. ~~~ philbarr [https://imgur.com/a/OnJKA](https://imgur.com/a/OnJKA) ~~~ joejerryronnie Fantastic, I'm using this in my next presentation to management. ------ daanlo I am a big fan of scrum precisely because of the word commitment (I hand't realized it was removed). Forecast means we need to use a larger estimate next time. Commitment means: "how can we still get this live". In a good culture the answer to this should rarely be work extra hours or reduce code quality - it should be reduce scope of functionality. Without the commitment you often get micro feature creep, where a bunch of non-essential micro features are added. A bit like this ([https://lawsofux.com/parkinsons- law.html](https://lawsofux.com/parkinsons-law.html)). It is also the obvious moment in time to tell a product owner "we need to remove functionality x or not ship". Without the commitment that important conversation is never had. In my experience micro & macro feature creep is one of the biggest issues in sw development. Obviously you can still do the above with the word forecast, but forecast empowers you less to actually change anything (apart from better aka higher estimates next Sprint). On a general note: I feel scrum is often misused to "manage" engineering teams, when it is really a productivity tool that the team should use for itself. ~~~ brightball Depending on the size or the organization, that word commitment can create numerous issues. It can keep teams from collaborating because of a need to finish their commitments first, effectively blocking the other teams and delaying actual delivery of the product. You can see the same issues in customer support requests. The second that somebody decides to measure completed sprint commitments, you are in deeeeeep trouble because it forces people to low ball to hit that number. It removes your ability to pivot. The entire concept of sprint commitments in a moderately sized team is borderline destructive. This change is the best news about software development I’ve read in YEARS. ------ EngineerBetter I wrote an article on the negative psychological impact of commitments in sprints ([https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/scrum-makes-you-dumb- daniel-j...](https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/scrum-makes-you-dumb-daniel- jones)). It's great to see renewed focus on shifting away from a term that has been used to make developers' working lives unpleasant, leads to lower-quality code, and gives false certainty to stakeholders. ------ je42 This PDF is pretty nice. Regarding the differences of Kanban vs Scrum. [https://www.crisp.se/file-uploads/Kanban-vs- Scrum.pdf](https://www.crisp.se/file-uploads/Kanban-vs-Scrum.pdf) ------ perseusprime11 Is Agile & Scrum still relevant? I am seeing more and more consultants who used to selling this stuff have moved upmarket into Lean and Digital Transformation of companies. ------ romanovcode Can we deprecate scrum in 2018? ~~~ dang Please don't post unsubstantive comments here. I'm sure few people here have any fondness for software processes, especially in the corporate decadence stage, but that's no reason to make HN worse. ------ brightball This is perfect. ------ saas_co_de [http://programming-motherfucker.com/](http://programming-motherfucker.com/) ~~~ make3 do people really pair program in real life? I've never actually seen it ~~~ dudul Yes. ~~~ make3 at which company did you see it, and was it everyone ------ woliveirajr Tag [2011] is missing... ~~~ sctb Thanks! Updated.

Quantum Computing Hardware Teardown - szczys https://hackaday.com/2018/01/22/quantum-computing-hardware-teardown/ ====== szczys I can definitely follow this article, but I still don't feel like I have an intuitive understanding at all the way I do with traditional processors that use plain old electron flow. It makes me wonder if that's how people felt when integrated circuits were first being seen in the world. ~~~ wd5gnr I think the harder transition was from tubes to bipolar transistors. FETs were/are more like tubes.

Ask HN: What domain registration and DNS service do you use? - dangayle I love using Digital Ocean and Heroku for my websites. Clean designs, straightforward navigation and functionality, affordable.<p>And then you have domain registrars like GoDaddy, Domain.com and others that are the exact opposite (except cheap).<p>Is there a domain registrar that doesn&#x27;t severely suck the life out of creating a new domain? Something that has an easy to use API, clean and modern? ====== niclupien Namecheap works well. They have an API but I never used it. ~~~ kkoch986 I'm up to about 12 domains on namecheap, can't complain ~~~ d0ugie Do they have a good deal on SSL certs when buying or transferring domains? the certs are good, yes? ~~~ gesman I used namecheap and buy SSL certs, including wildcarded SSL certs. I think they have the best prices for that. SSL certificate cost is a scam anyways - so you better off with whoever is the cheapest. ------ workhere-io [https://gandi.net](https://gandi.net) / [http://doc.rpc.gandi.net](http://doc.rpc.gandi.net). For DNS I sometimes use AWS' Route 53 because it provides some unique options regarding S3 and CloudFront. ------ pairing I've been using Name ([http://name.com](http://name.com)) for a few years now and I've been happy with their services. They also have two factor auth for accessing your account which is a huge plus. ------ ekpyrotic A Small Orange ([http://asmallorange.com](http://asmallorange.com)). Simple, clean & top-quality support. Used them for 2 years now - and it's been a pleasure. ~~~ chrxn I may be wrong, but this company seems to only offer hosting services. I see no domain name registration services offered. ------ Swanty [https://www.gandi.net/](https://www.gandi.net/) and [https://dns.he.net](https://dns.he.net). ------ RexRollman I used Gandi for my domains for the last six years. They been great, but since I've never had an issue, I can't say how good their customer service is. ------ randallma dnsimple ([https://dnsimple.com](https://dnsimple.com))

The Reproduction of Privilege - pg http://campaignstops.blogs.nytimes.com/2012/03/12/the-reproduction-of-privilege/?src=recg ====== rdl There are a lot of points in this (some of which seem bogus), but just to focus on one: "Higher education itself has polarized" -- relative growth in competitive, very competitive, and most highly competitive colleges AND in community colleges, but not in the less and noncompetitive 4-year colleges. This seems like something to be celebrated and encouraged, not reviled. I really don't see any reason for any but the top 100 universities (maybe less) to exist as residential institutions, focused primarily on research; the community college system, plus the Internet, should be sufficient for the vast majority. High quality community colleges (and not forgoing income by going to school instead of working for 4 years) would go a long way to reducing the income gap, especially combined with decent public education and free Internet resources. Pell Grants cover 62% of the cost of community college, and there are usually state funds on top of that. There are very good reasons to not cover 100% of the cost of education with "free money" -- bringing it down in cost to the point where the poor can afford it at some acceptable sacrifice should be the goal. Lowering the actual cost of delivering community college classes makes more sense than trying to use federal money to subsidize inefficient producers, too. The big problem with community colleges is branding and prestige. A lot of people could get just as good an education in the community college format, but as long as employers view a 4 year BA in communications from some relatively worthless college or university as superior to the community college degree, it will be a problem. Some kind of independent credentialing system (vendor certs in tech are one example -- a self-taught CCIE is probably a better pick to build and admin a Cisco network than a guy with a BA in IT from U of Phoenix), merit based candidate evaluation (which in some cases runs up against antidiscrimination laws...), and a move away from hiring as employees to hiring contractors or buying services from small firms. I wish there were a way for the super-rich to earn as much prestige by endowing basic technical courses at thousands of community colleges as by building yet another stadium at a mediocre large university. ~~~ buss > There are very good reasons to not cover 100% of the cost of education with > "free money" -- bringing it down in cost to the point where the poor can > afford it at some acceptable sacrifice should be the goal. Lowering the > actual cost of delivering community college classes makes more sense than > trying to use federal money to subsidize inefficient producers, too. I think that you shouldn't _have_ to sacrifice _anything_ to become educated. I think that would mean the poor are always sacrificing relatively more than their richer contemporaries. If we don't cover the entire cost of education for those most unable to pay then we are continuing the stratification of higher education. Say the cost was covered at 80% for individuals coming from families making $40,000 or less per year. This family is probably already struggling to save money while paying their bills, and having to divert any amount of money to the continued education of a child is probably off the table. This requires that the child work while attending school which takes valuable time away from studying and getting enough sleep. Lots of people work while going to school and end up dropping out or going every other semester because they don't make enough in their low-paying unskilled labor job. This is a vicious cycle which results in the poor staying poor because they can't make enough at the job they must have in order to pay for education. Children from wealthier families can afford to funnel a bit of money towards their education, and maybe only work part-time for some spending money. Don't get me wrong - highly educated people are great for a society and this shouldn't be discouraged, but I also think we have a duty to help those living harder lives than our own. ~~~ rdl I agree most education should be free -- just not that 4-year residential institutions (particularly mediocre ones) should be subsidized. The purpose of partial payment by the user for a service like community college is to discourage waste; something on the order of $100-200 per class would be adequate for that. It would be payment by the student, not by his family. The community college model is that you can work while attending. I don't think it is unreasonable to expect someone to do so -- working full time while attending a 4 year university is probably not viable (I tried doing it, and ultimately dropped out), but I think the Internet should allow an expansion of the role of online courses and community college, both highly compatible with work-study. I would go so far as to eliminate non-merit scholarships and financial aid (subsidized loans, etc.) for 4 year institutions (except for things like the GI Bill which are a form of compensation). They should not be the mainstream form of education. This only works if we can remove "must have 4 year degree, we don't really care from where or in what" as a job qualification for most jobs. I'd like there to be qualification tests for jobs, vs. checking a box for a degree. In this case, only circa 1900 level of 4 year college attendance would happen, and the vast majority (95%+) would have high school for general education and some specialized training beyond that for employment. ------ kunle I dont know if it's more scary that you can basically predict someone's SAT score by knowing their family income, or that you can predict their family income by knowing their SAT score. ------ snambi My father used to tell me this "Provide education for free to those who really want it and deserve it. If not provide it only those who can pay for it". My father was a professor in India, where college education is free. All state funded colleges are free and most of them are easy to get into. But most of the students are not interested in learning, they come to college for time pass. So, free education should be given to only those who deserve.

/usr/bin/time: not the command you think you know - activatedgeek https://hackernoon.com/usr-bin-time-not-the-command-you-think-you-know-34ac03e55cc3 ====== jimrandomh The reason 'time' is a builtin is because it can time a complete shell pipeline, not just a single command. If you type time foo |bar Then the result is the total time taken by foo and bar together. This requires it to have special-case syntax. Whereas /usr/bin/time foo |bar Would run foo and give its time statistics as input to bar. ~~~ jcoffland Run these commands for a better demonstration: time echo | sleep 1 vs. /usr/bin/time echo | sleep 1 The former times the entire pipeline whereas the later only times the first command in the pipe. ~~~ fnord123 This also gives the time of the entire pipeline (since the commands all begin together and only finish when the last command has completed): echo | /usr/bin/time sleep 1 ~~~ roblabla I'm pretty sure this is wrong. As an example : sleep 2 | /usr/bin/time sleep 1 This gives an output of "1 second" even though the entire pipeline took 2 seconds. ~~~ fnord123 Ok you can wangle your way out of it. But if you're doing something like `grep "$something" | /usr/bin/time some_job` then generally you're fine. ~~~ perennate Wouldn't the system/user time be wrong though? ------ graton On bash you can do this to have it not use an alias or built-in command: $ \time echo 0.00user 0.00system 0:00.00elapsed 100%CPU (0avgtext+0avgdata 1764maxresident)k 0inputs+0outputs (0major+66minor)pagefaults 0swaps The built-in version: $ time echo real 0m0.000s user 0m0.000s sys 0m0.000s ~~~ yrro Is this behaviour documented anywhere? The closest I can find is [https://www.gnu.org/software/bash/manual/bashref.html#Aliase...](https://www.gnu.org/software/bash/manual/bashref.html#Aliases) which remarks, > The first word of each simple command, if unquoted, is checked to see if it > has an alias. I observe that t\ime works just as well as \time. ~~~ sigjuice _t\ime_ is rather surprising. Is there any documentation or explanation on why it does what it does? ~~~ yrro [https://www.gnu.org/software/bash/manual/bashref.html#Escape...](https://www.gnu.org/software/bash/manual/bashref.html#Escape- Character) I think it's because using the backslash to escape counts as quoting. So the following are all equivalent: $ \time foo $ t\ime foo $ 'time' foo ------ dredmorbius Since the article doesn't clarify on shell command priority, commands are search in order: 1\. Alias expansion. 2\. Defined shell functions. 3\. Built-in shell functions. 4\. Command path. If you provide an unqualified command that matches more than one of these elements, the _first match_ wins. Prepending a backstroke: "\command", will inhibit alias expansion. E.g.: alias date="echo no date" date \date Should return "no date", and your current system date, respectively. To invoke a system command directly, call the full path. If you don't feel like running the fish shell (not that there's anything wrong with that). Some simple shells (e.g., dash, and IIRC the original Bourne shell, though that is _not_ what you'll find as /bin/sh on most modern systems) don't include a time builtin, and can invoke the system time command directly. ~~~ knome Perhaps, but time is a syntactic form, like `if` or `case`. [https://www.gnu.org/software/bash/manual/html_node/Pipelines...](https://www.gnu.org/software/bash/manual/html_node/Pipelines.html#Pipelines) ~~~ dredmorbius I'm sorry, that's not clear to me. What's the significance exactly? ~~~ knome A command takes a series of arguments, stdin/out/err pipes and returns an error code on completion. time prefixes a pipeline ( the most basic case being a single command without a pipe into another ), a command block { ... } a subshell block ( ... ), a for statement, an if statement, just whatever really. This "time" would output how long "a" took to run: /usr/bin/time a b c | { d e ; f g ; } | h i ; This "time" outputs how long the pipeline "a", "d", "f", and "h" took to run: time a b c | { d e ; f g ; } | h i ; This is a syntax error: /usr/bin/time { d e ; f g ; } This returns how long the command group takes to run: time { d e ; f g ; } Further examples: $ time sleep 10 | sleep 1 ; real 0m10.073s user 0m0.000s sys 0m0.000s $ time sleep 1 | sleep 10 ; real 0m10.003s user 0m0.000s sys 0m0.000s $ /usr/bin/time sleep 10 | sleep 1 ; 0.00user 0.00system 0:10.00elapsed 0%CPU (0avgtext+0avgdata 1796maxresident)k 0inputs+0outputs (0major+80minor)pagefaults 0swaps $ $ /usr/bin/time sleep 1 | sleep 10 ; 0.00user 0.00system 0:01.00elapsed 0%CPU (0avgtext+0avgdata 1808maxresident)k 0inputs+0outputs (0major+82minor)pagefaults 0swaps Note the two /usr/bin/time's output their timing information as soon as the first command is done, but the pipeline doesn't return until both commands have exited. > hope this rant helps in some way ~~~ dredmorbius Thanks, that _does_ raise some interesting points. What of: /usr/bin/time ( sleep 1 | sleep 10 ) Explicitly invvoking a subshell. Which I understand the builtin to be doing. ------ metafunctor A more interesting command is /bin/[. Yep, it's the same as /bin/test, but basically requires the last argument to be a ]. Typically /bin/test and bin/[ are hard links, that is, they are physically the same file and share the same inode(s). You know, so you can type if [ $foo = $bar ]; then yes else exit fi This actually _runs_ the command /bin/[, except most of the time it doesn't, because it's built-in to the shell. As as side-note, an article like this should at least mention which OS and shell the author is using. ~~~ Elrac > As as side-note, an article like this should at least mention which OS and > shell the author is using. Very much agree! I just tried this on my 2.6.32 RHEL system, and it's never heard of "-l". It outputs very similar-looking information as in the article, though, when given "-v" . ------ halostatue In both bash and zsh, you can force the shell to use $PATH for lookup (bypassing functions and shell builtins) by calling a builtin name with 'command' ('command time -l ls'). You can equivalently force a builtin with 'builtin', but that does not work with reserved words (and 'time' is a shell reserved word). ~~~ ramshorns TIL that a shell reserved word is different from a shell builtin. [http://unix.stackexchange.com/questions/267761/differences-b...](http://unix.stackexchange.com/questions/267761/differences- between-keyword-reserved-word-and-builtin) ~~~ xelxebar Yeah. Shell semantics can be pretty unintuitive sometimes. I often find it helpful to translate these ideas to standard programming language terms. * Commands are like functions * Commands in /bin etc. are like library functions * Builtins are like a language's primitive functions * Keywords are keywords ------ hobarrera $ which time time: shell reserved word $ ls /usr/bin/time /bin/time ls: cannot access '/usr/bin/time': No such file or directory ls: cannot access '/bin/time': No such file or directory Looks like something specific to the author's distribution. ~~~ kylek Exists on a debian(/testing?) system I've: $ time ls / bin boot dev etc home lib lib64 lost+found media mnt opt proc root run sbin srv sys tmp usr var real 0m0.004s user 0m0.000s sys 0m0.000s $ /usr/bin/time ls / bin boot dev etc home lib lib64 lost+found media mnt opt proc root run sbin srv sys tmp usr var 0.00user 0.00system 0:00.00elapsed 0%CPU (0avgtext+0avgdata 2304maxresident)k 0inputs+0outputs (0major+109minor)pagefaults 0swaps Edit: formatting ~~~ kevinoid Sometimes. It depends whether you have the time[1] package installed. 1\. [https://packages.debian.org/sid/time](https://packages.debian.org/sid/time) ------ 7171u I had to use "\--verbose" instead of "-l" in my RHEL7 \time --verbose echo ~~~ aij I bet you're using GNU time rather than BSD time. It did seem odd to me that the author didn't bother to mention which OS he is using, though from the hostname I have a pretty good guess. ------ brendangregg No, /usr/bin/time is indeed what I know, and its extended stats is why I suggested using it in my last perf book (time -v). "/usr/bin/time: not the command you think you know" -> "/usr/bin/time: may not be the command you think you know" There, I fixed the title. ~~~ an_account /r/iamverysmart ------ d4l3k /usr/bin/time doesn't seem to be a thing on my Arch Linux install. ¯\\_(ツ)_/¯ ~~~ fbernier Same here. I had to fetch it via pacman. Also, the -l option doesn't exist on the non-bsd version. ~~~ tomsmeding I love arch. Sudo doesn't exist until you install it (directly or indirectly). ~~~ jcoffland That's the same on Debian. ~~~ ajsalminen Yeah, I don't think it's all that rare for sudo to be an optional package not installed by default in distributions. At least that used to be the case back when I used try various ones a lot more. ------ devnonymous So also are /usr/bin/{cd,[,echo,pwd,fg,..etc} a lot of them having subtle differences with their corresponding shell builtins. Most of the time the differences are not worth the hassle to remember, unless you somehow end up on a system with a broken filesystem (for example where /lib or /usr/lib is destroyed) and need to rescue stuff. ------ cmurf On Fedora Linux, '/usr/bin/time -v <command>' rather than -l. ------ saagarjha So it's just like /usr/bin/cd–a builtin that also has a binary. ~~~ tyingq How would that work? A forked/execed subprocess somehow forcing chdir() in it's parent? Guessing it isn't terribly useful. ~~~ zwp I too don't see how it is useful but it's certainly a thing. The Solaris implementation looks like this: #!/bin/ksh -p # ... cmd=`basename $0` $cmd "$@" I just noticed that the what(1)-string (I haven't seen on of those for a long time) references "alias.sh", perhaps this is a clue? #ident "@(#)alias.sh 1.2 00/02/15 SMI" Were builtins actually aliases in an early shell? I still don't understand how this works though. ~~~ tyingq That's a funny implementation. It would end up being an infinite loop for any command that wasn't a builtin, or didn't have an identically named thing higher up the PATH. Like if you renamed it from /usr/bin/cd to /usr/bin/mycd.

Using “and” and “or” in Ruby - fogus http://avdi.org/devblog/2010/08/02/using-and-and-or-in-ruby/ ====== raganwald I use this a lot. I dislike side effects in the subject clause of an if statement, so I used to rewrite: if user = User.find(...) ... end as: user = User.find(...) if user ... end I then got into the habit of using and: user = User.find(...) and begin ... end It just seems to resemble something I'd say to a colleague: "user becomes blah blah blah and then we do this with it..." Likewise: user = User.find(...) or begin user = User.create(...) SecurityTheatre.starring(user) end This looks to me like it says "find the user or create the user." The precedence of the words "or" and "and" seems obvious when you think of them as words rather than as operators, while the precedence of operators naturally seems higher/tighter. JM2C... ~~~ KirinDave I like your find-or-begin pattern, and I've used the or operator to pun that way before as well. But just a note, the if x = ... is not a side effect unless the variable "x" already exists. There's not problem using that as a pun to get rid of lots of if nesting. Similarly if x &&= ... is very good for avoiding an if-cascade, albeit more obscure and perhaps less performant. It's too bad there isn't a beautiful way to do monads or the thrush operator in Ruby. ------ tomstuart As per Tim Bray ([http://www.tbray.org/ongoing/When/201x/2010/06/29/No- Default...](http://www.tbray.org/ongoing/When/201x/2010/06/29/No-Defaults)), remembering this kind of nonsense is a waste of a perfectly good brain. Just don't bother. ~~~ msie I agree with you, but I always wonder if we discount memorization too much that it impedes learning a language. We can't expect all of a language to be "logical". There will be always quirks that have to be remembered. If we discount those parts that have to be remembered then have we shortchanged ourselves in mastery of a language? Warts and all? ------ draegtun Also see this blog post: _Logical operators in Perl and Ruby_ [http://eli.thegreenplace.net/2007/06/02/logical-operators- in...](http://eli.thegreenplace.net/2007/06/02/logical-operators-in-perl-and- ruby/) ------ gmac I knew this, but I always find it a rather disappointing choice in the language design, as I think its capacity for inspiring bugs rather outweighs its usefulness (which extends as far as making some parentheses unnecessary). In a nutshell: there are two forms of the AND and OR operators, with different precedences; in many contexts, you can use them interchangeably; but in some, they'll behave differently, and could bite you. ------ jim_h I'm slow this morning. That took me a couple of minutes to get the example. 'foo = 42 and foo / 2' I was expecting an undefined variable since foo was never set because I was thinking of it as foo = (42 and foo / 2) Basically I would write the example as this in 2 lines to avoid confusion and not use 'and': foo = 42 foo / 2 Maybe another example in the article would have been better to show the power of 'and'. ~~~ avdi Writing it in two lines would defeat the purpose of demonstrating the difference between && and 'and'. ~~~ CodeMage Yep, that's an important point: you should probably have chosen a different example. The one you used will either make people say "it's a lot better to write it in two lines" or "oh, cool, I can write one liners like that". Your post is explaining and demonstrating the use of "and" and "or", whose purpose is to allow idioms which rely on short-circuiting logic to control side effects, but that particular example didn't involve side effects _after_ the operator (which is the whole point). Perhaps it would be a good idea to replace that example with one that shows what would happen if you used "and" in an "if". It would serve the same purpose as the one you have currently -- show the unintended effects of using the wrong flavor of operator -- without confusing people or unintentionally teaching bad practices. ~~~ stevejohnson I agree that the numeric example in the blog post was a bad one. The use of 'and' just looks confusing in that situation. You might try something like "foo = open_connection() and send_data()" instead. ------ jewbacca This seems like a kind of hack-y laziness, specifically in the form of a poor man's exception. It's no more "magic" than an if statement or any other kind of block. I would probably use this plenty if I were to use Ruby (Haskell has spoiled me for strict evaluation forever), but it definitely smells like language bloat -- you wouldn't need to tell me it's Perl-inspired for me to strongly suspect it. ------ sunkencity Yeah I've looked briefly at and before and not gotten it's use, this is awesome. In a similar vein it's possible to just hang on a rescue at the end, very practical and easy to read, like in a view: <% percent = (count /total.to_f * 100 ).round_with_precision(2) rescue 0 %> ------ bryanlarsen There's just too much semantic overload on those two operators. I myself have misread these before. When I use these operators, I always follow with "raise" or "begin". This customary usage is not going to cause confusion and covers 99% of their usage anyways. ------ code_duck It works exactly the same in PHP, another twisted offspring of Perl. ------ aneth If you're relying on obscure not well known operator precedence rules, you are writing less maintainable code. It's as bad or worse than using meaningless variable or function names. Use parentheses so your code communicates your intention. ~~~ KirinDave Except that it's not obscure at all. "and" and "or" exist specifically to facilitate this kind of code. That's their primary purpose. And it's not like that's exactly unusual in the ruby language. Post- conditionals have a similar low precedence. ~~~ acgourley Is "this kind of code" worth it? It certainly is aesthetically pleasing and somewhat terse compared to a parenthesis jungle. But that does outweigh the fact non-experts don't know exactly what the statement is doing? ~~~ sketerpot To anyone who learns the idiom, this code is fine, and perfectly readable. I don't even know Ruby yet, and it took me less than a minute to become fully comfortable with this kind of code. This isn't a huge barrier to "non- experts". ~~~ acgourley Of course it took under a minute, you were reading a nice blog post on the topic. The problem is not every instance of 'and' will include that information. And so I worry that if I drop 'and' into some minor glue script I write - it becomes less self documenting to my coworkers. It's a minor point, but it can become a slippery slope (see: perl) ~~~ KirinDave This entire argument is moot. No one cares how obscure a language looks to someone who is not familiar with it. Do you regularly sit down and decide, “I am going to use a language I don't know to accomplish something essential and immediate?” And even if the answer is yes, then do you still not know the language at the end of that exercise? This is a very simple, easily understandable and easily readable feature of Ruby. It's not obscure, complex, or even that unusual. Precedence is something every competent programmer needs to understand, and it should be part of every programmer's research to learn a new language. After all, this is a conversation about the existence of "and" & "or", not their abuse. ~~~ Roboprog I used to be competent, but now I guess I avoid writing stuff that relies on _any_ knowledge of operator precedence. I try to learn what I can of such precedence in the language of the day, since I will have to maintain other people's "code" (cypher?), but I try to write obvious "programs" (who is in this play, what are the acts?). I've been at this over 2 decades, and it's much easier to read something that uses a few parentheses, a well named intermediate variable or two, or even a few functions, than it is to read bunch of multiple operators on the same line gobble-de-gook. Watching somebody else generate a hundred thousand dollars of wasted product in a manufacturing preparation process a few years back, due to such a run-on if-statement being fouled up, was also a good confirmation of this bias. I'm sure my current job in finance offers similar opportunities for expensive blunders. ------ GrandMasterBirt Wow, honestly this article helped :), I really did think it was a synonym and did not realize the precedence implications. ------ sabat The logic for and/or vs. &&/|| is borrowed directly from Perl. It makes sense once you use them for a bit. ~~~ _delirium Maybe I'm not good at the context-switching between parsing things as operators versus as English, but I find them confusing in Perl except in some very simple idiomatic cases, where they're fine because I read them as boilerplate. The common _do_thing or die "error"_ idiom is perfectly readable, but anything more complex and I start explicitly reasoning about short-circuit semantics. It's possible I have that reaction due to the strong negative consensus about using short-circuiting as control flow in C being hammered into my head at an early age, though.

Show HN: Convert walkthroughs to working programs - j-angnoe https://github.com/j-angnoe/code-walkthrough-compiler/ ====== zzo38computer I think Knuth did something similar before. TeX is written in WEB, which like that you can define many blocks and include them within other blocks, but it also has other features such as it will generate an index automatically. ------ ldb I like the idea. Reminds me of the Eve language/IDE (www.witheve.com). ~~~ j-angnoe I can see why, Eve looks brilliant! It's pretty close to the way I would like to learn, develop and play with a program. Thank you for this!

Pixie Pi - jonnybgood http://stuarth.github.io/pixie/pixie-pi ====== therealmocker There doesn't seem to be a homebrew package for Pixie yet on OS X. I made a quick Brewfile ([http://brew.sh](http://brew.sh)) but was bitten by pixie needing to find its standard libraries in a specific location. I should look again because the project looks like a way to use Clojure style syntax for quick one off scripts instead of making an uberjar. ~~~ _halgari It's pretty trivial to fix the default locations that Pixie looks for files. Create an issue on our github page and I'll help you get it working. ------ BFay Cool, I wanted to use Clojure on the Raspberry Pi, but the startup time is very slow, due more to loading the core Clojure libraries than the JVM. It makes writing a Clojure web server really impractical on the Pi. I considered using clojurescript for the server, but ended up just going back to node for my project. ~~~ evilduck I wouldn't get too excited just yet. Just built this on my RPi2 without JIT and ran the hello world file in the example folder: ./examples/hello-world.pxi 24.33s user 0.40s system 99% cpu 24.797 total ~~~ _halgari There's something pretty wrong with that example. Times from my RPi2: time ./pixie-vm ./examples/hello-world.pxi Hello, World! real 0m1.167s user 0m1.160s sys 0m0.000s ~~~ evilduck No clue what was different but I started from scratch and now get ./pixie-vm ./examples/hello-world.pxi 1.01s user 0.00s system 98% cpu 1.021 total Sorry for the negative report. ------ rasur In what way is this clojure inspired? (Just curious.. Does it need the JVM, or is it a brackety/syntax thing?) ~~~ dorfsmay Pixie (1) is a Clojure-like language that is written in rpython and is run via pypy (python jit), the advantages being fast startups (Clojure compile some libraries on startup which doesn't make it very suitable for writing CLI). This particular article is about running Pixie on the Raspberry Pi, check the Pixie language page to learn more about Pixie itself. Pixie does not require the JVM. > In what way is this clojure inspired? is it a brackety/syntax thing? Have you looked at the article? It shows an example (that uses brackets and indeed looks like Clojure/lisp syntax). [1]: [https://github.com/pixie-lang/pixie](https://github.com/pixie- lang/pixie) ~~~ rasur > Have you looked at the article? Well, yes briefly (it lead to the question by saying it was clojure inspired), but I didn't have time to delve fully into the minutiae, as am at work and for some reason they keep expecting me to do stuff /shrugs/ ------ acron0 This is interesting. I've had success in the past at running Hy [1] (a Lisp running on Python) on a Raspberry Pi as well. This could be a nice, speedier alternative, however you lose the Python ecosystem. [1] [http://hylang.org](http://hylang.org) ------ fit2rule I want to do the same but with Lua. I think that would be a very nice environment. ~~~ malkia Then you should look no further than luajit -> [http://luajit.org](http://luajit.org) ------ rcarmo I tried to get the JIT to work on ARM a couple of months back. Since the author explicitly turned off the JIT, I suppose there's still work to be done... ~~~ _halgari The jit works, it's just that RPython's support for cross compilation is weak, and it requires a fair amount of memory to compile. The gist of it all is that compiling pixie with a JIT for ARM requires an ARM machine with at least 1GB of RAM. I've gotten it to compile with a JIT on my Raspberry Pi 2, but it's a bit tricky. Once the interpreter is compiled it only takes about 10MB of ram to run, so my long term goals are to release pre-built binaries. ------ karmakaze Clojure, Pi, FFI, oh my! (couldn't resist)

Show HN: HackerNews for Social Entrepreneurs - dhruvkar http://news.socent.io ====== dhruvkar Currently using the very useful telescope app. Any feedback on design and user experience would be very helpful.

Zero-day in jQuery plugin sample code exploited for at least three years - john37386 https://www.zdnet.com/article/zero-day-in-popular-jquery-plugin-actively-exploited-for-at-least-three-years/ ====== lcashdol Larry Cashdollar here. I don’t blame the author either. None of the folks including my self knew .htaccess support was no longer default. ------ blueimp Author of jQuery File Upload here. The vulnerability is a combination of Apache v.2.3.9's default setting to not read .htaccess files and my mistake of relying on .htaccess to enforce security of the sample PHP upload component. To give you some context on how this could happen: \- As the project name implies, this started as a client-side jQuery plugin, with a dummy PHP script to echo out the uploaded file \- Over time, I added a couple of sample server-side upload components, including two for Google App Engine (Python + Golang) - which I used for the demo - and one for PHP, which I never used myself in production \- I used the PHP component for local tests with various possible file uploads, including very large files and chunked uploads, which required enabling all file types for upload. My thinking was that allowing all file types for upload is not critical as long as the handling of those files is properly configured. \- Prior to adding the .htaccess file, I mistakenly assumed developers would configure their Apache server themselves so that no PHP scripts would be executed in the uploads folder. It was only added in this commit: [https://github.com/blueimp/jQuery-File- Upload/commit/13931c7...](https://github.com/blueimp/jQuery-File- Upload/commit/13931c7e4f7113c7b6832fe6d9abe0edf627ab3d#diff-4ea7e687ccf6a97c37a1a198b894aae1) \- The Apache servers I tested with always had support for .htaccess enabled, so I never bothered to check that the default Apache configuration since version 2.3.9 actually disabled it \- The original .htaccess configuration didn't even prevent script execution in all Apache configurations and had to be fixed, see: [https://github.com/blueimp/jQuery-File- Upload/pull/3381](https://github.com/blueimp/jQuery-File-Upload/pull/3381) Looking back, there are a couple of things that I should have done differently: \- Move out the server-side components into separate repositories \- Inform users better about file upload security - see [https://github.com/blueimp/jQuery-File- Upload/wiki/Security](https://github.com/blueimp/jQuery-File- Upload/wiki/Security) \- Never assume people actually read information about security \- Never rely on .htaccess for security configurations in Apache \- Make sure that published code is secure in all default configurations \- Never allow all file types for upload by default, even if it is secure in your configuration \- Recommend users to not upload files in the same root as their executable web application \- Always follow security best practices, even if it makes setup for users more difficult I wanted to make it really simple for users to install a generic and secure file upload service with a great user interface. Unfortunately, security best practices and ease-of-use are often at odds to each other. Bonus info: The client-side component had a cross-site scripting vulnerability in the Iframe Transport HTML site back in 2012: [https://github.com/blueimp/jQuery- File-Upload/commit/4175032...](https://github.com/blueimp/jQuery-File- Upload/commit/41750323a464e848856dc4c5c940663498beb74a) The App Engine components had an open redirect vulnerability back in 2015: [https://github.com/blueimp/jQuery-File- Upload/commit/f74d2a8...](https://github.com/blueimp/jQuery-File- Upload/commit/f74d2a8c3e3b1e8e336678d2899facd5bcdb589f) ~~~ willeh I really don't blame the author here, sure there was an issue with the sample code - but come on it was sample code. If someone is implementing user uploads they should really do the due diligence and understand what the sample code does. To be honest I'm not really that surprised that the vulnerability stayed hidden for so long; many PHP users are hobbyists or come from a more traditional "webmaster" background. This is not to say that there aren't good PHP programmers, just that there is a large group of novices. ~~~ blihp It wasn't exactly hidden seeing as how there was a YouTube video titled 'Exploit jQuery File Upload Vulnerability' available since 2015. I don't blame the author (given the timing of the Apache change it probably would have been easy for him to overlook[1]) and it is surprising that this took years for anyone to make him aware of the issue since the exploit wasn't exactly unknown. Apparently there's some groundbreaking work left to be done in infosec searching on combinations of various library / application names and 'exploit'... [1] I assume that like most of the rest of us he was lagging behind the latest and greatest Apache release a bit. So when he was writing/testing this, it probably wouldn't have been an issue. ~~~ blueimp Unfortunately, I never tested it with an Apache configuration that had .htaccess support disabled and so it simply did not occur to me that the default was "off". I think the bigger issue was that the PHP sample code allowed all file types by default - this would not only affect Apache, but any Webserver that had broad rules to execute PHP scripts found in a directory. Originally I didn't see this as an issue as I trusted developers to securely configure their server to make sure no uploaded files would be executed, which is why the .htaccess security settings were only added later in this commit: [https://github.com/blueimp/jQuery-File- Upload/commit/13931c7...](https://github.com/blueimp/jQuery-File- Upload/commit/13931c7e4f7113c7b6832fe6d9abe0edf627ab3d#diff-4ea7e687ccf6a97c37a1a198b894aae1) But neither was the documentation informing developers clearly enough about the security implications, nor should I have relied on people actually reading security notices. ~~~ blihp Fair enough... but I still don't blame you ;-) ~~~ blueimp Hehe, thanks! :) ------ yebyen OK. I'll be that guy. Is there nobody who is going to talk about Larry Cashdollar, the person who discovered this vulnerability and first reported it? I'm honestly not sure how I'd be more impressed; if you told me this man actually uses this as his real name in his daily life, or by finding out that this is actually his birth name. ~~~ hlieberman He's a former co-worker of mine, and is an awesome dude in many ways. His name really is Larry Cashdollar, born and raised. Sometimes I wrote his name as 'Larry $$' though. ~~~ blueimp Larry was also super helpful in identifying the underlying issue and very polite in his emails. Would definitely write another security vulnerability into my code again if I knew that Larry would report it. ;) ~~~ lcashdol Thanks, :-) ------ galaxyLogic Isn't a JQuery Plugin something that executes on the client-side? If so then how can something on the client-side compromise the security of a server? Isn't the fault on the server-side? Or is this a PHP server-plugin which if installed on a PHP server makes them insecure? But of course anything you install on server can make it insecure. No? ~~~ runn1ng There is an example PHP code in the same repo and people copy-pasted that into production. The issue is not in the front-end jQuery library, despite the title. ------ fulafel What other vulnerabilities did this backwards-incompatible Apache change cause? Probably many people rely on .htaccess, for example to disable access to non-public files or disable php execution on a DIY CMS file sharing area. Sounds like the risk from this is not widely known. Probably the correct solution for Apache would have been to detect presence of now-ignored .htaccess files and signal an error. ~~~ blueimp That was my thought as well. I think one of the reasons nobody reported this earlier was that people simply assumed that .htaccess support was the default - Larry Cashdollar, the security researcher, also confirmed this: [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=18271880](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=18271880) ------ xab9 Isn't this a click-baitish title? I would say that this is a configuration issue and not "exactly" a vulnerability and basically get off my lawn. Reading blueimp's and larry's comments here I envy their constructivity, open mindedness and professionalism. ~~~ blueimp Thanks! Comments like yours are what keeps me motivated to continue contributing to open source software. But although the title is somewhat click-bait, I still think this counts as a vulnerability in my project, since there is a possible combination of default Apache setting and default project files that is exploitable. ------ jpic Another apache disaster, blueimp's plugin has nothing to do with it: it's common for script kiddies to try to upload php executables on php sites, and sometimes it works. ~~~ blueimp I do think that my project is responsible and not Apache, since I provided sample code that was not secure by default when used in a default Apache configuration as is. However I wish Apache would have changed their default config in a way that would have signalled an error if an .htaccess file is present but not applied. Something that HA user fulafel also pointed out here: [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=18272407](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=18272407) ------ based2 [https://github.com/blueimp/jQuery-File- Upload/commit/aeb47e5...](https://github.com/blueimp/jQuery-File- Upload/commit/aeb47e51c67df8a504b7726595576c1c66b5dc2f) ------ vel0city Can someone share some information on the reasoning behind httpd's default handling of htaccess files? How does ignoring a security feature that many relied on improve security? ~~~ __david__ I suspect it's so that a user can't accidentally make security worse by fiddling with security settings that they don't understand. That said, I might've considered turning any page that had the disabled .htaccess settings into a 500 response instead of just keeping on like everything is working fine. ------ londons_explore Haven't seen this sample code, but in general letting your users set the filename of anything on your server is a bad plan. If the upload script just generated a random filename (046359905445.bin), and then stored the mime type, users filename, other metadata, etc. in a database, that would be a much better design. ~~~ blueimp I agree with you that this would be the safer route. For a production file upload service, file uploads should ideally stored in a specialized blob store, e.g. Amazon S3 or Google Cloud Storage. However the PHP code was written as easy-to-use sample code and I did not want to introduce a database as dependency and keeping the sanitized filename plus extension keeps the meta information intact. If I had provided better information about how to securely configure the Webserver to allow all file types for upload, using the original - but sanitized - filenames would not be an issue. ------ john37386 So this afect only apache? Anyone have any thoughts on nginx, IIS and other web servers like tomcat, websphere? ~~~ blueimp Please refer to the vulnerability documentation here to see if you are affected: [https://github.com/blueimp/jQuery-File- Upload/blob/master/VU...](https://github.com/blueimp/jQuery-File- Upload/blob/master/VULNERABILITIES.md#remote-code-execution-vulnerability-in- the-php-component) ------ Assossa I'm curious as to how this could be a widely known exploit in the hacker community, but no one reported it until 3 years after its publicity. ~~~ jpic It's not 3 years old, we've been exploiting it when we were 14 yr old trying to find server to host warez content, and has nothing to do with the plugin itself: it's all about apache's mod_php configuration: does it allow execution of php files that are in the directory where users upload their avatar ? If yes, then they can try to upload a php script and execute it on the server. ------ paulie_a In 2018 Apache, phone and jQuery is a doormat saying "please hack my servers" ------ based2 [https://www.bleepingcomputer.com/news/security/jquery- file-u...](https://www.bleepingcomputer.com/news/security/jquery-file-upload- plugin-vulnerable-for-8-years-and-only-hackers-knew/) ------ solidr53 Hey Larry $$ ~~~ dang Please don't post unsubstantive comments here. Don't you think maybe he's heard this a few times already? We detached this comment from [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=18271880](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=18271880) and marked it off-topic.

Portland Startup Weekend - jmorin007 http://startupweekend.com/portland-startup-weekend/ ====== olefoo Anybody here been to one of these dos? Is it worth doing? ~~~ timr Never been, but it sounds like exactly the wrong sort of environment for creativity and productivity. Too many people attend; the communication overhead must be insane. I _can_ tell you that the folks in Seattle failed to launch last weekend. From what I read, it sounded like there were too many chiefs, and not enough indians (or maybe just too many chiefs). I might have gone, but by the time that I found out about it, the event was sold out. It was therefore a bit galling to hear (later, via the blog) that some large percentage of the attendees were PMs, BizDev, and Marketing types. Anyway, if you view it as a professional networking event, your expectations will probably be more in line with the reality of the situation.

T-Mobile kills the 1GB data cap, takes a more friendly approach - terpua http://www.engadget.com/2008/09/24/t-mobile-kills-the-1gb-data-cap-takes-a-more-friendly-approach/ ====== kqr2 They need to at least match AT&T's data plan in order to be competitive. For an unlocked i-phone, there is a $5.99 "t-zones hack" that allows you unlimited data access using t-mobile. <http://www.modmyi.com/forums/t-mobile/> I wonder if this hack will work on the G1.

What would happen if we randomly gave $1,000 to poor families? Now we know - Reedx https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2019/12/03/what-would-happen-if-we-randomly-gave-poor-families-now-we-know/ ====== mymacbook Link to actual study: [http://emiguel.econ.berkeley.edu/assets/miguel_research/88/G...](http://emiguel.econ.berkeley.edu/assets/miguel_research/88/GE- Paper_2019-11-20.pdf) ~~~ xyst Thanks for the study, getting pay walled. Will have to read this later. Side note: on mobile, the papers in line citations are anchored to the individual reference (tapping the citation redirects user to reference). This is a pretty neat feature. Hope more people start to use it. ~~~ uoaei That's a PDF which has been compiled by LaTeX. ------ abraCadabstrax Famed anthropologist James Ferguson wrote a pretty thorough read that breaks down the arguments on both sides that was also reviewed by the Washington Post: [https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/monkey- cage/wp/2015/07/2...](https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/monkey- cage/wp/2015/07/24/this-book-will-change-the-way-you-think-about-cash- transfers-for-the-poor/) ------ IXxXI Tax cuts are the best way to put $$ in the hands of the poor. Raising taxes on the poor, to "give them" more money as proposed by UBI is a terrible policy no matter what this or any other study says. ~~~ gdubs Why? ~~~ IXxXI Governments are the largest, most inefficient and wasteful monopolies in the world. There's zero incentive for them to provide cost effective or reliable solutions to problems. Private sector alternatives are better the large majority of the time. ~~~ beatgammit UBI does precisely that. Instead of the government offering a service, they redistribute that money so the poor can get that service on the open market. ~~~ IXxXI Social Security pays out negative returns. Meaning you're guaranteed to receive lower returns from it in contrast to whatever capital you invest. A person could do better putting their money in a bank account that pays out 0.000001% APY. UBI is the same as social security. You're guaranteed to receive less money than whatever you invest in it. The state will likely funnel a major portion of collected tax revenues into dubious projects like giving free healthcare to illegal immigrants and funding transexual beauty pageants. Then when the program fails as it inevitably will, they'll say the problem is taxes are too low. They'll propose tax hikes and people unfortunately being uneducated will far for it and think its a good idea, the same way many are falling for it right now.

Twitter is not a public utility - daveid https://medium.com/@Gargron/twitter-is-not-a-public-utility-2bc49567152b ====== messo Federation makes a lot of sense for a micro blogging service, as no community is the same. Allowing for different rules and styles of moderation without trapping users in silos / walled gardens, is exactly what we need in the social media space, in my opinion. ------ CM30 Of course it isn't, the big question is really whether it should be, since network effects mean it's much harder to compete with established social networking sites/services. Still, I do hope Mastodon does well, since a federated Twitter esque service makes a lot more sense than a centralised one, and feels far more in tune with what the internet should be.

Three Minutes to Midnight - masteryupa_ https://thedaleyreview.wordpress.com/2016/10/09/three-minutes-to-midnight/ ====== hourislate >Surely it is clear that if anything the build up of troops on the Russian border acts to position NATO in an overtly aggressive posture, regardless of any predilection for defensive contrivance. Seriously? I feel like I'm reading something Putin wrote for the Russian people. Wasn't it Russia that annexed Crimea? Wasn't it Russia that shot down MH17? Wasn't it Russia that invaded eastern Ukraine? Wasn't it Russia that is bombing UN Convoys and Hospitals in Syria? Wasn't it Russia that has openly invaded the Airspace of Baltic Countries? Everything Johnathan Frances has written reeks of the Kremlin Propaganda Machine.

India court blocks Bayer generic drug appeal - hemantv http://www.thehindu.com/business/Industry/generic-drug-makers-get-a-boost-from-sc-ruling/article6689370.ece ====== hemantv just to give some perspective Rs 8880 = 141.751 US Dollar Rs 284000 = 4533.486 US Dollar

Self-Documented Makefile - fzaninotto http://marmelab.com/blog/2016/02/29/auto-documented-makefile.html ====== ArnaudRinquin As I used `make` more and more for our node projects, I missed the clean outputs `grunt` or `gulp` provide. To fix that, I created `make2tap`: [https://www.npmjs.com/package/make2tap](https://www.npmjs.com/package/make2tap) This small utility takes a `make` output and generate a `TAP` one that you can pipe to any `TAP reporter`. Our current `make build | make2tap | tap-format-spec` looks like: [http://i.imgur.com/chs0Jf3.png](http://i.imgur.com/chs0Jf3.png) ~~~ agumonkey Beautiful, just beautiful. ------ chubot They should really be using bash for this, not make. There is nothing wrong with bash scripts calling Make -- for building with DEPENDENCIES. But when you aren't doing that, just use bash (because Make is actually Make + bash to begin with). This is dumb: restart-frontend: ## Restart the frontend and admin apps in dev @make stop-frontend-dev && make run-frontend-dev @echo "Frontend app restarted" Write it with a shell script like this: stop-frontend-dev() { ... } run-frontend-dev() { ... } restart-front-end() { stop-frontend-dev run-frontend-dev echo "Frontend app restarted" } build() { make # this actually does stuff you can't do in bash. } "$@" # call function $1 with args $2... Can also print help here. This is a lot cleaner. The PID stuff can be done with bash too. ~~~ jlg23 This is only cleaner in your simple case. Make's power lies in dependency tracking and its declarative approach to defining those dependencies. When you use make anyway, adding those targets there is the logical thing to do. One interface instead of two. It's even less lines of code than your proposed solution (which btw does not fail hard like make does, so a recipe for desaster). Finally: Pretty please, _sh_ , not _bash_. Almost none of the bash-scripts out there use actual bash-features and those that do can usually easily be rewritten to just rely on a plain posix shell. ~~~ chubot My point is precisely that the script is not using "Make's power in dependency tracking". It's just running commands. If you need Make, use Make; otherwise use shell. It's far from unusual to have a Makefile and some shell scripts at the top level of a project. Make's semantics are to invoke the shell at EVERY LINE. This is slow and makes quoting a nightmare (try quoting find or sed in bash in Make correctly; you cannot directly invoke them from Make). Conversely, bash's semantics do not involve make whatsoever :) Shell also has local variables for modularity, and better constructs for conditionals and iterations. And functions. Make has a poor man's implementation of Turing-complete constructs compared to shell (which is a little ironic since shell is already sort of a poor man's procedural language). 'set -o errexit' makes bash fail on errors. Also, as mentioned, the Makefile isn't using phony targets. Neither shell or Make is perfect, but shell is the more appropriate tool when you're not making use of Make's incremental build features. Another pattern I find useful is to have the actions take more arguments, like: ./run.sh dev-frontend --flag-for-testing which is implemented just like this: dev-front-end() { ./frontend.py --port 8080 --other-default-flag "$@" } "$@" The arguments to Make are actually TARGETS/files and not functions, so I don't think you can do this. ~~~ jlg23 > Make's semantics are to invoke the shell at EVERY LINE. This is slow [...] I assume you mean commands here? Actually, how slow is it? Ever measured it? I am sure me writing this line took more time than they could save by a rewrite over the course of a few years of using the performance optimized version. > Shell also has local variables for modularity, and better constructs for > conditionals and iterations And variables in make that you set for a command are only visible to it. Besides - wasn't your point that the OP should not use make because s/he does not use its features? > 'set -o errexit' makes bash fail on errors Indeed it does, it was just missing from your _better_ version. > Another pattern I find useful is to have the actions take more arguments > [...] The arguments to Make are actually TARGETS/files and not functions, so > I don't think you can do this. Yes, one communicates with make through variables, not through arguments. Over the last 20 or so years I've done my fair share of shell scripting and of writing makefiles. Maybe I am just too old and boring to get excited over this, but let me recap: The OP happens to be using make, s/he used an elegant hack to have the file document itself and its usage. S/He wrote about the latter. No, I am not impressed by the post - I used a similar technique in 2003 or 2004 to bootstrap the documentation of a very complex build system - and I'm sure others have before and after me. But I like the concise article. Debating whether make is "better" than "sh" is completely off-topic here - if there was a universal truth we'd not have seen tools like psh, scsh and the rest of language-specific shell substitutes nor would we have the myriad of language-specific build tools. Back then, when I was young and naive, I've implemented a few of those myself. But now I am not young anymore. And now I naively believe that people should use what they are most productive with. Or everybody come to their senses and just use lisp. ------ jdp I like the ideas here, but for long-running processes like file watching, dev servers, hot reloading, etc. a better format is Procfile ([https://devcenter.heroku.com/articles/procfile](https://devcenter.heroku.com/articles/procfile)). The ideas from this article could be nicely applied to it. Procfil is a format that declares a named list of processes to be run that can be controlled by tools like Foreman ([http://ddollar.github.io/foreman/](http://ddollar.github.io/foreman/)) and Honcho ([https://pypi.python.org/pypi/honcho](https://pypi.python.org/pypi/honcho)). The advantage is being able to start and stop them concurrently as a group, useful for things that otherwise take a tmux session or multiple windows/tabs, like dev server + file watching + live reload: they become a simple `foreman start`. Processes can also be started individually. Procfiles can also be exported to other formats, like systemd, upstart, inittab, etc. Here's an example Procfile from a web project I've been working on. Since it uses node I went with node tools like http-server and watch, but it could just as easily use any other web server or file watcher. The way it works is it starts a web server serving public/; starts a live reload server for public/; and watches the src/ directory for changes and re-runs make. The makefile has a few rules for compiling JS and CSS from src/ to public/. web: ./node_modules/.bin/http-server livereload: ./node_modules/.bin/livereload public watch: ./node_modules/.bin/watch make src ~~~ aikah > but for long-running processes like file watching, dev servers, hot > reloading, etc. I don't think anybody should use make to do that at first place. That's not what make was built for. Likewise Foreman should not be used as a build tool because it is not. EDIT: now i've seen the makefile in the example,I understand your comment and this is absolutely not where one wants to use make, that's just ridiculous. ~~~ solipsism Wouldn't "it's not appropriate for the task" be a better reason not to use something than "it's not made for the task"? Don't you have any better reasons at all? Does _make_ bring out people's conservative side or something? Let me ask you this. Would you sit on a tree stump? How about kill a fly with a newspaper? Sometimes things are great for purposes for which they weren't originally intended. ~~~ aikah > Does make bring out people's conservative side or something? Misuse of tools in software development is why we end up with broken software, useless solutions that solve stupid problems because the problem wasn't well understood as first place, and first and foremost unnecessary dependencies. That's why we end up with this makefile "hack". Now explain what it's got to do with "conservatism". bad practices != innovation . ~~~ solipsism Do you really believe any use of a tool in a way that wasn't intended is a "bad practice"? Is there no more subtlety or thought to it than that? This adherence to an ultra-simplistic black-and-white rule is absolutely a form of conservatism. If you think this particular use of make is a "bad practice", then argue why it is! If there's no better reason than "This use isn't as intended!" then your opinion won't have much weight with people. ------ yxlx >Wouldn’t it better if we could just type make, and get a list of available commands, together with their desciption? No, Jesus Christ, please don't. Preserve default action as being to build. Good user interface and good user experience relies on meeting expectations. This behavior breaks those expectations. What if your expectations are different, you ask? In environments where there is an established tradition I think it is rude to break with the norm unless there is a compelling reason to do so. The commandline is popular among developers, other IT professionals and power users because of how efficient it is. It is efficient because there is not all the noise, handholding and other bullsh*t. Please let us keep it that way. Use a specific target to list other targets. I've seen some people use "make targets". ~~~ solipsism Bah. What's the harm here? It's not like you'll type _make_ and then not be able to figure out what to do next. The problem you're trying to avoid when preserving default behavior is confusing the user, and that's not applicable here. Instead of blindly following laws like "Always meet user expectations" we should think about things in a case-by-case basis. Your law is at best a rule of thumb. ~~~ bschwindHN There are few things more infuriating than a build tool that prompts for user input when it doesn't need to. Most people like to automate these things, and having a prompt ask for input after typing `make` is completely unexpected and annoying. Bower is a particularly bad offender here. By default it will periodically ask you if it can send anonymous usage statistics. If you've never experienced it before, you have to angrily google the problem once piping `yes` to it fails and find a github issue where the solution is `bower install --config.interactive=false` _Always_ assume your build tool is running in an automated environment without user input. If the user wants to do something out of the ordinary, provide command line options and try to follow the conventions that already exist. ~~~ solipsism I agree 100% that a good build tool makes it easy to build in an automated context. But that's not relevant here, is it? _make build_ is not less automatable than _make_. Sure, someone has to manually run _make_ once to figure out what the actual build command is. But no person in his right mind would automate a build without running it manually once. I say this as someone whose job it used to be too automate builds. ~~~ bschwindHN Yeah you're right, you'd run it at least once locally and discover what the right command is. I guess I'm just letting my feelings for Bower permeate to other build tools, because sometimes it'll run without user input, and other times it will prompt for it. ------ jgrahamc An alternative way that just uses GNU make functions: [http://www.cmcrossroads.com/article/self-documenting- makefil...](http://www.cmcrossroads.com/article/self-documenting-makefiles) ------ saiki Thanks for sharing! This is a great way to document and see documentation for main targets in Makefile. We use Makefile in same way to execute project related tasks like deployments and run development environments. This will even further help to show main targets from a Makefile easily and pretty standard way. Will be taken into use. You can achieve similar by writing bash scripts, but it will be mostly custom and others need to learn how to use it and extend it. Makefile gives you a standard way of writing small utilities related to all your project, and almost everybody knows how Makefile works and if not, they can learn from existing documentation. ------ to3m You probably want to be using phony targets if your Makefile consists of stuff like this. See: [https://www.gnu.org/software/make/manual/html_node/Phony- Tar...](https://www.gnu.org/software/make/manual/html_node/Phony-Targets.html) ------ kluck Good idea but target names might contain numbers as well, so you should adjust the regular expression used: @grep -P '^[a-zA-Z0-9_-]+:. _?## ._ $$' $(MAKEFILE_LIST) | ... ------ m6w6 Shorter, more fail-proof help target: help: @awk -F ':|##' \ '/^[^\t].+?:.*?##/ {\ printf "\033[36m%-30s\033[0m %s\n", $$1, $$NF \ }' $(MAKEFILE_LIST) ... but I agree, breaking expectations is somewhat bad. Also, many shells have completion for Makefiles nowadays, though, that won't get you an additional help text. ------ spoiler I've been using a similar self-documenting technique myself for a while now, too. Although, my version preserved the traditional part where just calling `make` starts building the program and also supported short one line descriptions and longer ones. Slightly OT: I like how Rake handles this, which is what gave me the idea in the first place ------ rekado Instead of using `awk` to break lines you could just use `fmt`, which is part of the GNU coreutils. ------ tempodox Change `grep -P` to `grep -E` (or simply `egrep`) and it also works on OS X. ~~~ fzaninotto Yep, that fixes the OSX problem. Post updated with this version. ------ beaufils Here is a version with no dependencies to grep or awk but just sed. I did not tested it on OS X yet. help: @eval $$(sed -r -n 's/^([a-zA-Z0-9_-]+):.*?## (.*)$$/printf "\\033[36m%-30s\\033[0m %s\\n" "\1" "\2" ;/; ta; b; :a p' $(MAKEFILE_LIST) | sort) ~~~ LukeShu I don't have an OS X box, but I do know that you'll need to change the `-r` to `-E` (GNU sed vs BSD sed). Recent versions of GNU sed (4.2+, I think) also accept `-E` for compatibility with BSD sed (though this is undocumented). ------ ehartsuyker I do this in my bash scripts, if anyone wants to see how. [https://github.com/ehartsuyker/node- deb/blob/ede596b2c8a07f1...](https://github.com/ehartsuyker/node- deb/blob/ede596b2c8a07f1f1925e4f8e51df5ba9ef15be3/node-deb#L44) ------ Gratsby But then you have lost the default target of make and instead of make && make install you end up with make build && make install. That's going to break a brain or two when people try to figure out why their default MO doesn't work.

Kevin Spacey on the potential of Netflix to disrupt traditional TV [video] - wiremine http://www.businessinsider.com.au/everyone-in-the-tech-and-tv-industries-is-passing-around-this-speech-by-kevin-spacey-2013-8 ====== nrivadeneira Kevin Spacey clearly gets it. Rampant piracy is an indication of a failing business model. It's not that people aren't willing to pay, and that's evidenced by the success of Netflix and shows like House of Cards. Same can be said of Steam's game distribution model. Give people what they want, how they want it, at a fair price, and you'll surely be able to make money. ~~~ clebio I like the message -- and the messenger in this case -- a lot. Having read the full transcript of his speech, I'm trying to imagine what he might have left out, what his opponents will use to dismiss this event. Off-hand, the easy out would be that 'giving people what they want' is actually pretty costly. The steep pilot culling selects for mass appeal. If 80% of the (paying) viewing public like a pilot, it's probably a low-risk venture with pretty predictable rewards. If those returns (ROI) are sufficient to keep the studio running, do the people writing the checks really care that more niche products _might_ gain slightly better rewards? ~~~ ballard Yeap. Locking it all away for an absurdly high price or just giving it all away are suboptimal. Charge a "no brainer" price that most people won't have a problem with is supply meeting demand more optimally... For potentially _higher_ profits. ------ avalaunch _For example, Spacey says there will be 146 pilots made this year at the cost of $US300-$US400 million. Only 56 of those will actually be made into a series. “That makes our House of Cards deal for two seasons really cost effective,” Spacey says in the speech._ Of course it seems cost effective when the show is a big hit. But had it been a flop, it would have seemed a colossal waste of money - something that could easily have been surmised with a much smaller investment. For Netflix's strategy to work, they'll need to be able to continue to pick winners at a much higher percentage than the traditional television network has been able to. To do so they'll need to have content producers that understand what it takes to tell a good story. I think the downside is that this high risk strategy is likely to make them more risk averse in the shows that they choose to produce. They'll be a lot less likely to invest in first time writers, actors and directors. And they'll probably shy away from any story that is at all experimental in nature. ~~~ shazzdeeds This is a good point. A company should not be expected to just throw a bunch of shows out and see which ones stick. Too expensive. What stuck out to me most in the speech was Kevin Spacey's quick mention of Netflix's response to the pitch: "We ran the numbers and we think our customer base would like it". Media outlets thinking of taking the all-in approach will need the technology to calculate and hedge the risk . Netflix clearly has that in place, and it helped convince them to take a chance. ~~~ hershel It's even better for netflix. They has the technology to allow directing decisions , small and big, be decided by data : [http://gigaom.com/2013/07/25/at-netflix-big-data-can- affect-...](http://gigaom.com/2013/07/25/at-netflix-big-data-can-affect-even- the-littlest-things/) ------ shmerl However it's not a DRM free streaming model. So it's not much healthier than other types of restrictions - it's still DRM. Some truly DRM free streaming should emerge in the face of all these Netflix-like DRMed barbed-wired gardens. Streaming should be a convenience, not a way to restrict copying. Others brought Steam as an example - for Steam, there is competing GOG which is DRM free and proves the point that DRM free gaming without regional restrictions and other such junk can be successful. So what is there for Netflix? Also, I didn't get his point about the music industry. Most music is easily available DRM free, _unlike_ video. ~~~ methodin I don't think most people expect DRM-free content when paying for a subscription model - I know I don't. I'm paying for the right to access that content when I want as long as it's available but I am under no assumption that I assume the right to take that content with me and do with it what I please. That type of content is completely different than what this streaming model represents. Netflix is surely on a better trajectory here than other providers, no? ~~~ shmerl It's not better as long as there is DRM in it. Why can't you expect to get the content with you? You can expect paying for titles some one time fee. Not unlike music and games. Streaming is just a way of accessing it from the "cloud" without the need to download it first. But why should it prevent you from downloading if you want to back it up, take it with you somewhere where you have no access to the cloud and so on? There is no good reason for "subscription model" in the digital world which restricts your ability to copy. Buy and use, that's what it's supposed to be. ~~~ smtddr _> But why should it prevent you from downloading if you want to back it up, take it with you somewhere where you have no access to the cloud and so on?_ That's the real problem; that internet is not accessible & free everywhere. I think DRM is fine as long as I can access my media anytime & anywhere on all my devices. Netflix pretty much fits this requirement aside from the hack of Linux+Netflix. The issue that internet isn't available to every human being or costs a ridiculous amount of money is a problem that needs to be fixed. I want to be able to say "Everyone has internet these days" and _really_ mean it for all people of the world. We need to make it impossible for anyone to make the argument _" but what if I don't have internet access?"._ ~~~ shmerl _> I think DRM is fine as long as I can access my media anytime & anywhere on all my devices._ I think DRM is never OK. Not only because of privacy and ethical issues, but because if you can't fully control the content and the service which issues DRM closes down you would simply lose everything you paid for. It should be a deal breaker. Then pirating that content will be the only option to get it back. This Xkcd applies to video pretty much the same way as to audio for which it was made: [http://xkcd.com/488](http://xkcd.com/488) ~~~ smtddr Unless we're talking about Win8-BIOS-TPM stuff(which I don't clearly understand just yet), I don't think proper(non-remote-controllable) DRM is a privacy concern. I'm not sure how it's an ethical concern either. But, I do think that if the DRM servers and/or media streaming servers are going offline and making the content disappear forever they should allow it to just be downloaded without DRM for free - since turning off the servers implies they're done making money off it(?). ~~~ shmerl When Netflix (or any other DRMed code) runs on your machine, it runs as a black box for you. Why isn't that a privacy concern and why should it ever be trusted? It's unethical because it's an overreaching preemptive policing, but it's a long subject. _> do think that if the DRM servers and/or media streaming servers are going offline and making the content disappear forever they should allow it to just be downloaded without DRM for free_ They may be "should" allow it, but they will never do at that point. They have more important problems to care about when they close down. So it's our obligation as responsible users to demand DRM free content from them right away, and avoid those who refuse to sell such. ~~~ smtddr Okay, I think I see what you're saying about the decryption binary blob. With all this Ed Snowden stuff, it would not be unreasonable to have some suspicion of any network-software that has a wide user base. Netflix-app would be a good place to have a government backdoor... Then how do we deal with piracy? Is piracy even a problem at all? I guess if iTunes is selling music without DRM and not falling apart, then we think TV- shows/movies can do the same? ~~~ shmerl _> Okay, I think I see what you're saying about the decryption binary blob. With all this Ed Snowden stuff, it would not be unreasonable to have some suspicion of any network-software that has a wide user base. Netflix-app would be a good place to have a government backdoor..._ No need even to go so far. DRM by definition implies that they don't trust you, the user. So, I see no point to trust them in return. It's normal to assume that DRM is always a risk of privacy violation. Surely, it's a good ground for sinister abuses like your example as well. _> Then how do we deal with piracy?_ DRM doesn't deal with piracy. Publishers and distributors don't even hide this fact these days. So what are they using DRM for? Guess yourself, but expect nothing good in there. The recipe for dealing with piracy is ages old - increase quality to be competitive. I.e. some part of piracy which can be affected is caused by the fact that pirated content has higher usability (no DRM, regional restrictions and other such junk). By releasing quality products while being DRM free and delivering them with high level of convenience, distributors can compete with that sector of piracy. The segment of piracy which is caused by people being crooks and getting free stuff won't be affected at all. DRM doesn't affect it either. ~~~ bluntly_said I think you're being too black and white here. I agree with you in principle on a LOT of the points, but the real issue is that most content producers (publishers are a different issue...) would LOVE to be able to do this: "The recipe for dealing with piracy is ages old - increase quality to be competitive" But realistically it's fucking HARD. Mainly because increasing quality to be competitive with piracy would generally require breaking tax and import laws everywhere. Even if it doesn't require breaking those laws to be competitive, you have to at least pay enough people to be aware of them, for each and every country you want to be able to distribute your content in. So decent* DRM isn't about stopping piracy, really. It's about slowing it down just enough that it's still worthwhile to jump through the hoops required to bring that content legally to other regions. *: It's actually fairly hard to hit this goal on the head, and often I feel companies buy too far into their own bullshit and sense of entitlement with DRM. A lot of shoddy executives with poor understanding of software misuse DRM to the extent that it drastically lowers the value of the content (see: always on DRM) Please continue to bash them, they deserve it. ~~~ shmerl _> Mainly because increasing quality to be competitive with piracy would generally require breaking tax and import laws everywhere._ I'm not exactly sure why so? Take for example gaming. GOG sells DRM free games worldwide, without regional restrictions and no inflated pricing for countries like Australia for example. Why can't video be sold on similar terms? _> So decent DRM isn't about stopping piracy, really. It's about slowing it down just enough that it's still worthwhile to jump through the hoops required to bring that content legally to other regions._ In my view it never pays off. The downside of reduced usability is always worse than any potential gain in slowing down piracy on the period between some new DRM scheme is introduced until it's broken. Usually that period is small, and ever since that DRM becomes obsolete, while usability stays crippled for legitimate users. All those involved in production and distribution should always keep in mind that DRM means their voluntary reduction of quality for practically absent gain of shortly slowed down piracy. How are they planning to compete, when instead of increasing quality, they cripple their own products? ------ DigitalSea I think Spotify which I might add has dramatically reduced piracy in the countries it is available has proven that streaming is the future. People don't care about not being able to download it, as long as they can watch it whenever they want. Going back to Spotify, I don't remember the last time I downloaded any music for free, I just use Spotify. ~~~ adamnemecek It has been argued multiple times that Spotify is not sustainable. [http://www.npr.org/blogs/therecord/2012/09/26/161758720/how-...](http://www.npr.org/blogs/therecord/2012/09/26/161758720/how- musicians-make-money-by-the-fraction-of-a-cent-on-spotify) So it's cool that you are getting your music legally, nonetheless, in the end it's not that different than in you had pirated it. ~~~ randyrand That's not all that related to sustainability. Sure, it might mean musicians make less but that's just supply and demand and supply is HUGE (still not infinite). ~~~ adamnemecek Yeah supply of shitty music is huge but that's the way it works with everything. ~~~ bluntly_said I think this is the wrong way to look at it. When you're in a constrained format like radio or cable tv you can only play one thing for your audience at a time. Because of that it's critical that what you play has mass appeal so that lots of people will be okay listening to it. When you're in an unconstrained model that lets users pick what to watch or listen to, that mass appeal factor becomes much less important. Sure, there's a HUGE array of music available, and each of us can claim that we think most of it's shitty. But when you actually start comparing what you consider shitty to what I consider shitty, I'd be willing to bet there are a LOT of areas that don't overlap. This is the power that comes with being able to stream the content that the user wants. Mass appeal becomes much less important. So yeah, there's a huge amount of music out there that I think is shitty. But there's an equally huge number of people that all have different opinions on what the shit actually is. ~~~ adamnemecek I'm not sure I understand your argument. I agree that in an unconstrained format mass appeal is much less important. Yet I don't feel some sort of 'good music' saturation point has been reached within the single subgenres (and subsubgenres) and I think that it will take a while for that to happen. ------ zalew HN title sums up Business Insider summing up a video sum up of the speech. ~~~ 3rd3 As long complexity is only hidden but not lost, that’s OK. Here is the full speech: [http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oheDqofa5NM](http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oheDqofa5NM) ~~~ Tyrant505 Thank you, from the lazy. ------ lukifer I still think Netflix is sapping some of the fun and vitality out of their original series by putting all the episodes up at once. Is binge-watching great? Of course it is! A huge library of great shows to binge-watch is one of the Netflix's biggest selling points. But getting it all at once is like peeking at your Christmas presents early: you think you want it, but it spoils some of the fun, the eventy-ness of it, and the social context created by a shared timeline (the so-called "water- cooler effect"). Anyone who doesn't want that experience can still wait until the whole thing is out, probably just a few months, at which point it will still be available in the binge library, presumably forever. (I know some who prefer not to start a new series _at all_ until the entire thing is finished, which is also okay.) ~~~ avalaunch _Anyone who doesn 't want that experience can still wait until the whole thing is out, probably just a few months, at which point it will still be available in the binge library, presumably forever. (I know some who prefer not to start a new series at all until the entire thing is finished, which is also okay.)_ Likewise, I could say that anyone who doesn't want to watch them all at once doesn't have to. You can choose to watch only 1 episode a week. ~~~ werid the problem is that these people tend to enjoy discussing "this week's episode" with their friends, and that's hard when they've watched the entire season/series. ~~~ Tyrant505 This discussion of an ep or event in series happens regardless... You are just defending a timescale based on an old model as a reason for it to exist. ------ benackles The technology and business model side of the equation could be solved, if the licensing problems were resolved. Too bad all the streaming services are still hamstrung by licensing issues from truly providing a service wherever you are. Netflix is still unavailable in most parts of the World, including many Asian countries where piracy is the most prevalent. ------ davemel37 This reminds of Fred Wilson's post about Piracy [http://www.avc.com/a_vc/2012/01/screwcable.html](http://www.avc.com/a_vc/2012/01/screwcable.html) ------ jamesmcbennett In this interview, is there a relationship between a TV pilot and a lean startup MVP where Spacey is against such a pursuit preferring more visionary endeavours that take longer to get feedback?

Dumb Screenplay Robot - smacktoward https://dumbscreenplayrobot.wtf/ ====== duxup >A series about a group of U.S. veterans succeeding in life after stumbling upon a full zombie outbreak! This seems like it would be already a thing. >An erotic comedy smorgasbord of blackout gags inspired by goings on by the circumstances of the matriarch's death come into question. I'm having trouble wrapping my head around this one... ------ liquid153 Highly doubt any AI is being done by this shitbot

German parliament votes to legalise gay marriage - rbanffy http://uk.businessinsider.com/german-bundestag-votes-for-gay-marriage-law-merkel-opposes-2017-6 ====== iMerNibor ..and right after voted to pass a law against free speech :) [http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/technology-40444354](http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/technology-40444354) (companies will be very careful and delete everything that could potentially not be legal) Quite a coincidence this happened right after, if you were cynical you might assume they did this on purpose..

Introducing the LEDE project – A reboot of the OpenWrt community - ycmbntrthrwaway https://www.lede-project.org/ ====== ausjke A long time openwrt user here. What puzzles me the most is that, those who are forking openwrt are the the majority group of core developers for openwrt, so I don't know why they are leaving the project they're in control in the first place. It seems a few core developers left behind are also in shock, nobody knows why, and there is no dispute in the community that led to the split either, truly a mystery. ~~~ dman Maybe this is the first step towards launching a commercial offering? ~~~ mcbridematt Given that OpenWRT is the reference distribution of choice for networking chipsets these days, the reference goals do seem to be focused on making it better for that. The last couple of OpenWRT releases have moved fast, in the future OpenWRT could move closer to the cutting edge without the pressure of users who want long term stability? ------ ge0rg It is a real pity that the lack of developers is compensated by splitting developer focus on two different forks. If the reasons stated are true, let's hope it works out and strengthens embedded Linux, maybe even leading to a reunion like egcs/gcc. ~~~ embeem This announcement comes as a surprise to all the other developers, myself included. \- mbm (openwrt founder) ~~~ JeremyNT OpenWRT is an impressive project and I've really enjoyed using it over the years. It's always disappointing to see a project you use and rely upon face this kind of challenge. With technical forks, you can usually at least appreciate the motivations, but with political forks it can be difficult to understand what or how things will be improved (especially for users who only see events from the outside). Best of luck to you and the rest of the team in resolving whatever issues are at play here. ------ revelation They have a point, maintaining something based on OpenWRT is extremely painful if you are not very in tune with the development. I remember one instance where they just switched the entire package feed stuff around and didn't bother porting all old packages over. Or when core packages move around willy-nilly. Another instance was when they changed over to a new freaking libc (musl). That's the kind of thing for major releases, and the fallout was that stuff like hwclock suddenly segfaulted. ------ symlinkk oh boy more fragmentation! I wish the devs behind OpenWrt, dd-wrt, and LEDE would just work together for god's sake. OpenWrt is far from complete. the documentation alone is terrible. ~~~ embeem Agreed, but the irony in that statement is that the OpenWrt developers who started LEDE are also DD-WRT developers. ------ patrickg_zill Concerning those who complain about the fork - Debian has spawned Ubuntu and many other distros. RedHat has spawned CentOS and Scientific Linux. Is anyone arguing that this has destroyed Linux? ------ Animats Now if they could just get rid of Linux underneath and use something with better security. L4, maybe. After all, this is for embedded devices which basically run one program. ~~~ DiabloD3 I don't know why parent is being downvoted. Linux probably isn't the best OS for this, a microkernel OS or something based on BSD seems to be far saner, especially since we _don 't_ need weird hardware support, all home routers use the same three or four families of MIPS and ARM SoCs. ~~~ wtallis Home routers come with one of three instruction set families (MIPS, ARM, PowerPC) with CPUs or SoCs from at least six major manufacturers (Broadcom, Qualcomm-Atheros, Ralink/MediaTek, Marvell, Freescale/NXP, Realtek) and WiFi interfaces from any of them except Freescale but plus Quantenna. And there are multiple generations of hardware in the market at any one time. That adds up to a hardware ecosystem that is vastly more diverse than PCs; this is in no way a narrow scope of problem. And I'm ignoring all the devices that also have a cable, DSL, or cellular modem. The boundaries of what tasks are handled by the CPU vs by dedicated offloads on the SoC vs by the NIC (which usually has software of its own) differs with every manufacturer and every hardware generation. The job we want our routers to do is a moving target as the industry continues to develop new routing and configuration protocols (eg. Homenet) and new QoS techniques and new WiFi rate control techniques that need to be incorporated into the software running on the CPU and/or NIC. The hardware is usually weak enough that the products can only get the job done by prioritizing performance over expensive security measures. I could get behind the idea of a line-rate dedicated firewall+NAT with formally specified behavior. But any attempt to enumerate the core functionality of a modern wireless router will leave you with a job that is far larger than any successful formally specified/verified software project. Running atop Linux is the only option that doesn't leave you stranded with a '90s-era feature set and a cripplingly small base of supported hardware, and the userspace stuff is the low-hanging fruit for securing anyway. ~~~ duaneb What about {net|free|open}BSD? ~~~ wtallis Their hardware support is not as good as Linux, especially for WiFi and for embedded SoCs. Their network stacks are lacking in more advanced features like QoS that's not from the '90s (AQM, FQ, traffic shaping that accounts for the overhead your DSL or cable modem adds) and I'm not aware of any efforts to eliminate bufferbloat from NIC drivers the way BQL has for most Linux Ethernet drivers. I'm not sure how Linux compares against the BSDs for dumb packet forwarding and NAT performance, but for real-world performance the better QoS makes it no contest. Linux is what the chipset manufacturers target, it's what the router manufacturers ship, it's what most of the academics seem to turn to when they're not using a network simulator, and Linux seems to have the most active networking developers. The only compelling argument for BSDs is that pf.conf is more approachable than the Linux tools, but BSD advocates usually don't mention that it's because pf does a lot less than tc and the other Linux tools. ~~~ antxxxx FreeBSD has QoS available via PF and ALTQ. As for performance, Netflix chose FreeBSD for their CDN for the better network performance over linux. I do take your point about hardware support on consumer routers though - most of these are based on linux so its relatively easy to get linux based *wrt installed on them ~~~ wtallis Stop thinking like QoS has a singular meaning. ALTQ provides the aforementioned '90s-era inferior QoS techniques, and it isn't even available on FreeBSD without recompiling the kernel. The dummynet module is a little more modern, and in February patches appeared implementing the CoDel and FQ- CoDel AQMs that Linux has had for four years. ------ DominikD It's interesting to compare contributors from both LEDE[1] and OpenWRT[2] sites. Most of the folks involved in LEDE seem to be from Germany. With OpenWRT devs mostly from DE to begin with, this fork may end up as something interesting. Hope it's not another libav/ffmpeg snafu. [1] [https://www.lede-project.org/about.html](https://www.lede- project.org/about.html) [2] [https://dev.openwrt.org/wiki/people](https://dev.openwrt.org/wiki/people) ------ patrickg_zill What I can tell you, is that I found it very difficult to find what the situation was on the Netgear router that I wanted to work with. A series of well-designed pages that would help me find the latest info, with notes of workarounds or "no it won't work" would have saved me a lot of Googling to find posts, then having to look at the date of each post to work out the chronology; and would go a long way to helping with adoption. I was very pleased with OpenWRT even 5-6 years ago! I am sure that things are better now. ------ Hydraulix989 I really don't understand why there needs to be a newly forked router firmware project every few years. Back in my day, we used DD-WRT, and it worked. ~~~ the-dude They went over to the dark side. ~~~ randomchars How so? ~~~ the-dude Tried to go commercial, relicensing a community effort. Not sure if this is what sparked OpenWRT into existence. ~~~ gear54rus Is this it? [http://www.wi- fiplanet.com/columns/article.php/3816236/The-D...](http://www.wi- fiplanet.com/columns/article.php/3816236/The-DD-WRT-Controversy.htm) ~~~ the-dude yes. ------ pmorici Interesting. I've always found OpenWRT a lot easier to use for embedded development than alternatives like OpenEmbedded even if I didn't care about the Wireless or Router focus of the project. ------ ksec Slightly Offtopic, are there anything similar based on FreeBSD / BSD? ~~~ nissimk There are several listed here, but most of them only work on x86, not consumer routers. [https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_router_and_firewall_...](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_router_and_firewall_distributions) ------ chris_wot What are the benefits of using procd? And are you going to fork that also? What's the scope of this project - really very interested... ------ bluesign "AGREED: 4/6 attendees agree to create and agenda and finding a date on the mailing list (jow_laptop, 13:05:51)" [1] First major disagreement :) [1] [http://meetings.lede-project.org/lede-adm/2016/lede- adm.2016...](http://meetings.lede-project.org/lede-adm/2016/lede- adm.2016-03-30-11.05.html) ------ Zekio More of this type of projects is good, gives consumers/developers more choices. ~~~ pferde Not always. If a fork is made because some group wants to move in a different direction code-wise, it's good, because it gives users more choice. However, if the fork is made because of administrative reasons (as it seems to be the case here), then often all it does is muddy the waters and create confusion. We'll see how this one plays out. ------ lindadarnell I don't like it ------ grandalf While I'm excited about OpenWrt, why wouldn't the ecosystem move to Raspberry Pi at this point, considering that a Pi and multiple wireless NICs can be purchased for much less than a typical access point? ~~~ grandalf My comment is getting lots of downvotes. I'd argue: \- All the routers (buffalo, linksys) I've installed OpenWRT on have ended up being fairly unstable and have required reboots. The only consumer grade wifi router I've tried that seems stable is the Apple Airport Extreme. \- Most home users never come close to maxing out the throughput a pi can offer. \- If not a pi, perhaps another open hardware device -- seems like one could be sold for under $50 with nic support that addresses all the max USB bandwidth concerns (it may already exist). \- All the complexity of installing on random wifi router hardware (version maintenance, minimal storage space, etc.) seems prohibitive compared to the simplicity of a pi, risk of bricking the router, etc. ~~~ easp "Most home users" are never going to install OpenWRT on anything, RPi, or otherwise. Of those that do, it seems likely that they will max out the throughput of a RPi, especially now that >100Mbps internet is common place is some countries, and is becoming increasingly available in others (like the US). There are some RPi like boards with a single GigE, but they suffer from having smaller developer communities, and still come up short on IO when compared to a networking platform, which will typically have 1-2GigE lanes to the SoC, integrated 2 or 3 stream 2.4 GHz WiFi and a 1-2x miniPCIe interfaces. Right now, probably the cheapest most capable router is the Ubiqti EdgeRouterX for $50 (no wifi though). It has a 2 core/4 thread MIPS CPU that can do ~1Gbps NAT/ROuting with hardware offloads and ~500Mbps just using the CPU and DMA hardware. ~~~ grandalf > It has a 2 core/4 thread MIPS CPU that can do ~1Gbps NAT/ROuting with > hardware offloads and ~500Mbps just using the CPU and DMA hardware. Wow! What do you think is the best one that _does_ do wifi?

Scraping Roger Ebert’s reviews and finding his favorite movies on Amazon Prime - catwind7 https://www.linisnil.com/articles/scraping-roger-ebert-reviews-and-amazon/ ====== sonofgod If you need a more stateful version of requests: import requests session = requests.session() # now use session like you would requests session.get("http://httpbin.org/cookies/set/name/value") print(session.get("http://httpbin.org/cookies").content) ~~~ catwind7 oh I need to try that - I had this feeling that there was a more stateful version but for ..... some reason ... reaching for a new dependency felt easier at the time haha. Thanks ------ gabrielsroka See also "Where to Find Roger Ebert’s Great Movies Streaming" [0] which has US listings for Netflix, Amazon Prime, Hulu, Disney Plus, Criterion Channel, Kanopy, HBO, Starz, and Showtime as of March 2020. [0] [https://www.rogerebert.com/features/where-to-find-roger- eber...](https://www.rogerebert.com/features/where-to-find-roger-eberts-great- movies-streaming) ------ jyriand I guess this list of movies applies to people who live in US. Available movies differ substantially between countries. With Netflix it's easy, it doesn't even show the movie you can't watch, with Amazon you have to click through every movie you are interested in to see the screen that says that this movie is not available in your region. There are even series where only one or two episodes are unavailable. ------ Mediterraneo10 It is the fact that we have a relatively agreed-upon canon of great films (with immense re-watch value over the years) that keeps me torrenting instead of streaming. Sure, you could search from one streaming site to another for a given film, but the film may be either completely unavailable, or it may be offered one moment and the mysteriously removed the next. Meanwhile, some torrent communities are run by ardent cinephiles and they have all of these films, and once you have downloaded it, you can go back to it whenever you want. ~~~ kjakm You can also solve the “what streaming service” issue by buying the movie on DVD or Blu Ray allowing you to go back to it whenever you want. Additionally if you’re ok with DRM iTunes has most stuff. Useful tip for finding which streaming service a film is on: google “film name streaming” and google lists the answers in a box at the top of the results. ~~~ Mediterraneo10 The problem with recommending that people buy the DVD/Blu-Ray is that the agreed-upon canon of great films stretches into the many hundreds of titles (Ebert’s list at 364 titles is only an abridged canon.) Therefore, for someone seeking a cultural education, buying the physical releases would run into the thousands and thousands of dollars. It would be a challenge even for North Americans or Western Europeans to amass a suitable collection, let alone people in lower-income countries. Consequently, a person can only realistically learn about great cinema by streaming from multiple subscription sites, or torrenting, and people disappointed by the former ought to remember that the latter exists. ~~~ dfxm12 You can sub to one streaming service and never run out of great films to watch (in part _because_ titles rotate, not in spite of, but that's beside the point). Justifying piracy because, for example, you're disappointed that Netflix is missing one great film, is disingenuous. ~~~ Mediterraneo10 You misunderstand my point. It’s not that a person might be looking just for "great films to watch", in which case any streaming site might satisfy them. It is that a person might be looking for _the_ great films, that entire canon of films which scholars hold to be important. Netflix is never going to have them all regardless of how much they rotate. ~~~ dfxm12 That doesn't really affect my point. No streaming service will meet your unreasonable demands (for many reasons, first of all is that there is not an objectively agreed upon list of _the_ great films), and therefore justifying piracy because of it is disingenuous. ~~~ Mediterraneo10 That a service should have it all is not an unreasonable demand, and it is peculiar that you chide someone for "justifying piracy". After all, the HN crowd is generally very sympathetic to Library Genesis, which is aiming to gradually contain all books on all subjects, and therefore the curious reader can conveniently and at no cost learn about classic 20th-century literature, copyright be damned. Someone who wants the same solid cultural education with regard to films will not be served very well by the commercial offerings compared to torrent communities, but a cultural education is more precious than anyone’s claim to copyright. As for "there is not an objectively agreed upon list of the great films", there may not be one single list, but as a broad consensus one can take the overlapping suggestions of the critics who contribute to the Sight and Sound poll, the winners at Cannes and Venice, those films and directors who have been celebrated year after year in _Cahiers du Cinéma_ , and so forth. ~~~ dfxm12 _That a service should have it all is not an unreasonable demand_ Yes it is, especially when you said that it is a requirement for a service to have a certain list of movies, and then admit that that no such list exists. Therefore, a service _can never_ meet your stated requirements (and therefore, you've created a self fulfilling framework to justify your piracy of certain movies). If you're playing so fast and loose with what constitutes a list of great films, then you can subscribe to the Criterion Collection and call it a day. _it is peculiar that you chide someone for "justifying piracy"_ You said piracy of certain films was ok _because_ of their lack of inclusion in a service didn't meet your requirements, requirements that could never be met. I'm saying it's wrong to knowingly create unrealistic requirements and justifying piracy based on that. If you're going to change your argument to say that certain films should be free to all, due to certain significance to the public, that's a different stance (and one I'm more sympathetic to). ------ staycoolboy Thank you for doing this. I wish "top critics" was a search option on Prime (but their Roku interface is just abhorrent). There was a time when I hoped Netflix would do something similar: click here to see your favorite critics film list, but since Netflix has lost the streaming rights to soooo many films compared when they first started streaming ca. 2007, this is not doable. (Even DVD rights in most cases: films that are in my "Movies You Rated" queue from 2003 are no longer in Netflix's library.) ~~~ ddrt They have a really poor UX imo. The categories are seemingly arbitrary, and they have niche and seasonal ones that don’t make sense. During the December holidays they didn’t have a holiday themed category until near holiday end. Further, they make “innovation” like auto play when nobody asked for this, and without any way to stop it (unless you go to desktop and disable it deep in your settings). When searching you will receive similar results for titles they used to have... well why not state “are you searching for x? It’s no longer available, here are some recommendations” so the user isn’t wasting time wondering if the search feature is just “bad”. In the world of constant, unannounced, and live experimenting on huge user bases a little messaging goes a long way (with the comparison being nothing) ------ greggman3 I'm surprised not to see more people adding their favorite movies. Just sticking to things semi-related. I may have to go watch "My Man Godfrey" again but at least for me "The Thin Man" and its 5 sequels stuck with me where as though I watched "My Man Godfrey" years ago but I don't remember any details of it. (same lead actor and he pretty much always plays the same type of person) "The Man Who Shot Liberty Valance" is a good movie but if you want some other westerns starting James Stewart I can recommend "Destry Rides Again" which is not super serious but I found it throughly entertaining. Also "Broken Arrow" (1950), (not the 90s John Woo movie which is a fun popcorn movie). Seeing "The Good, the Bad, and the Ugly" on the list I recently saw "The Outlaw Josey Wales" which I enjoyed (also a Western with Clint Eastwood) Of the movies on that list I've seen the one I'd recommend the most is "Women in the Dunes". I don't want to over hype it I've seen most of the movies on the list and they are all great stories but "Woman in the Dunes" might give you something new to think about where as the others are mostly just great entertainment. ~~~ patrec In addition to “Woman in the Dunes”, I'd also nominate “The Gospel According to Saint Matthew”. And, in fact, “It's a Wonderful Life” for those who haven't seen it (it's a much more grown up and dark film than you may have been led to believe). ------ sfaruque There used to be a site call ClerkDogs.com that probably had the best movie recommendation system I've used. You started off naming a few movies you liked, and it would provide a list of movies you'd also probably like, and it was very accurate. From what I remember, the database was cataloged and maintained by actual humans, and not some algorithm following behavior patterns. ~~~ fastball Yep, jinni.com did the exact same thing, and I loved it. Unfortunately, it seems like B2C just didn't work financially so they switched to an entirely B2B model to help providers with their recommendation engines and no longer have their data accessible to end-users. ~~~ cpach It’s a shame that the economics of recommendation engines doesn’t seem to work very well in the B2C space. Good rec. engines can be very useful. ------ x3blah Instead of using Python, here is a solution that only requires sh, curl, sed, sort, uniq and grep. This solution uses a generous 87s delay to retrieve the Amazon pages. There are 328 films listed as "great movies" on rogerebert.com. As such, the script, named "1.sh", needs 8h to complete, e.g., the time while you are at work or sleeping. No cookies, no state, no problems. Usage: sh -c 1.sh > 1.html Open 1.html in a browser and it shows whether each "great movie" is available as Prime Video or whether it is only available in some other format, such as Blu-ray, DVD, Multi-format, Hardcover. A link to the item on Amazon is provided. #!/bin/sh curl -HUser-Agent: -H'Accept: application/json' --compressed 'https://www.rogerebert.com/great-movies/page/[1-16]?utf8=%E2%9C%93&filters%5Btitle%5D=&sort%5Border%5D=newest&filters%5Byears%5D%5B%5D=1914&filters%5Byears%5D%5B%5D=2020&filters%5Bstar_rating%5D%5B%5D=0.0&filters%5Bstar_rating%5D%5B%5D=4.0&filters%5Bno_stars%5D=1'|grep -o "/reviews/great-movie-[^\\]*"|sed 's/.reviews.great-movie-//'|sort|uniq|while read x;do y=$(echo $x|sed 's/-/+/g');echo $x;curl -s --compressed -HUser-Agent: https://www.amazon.com/s/?k=$y 2>/dev/null|grep -m1 -C4 a-link-normal.a-text-bold;sleep 87;done|sed '/^[^< ]/s/.*/@&,/;1s|.*|<base href=https://www.amazon.com />&|;s/ *//;/^$/d;/^[@<]/!s|$|</a>|;1s/@//;s/@/<br>/' ------ dvt Roger Ebert had an unexpected impact on me in my 20s. In my late teens, I started religiously reading his reviews, and this continued until his death. I've never really been a "movie buff," but Ebert's witty prose and pointed technical critique reminded me of Scalia (whom I also loved reading). Thank you for putting this list together! ~~~ Mediterraneo10 The tragedy of Roger Ebert is that, although he had a vast knowledge of great cinema, he established a niche where he was expected to mainly write about ephemeral popular films. His time was mostly spent on Hollywood blockbusters and popcorn, and he was appearing in media where he could not go into any great depth due to space limitations, or because that would be a turnoff for his mass audience. So, only in a few Ebert productions like his "Great Movies" books can one get a sense of the films that really mattered to the man and to art. Compare this to a critic like Richard Brody, who in his career has been fortunate to focus entirely on art cinema (though of course Brody’s net worth is probably an order of magnitude less than Ebert’s was). ~~~ ctchocula I've only read a few Ebert reviews, enjoyed them and happened to be looking for a book to read, so I appreciate the recommendation! edit: The introduction alone makes the book worth reading: > Of all the arts, movies are the most powerful aid to empathy, and good ones > make us into better people. Not many of them are very good. ------ catwind7 Author here. The list (both on my post + the google sheet) should be correct now - I underestimated how many different releases of the SAME movie title there are ... Thanks all for catching the mistakes. ~~~ jchazin FYI - the "Review URL" links at the bottom don't seem to be working properly. e.g. for "Moonstruck", the link leads to: "www.linisnil.com/articles/scraping-roger-ebert-reviews-and- amazon/www.rogerebert.com/reviews/great-movie-moonstruck-1987" instead of: "www.rogerebert.com/reviews/great-movie-moonstruck-1987" ~~~ catwind7 hey thanks for catching that - turns out leaving out the protocol in markdown causes makes it a relative url. fixed. ------ duxup I miss Roger Ebert. I honestly watch fewer films since his death. Maybe this list will change that. Also "Spirited Away" is on the list but doesn't seem to be included with prime. ~~~ vincentmarle Spirited Away is now on HBO Max if you're looking for it ------ lostgame I’d like to see this for more services. Amazon Prime has IMHO the worst UI/UX I have used in a streaming service. ~~~ TechBro8615 Agreed. What’s most annoying is how they deal with geo blocked content. They don’t tell you it’s blocked until you start watching it. So you browse the catalog for five minutes, finally find a movie to watch, press play, and then get an error message. ~~~ glenneroo Or how they sometimes won't allow you to watch the original English version because you're not in an English speaking country. Even if your language is set to English (of which around 1/4 is still not translated). All movie previews are in native language which necessitates a visit to YT or IMDB. Even non-prime content is affected, just recently I paid 2.99 to watch some cheesy 90s movie with my friend who had always wanted to see this "classic". The syncing was abysmal and resolution 480p i.e. 720x480 i.e. DVD. After we were done, I noticed there were a handful of HD torrents in various languages. Reminded me immediately of Gabe Newell's thoughts on pirating games: "Piracy is almost always a service problem and not a pricing problem". ------ Curnee Self-promotion: A number of years ago I made a little website which links you to a random review written by Roger Ebert. It isn't the cleanest of implementations, but it did what I needed it to do when I built it. [http://randomebert.com/](http://randomebert.com/) ------ alexilliamson Side note: one excellent film that Roger Ebert didn't review is Life Itself, the documentary about his life that came out right after he died. It's full of joy and heartbreaking at times, but it really solidified his place of most universally relatable movie critic in my mind. ~~~ catwind7 thank you for this. We will be checking this out! ------ Alex3917 FWIW the link for "The Bicycle Thief" (1949) links to "The Bicycle" (2015). Great list though. It would be interesting to see the thing done for the AFI and BFI top 100. (Although I suspect that most movies on the AFI are probably already on Ebert's list.) ------ intellijdd I was just seeing someone else's tutorial on scraping Amazon prices. They also ran into an issue where they needed to scrape twice instead of once. Not sure that it's the same issue you're facing but I thought I might drop my two cents. ~~~ catwind7 I actually did notice that issue, even with using a stateful client like mechanize. Sometimes I had to scrape > 5 times in order to get through the "anti robot" page. Other times, I get no issue at all. It's weird - maybe they're doing some pattern matching on request metadata on their end? ------ trimbo "The Man Who Shot Liberty Valance" IMO, John Ford's best movie, hands down. Unfortunately, it is not actually available on Prime without "CBS All Access" [Edit: ah, I see that this is not just "Included with prime", but all movies] ~~~ dmix Prime just recently introduced channels, which dramatically increased the amount of content available, but each is $3.99. I personally love this because I’d rather have the option to subscribe to Smithsonian content or MGMs back catalog using the same streaming service I already use, rather than paying to use 10 different or getting stuck using the small list of (mostly old, TV movie, or B movie) content on just prime or Netflix. So this is a feature, not a bug. Mostly because I’ve accepted how backwards the movie industry is going to be with copyright. But still having the option is the less evil. That said, Maybe the UI can make this more obvious? ~~~ wolco First time surprised me. I can see it being useful when you have the channel. Or as a separate tab when you want to possible add a channel. It kinda taints the other content. You ask internal.. Is it really available without subscribing? to channels you have access to. Then you finally click and they have season 1 and 3 and 5 of some show. Terrible UI. Feels like you get so much less than you do. With netflix it feels like you could just fall into a series immediately. ------ bogomipz Although it's not listed in this post because it's a rental. I feel like it deserves a mention nonetheless. "Beyond the Valley of the Dolls" is a 1960s cult classic. It was directed by Russ Meyer and written by Roger Ebert. There's a link to it on Roger's site as well as available to stream from Amazon for cheap: [https://www.rogerebert.com/reviews/beyond-the-valley-of- the-...](https://www.rogerebert.com/reviews/beyond-the-valley-of-the- dolls-1980) ------ cottager When you said you were faking a proper agent with `requests`, do you mean you were setting the headers to look like a browser, as in here?: [https://stackoverflow.com/questions/27652543/how-to-use- pyth...](https://stackoverflow.com/questions/27652543/how-to-use-python- requests-to-fake-a-browser-visit) That was going to be my suggestion for how to get around the anti-robot responses. ~~~ x3blah No agent at all is required. I got past the anti-robot response using no user- agent header and a simple delay. ------ youngamerican Reading Ebert's Great Movies site was hugely formative for me. I also love that he's low-key one of the best writers about addiction and recovery. Side note: A colleague who worked at the Sun-Times when Ebert also did recently told me about how whenever management threatened cuts, he'd come into the newsroom to throw his weight around against it. Even when he was getting to be in ill health. Much respect. ------ DarknessFalls I think this is referring to his list of "Movies You Must See Before You Die". On that note, I should mention "Gates of Heaven", which is part of that list. A compelling documentary on animal cemeteries, by Errol Morris. [https://www.rogerebert.com/reviews/great-movie-gates-of- heav...](https://www.rogerebert.com/reviews/great-movie-gates-of-heaven-1978) ------ chillee Self-promotion (of sorts), but I (with some friends) have been watching lots of movies and keeping globally ordered rankings on github here: [https://github.com/chillee/movierankings](https://github.com/chillee/movierankings) I find globally ordered rankings of movies to be an interesting exercise of consistency. ------ samteeeee Folks interested in this topic might like my new side-project: get an email when your favorite director releases a new movie - [https://directoralerts.website](https://directoralerts.website) ------ ngcc_hk Minor instruction to make it work for me: pip3 install BeautifulSoup pip3 install mechanize mkdir data Guess you can check data directory but not sure about the pip3, python does not like R I am not sure and can it pip3 install when not exist .... ------ boomboomsubban Only three movies in the past fourty years, non past 87, is surprising. Is Prime that full of older content or did Ebert's recommendations just stop coming from major studios? ~~~ zucker42 Using [https://www.rogerebert.com/great- movies](https://www.rogerebert.com/great-movies) you can filter by date ~~~ boomboomsubban Thanks, but that doesn't explain why Prime doesn't have any released after 87. ~~~ ThePadawan I'm having a hard time coming up with the data to confirm this theory but 1986/1987 seems to me to be the peak of both VHS sales and the bottom of VCR prices. I assume from that many studios had to come up with their first licensing schemes for movies "for home use" (contrary to movie theater and broadcast use), which could potentially still apply to (and restrict) streaming. Once again, this is my personal hypothesis (and I'd be happy to see some data to support or contradict it). ~~~ boomboomsubban 1988 was the year of the Writers Guild strike, so while your exacts may be mistaken you're probably right that the licensing scheme is involved. ------ NicoJuicy I cancelled my Amazon prime subscription, because of the ridiculous things they did in France. And following the dark pattern path to unsubscribe. I'm happy that I did it. Fyi, I'm from Belgium ~~~ jrib I didn't hear about this. Can you give a quick summary of what actions Amazon took in France that you are referring to? ------ s1artibartfast Useful information but the results look like garbage in Chrome and IE. The multi-line titles all run together and would greatly benefit from a table outline. ~~~ adamzegelin Safari too. I just discovered that modern user agents don't include table borders by default in their stylesheets -- at least, choosing Develop -> Disable Styles didn't make the table borders appear. I'm having flashbacks to the chiseled borders of Netscape. ------ xtiansimon Are these free on Amazon or is this just an advertisement for Amazon Prime (or does everyone have a subscription but me?) ~~~ catwind7 Not an advertisement for amazon prime :) These are free with prime, not free for non-subscribers I'm actually going to be cancelling my prime membership, which is another reason I wanted to see what I could watch for "free". ------ exhilaration If the author reads this, the link in the Google sheet to the Battle of Algiers goes to Algiers, a totally different movie. ~~~ catwind7 i'm fixing this list ... just realized a few bugs in the code. _sigh_ ------ gittes Don't mean to undermine this guy's screen-scraping adventure... but if you want to use something that will tell you all the streaming services that have the list of movies, you can use: [https://letterboxd.com/dvideostor/list/roger-eberts-great- mo...](https://letterboxd.com/dvideostor/list/roger-eberts-great-movies/) You can look at each movie to see what streaming service it's on one at a time for free. If you have a pro paid account, you can even do: [https://letterboxd.com/dvideostor/list/roger-eberts-great- mo...](https://letterboxd.com/dvideostor/list/roger-eberts-great- movies/on/amazon-prime-us/) Which shows that there are 39 movies in Amazon Prime US from Ebert's "Great Movies," not 21 like this guy's spreadsheet says. To be fair, the exercise was to scrape the reference sources... so it might just need some refinement. Need to double check though if both lists are correct, only confirmed number totals. __Full disclosure: That letterboxd list is not mine, I just found it __ ~~~ js2 FWIW, I screen scraped rogerebert.com and copied all of his ratings and an excerpt of every review to letterboxd: [https://letterboxd.com/re2/](https://letterboxd.com/re2/) Just the great movies: [https://letterboxd.com/re2/tag/great- movie/films/by/release-...](https://letterboxd.com/re2/tag/great- movie/films/by/release-earliest/) You can then filter those by streaming service, but you need a pro account. Looks like 38 movies: [https://letterboxd.com/re2/tag/great- movie/films/on/amazon-p...](https://letterboxd.com/re2/tag/great- movie/films/on/amazon-prime-us/by/release-earliest/) [https://ibb.co/KFSj9jg](https://ibb.co/KFSj9jg) Apparently I missed the Buster Keaton movies: [https://www.rogerebert.com/reviews/great-movie-the-films- of-...](https://www.rogerebert.com/reviews/great-movie-the-films-of-buster- keaton) [https://letterboxd.com/director/buster- keaton/](https://letterboxd.com/director/buster-keaton/) But that means 39 isn't quite right either since Ebert is saying all of Buster Keaton's films are great. Anyway, the scraping was easy. The harder problem was parsing the html reviews (even with BeautifulSoup, the html is a mess), and then matching the reviews on Ebert's site to the correct movie, which I did via queries to tmdb and a lot of heuristics. There's nearly 8000 reviews and many have wrong years, bad titles, etc on rogerebert.com. It was a fun spare time project for a couple weeks. ~~~ gittes Nice! Yeah, I wish letterboxd was free somehow without ads and they made their beta api public. Yeah, I bet there's not a great standard for normalization/corrections of tiles, making a distinction of like when a movie was made and when a movie was released and translations and imports. Good work. ~~~ js2 I ended up using the director and cast that are listed for most reviews on Ebert's site for matching the right movie. Even that required some tricks due to spelling errors or differences in how names were listed. I then flagged any matches that weren't unique or where the title wasn't similar enough for me to manually review. I think I only had to double-check about a hundred or so. I didn't use the letterboxd api. Instead, I generated csv files for the letterboxd importer. I then did a csv export from their site I could reconcile to look for import errors. Trivia: Ebert reviewed a few adult films which I couldn't import to letterboxd because the site officially doesn't allow those. BTW, it's only $19/year for an account. I have my own account I pay for which follows the re2 account. That way I can easily see any of the re2 reviews for movies in my own watchlist. ~~~ gittes Yep, I caved and got an account last month too ------ cm2187 A weekend project idea for geeks like me who like films, but have the feeling to have already watched everything. I find that imdb ratings have a high (but not 1.0) correlation with me liking the movie (provided I like the genre). You can still download from imdb flat files that contain all movies, ratings, as well as cast/directors/producers/writers. Stick that in a database, with a basic UI to hide movies you have already watched. And you can make a good personal recommandation engine for movies you didn’t suspect exist. The power of this approach is that imdb is pretty much an exhaustive catalog. ~~~ jraedisch I tend to like movies/shows on Rotten Tomatoes, where the critics like the movie less than the other users, e.g. The Orville [https://www.rottentomatoes.com/tv/orville](https://www.rottentomatoes.com/tv/orville) P.S.: And audience score should roughly be above 70. ~~~ kspacewalk2 I completely agree with this. Whenever critics' and users' assessments of a movie or a TV show diverge, it is almost universally the critics who end up being wrong (in my subjective view). They sometimes over-rate things people in their position cannot be seen disliking because it's about Societal Importance or some such thing that has little to do with actual quality. And conversely, they sometimes ignore or under-rate things because they cannot be seen to overly praise a work that's criticised for things having little or nothing to do with actual quality. Thing is, I don't need to be culturally influenced, have my outdated views updated to match what's currently considered mainstream, my privilege checked, etc. I just want to watch a good fucking movie and decide for myself whether it contains a message that changes my mind on a topic. For example, critics and users disagree on The Shape of Water[0] (users are right, it's very mediocre). They also disagree on Green Book[1] (users are right again, it's a great film even if it doesn't tick all the wokeness and political correctness checkboxes). [0] [https://www.metacritic.com/movie/the-shape-of- water](https://www.metacritic.com/movie/the-shape-of-water) [1] [https://www.metacritic.com/movie/green- book](https://www.metacritic.com/movie/green-book) ~~~ clairity > "For example, critics and users disagree on The Shape of Water[0] (users are > right, it's very mediocre). They also disagree on Green Book[1] (users are > right again, it's a great film even if it doesn't tick all the wokeness and > political correctness checkboxes)." no, the _green book_ is awful, a particularly bad example of the feel-good movie, never once inviting the viewer to get lost in a believable world, instead inviting the viewer to question every directorial decision made. it was fake and pretentious at the same time, and completely safe around race relations. the _shape of water_ was not perfect, but better. not the best example of interracial relations (metaphorically), but gentle, revealing, quirky, ambient, and unpretentious. ------ jamesrcole On a tangent: I dream of a web where whenever there are sets of items (eg eberts-great-movies, and movies-on-amazon) you can easily apply set operations (like intersection) on them (so if ‘n’ stands for ‘intersection’, eg eberts- great-movies n movies-on-amazon). So, in effect if you’re on a site that deals with a set of items, like the amazon prime movies, you can tell the browser to intersect this set with a different set at another URL. I understand that doing this would require the right ‘infrastructure’ to be in place. ~~~ castratikron I don't know why there's no good way to know what's streaming on a certain service. Seems like the only way is through third party sites that are probably made up of people manually adding to the list. If everyone is going to make their own streaming service then there needs to be a standard interface to make them collectively easier to use. A "guide", if you will. ~~~ pjc50 Unfortunately their profit incentive is the opposite: to train you to watch what they choose to recommend, rather than take a step back and look at what isn't there. See the hollowing of the Netflix catalog.

Chief Executive of Social Finance to Step Down - coloneltcb https://mobile.nytimes.com/2017/09/11/technology/sofi-mike-cagney-sexual-harassment.html?_r=1&referer= ====== throwaway6497 Interesting that branding is not important/creatively skirted when negative news is involved. Doesn't come as a surprise. Wondering, if this is intentional. Difficult to imagine that the company is spoon feeding an NY times reporter the headlines. Always saw SoFi everywhere in ads and branding. Social Finance on Google doesn't rank SoFi in the top two organic search results. Wonder why the headline is Social Finance instead of SoFi though there is mention of SoFi in the article. ~~~ CPLX Maybe they put that in the headline because that's the name of the company. Doesn't seem particularly confusing to me. ~~~ greglindahl The NYT frequently uses full company names, for example they used to refer to SpaceX as "Space Exploration Technologies", and they still put periods in places where other journalists won't (I.B.M.). I wouldn't read anything into it other than the NYT marches to the beat of a different drummer. ------ djchung23 Yikes. Culture starts from the person at the top and flows down. Curious to see how and if the cultural narrative within Silicon Valley companies will change one year from now after all that's happened. Will there actually be meaningful change? I don't know, but I'm hoping so. ~~~ lefstathiou I was chatting in bed with my lady about this last night and we hit on a few negative potential outcomes and concerns: Companies and their investors are going to look for ways to prevent these issues from happening. Part of the solution will rest on coaching, monitoring and policing (perhaps through employee empowerment etc) the "aggressive" people (mostly men) in the workplace. A concern my girlfriend highlighted is that this may increase unconscious bias in the hiring process, for example: Will men consider beautiful girls a risk to the workplace? If you have 90% male employees working in your office and a beautiful girl who is definitely qualified for the job but for the sake of argument not someone you "have to have" for this role, are you introducing risk into the workplace by hiring her knowing that people react stronger to attractive people? Said differently, is there a possibility that her presence becomes a potential "distraction" in the office. Will progressive personalities be considered a risk to the workplace? Beyond looks to personality types, if you are interviewing a candidate and through rounds of interviews you discover they actively contribute their spare time and energy toward socially progressive movements, rallies, campaigns etc, will they be deemed higher risks as potential work-place agitators? I never really thought about these things until my gf mentioned them but apparently she and her girlfriends consider these factors when strategizing about interviews ("don't look too good, etc"). Another anecdote: we have a handful of couples we're close to whose girlfriends/wives insist that their CEO boyfriends/husbands never conduct challenging performance based conversations with female employees without a witness present. This was consistent with my girlfriend's experience in banking where she found that her senior managers were comfortable having performance reviews 1-1 (which in theory facilitates more candid dialogue and deeper relationships) whereas all the girls had multiple managers present reviews. On the margin, does this disadvantage women? I don't know but my gf seemed to think so. ~~~ neo4sure "Companies and their investors are going to look for ways to prevent these issues from happening. Part of the solution will rest on coaching, monitoring and policing (perhaps through employee empowerment etc) the "aggressive" people (mostly men) in the workplace." Just be a good person... It's really easy. I don't know why a guy would need coaching on basic decency. ~~~ cflewis Yeah, this is classic victim blaming. "Oh, she looked too pretty, I couldn't help myself from touching her ass." How about not hiring assholes in the first place? If they have to be coached to not have issues with women, then they aren't worth your time. ------ mgkimsal Maybe he was busy having "inappropriate relations" with the people who should have been "reviewing" my paperwork? Tried to use them years ago and... turnaround time took _weeks_. Their web interface just kept telling me they were "reviewing" then "need more info" without any concrete info as to what was needed. Emails took days to get a reply to. Tried to use them again last year - same horrible turnaround/response time (days/weeks). I was able to use another institution and have my financial stuff handled and done in less time than it took them to even clarify why the exact same info other financial agents were fine with wasn't good enough (and, they never did). They followed up about 4 months later to ask if I still needed service. ------ SoFiThrowaway The internal messaging is the same as external: "buisness is strong, we continue to execute as we did, looking for a new ceo". However, if you read between the lines, it sounds like the board might have been looking for an excuse to oust Mike, who preferred high risk ventures and expansions, and replace him with someone experienced in bringing companies to an IPO. It seems like this is an attempt to kill two birds with one stone, in terms of bad press. ------ blizkreeg “I believe now is the right time for SoFi to start the search for a new leader,” Mr. Cagney said in a statement. What's with these cowardly statements? Admit your mistakes, say you're no longer the right leader, and that's why you're stepping down.

Analytics at GitHub - janerik http://johnnunemaker.com/analytics-at-github/ ====== phunge Jay Kreps speaks the truth. His talk "Building LinkedIn's Real-time Data Pipeline" is along the same lines as the Log blogpost mentioned here and is also extremely informative. ------ fuziontech Fantastic read. Concise and solid decision explanations. Thanks for writing! Was there any other reason you chose kestrel over alternatives like kafka? Did you test any others, or where you just that satisfied with kestrel? ~~~ jnunemaker We chose kestrel mostly just from usage/familiarity. We've been satisfied with it, but are currently researching/testing kafka. ~~~ nextplaylist Are you guys using either of them elsewhere or just for analytics? ~~~ technoweenie We use Kestrel for our internal hooks delivery system also (based on jnunemaker's suggestion). ------ khaledh Very good article. It aligns with our envisioned architecture for our next-gen analytics platform. So far our decision is to keep the raw events in Cassandra, and pre-aggregate most data for fast reads. Just wondering about your decision to not store raw events in Cassandra, and use raw files for that, and using Cassandra only for storing Hadoop analysis results. Do you think this decision may affect you later if you ever decide to support real-time analytics? ------ nicklovescode As an aside, do you have any info on the visual software used to run the charts? I'm guessing d3 is there somewhere., but maybe not. I've struggled to find a beautiful charting library and yours are beautiful! ~~~ calavera we use d3 for all our charts. ~~~ nicklovescode any chance of you guys open-sourcing them? ~~~ Caged Most of our graphs are pretty stock d3 code tailored for specific datasets, so I don't see much value in open sourcing them. Is there anything in particular you're interested in? ~~~ jrpt There's a need for a good charting library built on top of d3. Kind of like Highcharts, in terms of usability, but free. d3 is powerful but not as easy to use and customize as Highcharts. ~~~ middleman90 Can I suggest [http://www.sibdo.com](http://www.sibdo.com) For individuals it's free and built on top of d3 with some extra functionality that Higcharts does't have. You can even drag files directly onto to the visualizations and the data will render. Also really nice UI for mobile. ~~~ sheff Looking at the Sibdo pricing page, it looks like much higher pricing (compared to the more established competitors) at $95 a month for use on a SINGLE website with a confusing limitation to "50 users" whatever that means. Not only that, the example graphs and charts look very basic. ~~~ middleman90 Good feedback thanks It would be interesting to know what you mean by basic as we're a start-up and would appreciate any feedback. ------ nickstinemates > For any business, the process of collecting data, measuring performance, > making changes, and reviewing if those changes were successful is really > important. This applies for any sort of goal/process/?, whether programmatic or personal. Very cool story, I'm looking forward to additional features. We pull a _lot_ of data about Docker from GitHub that could be more readily available. We'd be more than happy to discuss or beta any new features, if you're interested. ------ alexatkeplar Nice to see lots of parallels to how we have architected things at Snowplow (trackers -> collectors -> enrich -> storage -> analytics)

Pinterest, We Have a Problem - CMartucci http://whatblag.com/2012/03/07/pinterest-we-have-a-problem/ ====== OneBytePerGreen Pinterest has a market valuation of > 200 million dollars... 30%+ of its images are flickr images... ... 99%+ of which are "All Rights Reserved". How many ... page views, ... new subscribers, ... and $$$ have the most-pinned flickr images generated for pinterest, with the author not seeing a single cent... not even having the satisfaction of seeing their popularity on pinterest reflect in their flickr stats? And: Pinterest does not even have the decency to display the author name and license info next to the image. Pinterest's business model is flawed; it is based on systematic violation of copyright. At some point, someone will start a class-action lawsuit and invite flickr photographers whose works got "pinned" to sign up, to reclaim part of that >$200 million pie. In fact, this seems like a valid startup idea to me: Create a one-page website explaining to flickr users what has been going on. Do a systematic reverse image search to find out which authors have been affected and invite them to join. Arrange with an interested lawfirm to get a % of their fee in exchange for delivering the list of potential plaintiffs. ~~~ js2 Recently, I wanted to make some picture postcards of various locations around the US for personal use, so I went looking for images. I found many on Flickr. I wanted to compensate the original photographer. There is no easy way to do this. At best, some photographs have a "request to license" link that bounces you to a third party (typically Getty Images) which offers to "Review the photo to determine if it's a good fit for licensing through us; Contact the photographer; Handle the details like releases and pricing" and takes "between two and seven days to arrange licensing." with prices typically around $100 for usable resolution for a postcard. At worst, you have to sign in to Yahoo so that you can send the photographer a message about wanting to use their photo. You may or may not get a reply, and you have to arrange how to pay the photographer, if at all. This may make sense for images which are to be used in a commercial context, but for personal use like how I wanted to use the images, it's way too expensive and much too much friction. The vast majority of images will never be used commercially. There should be an easier way to remunerate the photographer, and at more reasonable prices. A "Pix Store" if you will. Maybe that's what the stock photo sites are supposed to be, but they don't have nearly the inventory. Sorry for the tangent. ~~~ Terretta "This may make sense for images which are to be used in a commercial context, but for personal use like how I wanted to use the images, it's way too expensive and much too much friction." That's why Flickr lets you search for Creative Commons images, for which the photographer gives you that personal use permission in advance. ~~~ js2 There are shades of a grey between commercial use and free use which are unaddressed. ~~~ Terretta You think so? I license photos through Creative Commons, and differently depending on the shades of personal to commercial I consider inherent in the potential market for a photo. I find it covers all the shades of commerciality I've considered. Meanwhile, for a purely commercial photographer, the getty images option is there, and those won't come up in the Creative Commons search unless licensed appropriately. The CC search tool on Flickr is a fantastic tool for finding photos of the exact "shade" of use you're looking for. ~~~ js2 CC photos are all free for non-commercial use, correct? What if you'd like to be compensated, but not at rates that justify the overhead of Getty Images? Many of the images I found were not CC licensed, nor did they have a Getty Images option. Those are the images I'm referring to. e.g., go search Flickr for "drawdy falls". No results in Getty, no results in the Commons, but a handful of images from photographers that are retaining full copyright, but have't posted contact info. Maybe they don't want compensation and just failed to select CC when they posted. Who knows. Regardless, many of the images I found were in this middle ground. I'm not trying to sound entitled here, just pointing out that there's lots of images that sadly cannot be used. ------ jfarmer I have one direct comment and one meta-comment about the issue of Pinteret and copyright. First, I see no issue with their Terms of Service. That language is 100% cover-your-ass boilerplate, and any site that allows people to upload content will have a similar clause in their ToS. Facebook, YouTube, SoundCloud, etc. all do. See, e.g., section 6.C of YouTube's ToS: [http://www.youtube.com/static?gl=US&template=terms](http://www.youtube.com/static?gl=US&template=terms) If you find people are sharing your copyrighted material on Pinterest you should file a DMCA claim with them. That's how the mechanism is designed to work, for better or worse. Second, when you react viscerally to what Pinterest is doing or enabling, think carefully about your opinion of YouTube. With respect to content, is there a substantive difference between these early days of Pinterest and the early days of YouTube? The MPAA is probably saying, "See? You don't like it when it happens to you, either." ~~~ antiterra The indemnification clause is definitely 100% boilerplate and used in most any site that allows user-generated content. Facebook contains it near verbatim in item 15.2 of their terms. The license grant is a bit different, since Facebook allows you to terminate the license, though under particular conditions. The significant issue here is the idea that the intended primary use for Pinterest may infringe on the rights of others. This is what took down Napster, and, to me, indemnifying Pintereist is too risky at this point. It's my understanding that Pinterest is attempting to move to licensed and sponsored pins and they haven't annoyed any large industry groups and might even fare better legally than YouTube did. Who knows. ~~~ jfarmer Yes, they're definitely playing with fire, and they'll have to address it soon given the rate they're growing. But the outrage, _outrage_ , OUTRAGE at Pinterest over this clause here just tells me people are ignorant of (1) what this clause really means and (2) how many times they've agreed to it in the past. It's 100% nerdrage in my opinion, and a month from now nobody will be talking about it. ~~~ ktizo I cannot see how you can have (in reality, not legally) agreed to a clause without first knowing about it. ~~~ jfarmer Much of it is a conceit, yes, and I'm not qualified to comment on the legal precedents surrounding such licenses. I'm sure Pinterest makes you check a box saying you agree to the Terms of Use before they let you create an account. Whether that's sufficient is up to a court to decide, and an attorney could tell you the likelihood of a successful suit given a specific fact pattern. I'm not an attorney, though. As I said below, people -- engineers, especially -- get caught up in contractual technicalities. The fundamental question is: do you trust Pinterest to do right by you? Flickr has a similar clause that every photographer who has uploaded their photos has agreed to, but they do right by their users and so nobody believes one day Flickr is going to undo all that work. It would alienate their customers. If you think Pinterest is untrustworthy, why do you think some text on a screen that _they wrote themselves_ is going to impact their behavior one way or another? ~~~ jacobolus Actually, Flickr’s TOS (now a general Yahoo one) is quite different. They make it clear that their rights are limited to the specific uses obvious and essential to the function of their sites: > _Yahoo! does not claim ownership of Content you submit or make available for > inclusion on the Yahoo! Services. However, with respect to Content you > submit or make available for inclusion on publicly accessible areas of the > Yahoo! Services, you grant Yahoo! the following worldwide, royalty-free and > non-exclusive license(s), as applicable:_ > _With respect to photos, graphics, audio or video you submit or make > available for inclusion on publicly accessible areas of the Yahoo! Services > other than Yahoo! Groups, the license to use, distribute, reproduce, modify, > adapt, publicly perform and publicly display such Content on the Yahoo! > Services solely for the purpose for which such Content was submitted or made > available. This license exists only for as long as you elect to continue to > include such Content on the Yahoo! Services and will terminate at the time > you remove or Yahoo! removes such Content from the Yahoo! Services._ The key here is “solely for the purpose for which such Content was submitted or made available.” Pinterest’s ToS doesn’t have such language. Additionally, Yahoo’s ToS doesn’t indemnify Yahoo against all possible liability or force their legal bills w/r/t copyright claims &c. onto users. The relevant language is much more constrained: > _You agree that Yahoo! has no responsibility or liability for the deletion > or failure to store any messages and other communications or other Content > maintained or transmitted by the Yahoo! Services. You acknowledge that > Yahoo! reserves the right to log off accounts that are inactive for an > extended period of time._ ~~~ afiske Although Yahoo is definitely more constrained then Pinterest in terms of their license language, they actually do have a similar indemnity clause: "You agree to indemnify and hold Yahoo! and its subsidiaries, affiliates, officers, agents, employees, partners and licensors harmless from any claim or demand, including reasonable attorneys' fees, made by any third party due to or arising out of Content you submit, post, transmit, modify or otherwise make available through the Yahoo! Services, your use of the Yahoo! Services, your connection to the Yahoo! Services, your violation of the TOS, or your violation of any rights of another." ------ yuvadam Oh please, not again. Absolutely any and every product you use has ridiculous Terms of Service. These documents are drafted up by lawyers. Their job is not to please the end users who care to read through the legalese. Their job is to create a document that will protect the product vendor in court, if and when the time comes. Lets put an end to finding eccentricities in ToSs/EULAs, it's getting kind of redundant. If this is some sort of game to see who can find the most absurd clauses in these documents, we're all losing. ~~~ Terretta For "content" creators, these are not absurdities, these are terms that can make or break your ability to get paid for your work and put food on the table. A photographer having to go to court to defend his ownership of photos they'd exhibited through twitpic and get paid by newspapers who claimed the ToS said he'd released his rights, demonstrates this is not a "please not again" problem, this is ongoing, big corps are misusing these at the expense of individual artists, and the problem's getting worse. Every day I talk to artists who have no idea that posting their latest music video to a video sharing site could give that company performance rights in other media, or, as in this case, that pinning their own photos to Pinterest would let Pinterest publish a "Best Pins of 2012" book w/o compensating the artist. This needs to be called out and both consumers and creators deserve to be informed. ~~~ pork Let me rephrase GP's comment, since I felt the same thing as them. Allow me to set out a hypothetical. You find that Pinterest's terms are awful, and stage a very successful revolt with your own site, sans the offensive terms. Users flock to your site, and Pinterest dies a sad death. One of the copyright owners of your "pinned" content decides to go after you, and decides to sue the pants off you. So you freak out and hire a top-notch lawyer, who will draft a new set of terms for your users to shield you from the liability you now realize you have. Repeat, iterate, and before you know it -- your top-notch lawyer guarantees that you will face no more expensive liability, but you now have the onerous terms set out in practically all sites that allow user-generated content. Basically, these terms allow you to bump the liability from yourself to the user who uploaded it (because they have pinned the pictures in bad faith, in violation of your terms, etc.) So there's really no point railing against the terms -- they aren't going away, and the best you can hope for is very minor modifications of wording with sufficient popular pressure. Good luck on that. ~~~ alxp This post we're discussing _is_ the popular pressure. And yes, I also wish them good luck because the pendulum is currently far too in the direction against fairness to end-users. ~~~ growingconcern Exactly. Saying that this is just the way it is is ludicrous. They could under sufficient pressure change the wording so that they aren't assuming ownership or unlimited use and that it is something more akin to fair use. ------ chrisacky There was a similar HN post/Google+ post last week. I can't remember where I read it. Something along the lines of an avid lawyer decided to kill her account because she read the ToS and drew exactly the same conclusions as what you had just wrote. While it's quite easy to regard this as been a ticking timebomb, a few things to probably note. If you are a photographer or someone who holds copyright in a work you would most likely just issue a DMCA. Now, lets assume that you aren't content with that. You might argue that you have incurred losses and want some form of damages. You are first going to have to contact Pinterest to get the information of the user who has listed this said work. Are Pinterest goijng to give up this information so willingly? Probably not... ~~~ cbs >You are first going to have to contact Pinterest to get the information of the user who has listed this said work. Are Pinterest goijng to give up this information so willingly? Probably not... IIRC, in this case you sue John Doe and have the court compel Pinterest to identify him. ~~~ pavel_lishin Does pinterest require identifying information in order to register? ~~~ girlvinyl It requires a facebook or twitter login. Plus it should have some kind of IP log somewhere. Pinterest won't have the entire identity, but this is how e-discovery works. You keep sending subpoenas up the hierarchy until you get to the ISP. The ISP provides the subscriber information. ------ zaroth Speaking of the DMCA Safe Harbor... Images on Pinterest, in some cases, were not even uploaded from a user's hard drive; they were pulled in via a the 'Pin It' button (<http://pinterest.com/about/goodies/>) In this case, Pinterest even acknowledges that the images are not the property of the user, "When you pin from a website, we automatically grab the source link so we can credit the original creator." I'll bet the 'Pin It' button ultimately gets them in hot water, because it's hard to argue the content is 'user generated' when they know, via their 'Pin It' code, exactly where the content is actually coming from. § 512(c) [DMCA Safe Harbor] also requires that the OSP: 1) not receive a financial benefit directly attributable to the infringing activity, 2) not be aware of the presence of infringing material or know any facts or circumstances that would make infringing material apparent, I wonder if 'the original source URL' of a image may be construed as a fact that would make infringing material apparent. IANAL. ~~~ icebraining _In this case, Pinterest even acknowledges that the images are not the property of the user, "When you pin from a website, we automatically grab the source link so we can credit the original creator."_ And that's fine - their ToS says you need to be either the copyright holder _or_ have consent from the copyright holder. For example, if I "pin" a CC licensed image, I have such consent. ~~~ waitwhat _their ToS says you need to be either the copyright holder or have consent from the copyright holder._ I've seen warez sites with exactly the same disclaimer. It didn't work for them either. ~~~ icebraining But Youtube, Flickr, DeviantArt and thousands of other user submitted content sites are still online. ~~~ antiterra As far as I know there is no industry group for still-image photographers anything like the MPAA or RIAA. All three of those sites are and were filled with substantial original content, so they can claim that illegal use is not their primary drive. I don't know if Pinterest can successfully argue the same thing. It also should be noted that YouTube spent a _great_ deal of money on settlements and arrangements with RIAA & MPAA members, content networks and others to survive. ~~~ jlujan "As far as I know there is no industry group for still-image photographers anything like the MPAA or RIAA." The American Society of Media Photographers, Graphic Artists Guild, the Picture Archive Council of America, the North American Nature Photography Association, Professional Photographers of America. They do not have the deep pockets or political clout of MPAA or RIAA but they are large industry groups. I think someone else mentioned a class action suite against Google for copyright infringement by photographers. The lawsuit started with scanning and displaying images from the Google Library Project but includes infringement claims for images.google.com, etc. <http://asmp.org/articles/asmp-qa-google-class-action.html> ------ Alex3917 So you're claiming that pinterest should pay your legal bills for you? That's ridiculous. If you upload a photo that's copyrighted by someone else and get sued, why should pinterest foot the bill for that? There is no way the service would ever be viable under those conditions, because it would create an enormous moral hazard. ~~~ why-el There is no moral hazard when they are claiming the right to sell material that might be copyrighted. ~~~ Alex3917 That isn't an issue because you are co-assigning your copyright to them, assuming you own the copyright. And if you don't own the copyright then it's not a valid contract, so it doesn't matter. It's not like you're legally able to sign away someone else's copyright. Which is exactly why the indemnity clause is there, to prevent pinterest from being responsible if people are dumb enough to do that. ------ otterley I am an attorney (and as far as I can tell, the author is not one, so take his "analysis" with a pillar of salt). This is not legal advice though. With respect to the following paragraph: "So, if you snap an awesome photograph, upload it to your blog, and someone pins it, that person is either (1) claiming exclusive ownership of it; or (2) giving Pinterest your consent to reproduce it (and you just thought you were being flattered)." Actually, no. You can't transfer a right you don't have. All rights to a work are vested in the author of a protected work; only the author can consent to any of the activities protected by copyright. It's just like selling a house you don't own. First, you're committing fraud if you falsely represent that you have the right to sell it; and second, the actual owner isn't bound by anything you have done (the deed doesn't go to the putative buyer). ~~~ 1point2 And there in lies the problem with TOS (or is the problem with the law?) if one needs to be an attorney to understand them, what hope is there for the ordinary folk - just saying. No wonder people just click through. ------ edwinnathaniel Watermark the pictures in your blog? By the way, I found out that you can watermark all of your images that you're about to upload to Picasa Web via Picasa Desktop (there's an option to do that before you Sync to Web). I found that feature very useful if you organize your pictures using Picasa (and show them on your blog). ~~~ freehunter Problem is, copyright is implied on the part of the creator. It does not need to be applied for, nor is there any _requirement_ for a copyright notice. Just because you didn't watermark your image doesn't mean the copyright now belongs to Pintrest (or imgur, or Google+, or Facebook, etc) because people who didn't hold the copyright and didn't have the standing to give it away posted it. ~~~ icebraining And that's why you can send a DMCA takedown request and they'll have to take it down. I fail to see the problem here. ------ mtgentry 'The “pin” button remains inactive until the user types something. Anything. Might this count as “criticizing” or “commenting”?' Interesting. I'd like to see a court case further define what constitutes a "comment" on the web. Other sites do this too, for example Buzzfeed.com's entire business model is based on taking content from bloggers and then hosting it on their own site, without providing any kind of insightful comment _. _[http://www.buzzfeed.com/mjs538/if-both-of-angelinas-legs- wer...](http://www.buzzfeed.com/mjs538/if-both-of-angelinas-legs-were-showing) ~~~ anothermachine "commenting" is only one aspect of fair use, and it generally is interpreted to mean "copying a small snippet as an example" or "reproducing a low- resolution copy for reference" to provide context. Another aspect of fair use is "not depriving the owner of their own commercial use of the work". ------ zaroth If I'm a copyright holder who feels like my work is being misappropriated by Pinterest, I'm going to sue Pinterest, not the user. Their Terms of Service won't stop them from getting sued, and the indemnity clause won't magically make money appear in their pockets to pay for their defense. If they decide to start suing their users for recovery, that would be pretty amusing. "I trusted the person who gave me the image" is not a legal defense for copyright infringement. Their only chance is to stay within the DMCA safe harbor or else they will eventually be shut down. ~~~ wpietri As my lawyer explained to me long ago, who eventually "wins" a lawsuit is rarely interesting. Cost, time, and agony to get there are much more relevant factors. The "our users represent that the content is theirs" may not keep Pinterest from losing an eventual lawsuit, but it does complicate things enough that it discourages legal action. That may be sufficient for them to cash out long before the suits are complete. Or, like YouTube, things like that may allow them to grow big enough that they end up with sufficient negotiating power that they can get away with quite a bit, and possibly reshape what's considered reasonable. ------ npsimons I think many are dismissing this as "standard TOS/EULA legalese" and missing the point. Let's consider a scenario: let's say you post some photos online, and license them under the CC-By-SA license (<http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0/>). Then someone pins the photos you took to Pinterest. Next, Pinterest sells the photos you took, then catches someone copying or modifying the photos you took and sues them for copyright. To top it all off, Pinterest doesn't even give you attribution. This is _exactly_ the sort of thing that CC and GPL were created to combat: ruining someone's life through the legal system based on abuse of the copyright system. You want to sue someone over copyright violations of information you have copyright on? Fine. You want to sell something licensed under CC-By-SA? Fine. But you better be ready to comply to the license and allow whoever you give those works to the right to copy, sell and modify those works. I highly doubt Pinterest is prepared for this, and their TOS _is_ overreaching. ------ maqr Maybe all the buzz about Pinterest is because so many people think that finding an image online makes it publicly redistributable. "Pinning" is just another way of sharing. I get the impression that there's much wider public acceptance of sharing (pirating?) pictures than music, movies, or software. I don't have a good answer as to why this might be, but I'd be curious what HN thinks. ~~~ elithrar > I get the impression that there's much wider public acceptance of sharing > (pirating?) pictures than music, movies, or software. I don't have a good > answer as to why this might be, but I'd be curious what HN thinks. Anecdotally, it's because photographs and images are seen as "easier to reproduce" (whether this is true or not is another matter), and therefore possibly easier to justify by those doing the sharing. That, and there's far less friction to sharing photos/images than video and software. ~~~ eurleif Perhaps it's also that photos seem less valuable than songs or movies, since pretty much anyone can take a decent photo? (Decent by the person's own standards, at least; maybe not by a professional photographer's.) ------ brador Could this argument also apply to sites like Readability? Since it removes advertising (hence income for the writers) from articles. ~~~ viraptor I don't think so, unless readability grants itself rights to reproduce and sell every article that passes through its engine. Does it? ~~~ icebraining Maybe not sell, but they it'd be impossible for Readability to work without reproducing the articles. ------ fotoblur Pinterest and Tumblr are by far the worse offenders when it comes to sharing content from other providers as its not 100% clear, or sometimes elusive, on how visitor can view the original content. Its as if these sites are cutting content providers out of the loop which is like throwing out the baby with the bathwater. They are essentially going to injure the entire ecosystem of sharing if they keep up with these practices ([http://www.sv411.com/index.php/2012/02/pinterest-gets- caught...](http://www.sv411.com/index.php/2012/02/pinterest-gets-caught- changing-user-links-for-extra-income/)). What's worse is that these shady sharing practices have begun to support a broader ecosystem of image finding scavengers such as <http://www.whattopin.com> (see below). Here is a support ticket we received today at Fotoblur which illustrates the problems we are seeing (a bit of broken English but you get the picture): " _I am user the[http://www.fotoblur.com/portfolio/agnieszkabalut?p=1&id=...](http://www.fotoblur.com/portfolio/agnieszkabalut?p=1&id=370425) Another user Elinka used my photo art- senza titolo2 by Agnieszka Balut....... (via Elinka) in the web-site <http://www.whattopin.com/topic/photography/?id=283634> \- Printerest (commercial use) and in the [http://elinka.tumblr.com/post/18734723798/senza- titolo2-by-a...](http://elinka.tumblr.com/post/18734723798/senza-titolo2-by- agnieszka-balut) without my permission. All my images are protected by Copyright (reproduction and printing). All images on these are the exclusive property of Agnieszka Balut and protected by the Copyright . Therefore prohibited the publication and reproduction without written permission from Agnieszka Balut. Any violation will be prosecuted._" As you can see, this type of sharing confuses people. We usually explain "fair use" to them but they really don't care. They feel they have rights and they want action taken. I can fully understand why Flickr blocked Pinterest if they have been getting the complaints such as we've seen. In the end the burden falls on the image owner and what ends up happening is they have to chase down every site owner whose members improperly post their content. They then lose faith in participating at all because of their inability to control their content. ------ veverkap Didn't Pinterest address this to a certain degree? At least from the content creators - <http://blog.pinterest.com/post/17949261591/growing-up> says that you can add a meta tag marking your content as not pinnable. ~~~ FireBeyond "To a certain degree"... Not so much... So I, as a Content Creator, have to a) be mindful of, and b) take action to opt out of 1) Pinterest, 2) any other of a potentially large number of sites / applications, purely in order to ensure said sites don't claim commercial rights to and derive income from my work and effort? Not the way it works, or should work, say I. ~~~ icebraining You can send a DMCA takedown request if you see that someone is misusing your content. What exactly do you propose? Eliminate any website with user submitted content? I mean, what if someone posts a work to Hacker News without permission, should YCombinator be held liable? ------ mikeknoop So here is a thought. I presume the article is mostly critical of the terms based on comments here. But consider a service without any "ownership" terms, etc. Two scenarios: 1\. When a user "pins" an image elsewhere online, the image is downloaded by Pinterest to their server. When other users browse Pinterest, it is served directly by Pinterest's servers. 2\. When a user "pins" an image elsewhere online, the image URL is saved by Pinterest to their server. When other users browse Pinterest, they are downloading the image directly from the original source. Scenario (1) I see legal issues with. But scenario (2)? Isn't Pinterest simply providing a link (ala a search engine)? Moreover, isn't this just how the internet works? Surely this has come up before yet I am having trouble finding a similar case. ------ EGreg This is the problem with importing PUBLIC CONTENT YOU FIND ON THE INTERNET into a website. Not uploading from your computer, or importing from your own account somewhere on another site. If the website actually makes a copy of the media (picture, etc.) and stores it on their servers, they should hope that the DMCA still considers them a safe harbor. I think their best bet is to store the images only as a cache, and not as a permanent import. If the site owner decides to take down the original, then the cache should disappear soon thereafter. ------ danboarder Pinterest is more like a visual social bookmarking service than a blog. When people save bookmarks or share links on delicious or reddit or even twitter, of course they don't claim ownership of that content, it's just a bookmark. Similarly, with Pintrest people are saving a visual bookmark of something they saw that was interesting out on the web or on other social streams, tumblr, etc. I think a lot of people are missing the point here. ------ xn If posting an image with a comment is fair use, then arguably the combination of the image and the comment constitute the Member Content for which the poster is claiming ownership. If I publish a review of a work of art, including a reproduction of the work, in a magazine, my copyright would cover the entire article including the reproduction. I wouldn't be claiming copyright on the original work. ~~~ ajross That's pretty much how I see it too. Yes, you own the review, which includes the right to the image _for the fair use purposes of explaining the review only_. There is no transitive right if you sell that review to use the image for any other purpose. I too find this insane. If anything qualifies for fair use, surely pinterest does. "Hey look at this cool thing!" is about as close as I can imagine to the platonic ideal of discussing a copyrighted work. No one freaked out over /r/pics, so what's the deal here? I hesitate to point out that pinterest differs mostly in the gender demographics of the user base, but... yeah. ~~~ dangrossman > No one freaked out over /r/pics, /r/pics is just a collection of links to images; it does not reproduce or redistribute the images. ~~~ ajross Right, but that's the same sort of legalese excuse-making (or alternatively: just substitute imgur, which hosts most of that content). It has nothing to do with whether or not /r/pics constitutes fair use, just if-it-isn't-fair-use-who-gets-sued? No one, at the time or now, seriously thought that there was a legal problem for anyone with reddit. So why pinterest? Again, part of me is really suspicious that it's because it's a chick site that doesn't cater to geeks. ------ villagefool Funny thing is that Pinterest in their terms of service are asking people to follow rules they are breaking for other services... ------ treelovinhippie I was under the assumption that all social-based sites/companies follow the same policy, not so they can resell user content, but so they can eventually go through an acquisition without facing a class action lawsuit from its users who would demand a % of the sale. e.g. Geocities. ------ JBiserkov <http://500px.com/terms> I prefer the old ones though [http://web.archive.org/web/20110619022738/http://500px.com/t...](http://web.archive.org/web/20110619022738/http://500px.com/terms) ------ yonasb One phrase comes to mind after reading this: "so what." It's not about what the terms say, it's about how they're enforced. I don't see any users getting sued, just a bunch of stories on how you could potentially get sued. ------ kfcm Just opening the door for business casual G-men [video]: [http://www.southparkstudios.com/clips/382781/business- casual...](http://www.southparkstudios.com/clips/382781/business-casual-g-men) ------ cmiles74 Pinterest is caching these images on their servers, not their customers who are only pasting in links. I find it hard to believe that these end-users will be held liable for an implementation detail on Pinterest's end. And linking, I believe is legal. These are images that are publicly available on the internet and have been made available, in most cases, by the owner. Is there really a case that copying these images off the internet is illegal? ~~~ ceol It's not an issue of copying images off the Internet. It's an issue with _redistributing_ it, which Pinterest does. Just because an image is on the Internet does not mean it's up for grabs to whoever gets it. ------ billpatrianakos What we have here is manufactured outrage. Total non-story. I hope others don't start piling on now that this has been written. The real deal is that Pinterest is screwed either way. These terms sound scary but so long as they are enforced sanely there should be no problem. What do you expect them to do? Assume liability for users posting content they should not be posting? They might as well not exist. A lot of startups these days may as well not even try to get traction as long as bloggers keep getting their panties in a twist over every TOS they see. Pinterest provides a service for free that people seem to love. So long as no one is paying them and they haven't gone public they're damn smart to have these terms. If I ran Pinterest I wouldn't want to assume liability for some asshole who leaks a top secret photo on my site that I let him use for free and as long as I'm giving that service for free I'm going to make some cash out of my users. This is nowhere near evil. It's business. If someone doesn't like it they don't have to use it. Question: How do you get over writer's block? Answer: Start reading some terms of service or privacy policy docs from any popular online startup and manufacture some outrage over it. Truth is, if you read any TOS or privacy policy you're going to find something you can turn into a big deal most of the time. I've had it with the TOS/privacy policy outrage blogs. ~~~ seldo I agree completely, but there's a double-standard here. What if instead of (mostly) photographs pinterest was mostly video? Then it would be YouTube, and everyone is pretty clear that you shouldn't upload a video to YouTube if you don't own it. Of course, some people flout that rule, but I figure the majority of content on YouTube is genuinely owned by the people who post it, while I very much doubt this is the case on Pinterest. So which is it? Is it bad that Pinterest is mostly "stolen" content, or bad that we're not allowed to post similarly "stolen" content on YouTube? The former implies that Pinterest should start cracking down on people who post content they don't own; the latter implies that YouTube should stop doing so (and therefore, copyright law should change). ~~~ kapkapkap _> but I figure the majority of content on YouTube is genuinely owned by the people who post it, while I very much doubt this is the case on Pinterest._ That assumption seems fairly inaccurate, see this quote: "Remarkably, more than one-third of the two billion views of YouTube videos with ads each week are ... uploaded without the copyright owner’s permission but left up by the owner’s choice." [1] [1] <http://www.nytimes.com/2010/09/03/technology/03youtube.html> ~~~ jtheory Didn't read the article, but as far as I can see that doesn't disprove his assumption. The NYT quote is talking just about the videos with ads, and then only discussing them in terms of views (not in terms of percentages of actual content uploaded, which is something like 24+ hours of content every minute). ------ aiscott I'm an amateur photographer, and I wasn't too concerned about this until I read that by Pinning something, their TOS says I am granting them rights to sell my work. I don't like that very much. By making available any Member Content through the Site, Application or Services, you hereby grant to Cold Brew Labs a worldwide, irrevocable, perpetual, non-exclusive, transferable, royalty-free license, with the right to sublicense, to use, copy, adapt, modify, distribute, license, sell, transfer, publicly display, publicly perform, transmit, stream, broadcast, access, view, and otherwise exploit such Member Content only on, through or by means of the Site, Application or Services. The rest just seems like standard CYA stuff. ~~~ jfarmer Again, this is 100% boilerplate. YouTube, Reddit, Facebook, etc. will all have similar clauses. See for example section 6.C in YouTube's ToS. [http://www.youtube.com/static?gl=US&template=terms](http://www.youtube.com/static?gl=US&template=terms) Why? Because without this blanket waiver it opens them up to all kinds of legal issues since a core mechanic of their site is re-pinning. If you upload a photo to their site and someone else re-pins it, did that person just violate your copyright? If Pinterest implements a "most popular pins" page and features one of your photos on that page, did they just violate your copyright? Yes, you can come up with legalese for each potential scenario, but it really does complicate things. It's easier for them to just have a blanket clause and act in good faith, than open themselves up to the possibility of accidentally using someone's work in a way their ToS didn't whitelist. ~~~ adamc Saying it's boilerplate doesn't make it right. It's scammy. ~~~ icebraining What do you propose instead? ~~~ glimcat Be explicit about what forms of (re)distribution are allowed instead of going for a blanket license. Where appropriate, also be explicit about what is not allowed. It shouldn't say much more than "you give us the right to use your content to fulfill the services you ask us to provide, and you have the right to remove your content at any time." ~~~ adamc I like that answer, because it is clear and doesn't seem like a sneaky over- reach. ------ rjurney I am SO fucking sick of douchebag angst driven attacks by sniveling failure- driven wannabees on legalese in terms of service that are essential to make any and every successful consumer Internet site, application or platform work. If you don't like it, don't use it. Go back to the pre-social web with your mom and grandmother. If you are going to criticize it or upvote it, think for a moment about the reasoning behind it. Yesterday Path. Today Pinterest. Let's hope someone else makes something great for you to kick in the teeth tomorrow. Shut the fuck up already. ~~~ angryasian don't know why im responding to obvious troll. but they are really no better than megaupload at this point. Redistributing copy righted material without permission. Its a far bigger legal matter.

The Real Pirates Of Silicon Valley? - nickfrost http://techcrunch.com/2011/11/10/the-real-pirates-of-silicon-valley/ ====== Swizec As a foreigner wanting to come to Silicon Valley some day I feel this ship doesn't solve any of my problems. There is no need for physical proximity, at least not in the slave kind as is offered here, the only reason I want to physically move to the US is the ability to get off my computer at any time and meet cool people for coffee or whatever. Being stuck on a ship solves that problem no better than being on a different continent. ~~~ steelaz He mentioned business visit (B-1) visa, which is much easier to get. Also, if you live in one of 35 countries that participate in Visa Waiver Program, you don't even need a visa for a short term visit. <http://travel.state.gov/visa/temp/types/types_1262.html#2> ~~~ Swizec Sure, but I'm on a freaking boat! This hardly facilitates a quick coffee meet for an hour after lunch. ~~~ Kavan You we will sleep on the boat and commute into work. Being from the UK you get 90 days in the US, then you need to do a visa run out of the country and can then come back. I think as long as you are being paid by an non US business immigration don't mind. Perhaps instead of a trip to Mexico or Canada a night on the boat would suffice? ------ rmc _The sea platform was its own country called Sealand, with its own passports, currency, etc_ That's a bit of a stretch. Sealand never really was any sort of internationally recognised country that seriously printed its own money or anything that serious. ------ kokey As a foreigner outside of the US, I like this idea. There are many of us who are already strong earners but don't have anywhere near the million dollars required for an entrepreneur visa. In other words we probably can afford to sustain a nice ship. Getting a visa to visit the US is pretty easy, and staying on the US mainland and attending meetings, conferences, etc. are practical. We're just not allowed to work there. ------ pellias Will this work ? As mentioned, its in international waters outside the jurisdiction of the United States. Any gangster or real pirates can just board their ship and wreak havoc ? They'll need security staff to protect the ship then ? ~~~ knowtheory I would have a more pressing concern. If this ship is outside US waters and jurisdiction, under whose law and authority would they operate? What's stopping them from just stealing all your startup secrets? Forming rape squads? Ransoming you for your all of your family's worth? How are disputes settled? Do they just throw people overboard? Sure there are workable systems which would lead to some predictability in a culture/situation like this, but that doesn't and probably can't guarantee equitability and/or fairness. Sure the US government doesn't provide either equitability or fairness, but they do try their hardest to provide stability. You can count on the stupid shit that is going to go wrong to go wrong, and there is often recourse when someone does you wrong. I don't see how you could guarantee things won't go tits up in these bizarre libertarian "paradises" a la bioshock (well, okay, minus the splicers). ~~~ wisty tldr: They have to fly a flag, and follow the laws of whatever country's flag they are flying. Under The United Nations Convention on the Law of the Sea, they would be in a US Exclusive Economic Zone - between 12 and 200 nautical miles of the coast, so no fishing or mining without US permission. As it's not Territorial waters (up to 12 nautical miles), US law will not apply, but there are international laws against Piracy in the High Seas which do. Of course, that only protects you from people who come from another boat. As for what happens _on_ the boat, it's governed by the laws of the country that they choose to be registered under. Let's say Panama. But they still have to follow some legal system. Panama law is based on Spanish traditions, and is probably acceptable. ------ buro9 If a person has trouble getting a US work visa, wouldn't that person also have trouble freely travelling in and out of the USA? In which case, how do they get to the seastead? It seems that they would need a ferry, but does that ferry port have passport facilities and act as an international port? And if you're on the seastead for a long period of time and US access required a visa, how do you now renew that visa seeing that you couldn't land in the US without it and there is no US Embassy on the seastead? Or more plainly... what problem is this solving for whom? It doesn't seem to solve the problem for anyone who is unable to get into the USA without a visa. ~~~ vidarh I'm Norwegian, and live in the UK. I can travel to the US on the visa waiver program for up to 90 days at the time. At one point I worked for a US company for three years, and travelled into the US for meetings every 6-8 weeks. A couple of additional questions because of the huge number of stamps from SFO in short timeframe was all the hassle I ever got on entry. Yet getting a work visa was still hard enough that we gave up trying. ~~~ buro9 That makes sense, thanks for sharing. ------ jholman Wow, awesome claim in the third graf: _"one can imagine how similar ships could provide low cost healthcare all around the world by operating out in the open waters free from the various laws that restrict the ability for inexpensive medical treatments through competitive pricing"_ So, if I read correctly, this is asserting that medicine is so over-regulated an industry, in developed countries 'all around the world', and so anti- competitive, that the introduction of unregulated competitive for-profit hospital ships would lower prices (for market-rate users)? Despite the obviously higher costs of running a hospital on a ship, vs running it on land, from a strictly logistical standpoint? I guess it's conceivable. I admit I do hear these rumours about U.S. medicine and malpractice insurance, and also that the U.S. spends more on healthcare than civilized nations while still getting lower quality of care (all rumours for which I have no citations). But the weird part there is that, according to those rumours, the countries that outperform the U.S. all have more regulation, not less, so that doesn't fit. Also, medical tourism is a real thing, so maybe the same market forces could be exploited on a hospital ship. But then again maybe not, because I'd guess that some of those market forces include doctors and lab techs who (relative to the U.S.) have really cheap living expenses. Anyway. On the one hand, on the face of it, I find the idea that hospital ships could lower prices laughable. On the other hand, maybe I should keep an open mind. ------ dandv I really wish the media included links to the FAQs for both Blueseed and Seasteading. <http://blueseed.co/faq.html> [http://www.seasteading.org/about-seasteading/frequently- aske...](http://www.seasteading.org/about-seasteading/frequently-asked- questions) ------ EponymousCoward Charles Symoni (sp, I know) used to float the Intentional Programming team around on his yacht for weeks at a time. I think it was mainly to increase productivity though. ------ sskates Hopefully this can also act as a signal to the federal government about how costly the lack of immigration reform is. I certainly hope we see a real solution sooner rather than later.

Did the CEO of Reddit Pierce Section 230 of the Communications Decency Act? - mbgaxyz http://associatesmind.com/2016/11/24/did-the-ceo-of-reddit-pierce-section-230/ ====== mbgaxyz Summary: > Reddit CEO Steve Huffman has confessed to modifying the posts of some users > on the most visible Donald Trump-supporting “subreddit” community after they > repeatedly slung verbal abuse in his direction… > By editing users’ comments to reflect something other than their original > intent, Huffman changed himself and Reddit from being an “interactive > computer service” to an “information content provider.” i.e. If Huffman or > Reddit are sued, they cannot claim Section 230 immunity from a lawsuit. > In legal terms, Huffman has exposed Reddit to liability. > That the CEO of a media company so flagrantly violated the integrity of the > copyright of its users is insane. It represents a complete lack of > understanding of the ethical, moral, and legal duties he has to his > customers and his shareholders. Huffman has potentially exposed Reddit to > legal liability through his actions. By any account, it’s a breach of his > fiduciary duty to shareholders. EFF: [https://www.eff.org/issues/bloggers/legal/liability/230](https://www.eff.org/issues/bloggers/legal/liability/230) > Section 230 says that "No provider or user of an interactive computer > service shall be treated as the publisher or speaker of any information > provided by another information content provider." > However, you may still be held responsible for information you provide in > commentary or through editing. For example, if you edit the statement, "Fred > is not a criminal" to remove the word "not," a court might find that you > have sufficiently contributed to the content to take it as your own. > Likewise, if you link to an article, but provide a defamatory comment with > the link, you may not qualify for the immunity.

Why usability is still a competitive differentiator - nithyad http://teamblog.supportbee.com/2011/03/18/why-usability-is-still-a-competitive-differentiator/ ====== tokenadult Usability (in the sense of a product not frustrating the user's intentions) will always be key to getting good word-of-mouth advertising. Friends don't tell their friends to buy frustrating products or services. When I first started using Google for Web searching, way back before Google's IPO, I told all my friends about it, because it got me better results than the other search engines of the time. After edit: And the reason I knew about Google way back then is that I checked my server logs for my personal website, and noticed a new search engine spider coming by to visit. As I began using Google, I discovered its usability, and soon began telling everyone I knew, tech-oriented or not, about it. That's viral marketing at its best. ------ cantastoria It can be a differentiator but it's a hard one to sell. Telling someone your software is easier to use will usually be met with an eye roll or a snarky "of course you think it's easier to use, it's your software...". Ease-of-use needs to be either demo'd or experienced during a trial period. The question is how do you get a potential user to that point? Further, you'll notice very few companies that make highly usable products advertise them that way. Look at an Apple ad or Netflix or Toyota. Very rarely do they ever talk about ease-of-use. They always focus on what the product can do and how it makes you feel. ~~~ jpallen What you say is true if you restrict the term usability to just mean user interface design, but usability can go far beyond that. Usability should be about how your product solves a problem, not just how its options and menus are laid out. As soon as you hear about how Dropbox works you know instantly that it's far more usable than other sync options. ~~~ alsomike It sounds like you're talking about usefulness, not usability. In HCI/UX circles, the classic catchphrase is "useful, usable, desirable." ------ Stormbringer From the article: _"Businesses can’t make their products usable by just painting a thick coat of usability over their already functioning complex applications. "_ I don't know about you, but I can think of more than a few products where layering on a thick coat of usability might not solve all their problems, but it would be a jolly good start. ------ yannickmahe It will also become a differentiator in that services that don't have good usability will become ostracised. I remember when Wifi was becoming mainstream in Estonia's capital Talinn. Coffeeshop owners started providing Wifi, not because it brought customers, but because not having it pushed customers away.

Audio: Robby Russell on zsh and the bash vs. zsh debate - adamstac http://thechangelog.com/episode-0-6-1-oh-my-zsh-with-robby-russell/?t=0h12m58s ====== adamstac This is an old podcast, but the content is not stale one bit. This is also one of our top podcasts (<http://thechangelog.com/podcast/>), so I thought I'd share this here to get the Hacker community back into this topic and hear the details from the maker of Oh my zsh.

US Gov Requests Feedback on Open Access – ACM Gets it Wrong (Again) - drallison http://www.realtimerendering.com/blog/us-gov-requests-feedback-on-open-access-acm-gets-it-wrong-again/ ====== lutorm What a golden quote: "How would U.S. voters react to a Senator claiming that a given piece of legislation (say, one reducing restrictions on campaign financing) “strikes a fundamental balance between the needs of the Senate and those of the United States of America”? In my minds eye, I saw Joe Lieberman giving a press conference: "The health- care bill now strikes an appropriate balance between the interests of Joe Lieberman and those of the United States of America". ~~~ Kadin Well, that actually seems more reasonable than the ACM situation. I _expect_ Lieberman, as an individual, to have interests that are not the same as his constituents'. (He may be derelict in his duty as a Senator if he puts his own interests above those of his constituents, but that's a discussion for another day.) But there's no reasonable expectation, in my mind, that Lieberman's interests as an individual and my interests as a voter are going to be the same. Likewise, I wouldn't expect the interests of one of the ACM's directors -- as individuals -- to be the same as the ACM's membership. (I'd want them to set aside their personal interests while acting in their official capacity within the organization, but that's different from saying that their personal interests don't exist.) But I would expect the ACM _as an organization_ to reflect the interests of the membership. When an organization that supposedly exists for the benefit of its membership starts doing things that are almost certainly out of line with the best interests of the membership, it's a good sign that the organization has been subverted and is being used for some other purpose (e.g. simple self- perpetuation). ------ djcapelis I just left the following comment on the OSTP blog: (We submitted an NSF proposal yesterday, so this is particularly well-timed.) As a graduate student and researcher in Computer Science I would welcome the application of NIH’s open publication policy to NSF funded research as well. I just helped submit an NSF proposal and would welcome such guidelines on our research. We already follow them for the most part, and it would help us ensure that conferences and publishers won’t object to the dissemination of the results of our research if it’s not just our own desire, but an obligation from our funding agency. I would also appreciate if you look into the feasibility of establishing open data and open source requirements for the CISE division of NSF where funded projects would be obligated provide data generated as part of the research (this isn’t always reasonable, so some care will be necessary in formulating this policy) as well as source code used. Right now, especially in computer science, it’s extremely difficult to replicate the results of experiments and often we find that researchers have to invest time in reverse engineering someone’s experiment simply to be able to compare the results one research got with the results of another or their own work. In addition, university technology transfer departments sometimes get in the way of researchers who try and open up their work. Making this a firm requirement from the funding agency provides the researchers with the credibility and leverage they need to ensure technology transfer departments stop interfering with dissemination efforts. It’s rare someone ever asks for a requirement, but in this case I think extending these types of requirements to NSF programs will give us the power and leverage we need to overcome the obstacles in the way of disseminating our work in the fashion we’d like to be doing anyways. ------ smutticus Article is spot on. This makes me want to cancel my ACM membership. Which I only got in the first place so that I could get access to their digital library of published papers. ------ waterlesscloud I'm sure they're worried about a membership drop, but you really would think that the ACM of all people would understand that false scarcity is not a business model for information-based organizations in today's world. ------ blasdel The ACM have always been a bucket of dicks -- their Digital Library index pages dominate Google search results but have no content. They used to have some intentionally confusing text like "Please login with your free ACM Web Account to see the full text". Sure the account itself is free, but the subscriptions required to see anything ain't. All that happened is that I get spammed by them regularly with _Join ACM today and receive a 15% discount plus an ACM Free World Clock Calculator!_ A desk calculator! I don't see how they could be more out of touch. ------ codeodor As much as I'd like to see open access to ACM and other journals, I wonder how much it would benefit anyone? Surely almost everyone doing that work has a subscription. If not an outright membership, at least the University library will get them the articles. ------ heresy Screw ACM, glad I ignored all their spamming to get me to renew my membership. Never again. ------ Daishiman Good thing my ACM membership has just expired.

The Fay Programming Language: Compile Haskell to JavaScript - djohnsonm http://fay-lang.org/ A proper subset of Haskell that compiles to JavaScript. ====== drostie While I appreciate that they moved the site out to a dedicated URL, this is a duplicate of yesterday's HN submission: <https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4276625> People may appreciate the comments there. ~~~ chrisdone Indeed, the old URL 301 redirects to this one. Noticed a spike in traffic from HN and came to see the cause. I see it's at the bottom already, voting-based- moderation works. :-) ------ flyhighplato Amazing stuff. This may finally give me an excuse to learn Haskell. I have some concerns, though. I'm no JS expert, but it seems to me the resulting code is a bit difficult to read. The good thing about CoffeeScript is that the code that comes out is more or less like what you put in.

Coronavirus: Kodak pivots itself to become strategic drug maker - onetimemanytime https://www.bbc.com/news/business-53563601 ====== ggm Kodak always was in the chemistry business. Drugs are chemistry. Kodak is why we have 35mm and 70mm movie film: it's the production cycle sizes they could make when acetate was invented as a chemistry flow process. Ten minute reels and the crank rate for film, and lenses all stem from production limits to technology when Kodak and a small number of like companies made the photographic world. ~~~ onetimemanytime what an amazing brand Kodak is /was. Worldwide and a few decades back, their name was everywhere. I posted this to also show that USA is finally waking up and doing essential meds in house. Can't ask China to ship penicillin if we're at war with them. ~~~ ggm It's not a war ~~~ onetimemanytime states (should) prepare for every possible contingency. Once war starts, it's too late. I'm sure USA has a plan to invade Canada somewhere in the shelves. Here's something [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/War_Plan_Red](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/War_Plan_Red) ~~~ ggm The current president is the only one with any delusion that his populus want him to invade Canada. What he misunderstands is that they want to "invade" to get cheap healthcare, and rational (relatively speaking) social order. Its not lebensraum, its "escape from new york". That aside, all states plan for war, but health economics and strategic supply chain risks here don't need war plans to justify them. Self reliance is so good, it generates surpluses and America could turn from a health problem, to a health solution for others: in times of strife, your strategic assets help you AND help everyone else.

Fixing the 949 problem with Fipes - tOkeshu http://monkeypatch.me/blog/fixing-the-949-problem-with-fipes.html ====== alexchamberlain Does `priv` stand for `private`? <https://github.com/tOkeshu/fipes/tree/master/fipes/priv/ssl> ~~~ tOkeshu Theses files are examples files. You can find the same in the cowboy_examples repository[1] (Cowboy is the erlang server I use to build the application). I should remove these files as the application do not use them. For your information, there is no https available yet for <http://fipelines.org> as described in the blog post and the README. You have been warned ;) [1] [https://github.com/extend/cowboy_examples/tree/master/priv/s...](https://github.com/extend/cowboy_examples/tree/master/priv/ssl) ------ alexchamberlain You should consider using Fountain Codes as an easy way to resume file downloads and send to multiple downloaders. ~~~ tOkeshu Yes Fountain Codes are definitively something I have to look at. Improving bandwidth usage and resuming downloads are part of the next improvements with https. For now Erlang have been an excellent fellow to deal with these things :)

Fake Obama speech is the beginning of the end of video evidence - dctoedt https://boingboing.net/2017/07/17/fake-obama-speech-is-the-begin.html ====== glbrew Fortunately this will counteract a total lack of privacy caused by ubiquitous microscopic drones and cameras. You come forward with a celebrity/political/ceo sex tape? There is no difference between the "real" tape and thousands of already synthetic ones; no one could know the difference. In other words, this technology will return privacy to everyone by allowing us to all "hide" in plain sight. ------ basicplus2 I dare say deaf people who lip read could pick it, with forewarning I could see discrepancies. ~~~ girvo Yeah same. Seems to struggle with sounds that require more vertical shapes, or closed lips for short periods ------ glbrew Politicians/business/others will have to cryptographically sign their official audio/video ------ sixQuarks I don't know, this doesn't really impress me. It's not that hard to do using After Effects. Also, they're still using his real voice, if you're going to fake something like this, you have to have the person say something they never said. ~~~ propogandist look into project voco, a feature that was introduced to Adobe Creative product suite last year or so...you can make anyonr say virtually anything, by typing in text. This combined with video manipulation can be very effective. ------ dctoedt The researchers' own Web page: [https://grail.cs.washington.edu/projects/AudioToObama/](https://grail.cs.washington.edu/projects/AudioToObama/)

You can now mount SMB/CIFS on ChromeOS - ron0c https://plus.google.com/u/0/+YoichiroTanaka/posts/55Z5ojCPDQ4 ====== c0nsumer Specifically, SMB/CIFS, not just shares from Samba (a specific implementation of an SMB/CIFS server). ~~~ ron0c Yes, you are correct, title changed to reflect this. ------ tedchs Important note, this is not a feature provided by Google; it is "offered by www.eisbahn.jp/yoichiro" per Chrome Web store. ------ pgrote Has anyone gotten it to work? I've tried connecting to shares on Windows 7 and Windows Server 2008 without luck. ~~~ mbreese It's been a while since I messed around with SMB/CIFS on Windows servers, but IIRC you can force the server to downgrade the version of CIFS it will support. I remember having to adjust a server that needed to support older clients. Based on the comments from the post, it sounds like this is the problem. A quick Googling turned up these: Information about CIFS dialects: [http://blogs.technet.com/b/josebda/archive/2012/06/06/window...](http://blogs.technet.com/b/josebda/archive/2012/06/06/windows- server-2012-which-version-of-the-smb-protocol-smb-1-0-smb-2-0-smb-2-1-or- smb-3-0-you-are-using-on-your-file-server.aspx) How to enable/disable specific CIFS versions: [https://support.microsoft.com/en- us/kb/2696547](https://support.microsoft.com/en-us/kb/2696547) ------ RodrigoT why not follow the smbnetfs or fusesmb and create a whole tree for all the shared discs on the network?

Ab Initio ETL Tool - breck http://abinitio-interviews.weebly.com/ ====== rubyfan That might be the most I’ve ever seen written about Ab Initio in public. The company is notoriously private with documentation and even discussion boards. ~~~ breck Agreed. I couldn't find much about it. Looks quite smart though (not surprising, given the founders). ~~~ rubyfan For the reasons above I’m not a fan. What I’ve seen first hand, you can build powerful solutions but you can also build powerful solutions with Perl, python, Hadoop and Spark and I can at least read documentation with those.

Unorthodox Strategies for Winning (by Jason Shen) - lionhearted http://www.sebastianmarshall.com/unorthodox-strategies-for-winning ====== chegra I love seeing this, HN members teaming up. Let me add some strategies: "Dog Strategy" - Use timing to win. Certain times of the day or month or year goals are easily accomplished and obstacles easier to overcome, use those times to your advantage. For instance on HN, certain times of the week it is easier to get a post on front page. "Leopard Strategy" - The leopard strategy stresses taking actions based on your strengths and directing this action at your opponent’s weaknesses(Differs from aiming at your opponents weakness, in that you use your strength to target their weakness). For instance, in selecting your major choose something you are good at(strength), and when choosing modules, choose lecturers with a reputation for high class average(weakness). These were taken from: <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Six_Secret_Teachings> ~~~ lionhearted > I love seeing this, HN members teaming up. I feel really lucky here - Jason reached out to me to do this, and I think I got one of his best concepts and executed work. I almost feel a little guilty here that such an excellent concept/piece is on my site instead of his own. > <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Six_Secret_Teachings> Thanks, I hadn't seen these before. Good stuff. As a sidenote, I generally make myself available to anyone I have common interests with, as I do with pretty much all of this community. I've connected with a lot of people, but I'm always surprised more people don't take me up on my offers. Just today I talked out with a few people about various business things, in particular with one guy who is having trouble with a business partner's work rates. Turns out, I happen to know the answer to that (assign a market rate dollar value to every task, pay all those tasks before distributing what's left in profits as founder's dividends, let a person choose to do the tasks they're assigned for the pay or outsource it if not... set up correctly in a profitable business, this lets people work different amounts without friction) - anyways, in 20 minutes we covered a lot of ground, and I think chatting it over it'll help him. So, yes, once again I'm available via email and all sorts of other ways, for whatever people need. Quite a lot of people take me up on this, but I'm surprised more don't. No downside, plenty of upside and all... anyways, feel free to drop a line if I can be of service in some way. ~~~ jasonshen Not to turn this into too much of a lovefest but it's been an honor to post on Seb's site. It's amazing how much you can learn from a guy just by reading the things he posts online. Glad my post made the cut quality-wise. Win-win collaboration for sure. And yes, he is definitely a helpful positive guy - so reach out! ------ Stora_Kuken I lost by reading this.

GitHub Hires Former Bitnami Co-Founder Erica Brescia as COO - CrankyBear https://techcrunch.com/2019/06/11/github-hires-former-bitnami-co-founder-erica-brescia-as-coo/ ====== dmor Erica is an incredible founder who worked on Bitnami/Bitrock for 14 years. I’m lucky enough to have invested in her at Demo Day, have her as my partner at XFactor Ventures and as my friend. She is going to be phenomenal in this role, she is so deserving of this win and Microsoft is very lucky! ------ throwawaythat1 Didn't bitnami get acquired less than a month ago? How come the co-founder moves out so quickly? Was it an acqui-hire? Atleast [https://blog.bitnami.com/2019/05/vmware-to-acquire- bitnami.h...](https://blog.bitnami.com/2019/05/vmware-to-acquire-bitnami.html) talks about doubling down and what not but the co-founder has moved on already? ~~~ ztratar Would you rather be COO of Github, or a VP at VMWare? ~~~ warp_factor do you imply that it's better to be COO of Github? Because I would disagree with that. ~~~ skinnymuch Why do you feel that way? ~~~ warp_factor VMWare has annual revenue of about 9B$. Github.... 300M$ Github is way more hyped accross engineers but VMWare is 30 times bigger! VMWare is simply one league above Github. Github is a Business Departement part of Microsoft. VMWare is a huge company. This is the typical fallacy of B2C vs B2B. Consumer products are way more hyped and therefore people think they are way bigger than other less famous B2B Enterprise products ~~~ ceejayoz Would you rather eat the world's _largest_ steak, or the world's _best_ steak? Plus, a VP at VMware isn't going to be in charge of that whole $9B like a COO is. Bitnami is going to be a "Business Departement" too. ~~~ saalweachter How big of a steak are we talking here? ------ joewadcan Erica did a great job building up Bitnami, so I'm pretty pumped to see her + Nat at the helm of GitHub. ------ ajaurio VMware acquires Heptio - Kris Nova quits. VMware acquires Bitnami - Ara Pulido and Erica Brescia quit. What's wrong with VMware? ~~~ gkoberger Maybe nothing? Many founders have no desire to stick around for an acquisition, and VMWare has a lot of competent people who would be eager to take over. It's possible that's _why_ they sold to VMWare... they get to walk away rather than being stuck at a big company for 4 years vesting. ~~~ jessaustin Yeah VMWare may get a reputation as the firm to call when founders are feeling restless. ------ pbiggar Congrats to Erica! Phenomenal executive - looking forward to seeing how she moves GitHub forward. ------ koolhead17 Lucky Github. Erica is an incredible founder, met her few times in early days of Bitnami at OSCON, Portland. ------ smudgymcscmudge The link doesn't work. Probably because of the WordPress issue discussed here [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20157882](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20157882) ~~~ mastazi And when it’s back online you will still probably be unable to read due to intrusive pop-ups, reloading on scroll and other dark patterns in which Techcrunch excels

PhoneFactor acquired by Microsoft - marshray https://www.phonefactor.com/news/microsoft-acquires-phonefactor ====== marshray We'll be part of the Server and Tools Division, which includes things like Azure. Consider me your inside contact. (though I can't go making any promises yet :-)

IPhone 3.0 has copy/paste, subscriptions, micropayments, P2P, maps, push, MMS, etc - sama http://www.engadget.com/2009/03/17/live-from-apples-iphone-os-3-0-preview-event/#continued ====== ryanwaggoner _"Now as I said before, 3.0 brings a lot of new features for devs, but for customers as well... starting... with cut, copy, and paste."_ Freaking finally! ~~~ jgfoot > Q: Why did copy paste take so long? > A: Scott: It's not that easy. There were security issues. What does this mean? Could it be that with the iPhone, letting the user extract his own data from the device and sending it elsewhere is a "security" issue? ~~~ tptacek You download a game. You play it once. It sucks. Meanwhile, it has stolen your mail and phoned it back home to a server in Uzbekistan. ~~~ jonursenbach What does this have to do with copy and paste? ~~~ cameldrv If you don't trust the free game you just downloaded, you might not want it to be able to see what's on the clipboard. Some number of people will copy their passwords, credit card numbers, etc. If an app phoned home the contents of the clipboard every time it ran, eventually it would pick up some private information. ~~~ tptacek And that's assuming that all the bug gives you is the cut buffer. Who knows how they were actually led to implement the feature? ------ bemmu In-app sales will create huge new opportunities. ~~~ wvenable From the talk: "Would you like to purchase one rocket launcher for $0.99?" Oh yeah, that sounds like fun. Clearly a great way to be nickle and dimed to death in every application and game. ~~~ henning _Clippy resurrects himself from the grave and pops up in the lower right-hand corner_ It looks like you're trying to copy and paste. Would you like to pay $0.05 in order to continue? (Continue/Cancel) It looks like you're trying to exit the application. Would you like to pay $0.10 in order to continue? (Exit and pay $0.10/Stay for free) It looks like you're shocked to see one of Microsoft's worst creations pwn your smartphone. Would you like to buy a copy of iLithium(R), iXanax(TM), or iProzac(TM) to soften the blow for $14.99? (Yes/No) ~~~ mechanical_fish I have no idea why this is getting downmodded. _I_ think it's funny. Maybe I'm just the right age for this joke. Obviously, this in-app payment feature was _deliberately_ designed to be irritating and intrusive. Apple understands that, to most paying customers, the word _micropayment_ carries a connotation of _being slowly and imperceptibly bled to death by vampires_. So perhaps Apple is going to provide an API which turns in-app charges into such an ugly, flow-shattering experience that nobody could possibly miss it -- which will also compel app designers to avoid using this feature unless they really have to. ~~~ wensing It's possible to abuse any feature. I can see this being a win-win for apps that provide layers of value (depth). ------ nanexcool "So, copy/paste in iPhone 3.0." Applause. Applause for a feature that every other device in the world has. Odd. I like the iPhone, but this sums up what I usually feel about Apple products. ~~~ sounddust Applause because the iPhone went from being the best mobile phone despite lacking major features, to the best mobile phone which lacks no major features. ~~~ pietro Except for video recordings, a decent camera, and built-in TV. Those are standard features in high-end phones in Europe and Japan. ~~~ pxlpshr Built-in TV is a joke. ~~~ c3o Why? ~~~ pxlpshr Have you ever seen an OTAHD antenna? That's why. ~~~ nailer N95 has TV in some countries. The phones look like ordinary N95s. So do lots of Telstra phones in Australia (which have Foxtel content) and KDDI phones in Japan. They just look like ordinary phones. ~~~ Andys The Telstra phones stream the Foxtel content digitally over NextG if I'm not mistaken? ~~~ nailer Yup, and good point: there's no need for a giant antennae, anything capable of 3G can do it fine. ------ comatose_kid SDK access to bluetooth? Awesome, I have a client who is dying for this... ------ markessien Lovely. This was a good platform choice for me to specialize in. I'm going to start consulting almost exclusively for the iPhone, I think it's a platform that will be here for a good number of years. ------ pxlpshr Apple really nailed it with version 3.0, and this is going to be great for us. I suspect you'll start seeing app acquisitions as companies look to acquire an 'install' base to leverage. Time to get crankin' on more apps before gold rush 3.0! ~~~ pxlpshr Actually, hmm.. I wonder how the subscription will work for apps that were formerly free. I assume users will be able to 'opt-in' for subscription payment, otherwise the application is deleted. ~~~ GHFigs In-application payments are not available for free applications. ------ Hexstream 96% of apps are approved? I thought the percentage was much lower. Vocal minority, I guess. ~~~ jedberg That doesn't say how many times the app had to be resubmitted before approval. I'd like to see the rate of _first time_ rejections. ~~~ jshen A lot of first time rejections are for things like version numbers not matching. I'm not sure why that stat would be meaningful. ~~~ wizard_2 Well obviously we want to know more about the procedure and why apps get rejected. We want to know what Apple's "moral" objections are and what values they're trying to impose. Its more a fear of some agenda (beyond no apps that don't work or do harm) that we may not agree with then stats. It also doesn't hurt to know what your chances are to have trouble. ------ ObieJazz 3.0 SDK beta is available today. Can't wait to try it out. ~~~ kylec Is the new OS just for registered developers? How hard would it be for a non- developer to obtain and install it? ~~~ ROFISH It's just the normal $99 developers. Originally the betas were limited to whoever Apple liked. ------ ivankirigin 30% cut to Apple isn't a micropayment, which I define as tolerating small amounts without getting killed on overhead. You could just charge their credit card and get better rates. I wonder if they'll block services like <http://tipjoy.com> from working on the iphone. This sounds like an awesome release though. ~~~ auston I agree. If I wanted to sell an ebook or mp3 or something at a competitive price it would be impossible! ------ sama Search mail on the server! ------ jonursenbach I'm pretty pissed about MMS not being available on the 2G, but at least now with copy & paste I can finally copy those fucking username/password combinations that AT&T sends me. ~~~ gamache If I understand correctly, MMS will be available on all iPhones once they are updated to iPhone OS 3.0. It was never a hardware issue. ~~~ jonursenbach Nope. \---- Engadget ---- 11:27AM "What about the rest of us? iPhone OS 3.0 will be available this Summer. A free update to all of our iPhone 3G customers. And it works on the original iPhone. Now the hardware has changed between these two devices. For instance, A2DP and MMS won't be available on the iPhone 1st gen. It's also available for the iPod touch... for $9.95." \---- gdgt ---- 11:27AM - “As a bonus, we’ve enabled it to work on the original iPhone. The hardware’s changed though: MMS and A2DP won’t be available on the original iPhone.” iPod touch users: $10. 11:27AM - App Store will be in 77 countries. 3.0 ships this summer for free. ~~~ generalk This sounds like bullshit to me: maybe I'm just naive, but I can't for the life of me figure out how a cell radio could be unable to transmit MMS. Especially the radio in a phone released after 2002. ------ charlesju Shouldn't we wait until this conference is done before posting? ~~~ sama too exciting ------ zhyder Lots of great updates, but still missing voice-activated dialing, which -especially with a bluetooth headset- is very useful when driving. ------ quilby Why does apple not just release new features once they finish working on them? Why do they have to do these we-got-new-features press conferences and only release new features on those dates? ~~~ Angostura Not suprisingly, Apple releases the SDK ahead of the OS release, so that developers get some lead time. When the SDK is released it also announces the new features. ------ jhatcom Can someone tell me why cut and paste is so much in demand? I've been using my iPhone for months and never once needed it. Are folks editing documents on their iPhone? ~~~ sounddust What I need it for the most is when someone sends me the details of a social event via mail/facebook (location/time/phone number) and I need to SMS it to my friends. Currently, the only way to do so is to flip back and forth between the apps and rely on your short term memory. It's also a pain the other way: When you receive an SMS and you need to facebook/e-mail/SMS others (although SMS forwarding solves 1/3 of this problem). ------ pieter I wonder how the dock accessoires will influence the app review process.. Will you be required to ship your accessoire to Apple before they can review your app? ------ jodrellblank Does the MMS and voice notes support mean you could record a voice message and 'text' it to someone? Like the best bits of voicemail and SMS combined? Because that would be brilliant. ~~~ modoc Yes, it does exactly that! ~~~ dans Wow. How very revolutionary! You have been able do that with any standard Sony Ericcson phone, for the last 2-3 years, and probably Nokia, HTC, Samsung too. My phone has a button that says "reply with voice-message" and then using some sort of black voodoo it gets sent over mms. I like it when apple make a new product, strip it of most basic features and then when they finally add the long missing features... It's like the second coming of Jesus. ~~~ modoc I never said it was revolutionary. It's a feature that seems useful, is new to the iPhone, and will be a free upgrade. As a very happy iPhone owner (and yes I've had Sony Ericcsons, Motorolas, Nokias, HTCs, etc...) this upcoming feature (and the others) are something to look forward to. If Sony Ericcson offered a software upgrade that did over the air sync of all my MobileMe data, that would be great, and I can't imagine saying "well I've been able to do that for ages with my iPhone" to a happy Sony Ericcson owner. Why does it have to be a battle? ------ dustineichler What was the report on streaming video? if it's what i think it is, this is a huge win for qik and others. ------ mattmaroon As a serial app developer (though not yet on that platform) here's what I heard from Apple's announcement: crap, crap, crap, IN GAME PAYMENTS!!!, crap, crap, crap. P.S. background notifications I guess that list would probably be a little less bland were I an iPhone user. ------ martythemaniak The app store upgrades look like they might be useful for many devs, but to be honest it's pretty hard to get excited over features other smartphones have had for many years. And of course, users still don't have access to their own data. ------ statictype Wait - the iPhone didn't have bluetooth before this update right? Which means it was enabled entirely through a software update. Is that right? I know it operates on the same frequency as wifi but still, that's pretty impressive, isn't it? ~~~ allenbrunson the iphone had bluetooth before this update, but it was very limited in scope. ------ ajju How good the micropayments feature is depends on what their cut on it is. 30% off of 10 cents hurts a lot more than 30% off of $10.00 ~~~ cubicle67 um... in what way does it hurt more? ~~~ ajju That was a stupid comment made in haste that makes no sense as written. Paying apple 30% of repeated micropayments _would_ hurt me more than the alternative, but it's only true in my context - which is probably not the context Apple designed their system for. I am building a web based service which can also be accessed via an iPhone app. I get paid via micropayments which I aggregate till they reach a certain dollar amount and then process via a payment processor that charges me in single digit percentages. I have the option of using iPhone's own micropayment service but that would hurt me more. ~~~ pieter The advantage of using the app store micropayments is that users don't have to create a new account somewhere and put their account info in your app. They can use an existing system and have a one-click buy option. It'd be interesting to see what will result in more profits. My guess would be that the increased sales on the iPhone outweigh the higher profit margin with the alternatives. This depends on your costs too of course (e.g. copyright fees for eBooks) ------ phd_student is iphone 3.0 only for the iphone, or is it supported on the ipod touch too? ~~~ robotron There is a fee for Touch users to upgrade. ------ tocomment So you can embed Google maps in your app, but you can't use their maps? Isn't that kind of worthless? ~~~ peregrine You can use their maps just not for turn-by-turn. Read the article. :) ------ raptrex yay for turn by turn apps in the future ~~~ briansmith It will be interesting to see what happens with the pricing for those apps. On other phone platforms, they usually cost over $100 _per year_. A very bad deal, IMO. ~~~ pieter I came across <http://sygic.com/press/press_12.3.09.html> which says it'll release its software for the 3G for $79 ------ jodrellblank Soooo ... how long until people pull the SDK apart looking for indications of a new iphone with new hardware in June? Software streaming video support, the recent release of an Apple patent on a front facing camera behind the screen - are we likely to see a videophone iPhone? ~~~ briansmith What would a new iPhone be like? Slightly smaller? Better battery life? Better camera? It would be hard for many people to justify dropping $600+ for just those features. And, Apple has demonstrated with these major firmware revisions that they can upgrade the device substantially; I think consumers will get angry if they start withholding firmware updates as an incentive to buy more hardware. That is exactly what Nokia does, and I don't think Nokia's customers are going to take it anymore after seeing what Apple's doing here. Very soon the typical smartphone lifespan will be close to 5 years and the average computer lifespan will be close to 10 years. The Nokia N95 was released in 2006 and there are still tons of people rocking that device. There will probably be millions of people using the iPhone 3G and the Nokia N97 in 2014 (maybe as hand-me-downs). ~~~ ryanwaggoner _the average computer lifespan will be close to 10 years_ Is anyone here using a computer they purchased in 1999? Come on. ~~~ zandorg I'm using a 2nd-hand Omnibook 6100 which is from 2000-2001. It still works, and it's pretty powerful, so I use it. The main reason is the CPU fan almost never comes on, so it's a quietbook. Other than that, software development on it is a good idea, because if it runs adequately on this, it'll run blazingly faster on a new machine! ------ trezor From the report: _No backgrounding, no multitasking, no unobtrusive notifications. No copy and paste (yet), no MMS, no video. Really pretty minor stuff thus far._ Ah well. So we have push notification, better hardware access and the maps API opened up for apps. Not totally shit but not revolutionary either. ~~~ jws You really should watch the live coverage by someone other than engadget. I get the impression their person is only there because someone threatened to fire him if he didn't go. If you are looking for information the Grumpy Mystery Science Theater version of the live cast is the wrong place to be. ~~~ ashr I recommend watching the video on apple.com ------ asciilifeform Micropayments: death by a thousand cuts. Mark my words. ~~~ icey Well, that's kind of the nice thing about capitalism. If you don't like it, vote (or rather don't vote) with your wallet. ~~~ asciilifeform This would be true in a market driven by competition between near-equals. The iPhone does not live in such a market. It has no competition. It is a qualitatively different product from other mobile phones. The cell phone market is divided into two categories: the iPhone, and inferior crud. If Apple were to begin charging $0.05 per "click", you would have to cough up the dough or switch to a vastly inferior product. Therefore, your ability to "vote" with your money is academic in this case. ~~~ GHFigs You're conflating the third party iPhone application market (which can now use micropayments) with the cell phone market as a whole. That's very odd. ~~~ asciilifeform Micropayments could easily become a standard, expected part of iPhone use. In that case, there will be no escape. I suspect that this is the reason why Apple users complain about (even potential!) misfeatures to the extent they do. In the product categories where Apple is a player, from the standpoint of a dedicated Apple user, they have zero competition. All of the supposedly competing products are far below the quality-of-user-experience Apple users are accustomed to. Hence the perception that there is nowhere to run to. ~~~ GHFigs _Micropayments could easily become a standard, expected part of iPhone use._ Given how everything else you've said hinges on this assumption, you'd have done well to explain why you think it is true. Like I said before, you're conflating two markets. As it depends on all players in a highly competitive market suddenly colluding to degrade the user experience upon which they all depend without anyone realizing that they might stand to make more money by not doing so, I find it hard to believe. ~~~ asciilifeform > degrade the user experience upon which they all depend... I find it hard to > believe. Try this on for size: [http://arstechnica.com/apple/news/2008/11/apple-brings- hdcp-...](http://arstechnica.com/apple/news/2008/11/apple-brings-hdcp-to-a- new-aluminum-macbook-near-you.ars) ~~~ GHFigs That doesn't relate at all to anything I've said, nor does it reinforce your point in the slightest. Your powers of misinterpretation are astounding and I hope that in the future you will refrain from commenting anywhere on anything. ~~~ asciilifeform The linked article shows an instance of Apple unambiguously, deliberately degrading user experience. It is highly relevant to this discussion. ~~~ GHFigs That's not a discussion that any of my posts in this thread have been about.

RIP to the Perfectly-Sized iPhone - mrzool https://www.popularmechanics.com/technology/gadgets/a23105271/iphone-se-perfect-size-discontinued/ ====== anoncoward111 My LG Zone 4 cost me $115, it's the perfect size and speed and weight. I used to run an iphone5. Long may it live! ~~~ Finnucane I still have my iPhone 5, and the size is surely one of the reasons I keep it. That and I figure why bother upgrading before there's 5G phone service.

Bottled-water purchase leads to night in jail for UVa student - anaptdemise http://www.dailyprogress.com/news/bottled-water-purchase-leads-to-night-in-jail-for-uva/article_b5ab5f62-df9b-11e2-81c4-0019bb30f31a.html ====== dsl The ABC agents are obviously not correctly trained law enforcement officers. Even in "undercover" operations, police will have a mix of plain clothes and uniformed officers to avoid situations like this. ------ mjn earlier discussion: [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5962494](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5962494) ------ SurfScore They need to have better procedures in situations like this. A woman at night being approached by a bunch of men? The cons of staying are far greater than anything that could justify it. Sadly these situations happen so late that once the arrest is made, there is nothing that can be done until morning. That needs to change somehow. ------ stephengillie Protect yourself from police abuse. There was a similar situation from an ABC agent for a different state(NC): (NSFW - language) [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ug8rT1oxlRc](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ug8rT1oxlRc) ------ chrisabrams This sounds like a college prank...so confused how agents could ever act like this?

What Is the Definition of a Seed Round or an a Round? - adidash http://www.bothsidesofthetable.com/2014/10/07/what-is-the-definition-of-a-seed-round-or-an-a-round/ ====== adidash Related content from Pando - [http://pando.com/2014/10/07/what-you-label-your- funding-roun...](http://pando.com/2014/10/07/what-you-label-your-funding- round-matters-a-lot-less-than-how-much-you-raise-and-what-you-accomplish/)

It looks to me that Nintendo tried turning the SNES into a full blown 'computer' - easton https://www.reddit.com/r/retrogaming/comments/hxy4je/gigaleak_it_looks_to_me_that_nintendo_tried/ ====== mr-ron Great video that summarizes whats going on here. Seems like a big deal to a lot of people interested in this era of games: [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jwDPwLE7DBw](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jwDPwLE7DBw) ------ xenadu02 After the video game crash several companies, including Nintendo, rebranded their next-gen systems as "home computers" to avoid the stigma of being a "video game" system. In that light I don't think it's terribly surprising. ~~~ contextfree Video game crash was 1983 and affected the US marketing and positioning of NES (8-bit), this is 1991 and SNES (16-bit).

Someone Just Leaked Obama's Rules for Assassinating American Citizens - erichocean http://reason.com/blog/2013/02/04/someone-just-leaked-obamas-rules-for-ass ====== ghshephard For everybody commenting on this article, please take 45 minutes to read the document. It applies only to the following scenario: 1) The US Citizen has to be a Sr. Operational Leader of al-Qa'ida. 2) An informed high level official of the US Government has determined that the targeted individual poses an imminent threat of Violent Attack against the United States. 3) Capture is infeasible, and the United states continues to monitor whether capture is feasible. 4) The operation would be conducted in a manner consistent with applicable law of war principles. This Document does not consider American Citizens who are not Sr. Operational Leaders of al-Qa'ida. If you are just an American Citizen who has become a low-level Al-Qa'ida terrorist who is planning imminent attacks on the United States, that the government has discovered, and they are unable to capture you, this document does NOT provide justification to target you. It's a dense document, and hard to read with all that NBC NEWS watermarking, but take the time to read it before commenting on it. ~~~ rgrieselhuber It still violates due process. ~~~ rayiner It might, but it doesn't clearly do so. Due process does not mean a trial. It means what is reasonable under the circumstances. The length of the paper tries to show that there are no reasonable alternatives in the case capture is not feasible. It's a non trivial argument. ~~~ rgrieselhuber Yes it does, because the protections provided by the constitution allow for the deprivation of life, liberty, property, etc. in accordance with the "due process of law." There is no law here. Only an arbitrary, internal memo. ~~~ rayiner Pursuant to the AUMF. ~~~ rgrieselhuber Yeah, there is no room for abuse in that little gem. The US Supreme Court has already decided at least once that the AUMF could not be cited in defense of the goverment's actions (in this case, military tribunals) because those actions violated the principles of the Geneva Conventions, among others. That's the whole problem with this. The accused never get a chance to defend themselves in court, are presumed guilty and sentenced without any reasonable defense. ~~~ rayiner None of those things are due process problems necessarily. ------ iwwr This unchecked expansion of executive power is happening all over the world. Enabled by technology, but also lack of public outrage, soft, welfarish* dictatorships are in the works. Outwardly, it looks democratic, but the democratic principle rests on a limitation of power. Currently, there is no limit, so long as the right language and people are targeted (whistle-blowers, traitors and ultimately, "terrorists"). The public is not yet aware of the danger and by the time they are it may be too late. __*In a "guns and butter" sort of way ~~~ arrrg Sigh. What’s this ideological drivel doing here? Dragging welfare into this doesn’t even begin to make sense. You do it purely for ideological reasons. ~~~ maratd > Dragging welfare into this doesn’t even begin to make sense. If the state feels it's appropriate to take from one and give to another, then it must also feel that it is appropriate to simply take and eventually, not to merely take property but life itself. It's the taking mindset and mentality that's the problem. ~~~ arrrg Yes, that is the ideological view exhibited here. A near perfect description of it, actually. What you say is not, in any sense, the truth or self-evident or anything like that, it’s just one ideological view of many. ------ charonn0 I think I see a problem with the reasoning on the very first page (second para.): > The President has authority to respond to the imminent threat posed by al- > Qa'ida and its associated forces, arising from his constitutional > responsibility to protect the country, the inherent right of the United > States to national self defense under international law, Congress's > authorization of the use of all necessary and appropriate military force > against this enemy, and _the existence of an armed conflict with al-Qa'ida > under international law._ (emphasis mine.) < An armed conflict under international law is a war; and war is a power of nation states, not non-governmental actors (NGAs) no matter how violent. Not very many years ago the US began imprisoning non-Citizens on the justification that al Qaida (an NGA) was ineligible for protection by the Geneva, Hague, and other conventions, and as such the prisoners were neither criminal nor military defendants but prisoners of the President. Now they are arguing that war _does_ exist, permitting the US government to act violently against a US Citizen despite the Constitutional prohibition against punishment without trial. The administration's actions are inconsistent: despite a state of war now supposedly existing, prisoners of war still are not afforded the rights guaranteed to PoWs; despite the writ of habeas corpus not being suspended, US Citizens may be summarily executed at the order of the President. ------ ck2 I'm curious if people actually have more of a problem with this than invading Iraq which caused the death of thousands if not millions of innocents. Now history is being rewritten that Iraq was okay. Why are American citizens more important than thousands of innocent Iraqis? We should be protesting war in all forms, not just assassinations. But we're going to have enough problems domestically in a few years with drones everywhere. ~~~ logn Well, clearly, we invaded Iraq because it was run by a dictator executing his own citizens, so we were justified. ~~~ camus Saddam was US BACKED ! like Castillo , Pinochet , Palavi and countless others , armed and supported for YEARS by USA ! there is even a footage with Rumsfeld shaking hands with Saddam. And you wonder why people hate you all over the arab world ? your only strenght is fear, you definetly lost the cultural battle there. The war in Iraq killed far more iraqis than Saddam ever did, and i'm not even talking about the 1 millions children that died during the oil for food program. And yes ,they still call you the "great Satan" there. Ironic isnt it ? ~~~ logn I was being sarcastic. It's ironic that in this case Obama is doing what we claimed Hussein did in my comment above. ------ redthrowaway You know what? Seems reasonable. An American citizenship should not be considered a writ of special treatment for a terrorist. If you're going to say that terrorists can be killed without judicial overview, which I think you have to, then you can't say that doesn't apply to those terrorists who happen to be American. ~~~ chao- _If you're going to say that terrorists can be killed without judicial overview, which I think you have to_ I vehemently disagree: You don't have to think that terrorists can be killed without judicial overview. I'm also willing to bet I'm not alone, and am curious about why you think the opposite. ~~~ gfodor To play devil's advocate the reason would be if the terrorist could otherwise not be captured or detained without serious risk to American lives. The problem is that it's hard to trust the executive to not push the limits of what this means. ~~~ dlss This sounds right. I guess I would be in favor of drone airstrikes that froze suspects in carbonite so they could be collected for questioning. However, focusing on current technology, I think the scary part about these rules for airstrikes is: \- Suspected people can be killed without being told that they are wanted. This is made worse by the fact that the list of wanted people is not publicly available. \- Suspected people can be killed without being given the option of submitting to trial (no "stop or I'll shoot") The above two items make airstrikes unpalatable for me. Thankfully they don't seem beyond remedy (perhaps version 2 of the drone shoots down a ball-and- chain + warrant before resorting to a missile), but in the mean time I find it very disturbing. If this was happening in America I would feel like America was over. ~~~ anigbrowl _the list of wanted people is not publicly available._ <http://www.treasury.gov/ofac/downloads/t11sdn.pdf> is a good proxy. As for your other point, I'm no expert on the laws of war, but I don't believe one is required to abstain from acting against a legitimate enemy absent a reasonable possibility of taking them prisoner. This distinction is discussed in the white paper; it's against the laws of war to attack an enemy who you have taken into your confidence (eg agreed to meet under a flag of truce, or promised safe passage as one might to a plenipotentiary), but it's quite OK to ambush an enemy who is conducting their own operations against you. ~~~ dlss I wasn't saying that no lists of wanted persons was publicly available... just that no complete list of people a drone would kill on sight was available. Are you saying the people on this list would be killed on sight? (if so, thanks for the link) Or are you just saying that they are wanted? As for the laws of war, I think they were created for situations where the opponents could be easily identified. (Opponents wearing a uniform for example). Applying them to a situation where 'enemy' has a stochastic definition is a dubious thing. Of course it creates benefits, but it also creates a lot of problems. Killing people without due process, in the long run, creates an incredible amount of ill will. I think this, beyond rhetoric about justice, is the reason we have due process for criminal procedures -- the people who knew the innocent person you just killed get angry with you. Even if it was an accident. Note that this definition doesn't really effect two uniformed opponents on a battle field -- at least not in the same sense as "John was killed by a drone while driving to Texas for his vacation". The other good argument for providing due process is that without due process you give a huge weapon to your enemy... as it becomes easier to frame someone, and as that framing becomes more deadly, it becomes easier to convert people to your cause through blackmail. In summary: laws of war weren't handed down on a stone tablet, they codify a way of being that reduces the long term negative outcomes of war. When a new form of war is crated, you probably new new laws. The old ways of minimizing negative outcomes are probably obsolete. ~~~ anigbrowl You did ask for wanted. I'd imagine you'd end up on this list first. I think you're assuming that due process and judicial process are the same thing, but I don't agree with this. ------ brianlovin The title of this is really, really misleading. The first paragraph: This white paper sets forth a legal framework for the...use [of] lethal force in a foreign country outside the area of active hostilities against an American citizen who is a senior operational leader of al-Qa'ida ~~~ logn Well if this justification is somehow valid for senior al-Qaida members, it would hold for senior al-Shabaab members, senior Zetas in Mexico, senior Capone members, senior Bloods and Crips, senior LulzSec and Anon, etc. Then you apply the logic which hinges on it being a foreign country and parallel that to a condition in our own country and it gets ugly. After reading this whole memo, I actually see very little about geography or why this wouldn't be legal in the US. The bottom of page 4 and top of 5 seem to actually justify executions within our borders. ~~~ ghshephard The difference is spelled out very clearly in the document. The United States is in a state of congressionally approved armed conflict with Al Quaida. Where they not in a state of armed conflict, then there would be no legal basis. The consequences of going to war, is that the executive (President, acting as Command in Chief of the armed forces) is authorized to kill the enemy without judicial review. ------ ghshephard Sometimes you have to kill people. One hopes that, as a nation of laws, the United States does so within reasonable constraints and at the appropriate time, and for the appropriate reasons. See: [http://www.nytimes.com/2013/02/05/us/boy-is-safe-after- alaba...](http://www.nytimes.com/2013/02/05/us/boy-is-safe-after-alabama- hostage-standoff.html?hp) for a tragic example today. I've skimmed through the entire document - it spends a lot of time talking about things that must be tried prior to these targeted killings - including multiple references to the fourth and fifth amendments of the constitution (Unreasonable Seizures, Due Process) There doesn't seem any reason why this document shouldn't be made public. Seems pretty much reasonable (if somewhat overly legalistic for this layperson to totally follow) ~~~ nilved > Sometimes you have to kill people. This is not true. ~~~ tokenadult > > Sometimes you have to kill people. > This is not true. The position that one must never kill someone else is certainly a defensible position, defended over the centuries by many honorable people. I respect that position. But, even though I have largely pacifist ancestors, I think as a father of a daughter that if the Taliban tried to set up their women- oppressing rule anywhere my daughter might have occasion to live or work, I would oppose them by all means necessary, up to and including lethal force. That's not because forcing women to be covered from head to toe when they go out of their homes is itself a capital crime, but because some Taliban fellow- travelers also commit capital crimes like murdering women who try to teach mothers how to vaccinate their children to keep the children from dying from infectious diseases. I would not be ashamed to kill a baby-killer or woman- murderer. AFTER EDIT: I will now take time to give a careful lawyer's read to the document (white paper) linked to from the blog post submitted here. [http://msnbcmedia.msn.com/i/msnbc/sections/news/020413_DOJ_W...](http://msnbcmedia.msn.com/i/msnbc/sections/news/020413_DOJ_White_Paper.pdf) ~~~ vy8vWJlco > _I would not be ashamed to kill a baby-killer or woman-murderer._ So your ends justify their means. ------ joshfraser The strength of your principles is only tested at the extremes. I hate Westboro Baptist Church, but I'll support their right to say what they want, because that's how much I believe in free speech. And even terrorists deserve the right to a speedy and public trial if they're American. It's part of our constitution, something we're supposed to stand for as a country. It even makes me sad the way we handled the whole Osama Bin Laden assassination. How much of a bigger statement would it have made to the world if we had pulled him out and made him sit trial for his crimes? What happened to our principles that we used to care so much about? ~~~ mc32 W/re WBC, I think while they have a right to hold views, express them, share them, I do not think, and others have agreed[1], that they have the right to disrupt other people's proceedings (funerals) as part of their right to free expression. [1] [http://www.kansascity.com/2012/10/16/3870092/appeals- court-d...](http://www.kansascity.com/2012/10/16/3870092/appeals-court- delivers-westboro.html) ------ olefoo The following questions come to mind. 1\. What is "an informed, high-level official of the US government"; is it the President only, or does it include Cabinet Members? Is it restricted to political appointees, or does it extend into civil service roles as well? 2\. "imminent threat of violent attack against the United States" sounds like a definition of a legal standard, what are the elements of such a standard and would the mere possession of weaponry sufficient to carry out such an attack meet it? 3\. The phrase "senior operational leader of al-Qa'ida or an associated force" is used repeatedly in the document; what qualities put one in the category of an "associated force"? Would it be plausible to say that Wikileaks could be described as an associated force with al Qa'ida? Could the Syrian government be so described? What are the strictures here? 4\. Given that several known killings of American citizens seem on the face of it to violate the guidelines of this document; most notably the death of Abdulrahman al-Aulaqi <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Abdulrahman_al-Aulaqi> it would behoove the government to explain the apparent contradiction. Or if the definition of "operational leader of al-Qa'ida" has been watered down to "military aged male"; to state that publicly. There is no question that dealing with non-state paramilitary actors undermines the nation state paradigm that the existing law of war assumes and that there are a number of edge cases where it is hard to determine whether a given individual should be treated as a combatant or as a criminal; however we as a nation and as a society cannot afford to let our leaders become mere killers without restraint; no matter how heinous the opposition. ~~~ tptacek The "military aged males" killed by drones aren't US citizens. This memo does not suggest that the US can kill any military aged male regardless of nationality. And no, it would not be plausible to say that Wikileaks could be described as "associated with al Qaeda". You could have used the same reasoning in the 1930s and 1940s to suggest that the US could have killed Charles Coughlin; after all, he was on the radio advocating for Mussolini and Hitler! ~~~ olefoo In the particular case I referenced, he was, Abdulrahman al-Alauqi was born in Denver and was aged 16 when he was killed. Coughlin could have faced the death penalty for sedition; but he was silenced by his bishop before that was necessary. And the logic in this document is perniciously close to that used to incarcerate thousands of US citizens of Japanese descent after Pearl Harbor. This is why we should not vest the executive with untrammeled ability to kill on their own authority, but should restrain them to a procedure that asks them to justify the exigency to a judge at the very least. ------ ahmadss Here's a response from the ACLU - [http://www.aclu.org/blog/national- security/justice-departmen...](http://www.aclu.org/blog/national- security/justice-departments-white-paper-targeted-killing) ------ superkuh This memo spends the entire time talking about the 'evil' al-qa'ida and how even if a US citizen joins them then legally they should get to kill them. It goes into deep detail about this scenario for a number of pages. But it skips over, in 5 lines at the very beginning, that it also applies to anyone they arbitrarily say are associated with al-qa'ida. No details about that. The important issue isn't the legal justification of some mythical US al- qa'ida as this document tries to stress. It's about the fact that they decide who is an 'associated group' they can also kill and that decision is secret and arbitrary. ------ orionblastar I am just wondering but can people in Occupy Wall Street be targeted for assassination just as well as as a 'potential terrorist' in a foreign nation who happens to be a US citizen? If so we may be seeing a new form of US Government. BTW I thought President Jimmy Carter made assassinations illegal when he was President? Has that law been lifted? ~~~ jowiar Read the paper. The issue is not "potential terrorist" but rather swearing allegiance to Al Qaida, between whom and the United States there exists a present state of armed conflict. The US is not in a state of armed conflict with OWS. Also note that the application here is with regard to US citizens outside the US - picture someone training terrorists in a cave in Afghanistan, not someone camping on the streets of New York. ~~~ obstacle1 The paper starts off dealing specifically with high-level Al-Qa'ida operatives. However around page 4 or 5 the language changes to "and associated forces". That definition is too broad to be meaningful, which is a bit creepy. ~~~ jowiar Reading the original 2001 AUMF explains where this language comes from. [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Authorization_for_Use_of_Milita...](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Authorization_for_Use_of_Military_Force_Against_Terrorists) ~~~ obstacle1 It doesn't explain anything. In fact it is even broader than this whitepaper: >the President is authorized to use all necessary and appropriate force against those nations, organizations, or persons he determines planned, authorized, committed, or aided the terrorist attacks that occurred on September 11, 2001, or harbored such organizations or persons, in order to prevent any future acts of international terrorism against the United States by such nations, organizations or persons Hamlily v. Obama (2009) crystallizes the legal interpretation of the phrase a bit. Some key points: >The key inquiry, then, is not necessarily whether one self-identifies as a member of the organization (although this could be relevant in some cases), but whether the individual functions or participates within or under the command structure of the organization >The Court also concludes that the authority claimed by the government to detain those who were "part of ... Taliban or al Qaida forces" is consistent with the law of war >the government has the authority to detain members of "associated forces" as long as those forces would be considered co-belligerents under the law of war But note that _Hamlily_ applies to detention and not execution. And in this execution whitepaper, it clearly states that the definition of associated forces " _includes_ a group that would qualify as a co-belligerent under the laws of war". The phrase _includes_ leaves a lot of room for the term "associated forces" to apply to other things. But anyway, IANAL. Link to Hamlily v. Obama (PDF): [http://scholar.google.ca/scholar_case?case=15512898181635760...](http://scholar.google.ca/scholar_case?case=15512898181635760339&hl=en&as_sdt=2&as_vis=1&oi=scholarr&sa=X&ei=MpUQUaXcF82ayQGAyoGYDw&ved=0CC4QgAMoADAA) Link to AUMF (PDF): [http://www.lawfareblog.com/wp- content/uploads/2012/10/Author...](http://www.lawfareblog.com/wp- content/uploads/2012/10/Authorization-for-Use-of-Military-Force-2001.pdf) ------ matmann2001 Unfortunate automatic URL generation. ------ untog Is it really that fair to describe this as "Obama's rules"? They were prepared by the Office of Legal Counsel, after all. In any case, good to see this out there- it appears that the New York Times brought a court case to release these papers but were unsuccessful. ~~~ caseysoftware They were written by officials of the Obama Administration for policies established and enacted by the Obama Administration and used to evaluate decisions the Obama Administration is making. It seems quite logical to call them "Obama's" whether they are rules or justifications.. ------ rhizome Good thing all that energy has been put into preserving the 2nd Amendment. ------ tokenadult The full text of the purported Justice Department white paper mentioned in the submitted blog post: [http://msnbcmedia.msn.com/i/msnbc/sections/news/020413_DOJ_W...](http://msnbcmedia.msn.com/i/msnbc/sections/news/020413_DOJ_White_Paper.pdf) ------ dkokelley Without reading the memo (only the linked article), wouldn't top Al Qa'ida operatives be classified as traitors and enemies of the state? (Maybe that's the legal angle expressed in the memo.) Within the country's borders, the government kills its citizens all of the time when the judgement is made that the suspect represents and immediate threat to the safety and well-being of others (see: hostage situations and police shootouts). Otherwise, the state's decision to end someone's life is a long and arduous process filled with courts and laws and appeals (and rightly so!). ------ thisrod Let's turn this around. Suppose that an American citizen believes they're on the list, and the president is plotting to kill them. In what circumstances should it be legal for them to assassinate the president? The president is supposed to be just another citizen: one who's very certainly plotting to kill Americans. It's curious how few people apply his reasoning to his own case. Do people believe in some kind of divine right of presidents? ------ DigitalJack Just curious...do people usually title their white papers with the words "White Paper"? ~~~ bobbles Every white paper I've ever seen has the words white paper in the title.. but I don't think its expected, just a convention some organisations use ------ logn Nice to read a treatise on how the Fourth Amendment doesn't prohibit executing citizens without trial. Neither does the First Amendment. The Fourth is about "searches and seizures". That it applies to taking possession of someone's life so as to extinguish it is a pretty twisted premise. ------ hakaaaaak If the war is over, then assassination would seem to be possible breach of the Geneva convention. If the war isn't over, then when will it be over? And is it even legitimate? The U.S. declared war on the concept "Terrorism" during Bush Jr's presidency, not on specific terrorists or al-Qa'ida. The U.S. also declared a war on "drugs" during the Reagan years. Though I'm in support of both "wars" because I'm in favor of the well-being and defense of the U.S. people, I don't think Congress or the president should have a right to declare war on something that cannot end, i.e. cannot terminate via treaty, surrender/capitulation, complete destruction, or victory. I am a little concerned that we are declaring that it is ok to kill our own citizens without due trial, although I understand there are conditions. ~~~ camus well the point you are missing is , it takes place outside a war context. AlQaida is not the army of afghanistan , in fact most of its members are saudis , egyptians or from yemen. So the Geneva convention "doesnt apply" , that's the why of the enemy combattant status and all that illegal crap made legal. ------ revelation These are not "rules", these are _justifications_ should the political fallout be of the atomic type. Rules is a horrible euphemism for this absurdity, it implies that there is someone to enforce these rules, which is what is so conspicuously absent from the picture here. ------ jkoschei Best. Permalink. Ever. ~~~ brokentone In case they change it: "[http://reason.com/blog/2013/02/04/someone-just- leaked-obamas...](http://reason.com/blog/2013/02/04/someone-just-leaked- obamas-rules-for-ass) ------ drcube This isn't the outrage. The AUMF, which fairly elected US legislators enacted, and this white paper simply attempts to interpret, is. What's it been, 11 years now? We've always been at war with Oceania. ------ cpursley This power grab will only continue as governments lose their grip on the digital realm - mainly their ability to keep secrets and collect taxes. Real crypto currencies and encrypted communications will change human organization and governments will fight back with everything they have. These new laws over the past several years have been to address the above - they have nothing to do with 'terrorism' - cyber or otherwise. Government's only effective role is to maintain its power. Everything thing else is secondary. ------ rtpg Can someone explain to me how citizenship comes into play for any of these things? I was always under the impression that non-citizens also had basic rights. ------ ryanmarsh When you consider that humans have been on the earth some 150,000 - 200,000 years it's interesting that only in the last heartbeat of humanity's existence (4,000 or so) did we decide en masse to grant a monopoly on the use of deadly force to someone else, namely bureaucrats. ------ allingeek I had to giggle when I took a look at the URL, "someone-just-leaked-obamas- rules-for-ass." Which made me wonder if this, rather lengthy, but clearly truncated URL was hand chosen. Either way makes you think about more intelligent filters for URL generators. ------ logn [https://petitions.whitehouse.gov/petition/impeach- president-...](https://petitions.whitehouse.gov/petition/impeach-president- obama-unconstitutional-execution-united-states-citizens/Rdq942HF) ------ mens_rea I love that this title is so unbiased and doesn't at all blow the document out of proportion or make it appear more sinister than it actually is. Thank you for not misleading readers with your title in order to get views and points. ------ etherael "Because I feel like it" would be less vague than this travesty. ------ coloneltcb This is really a biased source. Reason.com has a clear agenda ------ mvid How long until someone makes a flow chart out of this? ------ conductr nice slug, someone-just-leaked-obamas-rules-for-ass ------ smiley1121 The president is black. I don't see how this this story is relevant.

Took me more than 2 years to get 200 paying customers for my Web App - barmstrong http://www.startbreakingfree.com/1640/universitytutor-races-past-200-paying-customers/ ====== user24 congrats! It's always inspiring to see people having success doing what they love. 200 users seems almost laughably smalltime compared to some of the companies who get featured on here, but to me, and I'm sure much of the HN readership, it's a dream; if I can get 200 paying users of my business when I launch I'll be ecstatic! It's really good to see a success story which doesn't focus on "hey wow, I got a million users overnight through sheer luck". It reminds us that 99% of the time, companies are built slowly and surely, not astronomically. ~~~ JarekS2 People have no idea how hard it is to get first 10 paying customers (not to mention 200!!). It's one thing to get people to say "I love your product - will buy premium plan for sure!" and the completely other thing to actually receive a payment ("I'm sorry I was busy", "Will buy, just waiting for my customer to place an order" etc.). Best of luck to everyone trying to persuade their customers to pay. I'm also one of you! ~~~ patio11 _People have no idea how hard it is to get first 10 paying customers_ I'm kind of conflicted on this. Yes, it is hard to get ten people to pay money, in that you have to have a mostly-functioning product, a website which markets it, and some way to charge their credit cards. But this is not really _that_ hard. BCC 1.02 ("Like 1.00, but with less crash bugs and the brand new ability to print to non-default printers") got to ten customers in six weeks from 1.0's launch, entirely on the strength of organic search marketing on two pieces of content. That was when I was young and stupid. Y'all can do better. I think software (let's scope it to B2C software for the moment) is like lemonade stands. You know how you get ten customers with a lemonade stand? Your price? Doesn't really matter. Your stand's design? Doesn't really matter. Your taste? Doesn't really matter. Your location? Probably matters for getting hundreds or thousands of customers, but for 10, pretty much any street will do. The key hurdle you have to get over is _charging money for lemonade_. I am worried that people think it is really really hard to run a successful business, and that stops them from ever charging for lemonade. ~~~ wlievens But how do you get over charging for something that competitors offer for free? Even if your product is better in different ways, that's a hard sell. ~~~ parfe 3/10 cent a gallon for water delivered straight to the home. $1.50 gallon for a jug in isle 13 at your super market or $1.75 for a 20oz bottle at the checkout counter. Are these all the same product? Do they even compete? ~~~ patio11 That example is going in my playbook. (And the product is available for free, in nigh-infinite quantities, in every occupied building in America. You don't even have to ask for it. In fact, asking for permission to take some would have whomever you asked immediately question your mental state!) ------ jasonkester This is actually a significant milestone for any entrepreneur. 200 * $10/mo == enough to pay your rent. $2k/month is the tipping point where you're no longer bleeding money and eating into savings. Sure, you're not getting richer and you might still need to take the odd freelance job for spending money, but it's a great place be, no longer watching your bank account on its slow & steady march toward zero. From here, it's all profit! ~~~ etm117 Remember, not everyone lives in the Bay Area. ;-) Depending on where you live and if you have roommates, the $2k per month may be enough to pay rent, bills, college loans and leave some left over for spending money. ~~~ jasonkester Don't you mean "not everybody lives in Honduras"? There aren't many places in the US where you can live for $2k/month all in, and the Bay Area would be the last place I'd expect to do so. I meant "pays your rent" quite literally. As in, taking the biggest of your financial worries away and leaving you only needing to deal with the spending money part. So you still can't live on your income, but you can coast along for an entire year on $10k savings. Up to that point, $10k in the bank meant you'd better start scrambling to pick up a contract in the next couple months before you run out of money. ~~~ patio11 _There aren't many places in the US where you can live for $2k/month all in_ $2,000 / 160 = $12.50, which is substantially higher than the minimum wage in all fifty states of the Union, so I'm guessing that there exist at least a few people who are somehow making do... ~~~ bkmartin I'm guessing you've never tried to live on $12.50/hr. And if you take that as a gross number not a net number its even worse. Sure, people are "making it work" but if you aren't single without kids and have zero college debt then you aren't doing it without some sort of assistance. Just because the minimum wage is $7.25 or up to $8.55 (depending on the state you live in), doesn't mean you can live on it. ~~~ bkmartin Really? negative points for a post that simply points out the fact that $12.50/hr is a lot harder to live on that what the majority of people on here want to make it sound? I'm not trolling, just offering a different point of view from different observations. I live in rural PA not a metro area or anything like that. I'm not saying it can't be done, but its not the norm. ~~~ Dove _Really? negative points . . . ?_ Well, you opened with, _I'm guessing you've never tried to live on $12.50/hr._ I consider this aggressive and personal. Rather than stating your position and evidence, you've attacked the credentials of anyone who disagrees with you. Aside from the fact that it's naive and almost certainly false (there are folks on this site from _all_ walks of life with _all_ kinds of experience and opinions), it is distracting. I do not care at all whether someone has the particular credentials you think are necessary to comment on the topic; I care only about what evidence and experience they _do_ have. Above all, I want to hear about ideas, not people. If you speculate on people's motives or qualifications (especially if you're suggesting downvotes are the result of disagreement or censorship), or any time in general that you attack the person of other commenters, you won't interest me. You'll annoy me. And unless you say something particularly redeeming, I'll probably downvote the comment. ~~~ bkmartin Understandable, I agree I came off a bit strong. It struck me the wrong way a bit, and I overreacted. I certainly mean no disrespect. I hope that what I said after that was on point with what I was trying to get across. I'll be better, thanks for the heads up. ------ JangoSteve Congratulations on the 220 paying customers, that's certainly no small feat. I've been running RateMyStudentRental.com for about 3 years now (well, really I stopped actively working on it about a year ago), and it only reached about half that in revenue. Then, LeadNuke sprang forth as an internal sales tool for RMSR barely a year ago and it's approaching that level already. In hindsight, I'm really glad I didn't have this kind of success the first time around, because I have a much more realistic perspective now and I can appreciate it that much more. In summary, mad props and respect to you. ~~~ steveklabnik > In summary, mad props and respect to you. Totally off-topic, but some of my friends lately have started joking around about making a subgenre of Nerdcore devoted to startups. There's so many good names and parody opportunities... > I got 99 problems, but my pitch ain't one. > whatddup, founda? > An east vs west style rivalry between the 'Limited Liability Crew' and > 'S-corp'. > Names: 'Series C', ... I forget the rest. There's others. ~~~ trafficlight That's awesome. Have any of them been so brave as to actually record a song? ~~~ steveklabnik Not yet, but this is pretty close: [http://www.kalzumeus.com/2010/01/12/the- solo-founder-startup...](http://www.kalzumeus.com/2010/01/12/the-solo-founder- startup-rap/) Patrick doesn't know about what I'm talking about though, this is unrelated. ------ adamt Congrats. As other people have said - it's refreshing to see some stories like this rather than just the 'here's my web app I built in 48 hours'. Hopefully it will help people reliase the difference between building something and building a business. At 200, you are close to what I consider to be a major inflexion point. It's often as easier (big separate post that I won't go into the full reasons why) to go from 200-2000 then it is to go from 20-200. Well done and good luck! ~~~ barmstrong Yep, I think you're right on that - the first 200 was just figuring out the right place for everything. Should get easier from here... ------ rubyrescue congratulations! when barmstrong was down here in Buenos Aires, we talked a lot about universitytutor.com and it's cool to see him just make little tweaks to the site and let it grow slowly and steadily. very inspiring! ~~~ barmstrong Yep - those were some good discussions, learned a lot from you down there! ------ ryanb How did you get 16,000+ tutors signed up? That's an impressive number. ~~~ barmstrong Tried a bunch of ideas, but the most successful was posting jobs to university websites. Can email me if you want more details. ------ stretchwithme Congratulations. A great idea and an important niche to serve. I just told two friends that do tutoring about it. ~~~ barmstrong Awesome, thanks! ------ tnorthcutt I may be assuming too much based on my reading of your post, but it sounds like you could really stand to implement some (or more) A/B testing. The fact that it took two years to reach 200 customers but in only a week or so you've added another 20 customers after making some changes makes me think you should have been making (and testing!) changes like that all along. Either way, congratulations, and best of luck in the future! ~~~ barmstrong Yur right - I just didn't have the idea to do this test until recently :) Have done some split testing on price etc, but could def stand to do more. ~~~ tnorthcutt Hopefully you'll continue to see a faster increase in signups. Good luck! ------ spencerfry Congrats! With 200 paying customers, you now have more than enough information to start tracking churn, CPA, life time value, life time profit, etc. You can turn those 200 paying customers into a lot more by accurately tracking your metrics and building from them. I recommend reading: [http://thinkvitamin.com/web-apps/how-to-track-six-key- metric...](http://thinkvitamin.com/web-apps/how-to-track-six-key-metrics-for- your-web-app/) ------ mrbird Maybe I missed this in the post, but are you working on this full time? If not, how many hours/week would you estimate you've invested, on average? ~~~ colonelxc read his about page: <http://www.startbreakingfree.com/about/> Shows he's started a few other sites, including working on a YC funded (stealth) startup. ~~~ barmstrong Yep, I have a day job. Right now it takes very little time to run the site, maybe a few hours per week. But I definitely spent a lot of time building it up front, and occasionally still do when I add new features. As a strict hourly ROI I could have made way more at a job or doing consulting work, but it's an investment that may pay off long term (or not, but either way it was way more fun :) ------ senthil_rajasek Not to nitpick but your about page shows that universitytutor.com was started in 2004 but your post shows that you started the site in 2008? Also the dashboard shows decreasing timeline which means you are either losing customers and below the 200 (can't guess the scale) subscribers or there is a simple error somewhere... What are we missing ? ~~~ barmstrong Good point - I actually first registerred and built a site back in 2004 but it was a different business (matching people manually in Houston only). 2008 was when I switched it over to a directory site that was open to anyone and let tutors and students contact each other directly (also rebuilt it in rails). Not sure what you mean on the graph though - it seems correct to me. ~~~ senthil_rajasek The dashboard graph shows just a months worth of data and for some reason I thought the timeline was decreasing. Congratulations on your success. ------ dfischer Congratulations. That's a great milestone. ------ antidaily The site is beautiful. Nice work!! ~~~ barmstrong I did the programming, but hired this guy to design it: <http://www.jackherbert.com/> I'd recommend him, he was good and fairly priced. (Found him on 99designs). ------ qq66 Nice job dude! -Amal ------ ohashi Congrats :) ------ cinimod That's an AWESOME dating service.

Any good world calling options? - nphyte ====== ankitgarg43 I prefer Google Voice, from one place you can dial out to many countries. Also rates change accordingly. And the rates are very competitive against other service. ------ someone_new $10-$15 T-Mobile unlimited international calling #gooddeal

70,000 Blogs Shut Down by U.S. Law Enforcement - dwynings http://www.readwriteweb.com/archives/70000_blogs_shut_down_by_us_law_enforcement.php?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=feed&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+readwriteweb+%28ReadWriteWeb%29&utm_content=Google+Reader ====== joshwa If the hosting company says that they can't name the agency and can't say anything about the nature of the claim, that immediately makes me think of a National Security Letter: <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/National_security_letter> "[A National Security Letter] is a demand letter issued to a particular entity or organization to turn over various record and data pertaining to individuals. They require no probable cause or judicial oversight. They also contain a gag order, preventing the recipient of the letter from disclosing that the letter was ever issued." ~~~ DavidSJ derwiki replied to this comment by saying: _"The gag order was ruled unconstitutional as an infringement of free speech, in the Doe v. Ashcroft case." (same article)_ For some reason, his reply is dead, but it seems like a valuable comment so I'm reproducing it. ~~~ fmora Thank god for the separation of powers. It is incredible how many rights the Bush presidency attempted to take away from its citizens all in the name of national security. The more I read stuff like this the more it seems that we were heading to a totalitarian government. Edit: In case anybody wonders why I threw in Bush's name in there is because the Patriot Act, created during his presidency, greatly extended the NSL powers. <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/National_Security_Letter> ~~~ fmora If you are going to down vote me at least explain why. ~~~ Yzupnick Maybe it is because you pick on a single president what every president has done. (From all parties.) Did Bush do things that where a violation of rights? Probably, but so did every president including but not limited to Obama, Clinton, Bush (senior), and Reagan. I would venture to guess it is impossible to name a president that did not infringe on the rights of citizens. Second, it was the current government that did this, not Bush. ~~~ jeromec _I would venture to guess it is impossible to name a president that did not infringe on the rights of citizens._ The degree to which any perceived infringement occurs is what is significant. Bush pushed for and succeeded in suspending habeas corpus, a Constitutional protection by which people can challenge their imprisonment. This was only done twice in history, once by Bush and once by Lincoln at the start of the Civil War. By contrast, President Obama opposed the suspension of habeas corpus since he was a senator. ~~~ Yzupnick And yet is continued by the current administration: [http://www.nytimes.com/2009/05/21/us/politics/21obama.text.h...](http://www.nytimes.com/2009/05/21/us/politics/21obama.text.html?_r=1&pagewanted=all) And Obama authorized the assassination of a US citizen; something even Bush never did: [http://www.nytimes.com/2010/04/07/world/middleeast/07yemen.h...](http://www.nytimes.com/2010/04/07/world/middleeast/07yemen.html) ~~~ GiraffeNecktie The speech you point to does not support your point. My reading is that he is trying to cleaning up the toxic legal spill that the previous administration left behind (while trying not to give his Republic critics ammunition). Re. the assassination of a US citizen, that hardly seems notable given that the guy is very actively involved in putting together terrorist attacks. Surely any president would make the same decision. ~~~ Yzupnick It seems the origigonal post was deleted I guess... Now it seems I'm like I'm talking to myself. 1) Among all his rhetoric about not continuing the policy he slips in "there may be a number of people who cannot be prosecuted for past crimes, in some cases because evidence may be tainted, but who nonetheless pose a threat to the security of the United States...must be prevented from attacking us again " His policy stays the same, he is just better at hiding it from the public. 2) Thats the same rhetoric people used to defend Bush. Innocent till proven guilty in a court of Law I say. ~~~ jeromec You should have listed more of that quote. Directly above that President Obama said: _Now, finally, there remains the question of detainees at Guantanamo who cannot be prosecuted yet who pose a clear danger to the American people. And I have to be honest here -- this is the toughest single issue that we will face. We're going to exhaust every avenue that we have to prosecute those at Guantanamo who pose a danger to our country. But even when this process is complete, there may be a number of people who cannot be prosecuted for past crimes, in some cases because evidence may be tainted, but who nonetheless pose a threat to the security of the United States. Examples of that threat include people who've received extensive explosives training at al Qaeda training camps, or commanded Taliban troops in battle, or expressed their allegiance to Osama bin Laden, or otherwise made it clear that they want to kill Americans. These are people who, in effect, remain at war with the United States._ The ease/danger of a transition from a democracy to a totalitarian regime was something of which the Founders were aware. Our freedoms are protected precisely by a Constitutional framework which provides safeguards, like habeas corpus. President Obama is a Constitutional scholar, and acknowledges our bindings to it. Compare that with Bush who was rumored to say it's "just a piece of paper". There may be case by case issues which are difficult as well as debatable for any president to decide, but altering the legal framework in ways which diminish civil liberties and protections is dangerous, and can too easily lead a public that is not paying attention to a place they realize too late they don't want to be. <http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Wmc60JmaLbE> ~~~ anamax > Directly above that President Obama said: It doesn't matter what he says in a speech. What matters is what he says via executive orders, policy, and executive branch action. > President Obama is a Constitutional scholar, and acknowledges our bindings > to it. Oh really? Feel free to cite any of his scholarly writings. > Compare that with Bush who was rumored to say it's "just a piece of paper". By someone who had an axe to grind. What has that person said about Obama's continuation and expansion of the same policies? (To be fair, some folks who criticized Bush for doing certain things have criticized Obama for continuing and expanding, but they're a marginalized minority. The "good people" have largely fallen into line.) Of course, if you want to play "was rumored to say", there are some doozies attributed to Obama. Double-standard much? ~~~ jeromec _It doesn't matter what he says in a speech._ I disagree. Words have both immediate and historical significance and impact, whether by a dictator like Hitler or a president like John F. Kennedy. _What matters is what he says via executive orders, policy, and executive branch action._ I agree. _Oh really? Feel free to cite any of his scholarly writings._ "Mar 28, 2008 ... Barack Obama is correct in saying he is a constitutional law professor." source: FactCheck.org ([http://www.factcheck.org/askfactcheck/was_barack_obama_reall...](http://www.factcheck.org/askfactcheck/was_barack_obama_really_a_constitutional_law.html)) _Of course, if you want to play "was rumored to say", there are some doozies attributed to Obama._ I will retract the rumor text. I almost didn't put it in, but I wanted to give some context for G. W. Bush's apparent disregard for Constitutional law. But I don't need to. Just watch the 6 minute YouTube video with a noted Constitutional law professor I included. Here it is again: <http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Wmc60JmaLbE> ~~~ anamax >> Oh really? Feel free to cite any of his scholarly writings. > "Mar 28, 2008 ... Barack Obama is correct in saying he is a constitutional > law professor." source: FactCheck.org > (<http://www.factcheck.org/askfactcheck/was_barack_obama_reall...>) The claim was that he was a constitutional law scholar, not that he was a professor. While there are overlaps between the two groups, neither one is a subset of the other. I'll ask again - if Obama is a constitutional law scholar, where is his scholarly output? ~~~ jeromec _The claim was that he was a constitutional law scholar, not that he was a professor. While there are overlaps between the two groups, neither one is a subset of the other._ You're kidding, right? Him being a scholar is an even easier proof than him being a questionable professor -- which the link I listed at FactCheck.org also asserts is true. Oxford Dictionary (First Definition): scholar (schol·ar): a specialist in a particular branch of study, _especially the humanities_ ; a distinguished academic From the UC Law School statement at FactCheck.org: "Senior Lecturers are considered to be members of the Law School faculty and are _regarded as professors_ , although not full-time or tenure-track ... Like Obama, each of the Law School's Senior Lecturers have high-demand careers in politics or public service, which prevent full-time teaching. Several times during his 12 years as a professor in the Law School, Obama was invited to join the faculty in a full-time tenure-track position, but he declined." ~~~ anamax >>The claim was that he was a constitutional law scholar, not that he was a professor. While there are overlaps between the two groups, neither one is a subset of the other. >You're kidding, right? Not at all. I have reasonably high standards for scholars. For example, even though the degree is "Juris Doctor", I don't call lawyers "Dr.". (However, I will call them "Esquire".) Meanwhile, you'd call a 6th grade history teacher a "scholar" if they teach some constitution.... ~~~ jeromec _Not at all. I have reasonably high standards for scholars._ This is not about you. It's about the definition in the dictionary. It has as a primary entry for scholar "a distinguished academic". The definition for "professor" from Wikipedia: _The meaning of the word professor (Latin: professor, person who professes to be an expert in some art or science, teacher of high rank[1]) varies by country. In most English-speaking countries it refers to a senior academic who holds a departmental chair_ ... etc. I don't know how you equate "Senior Lecturers regarded as professors" by a university to a 6th grade history teacher who may also be the school gym teacher filling in. That's stretching things a bit. ~~~ anamax > In most English-speaking countries it refers to a senior academic who holds > a departmental chair Which Obama didn't.... In general, real professors have publications. Heck, so do real academic doctors. Honorary and "we're giving him an appointment to curry favor" ones don't. ~~~ jeromec Bottom line: Point 1: You had a problem with me referring to President Obama as a scholar. Regardless of your semantic arguments, dictionaries also define scholar as simply a student or learned person. Point 2: The university statement clarifies how and why Obama was regarded as a professor -- and not just an "honorary" one. Point 3: Most academic doctors or professors with publications do not go on to become the President of the United States. Have you ever stopped to think maybe he was busy in service of the public as well as his family? Honestly, the original point was about the contrast in perspective, as far as the Constitution is concerned, between Obama and Bush. I really don't see what you are challenging. ~~~ anamax > Most academic doctors or professors with publications do not go on to become > the President of the United States. Irrelevant. Becoming president doesn't imply that he's anything else. Or, do you want to argue that he's an astronaut too? He didn't ever go into space, but that's just because he had better things to do. > Have you ever stopped to think maybe he was busy in service of the public as > well as his family? It doesn't matter why he doesn't have scholarly output. If he doesn't.... FWIW, almost every other editor of the Harvard Law Review managed to crank out a paper or two during their tenure. > Honestly, the original point was about the contrast in perspective, as far > as the Constitution is concerned, between Obama and Bush. I really don't see > what you are challenging. You seem to think that teaching a class tells us something important. Without scholarly output, we know nothing about what he did. (I'm a lecturer at a major university....) ~~~ jeromec _You seem to think that teaching a class tells us something important._ Correct. In the context of a presidency, along with his words, I believe we can infer a regard for the Constitution. And Obama made essentially this point. Take a look at an excerpt from a speech by President Obama on national security: _We are building new partnerships around the world to disrupt, dismantle, and defeat al Qaeda and its affiliates. And we have renewed American diplomacy so that we once again have the strength and standing to truly lead the world. These steps are all critical to keeping America secure. But I believe with every fiber of my being that in the long run we also cannot keep this country safe unless we enlist the power of our most fundamental values. The documents that we hold in this very hall - the Declaration of Independence, the Constitution, the Bill of Rights -are not simply words written into aging parchment. They are the foundation of liberty and justice in this country, and a light that shines for all who seek freedom, fairness, equality and dignity in the world._ I challenge you to find _any_ reference Bush made to any of the above documents at any time while on the subject of national security where he is clearly expressing a regard for the document(s) as a guide. ------ DanBlake I am skeptical - The host, <https://www.burst.net/> Looks like a template monster design with a reseller system, no traffic rank and a nearly empty forum- From a outsider looking in, it looks like a host that is barely in business and likely ran by one guy from his apartment. Maybe they are over-exaggerating for press? Maybe the server crashed, and they dont want the bad press so did a bogus excuse? Stranger things have happened. But I highly doubt this has even remotely anything to do with "operation in your sites" and is likely related to some issue at burstnet. I wouldnt be surprised if law enforcement isnt even involved. ~~~ zaidf Trust me, burstnet is far from a small host. They went through a rebranding I believe as part of their clean up effort from their last brand which had a reputation for attracting high bandwidth questionable sites. ------ datawalke BurstNET is located very close to where I am. About a year and a half ago I toured their facilities for a colocation project. Upon walking in I was horrified. They rows of tower based servers with their cases ripped off on the wire-frame racks you would find in a home improvement store. After seeing that and hearing they lacked any fire suppression system I respectfully walked away from their bid. ------ MadWombat Well, there is a link to a thread on a webhostingtalk.com, where some people are discussing the issue. After reading the original posting by the blog service provider and some of the replies, here are some basic lessons to be learned from this. 1\. A lot of people have no clue as to the legal process 2\. It pays REALLY well to have external backups 3\. It might be a good idea to use encrypted volumes to store sensitive data, so if authorities are involved, they have to serve you with papers to get your decryption keys. This way you stay more informed. 4\. Your hosting provider probably has a clause in their ToS that more or less says "we can terminate your service whenever, the hell, we want and there is nothing you can do about it". Deal with it. 5\. This story still sucks. 6\. Seems like this guy was simply small enough to just serve a court order and shut down his service. I don't think anyone would shutdown Google for questionable content on a blogger account or google web pages. 7\. I am pretty sure, that there is no legal way for a law enforcement agency to remain anonymous while doing something like this. Either I am wrong about it or something is amiss. ~~~ adamc Your hosting provider probably does have such a clause, but after exercising it they should expect to go out of business. ~~~ MadWombat Not if they only do it to a small percentage of clients and within common sense. Generally the clause is there, so that they have a legal ground to shut you down without waiting for legal process to catch up (i.e. if legal authorities ask them without providing a warrant, if they get complaints about some questionable content etc.) ------ jacquesm A blogging service works on a per-account basis, for them to shut down the whole server instead of just taking down the offending account(s) seems to be pretty excessive, no matter what those accounts have 'done'. There is some chance they found themselves the unwitting participant in a child pornography distribution network, and that they don't know which accounts are 'the ones', and they've taken everything off-line until they've verified which accounts are bad and which are good. ~~~ j_baker Why keep it a secret if it's just kiddie porn? ~~~ jacquesm Brand damage. ------ gphil If this isn't just sensationalist reporting, then this is pretty bad. I wonder if it's related to the piracy crackdown that was recently announced by the White House. ~~~ derwiki The spokesperson said it wasn't a copyright thing; it sounds a little extreme for that anyway. I'd rather not speculate on what it is though until we get more details. ~~~ gphil Sorry, I missed that the first time I read through the article. ------ kwamenum86 From BurstNET: "We cannot give him his data nor can we provide any other details" I guess this is one of the dangers of hosting a user-generated content site- law enforcement may confiscate your server. This seems highly unusual even for something like child pornography. Usually they ask (politely then forcefully) the server owner for cooperation. It's possible that the owner of Blogerty is a suspect. ------ known Instead of closing down the blogs why not impose fine on print & electronic media, if they publish a lie. ------ deanerimerman Yeah! joshwa's got a point there! Law enforcement agents concerned with not publicly identifying themselves might also likely be concerned with: <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Posse_Comitatus_Act> ~~~ j_baker That only applies if this was done by the _military_ though. ------ Spoutingshite A phrase with the words sledgehammer and nut comes to mind. Obviously somebody was a naughty boy, but what about the other users of the server? ------ logic More details from BurstNet's CTO: <http://news.cnet.com/8301-31001_3-20010923-261.html> ------ pinksoda This is why I don't trust the government with an internet kill switch. ------ Ardit20 That is a bit Kafkaesque. Everyone has the right to know why their right is being denied or what they are being charged with. If it was a privet firm then fine, but the government can't just go around closing websites without saying if not in detail then in general what the charges are. How, if the website owner is wronged, is he able to challenge the decision if he does not even know what the allegations are against him. ~~~ Roboprog What you say was more or less true in 2000. Things have changed a bit since then. The fact that many recent laws and programs obviously defy the first ten amendments to the US Constitution have gone "unnoticed" by the SCOTUS, and both major brands (D & R) seem content with how things have developed the last decade. "We the rabble" are likely in for a 10 year slog to fix things, if we are lucky: paper ballots; some kind of coalition or runoff voting rule changes to take down the "two" party system; reestablishment of the rule of law. ~~~ Ardit20 I am sorry. I can not quite agree with that. I do not know about the united states, but here in the united kingdom we have a very independent judiciary which has ruled against the government time and time again. I do agree in a way, just before Tony Blair left, which I think was 2008 or 2007 things seemed to be going in a very dark direction, but frankly, it is the peoples fault. We are so lucky as to be able to change government without bloodshed and in the UK for what I know we are so lucky as to not go down without a very real power struggle between the executive and the judiciary. Take them to court I say. That is what they are for. ------ ndimopoulos I am thinking that the subject might be child pornography, espionage or cyber terrorism. Should some of those blogs had some sort of method of communicating information with terrorists I do not see why the NSA would not shut the whole thing down. I hate to be in the shoes of those 70000 people but from the article and evidence available right now this is a really serious matter. ~~~ danek maybe the fbi thinks terrorists were communicating via blog comments, in a secret code designed to look like spam? as far as 'movie-plot terrorism' goes, i don't think it's too far fetched. ~~~ naturalized Does it mean that any site can be shut down if it's used by terrorists? Which one is next: facebook, because terrorists can create a group there and send messages, twitter, because a terrorist cell can use it to coordinate attacks, or perhaps wordpress? Which service will be shut down next?

Firefox web browser - ericras https://itunes.apple.com/app/apple-store/id989804926 ====== po1nter duplicate of this: [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10553646](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10553646) ~~~ ericras Thanks - I stumbled across it and submitted the itunes link hoping to find the discussion on here. ------ wodenokoto I'm disappointed that the styling didn't include the iconic round, enlarged back button. It also doesn't have the swipe-from-left to go back functionality.

Rate my startup: Feedlooks, a web-based RSS reader - arturadib Designed this out of my own frustration with current web-based RSS readers:<p>As a blogger, I was wondering why I was spending my time working on the blog design if most feed readers would strip off the visuals anyway.<p>All I needed was a web app that would list new items since I last checked, and would show the <i>actual</i> web content in full visual glory once I clicked on an item. (Without opening a new tab).<p>Hence Feedlooks. The bet is that there is a chunk of the RSS reader market that feels a similar need.<p>I'm looking for ideas and suggestions on how to get traction, comments on the app itself, and possible business opportunities.<p>Thanks!<p>http://www.feedlooks.com ====== crux Well, as a blog reader, I rather like the absence of bloggers' visual glory when I read my feeds. I'm interested in articles, not in someone else's design skills. Especially since, in most readers, I can set my own CSS preferences and thus read feeds that are not only stripped off but then customized exactly how I like them. ~~~ arturadib Hi crux, At some point it boils down to personal preference, but here's a counterpoint from a reader's perspective: When all of my 50+ feeds look identical, sometimes it is hard for me to identify whose blog I am reading based on its title alone--"this is an interesting article, but who's this JoeDoe guy again?". By seeing the actual website I can more quickly identify the guy. I guess in this case, "a web design is worth a thousand words". I'm not saying Feedlooks is for everyone; it sure is for me, and hopefully for many other people. Thanks for the honest feedback though! ~~~ arturadib Another advantage is that you get to see user comments on blog entries. ------ zackola \- Keyboard shortcuts or bust. \- Signup link too hidden. Man I hate most web service signups. if I try to log in and you don't have the email in your system, maybe you should just create an account for me and send me a verification w/ whatever password I entered in the verification email - or require that to not have my account deactivated shortly I must click on the activation link sent and set my password. ~~~ arturadib Good idea. I guess signup was the most commented on issue so that's definitely a priority now. Thanks! ------ javery <http://www.feedlooks.com> \- clickable ------ conesus This is quite a good idea. I'm working on a very similar idea myself, except I use the feed's main page and link the feed stories to where they are on the main page. My criticism is largely the same, but I want to echo it so it becomes that much louder. First, an instant demo is invaluable. It teaches the user immediately what they are getting into without the login/signup cost. Also, you should let the user in right on signup (logging them in so they don't have to login in immediately after they confirm). If they don't confirm in 24 hours, gently remind them, and then in a month of no use, delete the account. Also, I wish organization of the feeds was easier so I could read the feeds that start with the letter 'Y' much quicker than having to load 50-some feeds first. This could go far, so hats off to you. I know from experience that this isn't easy. ~~~ arturadib Thanks for the kind feedback! Yeah, live demo is definitely a common theme here; it's now in my to-do list. I do have plans to add feed organization features. Meanwhile, to get to 'Y', you can click on "Collapse" to see only feed titles and quickly scroll down to 'Y'. ------ JangoSteve Though my personal preference is for no layout in my feed reader, I actually do like the idea and I think there is definitely a market for it. One small nitpick: the specific example you chose for the screenshot under the "Why" tab is a bad example. If I had to choose between a plain-text article and that hard-on-the-eyes-gray-text-on-bright-green-background, I'd definitely choose the plain-text hands down. On a related note, if you do decide that you want to integrate a button that allows the user to view a plain-text stripped-down version of the article, I recently implemented similar functionality in LeadNuke and wrote an article about the "algorithm" (it's actually quite simple) I used to strip down the page. It's specifically written for Ruby, but you can skip to the "algorithm" part of the article: [http://www.alfajango.com/blog/create-a-printable-format- for-...](http://www.alfajango.com/blog/create-a-printable-format-for-any- webpage-with-ruby-and-nokogiri/#meat-algorithm) ~~~ arturadib I guess if I decide to go with a plain-text option I guess I can simply show the content from the RSS feed itself. As to the Why tab: Any takers for that real estate? I'd be happy to advertise a good-looking blog there. :) ~~~ JangoSteve Oh yeah good point. In my app, you can manually bookmark links that aren't from feeds. Also I like allowing users to see the full article contents when the feed just had a one paragraph summary. Feel free to use my blog, but I imagine you can find a much better looking blog from a designer somewhere. ------ metageek I cannot use it at all. My minimum font size is set at 24 (weak eyes); you apparently hard-code the font size and the line spacing, and Firefox is overriding only the font size. The result is that I see only the top half of each line. ~~~ arturadib Will definitely look into that! Thanks for pointing that out. ------ deno Sign Up link should be most visible item on your page. Actually you could offer Google OpenID/OAuth Hybrid connection and grab user's Google Reader data while you're at it. I prefer Akregator but I'd like to ask where did you get the idea for such personal captions on buttons? (“I understand what is happening”, “I _will_ check my email” etc.) Do you actually have some data as to whether it makes people read messages more carefully? ~~~ arturadib Ah, those button captions :) I do not have any data, but I _do_ know that I am an "OK"-button hunter. If I see one, I'm likely to click on it without thinking. I think I got this idea from the SVN blog at 37signals, but I'm not sure. ------ sfennell Ok, one huge grip - don't make me verify my email, that adds a whole _huge_ step to the account creation process. Also, If I click on a link in the blog, the feedlooks bar should go away, I dont want that hanging around - or at least open the link in another window, like greader. Overall though, I really like the idea - really cool ,and nice implementation - I will try using this over greader for now :) ~~~ arturadib So you prefer to click "back" to get to the feed list? Hmm, that's tough. I really like having that toolbar there--I can pin an item, skip to the next unread, etc. Agreed about the signup process. Clearly the issue most commented here! ------ sgt I was thinking about the same idea the other day and now I'm very happy that someone actually implemented it. It looks pretty slick and the overall speed is fast. Good work. Just one small detail I noticed is that when I signed up with an email address that contained a '+', it didn't autofill that on the login screen when I clicked on the redirect url I got on email. ~~~ arturadib Thanks that's very kind! Will look into that login issue soon. ~~~ metageek It looks like the problem is that the redirect to the login page doesn't URL- escape my email address. Since I used one with + in it, they got turned into spaces. (Bonus points for not rejecting +, though.) ------ AlexBlom My feedback on the signup process: I'd be changing the Login box with the Signup box. You want to make it REALLY easy for people to join! Users who come specifically to login will find the login button no matter where you go. Users considering registering may not look ("Oh, this is too hard to find, not to worry") ~~~ arturadib Good idea, will try to make changes to reflect all comments about the signup link/page! ------ rgrieselhuber I've been wanting something like this for a long time. One less thing I have to build. :) It's like an inverse Tumblr. I'd love to try a demo where you just put in a feed URL (without requiring email / password) and it shows you to display it. Or let me create a password if I want one. ~~~ arturadib Thanks! I got several live demo requests. It's now in my to-do list. ------ sgt Out of curiosity, what technologies are you using for Feedlooks? ~~~ arturadib LAMP ------ pavs Looks nice, the logo design could use some work. ------ pclark the sign up link is too obscure also, google reader integration? ~~~ arturadib Hey, thanks for the feedback. OK I gotta work on that signup link. Currently Feedlooks can import your feeds from Google Reader. I don't know how they'd feel if I constantly pulled content from their servers though. ------ wonginator1221 How about a live demo? ~~~ arturadib That's a very good idea I somehow forgot about after a while. Will probably implement soon. Thanks!

Facebook takes down ‘call to arms’ event after two shot dead in Kenosha - century19 https://www.theverge.com/2020/8/26/21402571/kenosha-guard-shooting-facebook-deplatforming-militia-violence ====== scohesc Crazy that the Verge doesn't do enough fact checking when writing their articles that they thought Jacob Blake was dead. It was common knowledge at the time the article was written that he wasn't dead. ------ Buttons840 "The protests have incurred significant property damage, destroying a local Department of Corrections facility on Monday night." Does The Verge know the definition of _incurred_? ------ stickyricky Word to the wise. If you haven't seen the videos (more specifically their aftermath) I'd recommend you avoid them. I'm sure a jury will watch them enough times for all of us.

Los Angeles learns to love its river - ColinWright http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-us-canada-14690082 ====== ColinWright I wouldn't usually submit this sort of thing to HN, but I found it to be an intriguing read. I've also lived in a city where the original river on which it was founded had, and still has, completely disappeared. It will be interesting to see if anything ever comes of this. Quote: That led to the first permits being issued, on a trial basis, to lead kayaking tours down a mile-and-a-half-long stretch. ... The 280 tickets to join the limited number of kayak tours sold out in the first 10 minutes. People kayaking down the LA river Kayaking down the river is an opportunity to explore nature in the heart of the city. Those who snapped up a "golden ticket" were delighted to get on the river, rather than just walk, bike or drive past it.

Competitive lockpicking growing in US popularity - robg http://www.boston.com/business/articles/2010/07/28/competitive_lockpicking_growing_in_us_popularity/?page=full ====== djacobs One of the more striking points of this article (for me) was not so much about lockpicking. It was this statement: "Some lockpickers observe a code of responsible disclosure by providing manufacturers information on weaknesses they discover in locks they defeat -- _just like responsible computer hackers do when they detect security flaws in software_." I'm thrilled to see a statement like this coming from the mainstream media. ~~~ baddox Yeah, and both types of responsible whistleblowers probably end up getting arrested. ------ proee I'm surprised there are not more digitally controlled locks on the market - something that has an embedded microcontroller that releases a solenoid if the right code is entered. What's a locksmith hacker to do with such a lock? There's no keyhole to use a diamond pick and so its basically a metal brick. I don't see too many ways to open it without destroying it physically. Maybe I'm missing the big picture, but a traditional keyed lock seems about as high-tech as an ancient model-T car. It's completely out of place given the latest technology available today. ~~~ shabble The big problem with digital and electronic locks in general is maintaining the power source. Mechanical locks have extremely low maintenance requirements, and could be left unattended for months or years without issue. Even if they then stick, a quick shot of WD40 will usually allow entry. Electronics, on hte other hand, rely either on external power, or some sort of internal battery. A battery is ill-suited to heavy duty-cycling when the lock will be opened/closed regularly, and an external source is potentially subject to tampering. There do exist many electronic locks, typically for fairly low-security shared access doors, or where various additional requirements make them more suited (such as easily rekeyable card-locks for hotel rooms) There's an interesting article at [http://www.wired.com/threatlevel/2009/08/electronic-locks- de...](http://www.wired.com/threatlevel/2009/08/electronic-locks-defeated/) regarding some work by Marc Weber Tobias and others in defeating hybrid electro-mechanical locks and their built-in audit logs. Electronic locks on the whole don't magically ensure security, and open up a whole new set of attack surfaces, whereas mechanical locks have been around for centuries, and have well-defined failure/exploitation modes. ~~~ sabat Problem, yes. Engineering problem to solve. The real issue is that these companies don't feel they need to innovate much, and so we're still stuck with technologies invented in the 19th century. ~~~ jerf Handwaving at a problem and declaring it's just an "engineering problem" doesn't actually do anything to solve it... hey, wait, are you my manager? The power problem is actually a big deal and shouldn't be minimized. Take the hotel situation; what happens when the hotel loses power? You _can't_ have the locks fail closed, you end up with people trapped away from their stuff. Failing open is of course a bit of a problem, too. Locks by their nature tend to congregate around things that are actually important so you actually have some serious problems with a lock that is "down" even five minutes a year. ~~~ sabat I'm hand-waving at it because this industry has had 40-50 years of high technology at its beck and call and has done little or nothing with it. This _is_ an engineering problem, and making excuses for them ("Failing open is of course a bit of a problem, too") does not change the reality. They have failed to innovate, and the world is going to pay for that. The power problem? So don't use traditional power: experiment with something else. Try. They've had half a century, at least. If that industry had tried at all, it would've come up with more than this. ~~~ jerf You deny my point, then just go on to reinforce it. The lock industry should just create a new magical power source? You just moved around the "mere engineering problem" label but if anything you've made your problem worse by being more clear about what you want to have magicked into existence, not better. ------ piramida Non-destructive lockpicking is a sport these days; burglars would use bumping or other destructive technique like crowbar (with a much shorter path to success) since they won't care about the clean result. Maybe only relevant for spies/intelligence/other areas where you need to hide the fact that the lock has been picked. And the fact that weak lock mechanisms are publicized encourages manufacturers to invent, it's all good. ~~~ blhack I'm sorry, but this isn't completely true. (The part about burglars not using lock picks). I am an amatuer locksmith, and I can open Masterlock No. 3 or No. 5 (which are used _everywhere_ ) incredibly quickly (less than 10 seconds, typically [especially on No. 5, which are horrible). A half diamond pick and a torsion wrench are tiny, I can keep them in my pocket and nobody will ever notice... I can't do this with a huge bolt cutter. Now, do I steal things? Absolutely not. Has getting into picking caused me to be much much more careful about what I lock up, where, and with what? _definitely_. I'm all for locksports, I think the fact that people are getting into picking is awesome, but the idea that using a bolt cutter against a padlock is faster and more conveinient than using a pick is just plain wrong. ~~~ aquateen I remember first seeing the MIT guide and it sparked my interest, however I didn't want to make homemade picks. Can you recommend a good lock pick set? ~~~ bmalicoat I have this set [1]. Though mine has a plastic handle so it was about half the price listed there. It's a nice set, quite small and very pocketable. There's something deeply satisfying about picking locks, hearing each pin tick and feeling the barrel give just _a little_ bit more than the last time you torqued it. I love it. [1] [http://www.southord.com/Lock-Picking-Tools/Jackknife- Pocket-...](http://www.southord.com/Lock-Picking-Tools/Jackknife-Pocket-Lock- Pick-Sets.html) ~~~ blhack Ha! YES! That little snapping feeling. I still remember getting my first lock, :). I was on the phone with a friend and just raking the crap out of it until finally _POP_. She did not understand my excitement.

Asshole x software = Asshole at scale - hermitcrab http://successfulsoftware.net/2013/07/14/asshole-x-software-asshole-at-scale/ ====== dethtron5000 Another use case that the author doesn't go into is the proliferation of penetration/injection/other security attack scripts that allows people to throw a battery of common attacks against dictionaries of sites. That's allowed malicious people to be malicious at scale. ------ quchen I wonder what state of mind suggested throwing "asshole" around all over the place leads one to think it's a good stylistic device for a semi-technical article. The text feels like it's written by a 3-year-old just after learning a forbidden word. ~~~ acuozzo Don't be an asshole.

Scientists 'may have crossed ethical line' in growing human brains - nnx https://www.theguardian.com/science/2019/oct/21/scientists-may-have-crossed-ethical-line-in-growing-human-brains ====== nsonha even a full brain is just a computer without memory, ethical what

Sony Shuts Down PlayStation Network Indefinitely - pwim http://blogs.wsj.com/japanrealtime/2011/04/26/sony-shuts-down-playstation-network-indefinitely/ ====== wmf While it's true that Sony hasn't given a definite promise for when PSN will be back up, I don't think "indefinitely" gives an accurate impression — they're still saying that they're trying to get back online as soon as possible. So there's really nothing new in this article (and it's self-blogspam as well). ------ bluedanieru So does this lend credence to the theory that the attackers compromised the network to the point that they were able to install compromised firmware on users machines? ~~~ ares2012 If they didn't I imagine that Sony is afraid that they could have. I'm more curious if credit card numbers etc. were stolen...

The hackers hacked: main Anonymous IRC servers seized - thornjm http://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/news/2011/05/the-hackers-hacked-main-anonymous-irc-servers-seized.ars ====== joshes The tl;dr of it all is that, according to at least one Anon, this "Ryan" fellow was a former moderator of the IRC and was the legal owner of the AnonOps.ru and AnonOps.net domains. Apparently, two others, "Nerdo" and "Owen" (whom you may remember from the HBGary fiasco), revoked his IRC credentials. Ryan somewhat predictably responded by DDOS'ing (with help from 808chan) and essentially taking his domains and going home. Some Anons responded by getting "Ryan"'s docs and now it's all just a bunch of circle jerking. ~~~ citricsquid It's as if you just described the entire "Anonymous" thing in one simple sentence fragment: > it's all just a bunch of circle jerking. ------ GoodIntentions Reading that article brought to mind a sarcastic question I heard addressed from a skin to a young punk decades back: "So who is in charge of this whole anarchy thing anyway?" ~~~ gcb You can only hear that from someone that still mix up anarchy with chaos. a good example to end this discussion quickly is to point that international law is anarchy, and is pointing to a pretty stable direction. And I do not see anyone claiming for a global earth goverment. just see how little UN has to say in anything. ~~~ udoprog Well little is a relative term. UNs had a big impact on politics in my country. I also found the quote a pretty amusing and quite valid tidbit, given that Anarchy simply means a gov. without ruler. ~~~ orblivion But, membership in the UN is as of yet voluntary, yes? Membership of states in the US, for instance, is not. ~~~ udoprog It was just a comment. I did not disagree with international politics being an anarchic system contrary to chaos. Just the UN bit. I do in fact see it as a very clever observation. ~~~ gcb The UN is just a face to the power. Do you think the global nations agreed on Israel for example? No, the powerful nations decided, UN just delivered the news. Of course UN has some power. but it's mostly a messenger. ------ jrockway Lesson learned today: if you're going to commit crimes, you'd better trust your co-conspirators. Follow-up lesson: turns out that random people on IRC are not automatically trustworthy. Follow-up follow-up lesson: use Tor. ~~~ iwwr Tor is far from safe, especially if your opponent has the ability to intersperse a majority of treacherous nodes into the network. ~~~ jrockway I don't know if that's something to be worried about or not, but it just seems like common sense to try and cover your tracks if you are doing something that The Authorities don't approve of. Sure, Tor might be broken (though there is no evidence of anyone getting in trouble for doing something through Tor), but it might also not be broken. We don't know. We do know for sure that when your IP address is 1.2.3.4 in the logs, they are going to call your 1.2.0.0/16's ISP and be on your doorstep in hours. To be honest, I guess it's good for society that criminals are so stupid. The downside for me is that I don't get to read anything interesting when the media covers these stories -- all I get is "we got a bunch of IPs and people using their real names to harrass Sony executives' kids". ------ sc68cal I guess someone decided to ride the split? <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Internet_Relay_Chat_takeover> ~~~ yurisagalov IRC operators and Channel operators are very different. IRC servers have IRC operators. They are volunteers who make sure that the server remains connected to the network (They can split/reconnect leaf nodes and hubs to/from other servers based on pre-defined rules in the IRC daemon's configuration. This allows you to rebalance the network, and reconnect servers if a central hub goes down/becomes unresponsive). They are also in charge of "policing" the network, they have the ability to kill (ban) users who misbehave, re-assign control in channels which are "taken over", and so on. I've never been on Anon's IRC network, but most IRC networks these days use a "network services" scheme to automate the policing of channels (e.g. ChanServ/NickServ on DALnet/Freenode/Other networks, X/W on Undernet. They are essentially sophisticated robots that have IRC-operator priviliges. They can make someone a channel moderator, automatically ban users by ip/hostname/etc, as well as numerous other functions... I believe EFnet is one of the few "major" networks that doesn't have a services scheme). In any case, a channel takeover, or what this wiki entry referrs to as internet relay chat takeover, can only happen temporarily. Most servers will reset the channel to pre-split conditions upon reconnection. Moreover, any IRCop can reset the channel's operators/moderators/numerous other settings. The problem in this case was that an IRCop misbehaved, not a channel operator :) (I grew up on IRC...can you tell? ;) edit: I'm aware I'm not using proper terminology for most of these things; this is on purpose. ~~~ shii Definitely. Good ol EFnet has always been great about having lax rules. ------ getsat SmilingDevil -> owen: :P we need a hidden irc server for the admins. Why not run their network inside I2P or something similar? ~~~ marshray Probably some are, but the only ones we tend to hear about are those which are not. The more visible ones are also likely to have the most and loudest followers. ------ BasDirks Am I the only one thinking this is all just smoke and mirrors? ~~~ pjscott I was going to go with "sound and fury, signifying nothing," but smoke and mirrors works, too. Anonymous is chaotically aligned. Should it come as any surprise that their innards are equally tumultuous? ------ hm2k reading this is like "when news isn't news"

Interview with Rob Pike on Concurrency/Parellelism (Video) - m0nastic http://www.infoq.com/interviews/pike-concurrency ====== m0nastic Oops, sorry, what I thought was a transcript was just links to that section of the video (updated the title to remove "with transcript") ~~~ tsuyoshi You can see the transcript by clicking on "Full Page Transcript"

Ask HN: Should I use Docker? - hacknrk I am building an internal server for my company in Flask. As of now I have successfully deployed it to a Digital Ocean droplet, configured nginx and WSGI and got it running. Another developer is building a React app to interact with my server&#x27;s API which I think I will deploy on the same droplet too. Because it&#x27;s just an internal app, I only use one droplet. I don&#x27;t know whether I should use Docker to containerize both the server and client apps or just put them on the same machine as two monolithic applications. I heard the good practice these days is to use Docker and microservices but I don&#x27;t want to overengineer things. ====== allsunny There will be a bit of "yak shaving" up front to get it working in the container but I think it's probably worth it over the long run. The main benefit is that you can be sure that the environment you develop in locally will be the same as what is deployed in the wild. As you share your code/application with other developers (which it sounds like you're starting to do) this will become more and more important. Just make sure you're writing your application to be "cloud native" up front (e.g. put your configuration parameters in environment variables) ------ atsaloli Have you got any problems with your current setup? ~~~ hacknrk Currently no, but I want to structure it in a maintainable way. ~~~ atsaloli I understand. Still, if it ain't broke... Check out Max Kanat-Alexander's piece on over-engineering (10 minute Google video) [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0wxyOng0-14](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0wxyOng0-14) In other words, if you're not having maintainability issues with it now, leave it be... once you start having issues, you can re-design (when you actually need it). =)

The best data visualisation I've ever seen - rudenoise http://brendandawes.posterous.com/the-best-data-visualisation-ive-ever-seen ====== TeMPOraL Great idea. Thanks for posting this! Reminds me of an advice my friend gave me once. I was writing a small game with a ball flying between planets in 2D space. Sometimes the ball would travel outside of the screen boundaries. I used to draw a marker on the proper side of the screen to point to where the ball is. The friend suggested much better idea - a circle centered on the ball should be drawn, with radius big enough to make it visible on the game screen. The continuous change of the curvature and length of the visible part of the circle provides feedback on the ball-to-screen distance in the same way that, in your example, hand gestures can provide information on the distance between the car and the wall. Screenshot: [http://temporal.pr0.pl/devblog/download/projects/ClozeCall/s...](http://temporal.pr0.pl/devblog/download/projects/ClozeCall/screenshot- marker.jpg) Note the part of the circle visible near the bottom of that picture. ~~~ hammock That is a much better solution than the "marker" or arrow approach that I've seen in many video games. The arrow approach basically only gives directional information, doesn't offer much feedback in terms of distance from the edge of screen. ------ BigglesZX I too have seen this before, but I believe the point that the author was making was an observation of the hand signal's simplicity. It's an unabiguous indicator of the physical situation he's observing, and doesn't involve any added complication of an ad-hoc signalling system (like waving for "come on" or "slow down" or "left/right", which are often somewhat ambiguous or at least require a second or two's thought). A fleshy progress bar, if you will! ------ joezydeco I'm guessing the author has never watched an aircraft being guided into it's parking spot at an airport. The ground crew does the same thing with the handheld cones/flashlights. ------ mtarnovan Seriously ? This is something that I've been doing all the time when I assist someone in parking in a tight spot. ------ sandstrom I agree, it's an excellent example of good visualization. My dad taught me a few years ago, it's very effective.

The Super Productive Programmer - andrewtbham http://seriouslackofdirection.blogspot.com/2012/11/the-super-productive-programmer.html ====== lmm My experience is that we validate our assumptions when debugging far less than we should. Most of the time your assumption can be tested very trivially, while you can waste a huge amount of time if it's wrong.

Automattic trial data and employee retention - krogsgard http://www.poststat.us/automattic-trial-data-employee-retention/ ====== x0x0 I still think it's weird. 0 - they claim this can be done around a fulltime job, but some people in the thread disagree from experience. Plus, I have a very fulltime job, and particularly come winter, I am busy every single weekend. Your job < snowboarding. In fact, your job <<< snowboarding. 1 - $25/hour is almost worse than $0; it's a fraction of my consulting rate. 2 - I, like many engineers, am not hurting for job opportunities at the moment. ------ jds375 Interesting concept to implement company-wide. It's much like having an intern and then giving them a full-time offer afterwards. ~~~ krogsgard Automattic is the first non-freelance job for many of their employees, but most of them are hardly entry-level like an intern. It's pretty widely considered the premiere place to work in the WordPress ecosystem, given they maintain WordPress.com and their employees are responsible for a considerable amount of the development to the .org project as well.

Show HN: StatusNotify monitors status of 250+ cloud services - kamizoo https://statusnotify.com/ ====== QuinnyPig Does this just scrape the AWS status page, or is it getting something that’s indicative of failure sooner?

Ask HN:Kindle Popularity and the affect of physical books - pedalpete Has anybody else noticed the cost difference between physical books and kindle books on Amazon seems to have shrunk significantly?<p>As an example, Guy Kawasaki's book Enchangement is more expensive as an e-book than a physical book. http://www.amazon.com/Enchantment-Changing-Hearts-Minds-Actions/dp/1591843790/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&#38;s=books&#38;qid=1298425537&#38;sr=1-1<p>Was this inevitable?? Do you think we will likely continue to see an increase in the price of e-books? ====== mechanical_fish Ebooks and print books have different markets. Ergo, we should expect pricing to be correlated, but different. Consider: The economics of producing a hardcover book and a trade paperback are not as different as their prices suggest. The hardcover costs a bit more to print, but not significantly much more, because most of the cost of producing a book is in the writing and editing and marketing. The difference between hardcover and paperback is an artificial marketing distinction: Hardcovers seem more substantial, and (more importantly) they come out earlier, so they sell to the people with more money than patience and with a taste in bookbinding. They are therefore priced higher to take advantage of those folks' willingness to pay. I suspect that so long as e-readers cost hundreds of dollars (and, more importantly, e-books have DRM and can't be borrowed or resold) they will naturally tend to be priced like hardcovers, or worse.

Let's Talk TED Talks - johndbritton http://johndbritton.com/2011/10/27/lets-talk-ted-talks/ ====== johndbritton tl dr; TED Talks spark discussion, let's watch some together and discuss. The group will be facilitated by a program. ------ andrewmwatson Sounds like an awesome idea! A TedXViewingParty! ~~~ growdetroit Great, great, great idea. I'm in. ------ thekevan I'm interested and just signed up. Thanks!

US Coast Guard won't see paychecks due to government shutdown - mariuolo https://www.militarytimes.com/news/pentagon-congress/2018/12/28/coast-guard-wont-see-paychecks-for-several-more-weeks-as-shutdown-continues/ ====== imroot What's interesting is that normally, USAA (and other banks that tend to cater to government employees) will offer 0% APR loans to those who are impacted by this. There have been quite a few reports of USAA not offering loans to those who are affected by this -- and other credit unions (NFCU) only offering $1000 as a quick loan... If the banks don't want to deal with the risk of this until the shutdown is over, this makes me believe that the shutdown will last a while. Interestingly enough, Congresspeople's staff are not getting paid during this break as well -- but the congressfolks are. ~~~ AndrewKemendo I am a USAA member and think this is because the military is not losing pay or being furloughed. The DoD is fully funded in this partial shut down. USAA and NFCU, while they do serve government employees, primarily cater to the DoD with these types of programs. ------ myrandomcomment This is wrong on so may levels. Congress should not see a cent if everyone else is not getting paid. ~~~ max76 The partial goverment shutdown is caused by the president's unwillingness to sign a bill as well as Congress's inability to pass a bill the president is willing to sign. The defused blame sets the game matrix to a state where the delta value between the bill congress agrees on and the bill the president will sign is significantly larger than the defecting penalty any oneside side will suffer. Removing a paycheck from all actors won't provide a significant adjustment to the game matrix, because the reputation deduction portion of the the defector penalty is significantly more valuable than salary. Some actors actually see a reputation increase for fighting this fight. While increasing the defector penalty is a good idea, reduction of salary doesn't increase it much. ~~~ gammateam > The partial goverment shutdown is caused by the president's unwillingness to > sign a bill as well as Congress's inability to pass a bill the president is > willing to sign. you forgot: or pass a bill the president can't sign, by overriding a veto but that also requires even greater consensus than Congress can currently achieve. ~~~ stephenboyd The Senate unanimously passed a budget bill to extend current funding levels into February. It had a good chance of veto-proof supermajority support in the House, but the outgoing Speaker of the House refused to bring it to a vote. ------ Jedi72 I wonder what's going to be more effective - building the wall, or paying the people employed to guard the border? ------ pbalau Maybe it's the time for us to get a RNLI? ~~~ gerdesj You might want to drop the R bit but actually the same org works across both the UKoGBnNI and the Republic of Ireland in a rare example of pragmatism. The US Coast Guard has a rather different remit to the RNLI which is devoted purely to rescue. I believe the USCG has other duties as well. Contrast: [https://www.uscg.mil/](https://www.uscg.mil/) and [https://rnli.org/](https://rnli.org/) The UK and Eire have a huge coastline relative to their land area and the RNLI are a treasured institution. Mostly staffed by volunteers and financed as a charity. We also have a Coast Guard which is actually responsible for search and rescue at sea. It's a little bit complicated but you will be pulled out of the water by a very highly trained civilian volunteer. There is no reason not to start a non military ANLI. The RNLI already have boat designs that are proven and a operational model that is also proven. Just copy it. ~~~ ryacko There was one. [https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_Life- Saving_Se...](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_Life- Saving_Service) ~~~ gerdesj Then this happened: [https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Coast_Guard_Act](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Coast_Guard_Act) You (US) have made your choice on how you want to be rescued at sea and we have made ours. They are simply different models on how to do it. ~~~ dingaling The UK didn't really make a deliberate 'choice'. The RNLI evolved to fill a need that Government wasn't funding; the Coast Guard is only two years older than the RNLI but was formed to prevent smuggling and to protect _shipwrecks_. Once the RNLI was founded as a charity there was of course no pragmatic reason to dedicate tax money to that mission, so here we are today. The contracted Coast Guard helicopter pilots on £150k each hovering beside a lifeboat staffed by volunteers. Whilst the paid RNLI executives sleep. Something's not right there and that's not a model I'd encourage others to adopt. If maritime rescue is considered worthwhile then it should be professionally rewarded, and at all levels. ------ Bodhisattya A president holding the government hostage to its people....... Just wow.

How Robber Barons hijacked the "Victorian Internet" - alecco http://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/news/2009/12/how-the-robber-barons-hijacked-the-victorian-internet.ars/1 ====== nickpinkston Why is no one here mentioning plug-in laws? With proper governance (ie: laws) we can remove the market externality that exists in the natural monopoly of telecom infrastructure. These laws force all infrastructure owners to sell access at bulk rates (like a T3) that allow new ISPs, etc. without any burdens (ie: throttling). Most people would pick the independents without restrictions. Net neutrality, as it's currently setup, makes it too easy for companies to influence the law. Plug-in laws are at work in many developed economies, and are more subject to market forces due to the competition for bulk rate product. ------ javert I smell a straw man here. All the problems mentioned arose because WU was a monopoly. But, why was WU a monopoly? Telegraph lines could only be installed profitably along railroad lines. Thus, the railroad companies could create a situation where there could only be one telegraph company--a monopoly. Why could telegraph lines only be installed profitably alongside railroad lines? Well, one could lay telegraph lines through the countryside fairly cheaply, but the problem is: high taxes on the land you're using, government not allowing you to bury lines below roads and other obstructions, and similar _regulatory_ issues. In other words, there were no non-regulatory reasons one couldn't set up a competing telegraph company (at great profit, if it's true that WU charged exorbitant prices and spied on your messages). Likewise, in the modern telco industry, there are _government-granted_ monopolies to certain companies like AT&T and Time Warner through regulatory means. E.g. typically, only one company is allowed to install communication lines in a given area. Doing away with government-granted monopolistic regulations is the solution. Consider what happens if the other route is taken. The other answer is to have government more heavily regulate the existing monopolies - which _will_ lead to abuse and corruption. If you allow for excessive regulation, you have the recipie for the problem cited in the article: government and certain companies will conspire with each other, to everyone's detriment. It's already happening with AT&T and the US government (consider the extra/quasi-legal spying AT&T has done for the government), and it _will_ get worse under net neutrailty. ~~~ pradocchia > Doing away with government-granted monopolistic regulations is the solution. I have no prescriptions, but I do observer that the grantor and grantee are typically two hands of the same will. That monopolies are granted because _the grantee wants it_ , and has found ways to make it so. How do you do away with that? Capitalism is premised on the concentration of wealth to fund capital- intensive investment. Given the concomitant concentration of power, how do you prevent regulatory capture and the general perversion of government? How do you dilute power and preserve the system? ~~~ anamax Of course the grantee wants it. However, if there's no grantor, it doesn't matter what the grantee wants. > Given the concomitant concentration of power, how do you prevent regulatory > capture and the general perversion of government? A govt that doesn't regulate isn't subject to regulatory capture. A "not govt" that tries to regulate can usually be ignored. ~~~ pradocchia I don't see how this answers the question. There is nothing to prevent a sufficiently influential grantee-to-be from creating a grantor. In fact, I believe this is the origin of many regulatory bodies and government powers. ------ steveklabnik Very cool article. As someone who's very much for small gov't, net neutrality has been a really hard issue for me, personally, as it's making another law to ensure more freedom? Those two concepts are kind of hard to fit together sometimes. ~~~ RyanMcGreal > making another law to ensure more freedom? Those two concepts are kind of > hard to fit together sometimes. Really? What do you think guarantees freedom, if not the rule of law? ~~~ gojomo Laws enforced against deceit and theft and murder help freedom. Laws dictating what's legal to sell, at what price, not at all. The FCC that would enforce "neutrality" also enforces "indecency" rules and has in the past required a minute-for-minute accounting and balance of political expression -- the "fairness doctrine". There is reason to doubt whether neutrality laws would be freedom-promoting or welfare-promoting, in the long run. How well did "rail neutrality" work, in the long run? See: <http://www.nytimes.com/2006/08/03/opinion/03lee.html> ~~~ weavejester > Laws enforced against deceit and theft and murder help freedom. Laws > dictating what's legal to sell, at what price, not at all. Laws are far from the only way to restrict what is sold to the public. Large corporations can leverage their market share to shut down competition in other areas. In order to maintain a healthy market place, you have to ensure that a market is not completely controlled by a few large corporations. ~~~ dpatru A simple way to do this would be to limit some of the advantages of a corporation, which is itself a state-created entity. I've no problem with government limiting the freedom of its own creation which enjoys unlimited life, limited liability, tax advantages. I do have a problem with government restricting the freedom of individuals and partnerships to contract freely in the marketplace. ~~~ weavejester I think the problem still remains; a free market does not necessarily mean it is an optimum market, and the government is not the only factor that can adversely affect a marketplace. ------ chrischen "Freedom is not a zero sum game, where taking it away from some gives more to others. Taking away freedoms of some takes away freedom from all." I wonder how he'd feel after we make murder legal, and then I shoot him in the face. Have him see how much freedom he has when he's dead. My point is that it's a gray area. It's not all freedom or nothing. ~~~ gills Some might see your analogy as backwards, especially if they view individual freedom as having natural bounds which are easily identifiable to mentally stable humans. I have a feeling that's why you were voted down (not by me, sorry). An example of this line of reasoning: <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/A_Theory_of_Justice>

Google fired engineer for breaking internal privacy policies - cristinacordova http://techcrunch.com/2010/09/14/google-engineer-spying-fired/ ====== thesethings I'm going to temporarily put aside what this guy did (which is really bad, but people with bad intent aren't common), to discuss what this tells us about Google (which is about The System, and cause for larger concern). If anybody from Google can (anonymously if necessary) step in and answer questions, it'd be great. * Different gmail accounts. Google knows they're all you. In the original Gawker story, this caught my eye: "...pulled up the person's email account...[and] a list of other Gmail addresses that the friend had registered but didn't think were linked to their main account—within seconds" Keeping separate Gmail accounts is how many protect against "Google knows everything about me." In fact on Google's "What Google knows about you" page, it never crosses accounts (unless you've manually connected them). This story basically tells us the "What we know about your account" page is a bit misleading. Of course most folks in IT know it's a bit naive to think one could never figure out that different gmail accounts are related. But it was interesting that Google pretty formally knows the relationship, but doesn't tell you right where it should. * SREs, and their level of access. It's not so much that I care is a specific group has lots of access. I care that not that many groups do in total. This story makes me concerned that actually many groups have lots of access. Despite the "elite navy seal" vibe presented in the Gawker story about SREs, I'm now thinking that many, many teams have this kind of access. (Previous to this story, I was led to believe that SREs were quite low level (not in importance. but in nature of responsibilities. Very performance oriented, having little reason to have access to an individual user's data.). Please feel free to jump in and correct this, Google peeps. It would make me feel better. * What this does for SaaS and web apps in general I love Google Docs and sincerely believe that most web apps that allow across- the-net collaboration are good for us. And are preferable to The Old Way. I want people to TRUST their stuff to Google (and Github and Amazon, etc). I hate security FUDers who love to derail conversations of great possibility with some far out scenario, "Can my enemy see my Google Docs?!?!" I'm way less worried about a few creeps who work at Google (they work everywhere...) and more concerned about laissez-faire access processes. ~~~ nl _"...pulled up the person's email account...[and] a list of other Gmail addresses that the friend had registered but didn't think were linked to their main account—within seconds"_ This surprised me too. In the absence of any further comment from Google, I'd be very interested to see some journalists doing some investigation here. Assuming that this is real and not mis-reporting or user error, I'm guessing Google links using either their google.com cookie, IP address and/or browser identification. Any of those methods have potential for errors (in particular they mean you should never share a _browser_ with another person in case your account ends up linked. That seems.... extreme..) ~~~ heinel Not a journalistic investigation, but a while back I decided that I need a new gmail account. I signed it up using some different credentials, including a different name. However, I did not mention my old gmail account in the entire sign-up process. After I activated my new account, I got an email on my old account referencing the new address I just signed up for and a verification code "in case something happens." From this it seems to me like this is not a deliberate maneuver to deceive, but rather just an oversight. ~~~ nl I have a second gmail account (in the olden days that's what they recommended on <http://code.google.com/apis/gadgets/docs/publish.html> \- I see now that they have switched to using filters), and this didn't happen to me. Are you sure you didn't use the first gmail account to send an invitation? Because in that case it does add the address to both accounts address books. ------ cperciva He was fired? That's all? From all reports, it seems that this Google employee accessed data which he knew he had no authorization to access. That sounds like a textbook case of computer crime -- why hasn't he been arrested yet? ~~~ pvg He did have authorization to access it. He didn't have authorization to abuse it in the way that he did. It's all kinds of icky but what do you think was so obviously criminal about it that you expect him to be in jail? ~~~ cperciva Unless Google's policies were written by bungling idiot, Barksdale would have authorization to access _information required for him to fulfill his duties_. The information he accessed very obviously goes well beyond such authorization. ~~~ pvg Well. We can get into a silly discussion about what 'authorization' means, I just don't understand why you find this so obviously criminal. Remember these idiots - [http://www.pcworld.com/article/154392/snoopy_verizon_employe...](http://www.pcworld.com/article/154392/snoopy_verizon_employees_fired.html) Didn't get charged, let alone arrested, either. ------ tptacek Regardless of how Google is playing this in the press, the question people need to be asking isn't about the rogue employee. It is: "what are the controls being put in place to prevent SRE's from accessing sensitive data inside Google apps, and what specific forms of information is Google considering sensitive for those purposes, and is there a class of employee at Google that is expected to be exempt from these controls?" ~~~ btilly And Google has answered that question. See [http://techcrunch.com/2010/09/14/google-engineer-spying- fire...](http://techcrunch.com/2010/09/14/google-engineer-spying-fired/) for the following passage: _We dismissed David Barksdale for breaking Google’s strict internal privacy policies. We carefully control the number of employees who have access to our systems, and we regularly upgrade our security controls–for example, we are significantly increasing the amount of time we spend auditing our logs to ensure those controls are effective. That said, a limited number of people will always need to access these systems if we are to operate them properly–which is why we take any breach so seriously._ I would assume that the logs he is talking about are logs of accesses made by Google employees to data covered by the privacy policy. (Disclaimer, I am an SRE at Google. I do not speak for Google.) ~~~ tptacek First hit: [http://jobs.metafilter.com/173/Site-Reliability-Engineer- at-...](http://jobs.metafilter.com/173/Site-Reliability-Engineer-at-Google) Required Skills/Qualifications: * BA/BS in Computer Science, MS or PhD is preferred. * 0-15 years experience. * 3+ years developing web-based applications. ~~~ btilly You left out most of the credentials that were listed in that ad. And I don't think that anyone believes that every SRE who has the paper credentials gets hired. Also most SREs don't get access to the same things that this guy did. (What you get access to depends on what you're working on.) ~~~ tptacek The rest of the credentials were skills-based, except for that last one, which suggested that some management skills would be a nice-to-have. Do you take my point about how "SRE" isn't a very strong answer here? ~~~ btilly I think you don't know what you are talking about here. It is like someone seeing an ad for entrepreneurs that says, "Willing to work. Willing to take risks. Strong computer skills a significant plus"." And then concluding that the bar to being a successful entrepreneur is very low so they should be dismissed as a group. Becoming an SRE is much, much harder than just having the credentials you listed. Being an SRE generally does not give you full access to everything at Google. I never met this one, so I don't know what his role was or why he was given that level of access. But that access really isn't something that just gets handed out to people off the street. The fact that you found that ad, and that Google screwed up this particular case, doesn't say that Google doesn't limit who gets access to sensitive data. ~~~ tptacek I think you're extrapolating too much out of my comments. I'm saying that "SRE is an important job" doesn't answer the concern. I'm not surprised that Google has controls beyond "you're an SRE, you can do whatever you want" --- in fact, I'd be shocked if they didn't. But it sure sounds that way from the story that just broke yesterday. ------ jacquesm At first glance, google comes off pretty good on how they dealt with this, but you have to wonder how come a single engineer has access to google voice _and_ google mail and IM data of end users. SRE's as these employees are labeled (site reliability engineers) are 'highly experienced engineers who can be trusted'. It goes beyond just snooping too, apparently this guy changed end-user settings which had specifically made to lock him out, and spent a lot of time and effort to use his position at google to achieve real world effects with the people he was snooping on. This guy has a serious case of sysadmin god complex and while I'm really not sure if it is ok for him to be exposed with name and picture I hope he'll never be in a position of such responsibility again, and I hope that google will perform better oversight of the people that have access like this. The only thing that got the ball rolling here was the parents of some of the kids alerting google. ~~~ yrb I got the impression that SRE basically have low level access to the storage stack. So wouldn't be subject to most of the normal application level logging that I would assume would red flag this behaviour pretty fast. The only way to get around this is to have someone audit _all_ their actions constantly, which you need someone equally or more familiar with the systems they are working with. I think that is pretty impossible to implement that level of overview with humans, the best way to go normally is the 'buddy system' so no one can access a system unless they have a 'buddy' with them. Like the military do in nuclear weapon silos. ~~~ jacquesm Access to the low level storage stack would not allow you to query with so much detail and would likely not have an interface that would allow you to modify user settings at will. So he must have used some higher level tools. ~~~ birken Well it depends. For example if an application uses Bigtable, then the key + column names often gives a lot of information about what data is stored there, which if somebody had access to some basic application data they might be able to get at somebodies specific data. However as you might expect there are many safeguards in place, including ensuring every action is fully and securely authenticated so even low level SREs cannot read application data without a paper trail. This story is pretty surprising to me, and if true this guy is an idiot. ------ robk This is pretty serious and the fact it's turned into a story is one of the more damaging things you could expect to see about Google w.r.t. privacy. SREs are indeed very privileged and in many cases have carte blanche on their associated products. It's saddening one of them used his rights for nefarious purposes and broke some of the trust around Google's handling of personal data. I hope this leads to better auditing at least internally - seems like something that better transparency of access would have brought to light earlier. ~~~ Kadrith While it is no guarantee of any change I like that they are not attempting to sweep this under the rug. There are a lot of companies where people have access to a lot of sensitive data. All you can do is screen the employees, limit their access where possible and audit their use of the security. But then someone needs to audit the auditors. Just before I started here we used to have an employee who would look in the Oracle database used by Lawson to check payroll data. Nobody knew for a long time since he was the UNIX admin and DBA. ~~~ jacquesm I don't know where 'here' is but you might want to edit that comment. ------ js2 I'm not a big fan of Gawker, but why not link to the original story instead of the meta-story? <http://gawker.com/5637234/> ~~~ epi0Bauqu Because HN auto-banned it: <http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1692807> ~~~ Anechoic That link just goes to a empty HN page ~~~ epi0Bauqu Turn on showdead. ------ nkassis I think google manned up well on this one. They will always have this problem. At least it seems they have less (that we know off) incidents than the government does. It's pretty incredible how many stories of government employees snooping (even selling it to organize crime) information stored in their databases. ~~~ jacquesm That was my first take as well, but after reading up a bit on it it seems that they tried to make it go away by not charging him, when if you look at the severity of this case they had every reason to. So they tried to sweep it under the rug by just letting the guy go. If an employee of mine had ever snooped on end-user data and would have used that data in order to get real-world effects in the lives of those users I'm fairly sure I would have registered a complaint with law enforcement. Google has their 'image' to be aware of, but in this case just letting the guy go may not be the best way to preserve that image. ~~~ jonknee Not that I have any information, but it could be that the parties affected did not want to pursue legal action. All we know about the story is a quote from Google and a speculative article from Gawker. ------ lippe_maia this isn't that surprising. this stuff happens all the time at any company that has that many employees. a person i know who is a software developer at facebook told me that everyone there looks at people's private stuff and reads people's private messages when they want to and you just have to be discrete about it so that no one (i.e. users) notices. ~~~ enneff I can tell you that it does NOT typically happen at Google. If you so much as joke about this stuff people will give you negative reactions. I was genuinely shocked to read about this today as I never would have expected any Google employee to be so unethical. If what you say about the practices at Facebook is even remotely true then it is disgusting and shameful behaviour. ------ brisance "For evil to flourish, all that is needed is for good people to do nothing." -- Edmund Burke. Google's mere dismissal of the guy comes across as pretty evil. According to the article, there was a previous instance of malfeasance. If the bad PR behind all these privacy breaches were taken more seriously, Google would probably have to clean up their act and users would benefit as a result. ~~~ cdibona Wait, are you saying that we should be reacting to the PR (we didn't, he was let go some time ago) or to the act? I would always rather we react appropriately to the act. (disclaimer, work at google, blah blah blah) ------ stevefink I'm impressed with how transparent Google was with handling the issue. Unfortunately, things like this can and will occasionally happen. You can either put up your own Postfix server if you do not like it - or you can thank Google for continuing to provide such a kick ass free service. As for David Barksdale, good luck to you, you will need it. ------ code_duck I'm a lot more concerned about the data centers full of government employees wiretapping innocent people for no apparent reason. A fair bit came about concerning this a year or two ago, with ex-employees stating that the system was routinely abused for amusement. What's up with that these days? ------ Xurinos Just to keep this into perspective, we are reading about this because it is Google. But _every_ system and _every_ relay through which your email passes is a point where somebody with less then well-meaning intentions can read your email. We may be able to somewhat rely on Google to enforce some privacy policy, given publicity pressures, but some danger lies in all the carriers between point A and point B. It is a shame that PGP only took off in the hardcore user community. If it was made insanely accessible to users -- maybe even transparent -- maybe we could have a better assumption of privacy for our communications (as well as a potential reduction in spam?). ------ jakarta Maybe Google should add more questions related to ethics in their rigorous interview process. ------ spaznode Still kind of alarming, I mean I do personally know some google employees and none would even remotely consider doing anything like this for both philosophical and practical reasons. Either way it's kind of scary that some douche fucker "quality assurance" dweeb had enough access to do this kind of thing. I think we ought to have some kind of equivalent HIPPA act for ALL data personally identifiable to us, not just in medical contexts. That'd put the fire under googles ass enough to take our privacy seriously. Fuck Eric Schmidt and his "change your name at 18" bullshit. We know who that fucker is right now. ~~~ 124816 Did you ever see the full quote of the "change your name" stuff? > Mr. Schmidt is surely right, though, that the questions go far beyond > Google. "I don't believe society understands what happens when everything is > available, knowable and recorded by everyone all the time," he says. He > predicts, apparently seriously, that every young person one day will be > entitled automatically to change his or her name on reaching adulthood in > order to disown youthful hijinks stored on their friends' social media > sites. Which makes sense to me. Hell, I wish I could delete some videos and/or photos of me on various sites. Lately Schmidt has been making statements like this though; they are reasonable when complete, but some reporters snip out five words (or, just paraphrase or interpret) and create a news storm. CEOs are supposed to be good at avoiding that sort of thing. > equivalent HIPPA act for ALL data personally identifiable We ought to start with getting the same level of laws for voip, IM, and email that phone and mail have. "All PII" is too vague, but those seem like a slam dunk. ------ braindead_in Are GV calls all recorded? Is it there somewhere in the TOS? Even if its there, the consent of the other party is required to record calls. Otherwise its a offense. Right? ------ cristinacordova TC followup - [http://techcrunch.com/2010/09/14/google-engineer-fired- secur...](http://techcrunch.com/2010/09/14/google-engineer-fired-security/) ------ heyrhett I love that this is on the front page at the same time as Don Dodge's blog article about what an amazing job google does at hiring people: [http://dondodge.typepad.com/the_next_big_thing/2010/09/how-t...](http://dondodge.typepad.com/the_next_big_thing/2010/09/how- to-get-a-job-at-google-interview-questions-hiring-process.html) ~~~ cdibona You hire 20k people over 10 years and make not one mistake? Iknow you are being snarky, but there is no perfect hiring process, no matter what you measure. ------ Pyrodogg Probably going way off deep end here... Sometimes I wonder if someone in the process shouldn't be licensed by the state in the interest of protecting the interests of the public. Just like doctors, lawyers and engineers. That way, if something goes horribly wrong, someone's ass is more on the line than them just losing their paycheck. ~~~ msisk6 As someone who formally worked in an engineering profession that required state licensing and now working doing the same job Mr. Barksdale did (not for Google, though), I can't see any sort of licensing helping with this sort of problem. And I think at this point Mr. Barksdale ass is pretty much screwed -- it's unlikely he'll ever get a job doing this sort of work again. It's a tricky problem. I know to do my job I need root access to everything. I guess at Google scale you could compartmentalize so the same person doesn't have free access across services. But at some point you just gotta trust your people. OTOH, perhaps I just don't understand -- what this fellow did is so over the top it's difficult for me to understand _why_ he would do such a thing. It's wrong on so many levels -- it's just not something I can comprehend. ~~~ nostrademons My read on it was that he's a typical Aspergian nerd (of which there are several at Google), and it never occurred to him that what he was doing was not-okay. A lot in the story seems to support that. Why else is he hanging out with high schoolers - who don't even like him? Why does he feel the need to brag about his position at Google and the power it gives him? Some people are born knowing all the rules to social interaction. But others have to learn them through painful trial and error. A lot of us got that out of the way in middle school, high school, and college, before we were given the responsibility to do anything truly damaging to ourselves and others. Maybe he just had the bad luck to not seriously screw up until he's at an age where everyone will blacklist him for it. ------ spaznode This is a really big deal guys, it means nothing at all how comfy we feel knowing google peeps personally. The fact is there is no regulation or oversight dictating how seriously google needs to take our privacy other than random - easily ignored - blips like this. We need government intervention/oversight to make this stuff go away. The gov is already there unofficially anyway, let's not kid ourselves about that. Google gave that little piece away years ago. No us company with that much personal data would be allowed to exist otherwise. I would know, did gigs at bellatlantic long before "it" happened and uncle sam was and always has been there just the same. More about what they're allowed to officially charge you with in court - don't think they couldn't know either way at some level..though probably what they were doing really was in our national best interest. Not judging, just saying..we need offiial public oversight or be left at the mercy of what the corporation decides to do with our data. The same data that provides the overwhelming majority of revenue via advertisers. It's just sick is all. ------ thought_alarm No worries. I don't personally know anyone who works for Google, so I guess I'm safe. However, I do know people who work at a local ISP, and I'm sure as hell not passing my email through those servers. ~~~ btilly If you hang out here long enough, you will likely get to know people who work at Google. (Like me.) ------ vegai I'm amazed, positively. I wouldn't have thought they would be taking the users' privacy so seriously. ------ towndrunk I'm surprised all of Googles interviewing tricks didn't catch this. ------ TheAmazingIdiot Hard call. They offer great free services and have changed the landscape of email, phone, and document communication. Yet they are one entity with all the information of DeJa News, Keyhole Maps, YouTube, DoubleClick, GrandCentral, Gizmo5, DocVerse, and their own email and app offerings. (see <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_acquisitions_by_Google>) So yes, it is refreshing to see transparency of "Engineer fired for snooping where they shouldnt". But we keep using them as a service, so it's a hard problem to combat. After all, the price is right. Just costs your privacy. ~~~ ZeroMinx While I enjoy bashing big corporations as the next guy, this isn't really a Google problem. If you're on the internet, your information will always be available to someone. On the internets, as in real life, this power can be abused. Appreciate the fact that they're open about it. ~~~ TheAmazingIdiot Trust me. I'm not bashing. I have a blackberry hooked up to Google Voice and Mail servers. They know my name, address, all my phone numbers, all my emails, my contact lists, frequency I receive calls on my Google number, text transcription of voicemails. They also can potentially record every call I receive and make with GV. Considering the benefit I get from _just Mail and GV_ , the datamining is a cost I'm willing to make. I also know if my phone is lost, I dont lose my data. And I can back it up elsewhere. And I am somewhat happily shocked that they came such forthright that they "fired him for snooping". Most places will only say "They no longer work for the company". ------ Charuru So this genius violated policy, and then bragged about it to his victim / the person who have the most reason to report him? He's totally dumb. ------ rufugee Wow...it appears Daniel Faraday left the island and took up programming...

“Oh By” Is the Universal Shortener - rsync https://0x.co/index.html ====== smt88 Don't use this or any other URL shortener for any reason. It degrades online security[1], creates a bad UX, and breaks the web[2]. If you insist on using one, use one that is owned and maintained by a massive, stable company, like Google[3]. Smaller services, with no culpable business behind them, tend to die off[4][5]. 1\. [https://www.schneier.com/blog/archives/2016/04/security_risk...](https://www.schneier.com/blog/archives/2016/04/security_risks_11.html) 2\. [https://t37.net/why-link-shorteners-harm-your-readers-and- de...](https://t37.net/why-link-shorteners-harm-your-readers-and-destroy-the- web.html) 3\. [https://goo.gl](https://goo.gl) 4\. [http://www.webpronews.com/study-claims-61-of-url- shorteners-...](http://www.webpronews.com/study-claims-61-of-url-shorteners- are-dead-2012-05/) 5\. [https://bit.do/list-of-url-shorteners.php](https://bit.do/list-of-url- shorteners.php) ~~~ rsync Hi - a few things... First, URL shortening is not what this tool is for. It _will_ function as a URL shortener if you put in a URL and _tell it to_ , but again - that's not what it was built for. Second, I tend to agree with the notion that URL shorteners are "bad for the web". So, since we happen to have a (secondary) URL shortening function, I did two things: 1\. Made a commitment with actual resources to keep 0x.co running _forever_.[1] 2\. Had a short discussion with my friend Jason Scott[2][3] about giving Internet Archive and Archive Team an easy port for download/archiving. In our conversation he reiterated his (well known) position that URL shorteners are bad in general, but less terrible if there is a published (and maintained) spec for data exfiltration. But _again_ ... URL shortening is NOT what this tool is for. [1] simple, lightweight pages combined with massive, leftover rsync.net bandwidth/hosting resources make this trivial. [2] [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jason_Scott](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jason_Scott) [3] [http://ascii.textfiles.com/](http://ascii.textfiles.com/) ~~~ hga Yes, this is _not_ a URL shortener per se, although it can obviously be used as such. Sad story, but I worked for a company named Netword exactly two decades ago that was going to do this in a big way, even got one of the major SV investment firms, Hambrecht & Quist, very interested (and their in with Netscape, who they helped take public, would have been important), as in, we launched, and they came to us.... But it was killed by devil investors who due to previous resource misallocations and bad risk management (MPV, MPV, MVP!!!) had gotten their hooks into the company about the time I started there. Weird and nasty denouncement, 13 of us resigned in masse one day from our lawyer's office, we had to fight to get our last paychecks (something state government enforcement agencies have no humor about at all), etc. etc. It a very good idea, I think, and who knows, maybe it's time has come. Mr. rsync (who I'm a very happy customer of ([http://www.ancell- ent.com/1715_Rex_Ave_127B_Joplin/images/](http://www.ancell- ent.com/1715_Rex_Ave_127B_Joplin/images/) )), you're welcome to drop me an email check my info) for what we figured out in that effort. Note that we were going to do "Networds(TM)", as in "Intel annual report", obviously one thing that made this less important was the increasing quality of search engines. This isn't quite the same thing.... ~~~ rsync First of all, thanks for being our customer (at rsync.net, that is). Yes, I'll email to hear your story - it would be interesting. I think the key to what I'm trying to do here is keeping the product, and the interface, extremely stripped down and simple - which causes costs to drop dramatically (in terms of hosting, bandwidth, server costs, etc.). Not having any advertisements or tracking or third party hooks, etc., makes that much easier - and makes for a much nicer product. The revenue model is selling custom codes, so _you are not the product_. The codes are. ~~~ hga _The revenue model is selling custom codes,_ so you are not the product _. The codes are._ That, BTW, was the business model of Netword, and in those gold rush days it worked very well. Today, resources are so cheap it ought to work as well, even if it doesn't really take off. And you're welcome, and again, thanks for saving my email etc. from a tornado.... ------ geofft How should someone unfamiliar with Oh By realize that the string "0x7DBZ3G" is a thing they can look up? Is your plan to get sufficient popularity that people will recognize them like they recognize URLs? IIRC, the "Visit us on the World Wide Web at aitch tee tee pee colon slash slash" days lasted quite a while. (Not to mention the "colon backslash backslash" days.) I don't think I can just write "0x7DBZ3G" today (but maybe in a few years!); I'd have to write some reference to [http://0x.co/](http://0x.co/). ~~~ rsync "Is your plan to get sufficient popularity that people will recognize them like they recognize URLs?" Yes, that is indeed the plan, and yes, that will be a challenge. That's why we chose that domain name and that sort-of-phonetical-mouthing of it ... ------ bunni Don't think of this as a url shortener, my use case would be something like pastebin or gist but with free private anonymous pastes. It also took me all of 2 minutes to get a python implementation working with the API. One suggestion, when I look up the codes if I include the 0x eg. "0xDV2HW7" or "0 x DV2HW7" it fails to lookup the code - it wasn't immediately obvious to me to discard the 0x on lookup. ~~~ rsync Hmmm .... we have it coded to accept _either_ : [http://0x.co/EXAMPLE](http://0x.co/EXAMPLE) or: [http://0x.co/0xEXAMPLE](http://0x.co/0xEXAMPLE) ... so I wonder, how are you doing the lookup that it is failing without the 0x ? EDIT: OH, ACTUALLY - are you looking up "0 x EXAMPLE", with the spaces in there ? No, that won't work - we just have the spaces in place on the webpage to make it easy on the eyes ... is that what you're doing ? edit: and for anyone reading, you can do the lookup _even simpler_ with plain old 'nc' \- you can specify [http://](http://) (non SSL) address if you need to ... ~~~ cbhl If you decide that spaces aren't valid identifiers in 0x codes, then it might be worthwhile to strip all of them out when someone enters one. ~~~ rsync Ok, we now ignore spaces in the code inputs, so it no longer matters if you enter: 7DBZ3G 0x7DBZ3G 0 x 7DBZ3G ... they all work the same way. ------ kqr Question not covered by the FAQ: for the mathematically lazy, what kind of size are we looking at in terms of "oh by" code space? How many documents can be stored until codes become too long to store in the (human) working memory? Will there be an option to generate a code "long enough" that it can not easily be brute force guessed? ~~~ rsync Right now, as in, launch day, we are handing out 6 character codes that are 0-9,A-Z (but excluding '0', 'o', 'x', '1' and 'l') ... so 31^6 codes. But you can _purchase a custom code_ [1] and the price is based on the length (shorter being more expensive) and the max size is 32 characters. So you can choose what you like, and it's as low as $8/year if it's 9 characters or longer... [1] [https://0x.co/custom.html](https://0x.co/custom.html) ------ rsync There is an "HN FAQ" which we think addresses things HN folks will be interested in, as opposed to the "civilian" FAQ. Not at all related to rsync.net, but yes, I'm the rsync.net guy. Happy to answer questions here. ------ cbhl The codes in your FAQs (0x7DBZ3G, 0xDY34NK) don't actually lead anywhere -- that might get confusing if they get handed out (e.g. start linking to malware) later. ~~~ rsync Thanks - we'll get those populated after lunch here... ------ bobuking Not working on Opera 12.16 (last Presto engine). Not working on Chromium 37 So. [https://www.ssllabs.com/ssltest/analyze.html?d=0x.co](https://www.ssllabs.com/ssltest/analyze.html?d=0x.co) \- and apache behind... ------ tokenizerrr The time that is displayed should include the timezone. No idea what timezone it's in, but it definitely isn't UTC. ------ chrismartin Another curious rsync.net customer taking a look. I think you're actually offering a key-value store (aaS) with a 4 KB maximum page size, and one of the use cases happens to be a text/URL shortener. It looks like someone is squatting on ox.co. You could contact them and hope they haven't seen your project yet.. How are the codes derived? ~~~ rsync "Another curious rsync.net customer taking a look." Thanks for being our customer (at rsync.net). "How are the codes derived?" # generate the ohby code use String::Random; my $pattern = new String::Random; my $size = 6; # don't use i,I,1,l,L,0,O,X,x etc.. $pattern->{'A'} = [ 'A'..'H', 'J', 'K', 'M', 'N', 'P'..'W', 'Y' .. 'Z', '2'..'9' ]; my $code = $pattern->randpattern('A' x $size); (We disallow ILOX and 0 since that could get confusing) Right now we are handing out random (free) codes that are 6 characters long, but at some point I suppose we have to increase to 7 ... like ICQ ... ------ LeoPanthera It seems like a bad choice of domain, given the example usage. "0x" will be regularly confused with "ox", and ox.co is a completely different site. ------ fraXis What language / framework is the backend programmed in? ~~~ rsync perl. Also: view source on any page to learn _just what kind_ of a website 0x.co is ... ------ wcf3 What does the public/private option do? ~~~ rsync At some point (not now) we will present existing codes as a searchable resource from the outside. I haven't decided what that presentation layer will look like, but the idea is that a lot of Oh By Codes will contain important or helpful information and benefit from being searchable. But some won't. So if you want to keep the content of your code private/unindexed/norobots, you would set that flag to "private". I think the expiration pick-list is self-explanatory, yes ? ------ thde Do you provide a .onion address?

AEZ: An Easy-to-Use Authenticated Encryption Scheme - mehrdada http://www.cs.ucdavis.edu/~rogaway/aez/index.html ====== pbsd There aren't many comments here, so I'll take the liberty of adding a thing or two. This is a CAESAR submission by Rogaway and friends. It is essentially a construction that uses AES and transforms it into a block cipher of arbitrary size. The authentication comes for free by appending zeroes at the end of the message and checking that they remain zeroes after decryption. This is a nice scheme for users, since it provides strong misuse guarantees. Repeating nonces won't be catastrophic like in many of the other CAESAR ciphers, and the speed is quite nice (mostly owing to the hardware-accelerated AES-NI instructions). For implementers it's not so nice, as it seems rather complicated (especially if you do not have constant-time hardware AES instructions). Like the majority of AES-based schemes, security starts to break down once you encrypt around 2^64 blocks with the same key. This is not AES's or AEZ's fault, it's a consequence of AES's small 128-bit block size. As a result, the authors do not recommend encrypting over 4 petabytes of data under the same key. It would be nice if AEZ was defined in terms of a generic block cipher, but as far as I understand the scheme is quite tied to AES. ------ akerl_ Does somebody wanna give the layman's version of why I would use this? I don't blame the site for this, given that it doesn't appear designed to be read by a layperson, but without some kind of I'm-Not-A-Crypto-Wizard translation it just reads like big-word-bingo to me. ~~~ mehrdada Relatively short description of the design goal: The goal of an encryption scheme is to provide confidentiality. It is important to know that most traditional encryption schemes, like block ciphers in CBC, CTR, OFB modes, do not provide any authenticity, i.e. while you cannot recover the plaintext from a ciphertext, you might be able to feed the decryption algorithm a ciphertext that you crafted, without the decryption algorithm having a means for detecting its lack of authenticity (e.g. flipping a bit in ciphertext generated with CTR mode will result in a flipped bit in decrypted plaintext), and in effect, making the system do things that an adversary wants it to do. In practice, this can often be more dangerous than loss of confidentiality. In order to add authenticity to an encryption scheme, you would traditionally apply a separate message authentication algorithm to the ciphertext and the initialization vector to generate an _authentication tag_ , which you can then use to verify if the ciphertext was tampered with. There are many ways this combination can go wrong (and has gone) due to design and implementation mistakes, like sharing the key for the MAC and encryption algorithms, not authenticating the IV, not verifying the tag correctly and exposing yourself to timing attacks, applying the MAC to plaintext, as opposed to the ciphertext, etc.. For this reason, and performance implications, it is desirable to have encryption schemes that also somehow provide authenticity almost "for free", as a natural byproduct of the ciphertext generation. Encryption schemes that achieve that, like OCB, CCM, CWC, and GCM modes, are called Authenticated Encryption. Most of the regular authenticated encryption schemes rely on passing a unique number when encrypting each message, called nonce or initialization vector. For instance, encrypting more than one message with AES in GCM mode with the same nonce will result in total loss of authenticity, among other things. Therefore, they are not very resistant to accidental misuse, and extreme care should be taken while using them. AEZ, on the other hand, strives to be a more robust authenticated encryption scheme in the face of nonce reuse (misuse), that is, it will not face a catastrophic loss of security if a nonce is accidentally reused.

Federal judge puts limits on FBI use of “stingray” cell site simulators - declan https://plus.google.com/+DeclanMcCullagh/posts/3gc6o6B3Pex ====== Sniffnoy The actual requirements start on page 8. Here's my summary: > First, law enforcement officers must make reasonable efforts to minimize the > capture of signals emitted from cell phones used by people other than the > target of the investigation. [...] Moreover, law enforcement officers must > not use a cell-site simulator when, because of the location and time, an > inordinate number of innocent third parties’ information will be collected. > Second, law enforcement officers must immediately destroy all data other > than the data identifying the cell phone used by the target. The destruction > must occur within forty-eight hours after the data is captured. [...] > Additionally, the destruction must be evidenced by a verification provided > to the Court with the return of the warrant. > Third, law enforcement officers are prohibited from using any data acquired > beyond that necessary to determine the cell phone information of the target. ------ scintill76 "Cell site simulators" Somehow I don't think they'd call it that if I "simulated a law enforcement officer", presented a "simulated identification document", or enticed someone to pay me for a "simulated service", opening mail addressed to my "simulated persona" but not to me, etc. These devices are fraudulently impersonating users' cell service carriers. They are fake cell towers. ~~~ thaumasiotes They likely operate with permission from the cell service carriers, which would make a big difference legally. ~~~ TazeTSchnitzel Do they? Why would the Govt. tell the carriers about it? ~~~ toomuchtodo Because without carrier permission, they're violating Federal laws administered by the FCC. ~~~ scintill76 Without carrier permission, they might be violating some type of interference regulations, but I would also think the fake cell device itself and maybe its operator would need FCC licenses regardless of carrier permission. As an Ars Technica post I linked in another comment shows, the cell sites are probably being used outside of the constraints of their FCC licenses. ------ dogma1138 This is the actual link [http://law.justia.com/cases/federal/district- courts/illinois...](http://law.justia.com/cases/federal/district- courts/illinois/ilndce/3:2015mc00021/317964/1/) ~~~ declan Well, yes, but HN often links to blog posts and news articles about a court opinion rather than the opinion itself. A summary (that links to the opinion) tends to be more useful to non- specialists than a document beginning with: "United States of America v. In the Matter of the Application of the United States, No. 3:2015mc00021 - Document 1 (N.D. Ill. 2015)" ~~~ privacy101 the blog post does not even mention warrants but the justia link does... I would be curious to know if a warrant is required for all people located in the area where such a device is used (which of course should be impossible). ------ omginternets Silly thought experiment: Police dogs are known for being trained to deliver false positives, i.e. saying "drugs" when the are no drugs. Couldn't STINGRAY et al be used to the same effect? I.e.: "the suspect showed a pattern predictive of child pornography" being used as a pretext for executing a warrant? Where is this wrong? Is there any evidence in favor of this interpretation? ------ leeoniya It says the destruction of collected info not pertaining to the target must occur within 48 hours but prior to this it says they frequently need to diff multiple sessions possibly at different locations to pinpoint the target and eliminate others. Does this mean they cannot run sessions separated by > 48 hours, since no diff would be possible afterwards? ~~~ jacquesm No, it means they're going to do the sessions anyway, keep the data, do the diff whenever they feel like it and then phone in an anonymous call with the evidence, _then_ destroy the collected information. ~~~ leeoniya [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Parallel_construction](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Parallel_construction) FTW i guess with the W = warrant ------ distantsounds I wish I were surprised these provisions weren't originally penned when drafting laws related to cell site simulators, but my faith in the US government actually looking out for the privacy of its citizens has been less than stellar. ~~~ exelius Law in the US tends to come only after abuses have happened, especially with regards to government powers. It was a brilliant marketing strategy on the part of the companies providing the cell tower simulators to claim they were covered under "national security rules" to avoid giving secrets to terrorists -- even though use of such cell site simulators by police/military has been commonplace across the world since the 90s. Especially in the types of totalitarian regimes that often push people into extreme ideologies. It prevented this from being much of a story for a long time, and by shielding the source of information in court, it allowed them to sell a lot of these devices before the legal system caught up. ~~~ oxide this is a great point. I often think of the current research chemical market in regards to this: a poorly understood drug like MDPV makes the rounds on the internet, someone decides to take the risks for the rewards in the gray-area and makes it widely available, someone buys it at a gas station and ends up in the hospital after doing something dumb, a panic ends up getting it banned, and a short while later the cycle restarts with a new drug that is still in the gray-area of the law. ------ nickysielicki Fuck the FCC. We need open source radios. ~~~ arca_vorago I hate that you were downvoted for the unfortunately negative truth. Open source firmware, with radios seperate from cpus (and seperate DMA), is exactly what we need for security. All these proprietary peices, half from foreign countries, are more a threat to "national security" and "cybersecurity" than just about anything else. They want to pass CISA etc because of cybersecurity but their actions show levels of incompetence with few bounds. When is the government going to embrace open source as a basis for security of users?

Matchimals.fun – a puzzle card game built with boardgame.io and React (PWA) - chrisheninger https://www.matchimals.fun/ ====== chrisheninger This is a simple puzzle card game I built over the winter holidays for my nieces. I wanted to explore Google's boardgame.io state management library. It works best in landscape on tablet + desktop. All the code is open source for anyone who wants to check it out, more info at: [https://github.com/chrisheninger/matchimals.fun](https://github.com/chrisheninger/matchimals.fun)

How to get a job as a web developer - charlieirish https://medium.com/kickstart-your-developer-career/how-to-get-a-job-as-a-web-developer-104127e0149d ====== bloggerden I'm noticing portfolios are much more important for dev jobs these days

Don't Blame Your Community: Ad Blocking Is Not Killing Any Sites (2010) - dsr12 https://www.techdirt.com/articles/20100306/1649198451.shtml ====== citricsquid > If you're reading Techdirt, and the ads we serve are not good, you have > every right to use an ad blocker. It's your browser, do whatever you want > with it. I, personally, do not use an ad blocker because I don't find most > ads annoying -- but if you do, more power to you. You're absolutely welcome > here on Techdirt. I know I'm in a minority so even posting this is absolutely pointless, but... if I don't like the adverts that a website runs I do one of the following: pay them to not have to view them (if they have a subscription option), don't visit the website again or begrudgingly view them. Yes it's "my browser" but it's also the websites content. If they didn't want me to view adverts they wouldn't have adverts, so the assumption is the adverts are there for me to view them. Either I view the adverts or I don't visit the website. If techdirt doesn't mine me blocking adverts, great, but why not make it a profile option? Sign up and get the option to disable adverts! Maybe I'm crazy, but I view access to websites, media and items (eg: biscuits) the same. If I want access / ownership / consumption of something and the owner wants me to pay $10, view an advert or give them my email address then I do that or I don't get the content. Just like I would hope everyone thinks the same of the content I'm involved in the production of (although I don't run adverts on the websites that I own...) As an aside I know of a website that has been around for a long time now that is suffering because of sticking to their guns regarding advertising. They don't want to sacrifice the "spirit" of the website so they're losing advertising options fast (some of the content is _not_ advertiser friendly...) and this is going to lead to them shutting down soon, which is a shame because it's a website that matters a lot to me and has a significant userbase and is a part of the internet history. Sometimes sticking to your guns to the death isn't the best thing for your users... ~~~ islon This is the internet not television. I'm not obliged to see their ads. Yes, it's their content but my viewport. By the same argument I shouldn't be allowed to surf the web using lynx (the console browser) because it doesn't show pictures and many ads are pictures or flash. On my client I can change the content all the way all want, if I don't want to see the word "fuck" I can replace it for " _beep_ " with a greasemonkey script, if I don't want to see ads I use an adblock. Internet is about freedom, television is about not- filterable predefined content down your throat. ~~~ Goronmon _This is the internet not television. I'm not obliged to see their ads._ I don't think anyone is really saying that. But I agree with criticsquid in that if I think a site has content worth viewing, I want to do what I can to support that site, whether it means subscriptions or viewing ads. So I don't run an ad-blocker. If I run into a site with ads that annoy me, I just don't visit that site. A site decides whether or not to run annoying ads, even if they don't get to pick the ads specifically, so I show my frustration by not giving such sites my traffic at all. ~~~ dubya There are sites that I visit regularly and many more sites that I arrive at only through search results. It's the second set of sites that keeps the adblocker turned on. There is an option in Adblocker Plus, I think, to allow non-annoying ads. If it comes to the Safari version I will try it. OTOH, every time I open a new tab, the Expose version of 12 most visited sites are retrieved with ads, so maybe I'm contributing enough. ------ gurkendoktor As the author states in the last paragraph, this is exactly the same argument as with piracy, but the OP is in a worse position to make it because the author has to pay for traffic - unlike pirated music/ebooks/software, where pirates generously share the bandwidth costs. And the impression I get is the same as with piracy. A few % have no problem because they are huge, have a devoted following, another income stream or because they post link-bait without mercy. It's like the lottery winners calling other people stupid for not winning. (Same reasoning in the software world: Adobe still exists despite lots of people torrenting Photoshop, Apple doesn't even bother to add copy protection to its OS, so then why are all the little crybaby studios whining about piracy?! Similar examples exist for games, music...) The headline, as explained in the article, is also a tautology. Because if a site goes bankrupt due to ad blocking, it is _the staff's fault_ , and therefore the site did not go bankrupt due to ad blocking. Besides, it is conveniently hard to prove for what reason a site went bankrupt - same story as with pirated goods again. ------ Karunamon I use an adblocker because most sites I visit that serve ads do not personally vet the ads that run (with the great exception I can recall being 4chan, of all places!), they use an unfiltered third party network, which generally are great vehicles for malware. The few tenths of a penny my ad impression is worth does not offset the cost, nor the risk, of your site infecting me with the rootkit of the day. Where do I send the bill? The second reason being the ads are generally scammy (One simple rule...), distracting (moving things, sound, etc), irrelvant (I live at home by myself. I am male. Why are you showing me women's fashion magazines and breast enlargement ads?!), etc. I've got no problem with text ads (ala Google) which eliminate most of these concerns - heck, in Google's case, they're even usually relevant! ~~~ Goronmon _I use an adblocker because most sites I visit that serve ads do not personally vet the ads that run (with the great exception I can recall being 4chan, of all places!), they use an unfiltered third party network, which generally are great vehicles for malware._ While sites might not be able to vet individual ads, they do get to choose which advertisers to use and it's glaringly obvious which ones use the ads people hate. Why not just not visit sites that decide to use annoying ads? ~~~ Nursie Because you've already caught the malware by the time you figure it out? ------ graeme There is a good article, linked within, about how as an entrepreneur, of things go wrong, it's your fault. I'd say that's valuable advice for humans, not just entrepreneurs. This belief is useful not because it _true_ , but because acting as of it's true offers you the best chance of changing what you can change. [http://www.marksonland.com/2010/03/note_to_entrpreneurs_its_...](http://www.marksonland.com/2010/03/note_to_entrpreneurs_its_your_1.html) ~~~ stephengillie One of my friends uses this philosophy in competitive gaming -- each point lost, each teammate death, each tower destroyed is his fault -- to inspire him to become better. It's too easy to find scapegoats for our blame. I try to remember this when I find myself sliding back into mediocrity. ------ snowwrestler A major failing of this article is that it presupposes that people actually considered the quality of advertising in their decision to run ad blockers. When running an ad blocker, most ads are blocked by default on every site. Therefore the user never even has a chance to see if the ads are "good" or not. The question is, what happens if everyone starts using this software? Granted, it's a very unlikely scenario since it takes effort to install and manage ad blockers. But it's not hard to imagine that a relationship would exist between marginal increases in ad blocker usage, and marginal decreases in ad revenue. Most of the "good" examples in this article are not even ads, they are sponsored content. It's roughly analogous to using product placements in TV shows to replace revenue lost to ad skipping software in DVRs. But not many websites are big enough (like TechDirt is) to command the special attention from advertisers to create these "one off" deals. ------ hayksaakian The qq around ad blockers is the same as the qq around piracy. Bootleg vhs tapes were available before streaming media, relatively easy to make, and share. However the vast majority of people do not consume them to a damaging extent. The same is true for ad blockers and content distribution now. Ad blockers are a solution to a usability and business model problem. If you as a producer of content find it to be a huge issue, then you have it in your power to change it. Only when its more convenient to do something the 'correct' way will it be guaranteed to be the predominant way. ------ TomMasz I don't mind ads _when I want to buy a product or service and don't know where to look_ , but otherwise they're just noise that generally slows page loading or makes the readable content scroll up and down (I really hate those ads). I use an ad blocker to make reading web content as easy as reading the newspaper (where I can skip entire pages of ads). If I like a web site, I'll pay for it. But I'm paying _because I like the content_ , not to remove the ads. It's a thank you, not a ransom payment. ------ kushti "Ad Blocking Is Not Killing Any Sites" - another false-positive thought of trendy venture-backed hipsters. Ok, speak your post-scarcity bla-bla-bla further. ------ leeoniya i use ad blockers primarily so that third parties cannot track me across different domains all over the internet and to increase page load times dramatically. ------ DanBC I would love for a simple easy way to make micro-payments to the websites I use regularly. It'd be even better if that allowed me to turn off ads. I'm gently concerned that would mean that site owners would allow obnoxious ads in an attempt to drive people to paying, but I guess they realise that people would ad-block or never visit again. ------ debacle I think it's likely that this is untrue. Slashdot and reddit are the two examples that come to mind of a userbase who are likely to be filtering ads and thus greatly reducing the revenue of their hosts. ~~~ gilrain ...you think it's untrue that ad-blocking does not kill sites, because two sites likely to be ad-blocked more than the average are very, very successful? ~~~ mylittlepony In this context successful should be synonym of profitable. Which, last time I checked, reddit is not. ------ commentzorro This article is years old and no longer reflects current information. ~~~ mylittlepony What do you mean? ------ pretoriusB > _"Ad Blocking Is Not Killing Any Sites"_ That's only because it's not really prevalent to the general masses. If it was, e.g if browsers came with Ad Blocking pre-installed and enabled as a default, thousands of news sites and blogs would suffer and crash. ~~~ mylittlepony <https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4804474> ------ rprasad I use an adblocker at home but not at work. Honestly, for most of the sites I visit, there isn't much of a difference (anymore). Websites have realized that having fewer high-quality ads is better than having a massive number of crap ads.

Cloud just got easier - nlolks https://finance.yahoo.com/news/amazon-makes-cloud-contract-more-customer-friendly-rivals-224556349--finance.html ====== bgrohman I think the title should be updated to match the article: "Amazon makes cloud contract more customer-friendly as rivals loom" This isn't about making anything easier other than legal questions around Amazon's contracts.

Show HN: Sinkhole – A CLI tool to archive your files into AWS Glacier - lunarcave https://github.com/ncthis/sinkhole ====== brudgers Glacier as a first order archive reminded me of this discussion: [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10921365](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10921365) ~~~ lunarcave Yeah, that sound like a nightmare. I was wondering why it would be that high and then I saw there were a bunch of failed attempts being billed for as well in that instance. I personally just push anything that would be highly improbable for me to ever need.