Why Fukushima Daiichi won't be another Chernobyl   - michaelchisari
http://www.newscientist.com/article/dn20257-why-fukushima-daiichi-wont-be-another-chernobyl.html?full=true

======
bioh42_2
I'm getting pretty tired of this meme.

Chernobyl was horrific! It happened at a time and in place that did not care
much about safety or human lives. The technology was primitive. Safety
mechanisms had been turned off. The response to the accident was to send
people on a suicide mission while telling everyone else everything was hunky
dory. It was a a horrific disaster.

How the hell could Fukushima be as bad?

And what is the point of all of this anyway?

Look, I think we should use a lot more nuclear power, yes despite the fact
that I grew up down wind of Chernobyl and with Fukushima still happening, I
STILL think we should all drive electric cars that get their electricity from
nuclear power.

But I want those nuclear plants to as safe as technology can make them. And I
welcome higher per kilowatt prices to make this happen. What I don't want is
nukes on the cheap, as this particular GE model of reactor appears to have
been marketed.

And I am really getting sick of the chorus of the last couple of days which I
can summarize as:

1\. Fukushima is totally under control you guys! 2\. Fukushima is not going to
melt down you guys! 3\. Fukushima is not going to have a total melt down, OK!
4\. Chernobyl didn't kill THAT many people. 5\. Chernobyl wasn't that bad. 6\.
The area around Chernobyl is going to be peachy in like another 50 years! 7\.
Well at least Fukushima can't be as bad Chernobyl!

For the love of God, if you want to promote nuclear power do it in a smart
way! Explain just how bad and radioactive coal is. Explain all the ways in
which modern nuclear can be made safer. And call for more oversight and
investment in safety.

But please stop trying to downplay Fukushima! Not only does this not help
anything, but it actively discredits advocacy for nuclear power!

~~~
michaelchisari
As long as people are comparing it to Chernobyl, we can't have a sane,
realistic conversation about nuclear power.

~~~
r00fus
Which is the whole point of the meme... destroy nuclear's credibility with FUD
comparisons.

Both anti-nuke environmentalist groups and fossil fuel mega-corps can get cozy
with this campaign.

~~~
bioh42_2
The way to combat that campaign is not by defending an ancient reactor built
on the cheap. It's not by defending the overly secrete save face first, save
lives second approach by the authorities. Fukushima should not be played down.
That is not the way to counter-act the FUD.

~~~
michaelchisari
Like I said before, we cannot have a sane, rational conversation about how
terrible of a design the Mark I BWR is, or how necessary it is to decommission
outdated reactors, until people know enough to stop making comparisons to
Chernobyl.

------
tybris
Every time I see a "everything will be fine" article, things get worse a few
hours later. Please, just sit on your hands, wait, and see.

Maybe Chernobyl wasn't actually as bad as it could have been. Maybe Fukushima
is going to be a lot worse than expected. Maybe Chernobyl is in the middle of
f*ing nowhere. Maybe Fukushima is in one of the most densely populated regions
in the world.

Who knows?

All we know is that there are a few dozen people right now, fighting to
prevent what could become one of the biggest man-made disasters in history.
Many of them are likely going to die within a few years because of it.

~~~
Natsu
> All we know is that there are a few dozen people right now, fighting to
> prevent what could become one of the biggest man-made disasters in history.

But how are they going to save the 26,000 people killed by the failure of the
Banqiao Dam without time travel?

I'm kidding, but don't let anyone fool you: Fukushima Dai-ichi is still
dangerous, but only to the people nearby. There's a substantial risk of
further hydrogen explosions and radiation spikes that are dangerous to the
people nearby. They're very unlikely to affect anyone not in Japan. Cleanup
will be a pain.

But hearing "OH GOD WE'RE ALL GOING TO DIE!" constantly in the media is pretty
grating for anyone who understands the real, immediate concerns in Japan right
now. Yes, the reactor needs cool and the workers are very brave. They probably
do risk significant radiation exposure. But meanwhile, there are many people
who got swept out to sea, people who are trapped behind blocked roads and who
need supplies and people injured from the quake in remote areas who need care.

These logistical problems are the real disaster and they're being virtually
ignored by anyone outside Japan while all eyes are on the continuing problems
at Fukushima Dai-ichi.

One good thing, badly under-reported, is how helpful the US Military's
logistical support is. And I don't mean just the stuff at Fukushima. Removing
rubble from roads and clearing collapsed buildings is not at all glamorous,
but a lot of such things need to be done right now.

~~~
locopati
'still dangerous, but only to the people nearby'

Depending on what happens in the next week or two and depending on which way
the wind blows, that could be 35m people nearby in the Tokyo metro area.

------
orblivion
"However, the company operating Fukushima Daiichi has now said that, for the
fuel pond at reactor 4, 'the risk of recriticality is not zero', meaning a
nuclear chain reaction could restart in the rods. Quite how this has come
about is unclear."

Whoops, looks like you invalidated half of your article.

------
alextingle
Nuclear power isn't pretty, but it's going to be pretty much a necessity in
the coming years. This relatively minor accident has come at a very
unfortunate time.

~~~
xlpz
It's amazing that you can know the accident was minor when it's not even over
yet. Seems like you are not really using reality to form your opinions.

~~~
Natsu
The earthquake + tsunami killed something like 5,000 people and counting. How
many have died from radiation poisoning or even the hydrogen explosions so
far? I'm counting two people missing and some radiation poisoning.

We're looking at a substantial risk of further hydrogen explosions until the
cooling is stable and a risk of radiation leakage to those nearby. There is a
slight risk of radiation further out, but it's unlikely to cause significant
harm. So the primary danger is to plant employees and those trying to cool it
down or fight fires. It's unlikely to be able to kill large numbers of people,
though it's likely that someone will calculate x% increase of cancer * 128M
people (all of Japan) and publish that number.

But let's count the casualties and weigh them against the 5,000 or so who have
died from the earthquake already:

[http://www.tepco.co.jp/en/press/corp-
com/release/11031710-e....](http://www.tepco.co.jp/en/press/corp-
com/release/11031710-e.html)

Casualty

\- 2 workers of cooperative firm were injured at the occurrence of the
earthquake, and were transported to the hospital.

\- 1 TEPCO employee who was not able to stand by his own with his hand holding
left chest was transported to the hospital by an ambulance.

\- 1 subcontract worker at important earthquake-proof building was unconscious
and transported to the hospital by an ambulance.

\- The radiation exposure of 1 TEPCO employee, who was working inside the
reactor building, exceeded 100mSv and was transported to the hospital.

\- 2 TEPCO employees felt bad during their operation in the central control
rooms of Unit 1 and 2 while wearing full masks, and were transferred to
Fukushima Daini Power Station for consultation with a medical advisor.

\- 4 workers were injured and transported to the hospital after explosive
sound and white smoke were confirmed around the Unit 1.

\- 11 workers were injured and transported to Fukushima Daini Nuclear Power
Station after explosive sound and white smoke were confirmed around the Unit
3.One of the injured workers got medical treatment on March 16th, but the
worker reported a flank pain. We required to the offsite center that the
worker should be transported to the hospital. After that, the helicopter of
JSDF arrived and transported the worker to the FUKUSHIMA Medical University
Hospital at 10:56AM

\- Presence of 2 TEPCO employees at the site is not confirmed.

~~~
bioh42_2
_The earthquake + tsunami killed something like 5,000 people and counting._

The absolutely horrific results of the earthquake and tsunami in no way make
Fukushima a minor deal. Yes, it has killed MANY fewer people then the tsunami,
but that does not make it a minor deal!

~~~
Natsu
(Edited for clarification.)

I never said it was a minor deal. My heart goes out to the families of the two
workers missing at Fukushima Dai-ichi as well as to those injured.

But I don't get the panic. I mean a run on Potassium Iodide tablets on the US
west coast? Seriously?? I don't know if I should be grateful that they at
least found something that could be effective or sad that they expect
significant amounts of radiation to get that far.

I need to figure out how to use actuarial tables to I can convert these
exposure levels to something like "cigarette equivalent risk" by comparing
cancer rates.

~~~
bioh42_2
A run on potassium iodide tablets on the US west coast is just plain silly,
but the way to combat that is to discuss exactly how radiation spreads, not to
try and argue that Fukushima isn't that bad.

~~~
Natsu
> A run on potassium iodide tablets on the US west coast is just plain silly,
> but the way to combat that is to discuss exactly how radiation spreads, not
> to try and argue that Fukushima isn't that bad.

How can I do one without doing the other, given the nice "radiation plume"
graphics, in "arbitrary units" no less, going through the news?

<http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2335273>

I'm not trying to minimize the problems, I'm trying to be realistic about
them. After the first hydrogen explosion, if you look through my HN comments,
I warned that there were likely to be more. Those are very dangerous, but to
the plant employees fixing this, but not to anyone who isn't nearby. Those
people are heroes, putting themselves in danger to protect everyone else from
further radiation leaks.

But I sincerely believe that nobody who isn't in Japan or in the sea nearby is
at any serious risk.

------
michaelchisari
I posted this before, but I feel it's worth re-iterating: There will never be
another Chernobyl. It was a perfect intersection of criminally inadequate
design, early-adopter naivete, incompetence, and Murphy's Law.

Not least of which was the fact that Chernobyl had no containment (!!), and
was running at peak (3200MW) as opposed to Fukushima Daiichi's 5% capacity
(25MW).

A comparison to Three Mile Island is totally valid, but Chernobyl is literally
off the table.

~~~
orblivion
I think we're way past TMI by now right?

------
borism
Yup, it won't be Chernobyl. It will always be Fukushima Daiichi.

How the nuclear accident will turn out to be is anyones guess right now
though.


Countries don't own their Internet domains, ICANN says - privong
http://www.computerworld.com.au/article/551289/countries_don_t_own_their_internet_domains_icann_says/
======
tokenizerrr
So instead the US is the only country that "owns" domain names, since ICANN is
an American company? If the domains aren't property then how can they be
seized? Is a distinction made between domain names and ccTLDs?

edit: Downvotes? Really? For asking a question that seems perfectly on-topic.

~~~
dragonwriter
> So instead the US is the only country that "owns" domain names, since ICANN
> is an American company?

If you read the article instead of responding to the title, you would
recognize that ICANN is saying no one "owns" ccTLDs, because they aren't
property at all.

~~~
tokenizerrr
I have, and yes, they say that, but since they are an American company and
thus can be compelled to do pretty much anything by the American goverment
(through secret courts even, which we've been hearing more and more about) it
seems reasonable to say that America owns them, and their bookkeeping.

~~~
dragonwriter
Their argument here is for why they _cannot_ be compelled to do certain things
by American courts.

------
dragonwriter
ICANN documents on the case: [https://www.icann.org/resources/pages/icann-
various-2014-07-...](https://www.icann.org/resources/pages/icann-
various-2014-07-30-en)

------
opendais
Seriously, fuck the people that want to seize 3 countries worth of ccTLDs.

That isn't reasonable or rational behavior. You can't seize top level domains.
You shouldn't be allowed to, regardless of the reasons. You break the human-
readable internet and DNS if this is allowed.

Some countries will go along with such a seizure, some won't, and the internet
will fragment.

~~~
forgottenpass
I entirely agree with you in principle, but can't bring myself to be angry
about it anymore. For the last few years I've been pessimistic about the long
term viability of the unary root zone anyway.

At one point the users of the internet were collaborative enough to decide
"lets just let Jon Postel run this shit." Almost half the world is online now,
and depending on the Internet more and more. That kind of collaboration still
works (in a more formal manner) for big things if they fly under the user's
radar (like the switch to IPv6). Outside of a few flamewars, things gets done
(slowly, it's a lot of work, but done nonetheless). How much of the planet
relies on and has daily visible interaction with the root zone? A forth? At
least?

There is already monkeying around in resolvers to add, remove or change
records but those are generally isolated and/or purpose specific. Can ICANN,
governments, and big ISPs all coordinate and keep their personal interests in
check well enough to persevere the the root zone's position as the one and
only source of authority?

------
logfromblammo
They are assigned names and numbers. You have as much ownership over a domain
as you do over the name of the street your home is on. Given the importance of
assigned names and numbers to business, similar to trademarks, you have a
certain amount of administrative control and protection against arbitrary
reassignment.

Think about this: (800) 588-2300. Some of you reading this will automatically
and involuntarily hear the end of the jingle: "Empiiiire." That number is not
owned. It has just been continuously in use by the same company for decades.

1600 Pennsylvania Avenue. That address is not owned. It's just how the USPS
identifies the White House mailbox.

Changing assignments for a TLD makes about as much sense as renaming the
postal code for California from CA to QM, or assigning the 777 area code to
any place in the US other than the Las Vegas Strip. That code isn't even in
use yet.

It's not about ownership, its about making sense and being intuitive for
people trying to find the information they need. Purposefully ruining the
addressing system for information is as much a dick move as heading to the
public library and demolishing their card catalog terminals with a fireman's
axe just because you don't want people to be able to check out any copies of a
certain book.

------
dragonwriter
From a quick read-through of the documents I can find on this, it seems most
likely that the ownership issue won't be reached because it looks like much
clearer jurisdictional and procedural issues that ICANN also raises are likely
to be dispositive as to the validity of the writs of attachment at issue.

------
qwerta
I think it is good move. Otherwise many countries would see DNS as something
worth controlling (and forking).

~~~
markdown
Only USA should have the power to seize domains. ICE FTW!

Merika! Fuck Yeah!

~~~
forgottenpass
Has ICE ever seized a TLD?

Could a registrar that operates outside the US not be compelled by that
nations laws w/r/t the domains under it's control? Because as far as I'm
aware, that's how ICE does in the US.

Not saying I like it, but I don't know that your characterization is accurate.

~~~
tankenmate
ICE don't compel the registrar, they compel the registry normally; in the case
of .com and .net that is Verisign.

~~~
forgottenpass
Oops, that's what I meant. I tend to mix those up.

------
johnnydogma
IF they want to seize domains in the country that is one thing. They want to
seize, basically, the right to identify yourself as that country/origin
online, as if to erase it from existence. Doesn't anyone see the de-humanizing
aspect of this?

------
spindritf
What about a phone prefix, like +963 for Syria? Can it be "seized"? Bizarre.

~~~
adestefan
Yes. They are assigned and controlled by the ITU much like ccTLDs are assigned
and controlled by ICANN. The same is true for radio and television prefixes.

------
13throwaway
Looks like countries need to look into decentralized DNS.
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Namecoin](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Namecoin)

------
walshemj
How to realy realy piss off the ITU and the UN and give it ammunition to take
over ICANT's job


Apple-Samsung verdict form requires jurors to answer 600 questions - anigbrowl
http://www.sfgate.com/business/bloomberg/article/For-Apple-Samsung-Jury-More-Than-600-Questions-3807591.php

======
anigbrowl
The SJMN has a copy of the 20-page verdict form. I must say I have my doubts
about the utility of the adversarial process in situations like this. In an
amusing irony, the last question on the form concerns 'patent exhaustion.'

[http://www.mercurynews.com/business/ci_21362502/document-
app...](http://www.mercurynews.com/business/ci_21362502/document-apple-vs-
samsung-jury-instructions?source=pkg)


why GNU grep is faster than FreeBSD grep - yarapavan
http://blog.erratasec.com/2015/12/some-notes-on-fast-grep.html
======
feld
fun fact: the author of gnu grep is actually a freebsd user :)

the linked email thread is also more informative than the blog post, so why
not go there directly?

[https://lists.freebsd.org/pipermail/freebsd-
current/2010-Aug...](https://lists.freebsd.org/pipermail/freebsd-
current/2010-August/019310.html)

------
ysleepy
That post says nothing about FreeBSDs grep or why GNU grep is faster.

------
aexaey
Two more remarks:

1\. Original article on FreeBSD mailing list is from 2010;

2\. Original article claims 20% speed improvement for --mmap. This option is
gone since:

[http://permalink.gmane.org/gmane.comp.gnu.grep.bugs/5049](http://permalink.gmane.org/gmane.comp.gnu.grep.bugs/5049)


Why Microsoft killed Courier - j-g-faustus
http://www.dailytech.com/article.aspx?newsid=23176

======
wisty
In the old days, when competitors were afraid to even say Bill's name,
Microsoft would have hedged their bets.

Microsoft sold some crazy UNIX thing called Xenix, DOS, and ported their
software to OS/2 and Mac OS.

Microsoft did not care who won, as long as they were positioned to get their
foot in the door, make a huge profit, kill off all the competition, start
displacing their upstream and downstream dependencies, and cement their
position by extend-embrace-extinguish.

They have one offering on the mobile, nothing to speak of in the tablet space,
and very few apps / trojan horses for iOS / Android. It's like watching
Ulysses stick to the Marquess of Queensberry rules.

~~~
politician
The difference being, of course, that in the old days Microsoft was not a
convicted monopolist.

------
antonyme
> According to Courier team members, the 130+ team had several finished
> prototypes and could have brought the device to market in mid-2010 with a
> bit of extra manpower.

A bit? They had some prototypes with just the industrial design, some with
just the software, some with just the performance - but none with all the
aspects of the finished product. And they say they were a few months away?

The hubris behind this kind of thinking is astonishing. It would take nothing
short of a miracle to pull together all these elements in such a short
timeframe. There are so many inter-related aspects that would prevent this.
Performance, battery life, weight, heat dissipation, software drivers, power
management - must all be designed and working in concert for a successful
product.

And that says nothing about the product positioning. Are there seriously
millions of architects out there who have been saying: "Boy, I wish I had a
small, portable computer screen I could sketch my ideas out on." ? There's a
reason they have huge drafting boards - they think big, and need big spaces to
sketch out their big ideas.

I love the way they were thinking outside the square, and there were some
seriously cool ideas in Courier. But it seems much more like a groovy concept
than a nearly shipping product.

------
D-Coder
But that's one of my favorite fonts!

Wait, what?

------
signalsignal
Not politics. Because it couldn't do email.

~~~
Rexxar
I don't understand why they chose to kill it instead of improve it.


Manipulating Text with Grep - tcarriga
https://red.ht/2CL9Uzo
======
Mr_JK
Cool!


Lyft allowed unauthorised access to my account - dayanajabif
When I travel to the US I usually buy a pay as you go AT&T sim card to use during my stay. I used to take Lyfts to move around, till today.
If you have a phone with pay as you go service and for some reason you don't pay the bill for a month, you will lose your number.
Then a few months later someone buying a new sim card will have your old number, so if they download lyft they will have your account with your credit card. And guess what? They can have free rides charged to your credit card!!!
So there's a creepy guy taking lyft rides in san francisco with my account.
The best part is that I can't remove the credit card from that account because I no longer have that phone number, so I can't access my account!
I sent an email to Lyft support but no one answered.
======
extc
Here's a strange Lyft scenario. I tried to send my friend a Lyft invite so we
could both get a discount. He got the invite link, downloaded the app and put
in his phone number. It kept rejecting his phone number (it's a CA number and
we're in NY, does it matter?). So we thought, maybe we need to put in the
phone number of the person that referred/invited him (i.e. me). So we put in
my number and it lets him in. He takes his ride home and then I see that his
ride was charged to my account. Somehow his phone is now linked to my account
and he didn't even enter a password. I emailed Lyft and they don't care, they
just explained that I agreed to surge pricing - that's not even on topic to my
complaint. Needless to say, neither of us got the referral discount.

~~~
MalcolmDiggs
I've dealt with the rejected phone number (for a California number) as well.
And of course, no responses to my emails. I tweeted about it, they tweeted
back, and then continued to ignore my emails.

...I switched to Uber...

------
Kronopath
This is what I hate about apps and services using phone numbers as primary
credentials. Phone numbers can and do change, so they're nowhere near as
stable as e.g. a simple email address. I'm recently facing the situation where
I may be moving in the near future, and when doing so I'm going to have to
change my phone number to a local one in the place I'm moving to. I'm likely
going to have to go through every account and app I have my phone number
associated with and change it. (Unless there's a better option that I'm not
aware of yet.)

~~~
joshstrange
> Unless there's a better option that I'm not aware of yet.

Keep your number? I love this XKCD on this [0]. I live in a different state
that where I got my phone number and when I moved I just kept the number so I
didn't have to go through the dog and pony show of updating it everywhere.

[0] [https://xkcd.com/1129/](https://xkcd.com/1129/)

~~~
Kronopath
That's less useful when you're possibly moving to a different country.

~~~
dublinben
You can maintain a US telephone number for a few dollars a year by porting it
to a VOIP or prepaid cell provider.

------
joshstrange
Really think the title of this post should be changed Lyft DID NOT leak your
credentials.

~~~
dayanajabif
so, who did it? It's lyft responsibility not to have this security bugs.

~~~
joshstrange
What I'm saying is:

Leaked Credentials != Unauthorised access to your account

Leaked Credentials == exposing username/email + password (unhashed)

~~~
dayanajabif
ok, agree

------
zachacole
Hi there - this is Zach from Lyft. Our support team has been responding to
your original email to resolve this case.

We take security and personal information seriously, and did not leak
credentials. The relevant teams within Lyft, including product/engineering,
have been alerted of this case to continue ensuring the community's safety.

~~~
agustinhaller
What about this comment:
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9355499](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9355499).
How is this happening?

------
digitalneal
Can't you just call the CC and dispute the charges and or freeze charges from
that merchant? Granted that doesn't solve the larger problem here but it would
at least stop the guy from abusing the system.

~~~
bduerst
This is exactly why 30 day chargebacks exist, right?

~~~
eli
Sure, though lyft may well ban you for life.

~~~
wiredfool
So? They don't know who he is anymore.

~~~
martin_
Wouldn't his billing info be sufficient to identify him again in the future?

~~~
bduerst
It doesn't sound like Lyft is retaining too much info on their customers. I
would bet if they used another card they would be able to join again.

------
dedward
What you do here is tell your credit card company that the charges are
fraudulent and that you have informed Lyft that the card is not authorized,
but they refuse to do anything about it. Let them handle it - they will.

~~~
pbreit
But Lyft hasn't refused anything. Best to have Lyft resolve. May take an ounce
of patience.

~~~
michaelt
The guy's e-mailed Lyft support and hasn't got an answer.

What downside is there to reporting the fraudulent charges for what they are,
apart from a tiny possibility of being banned from using Lyft in the future?

------
tessierashpool
TLDR: I feel your pain.

I went to Scottrade and asked them to close my account, back in 2007 or 2008.
They said "sure," cashed out the account, left it open, and continued sending
me account status emails for almost ten years.

Last week they told me I had a negative balance of $13. I called them and they
can't give me any information over the phone, because I don't know my old
address or phone number from whenever I opened the account. (I don't know when
that is, only that it was before 2007 or so.)

So I have to go into a physical office. And where I live now, the nearest
physical office is more than 60 miles away. And they're not open on weekends.

And they can apply fees to this negative balance, spiral those fees out of
control, refer it to a collections agency, and put it on my credit report, all
without ever once breaking the law.

So I have to drive 60 miles both ways, because almost ten years ago, one of
their employees was too lazy to do their job correctly. And I can't even do it
on the weekend.

US consumer law has terrific protections for all the problems that were
legitimate risks 100 years ago, but it sucks today. Effectively, the burden of
proof is now on me to demonstrate that this $13 fee is not my problem.

~~~
bduerst
Same thing happened to a Chase checking account I had.

I cashed & closed it, but the teller must not have actually closed it because
they decided to charge it $10/mo for some stupid bank-fee reason. It was
diving into negative numbers for months before I discovered it.

------
slayed0
This is a very serious issue and you should not stop pursuing all available
support channels until you get an answer. I can guarantee you that such a
glaring bug will immediately get high priority in their issue tracking system.
The last thing Lyft wants is for something like this to get reported on and
shake confidence in the platform they are trying so hard to build.

~~~
leephillips
The problem is that it's not a bug, it's the foolhardy way that the system is
designed.

~~~
slayed0
I guess it's a semantic disagreement but I would still call this a bug. If
they considered this use-case when they designed the system and then decided
it was not worth designing for then I suppose it is not a bug, but I find it
hard to believe that is the case.

~~~
icebraining
I don't (find it hard to believe). A few chargebacks are nothing compared to
adding friction to the signup of the majority of users, financially speaking.

------
djb_hackernews
This might be a stupid question but does this mean that if I have a phone
emulator and configure it to have some number and download one of these apps
that use the # for account lookup that I could essentially hijack peoples
accounts like this?

EDIT: no that doesn't seem to be the case. When you login to Lyft they send a
text to the registered number.

~~~
captn3m0
I think Lyft login/auth would require you to be able to _receive_ messages
sent to that number.

------
JohnHaugeland
Tell your bank that you did not authorize the charges. You get the money back;
they can't charge you anymore; the banks ding lyft statistically in rates and
trust.

------
ackim
Sounds like you merely need to inform the bank of the charges on your credit
card and let them know that you made an effort to contact the company. Contact
the credit card issuer to reverse the charges. Lucky for you you didn't use a
debit card then you would have had a real problem.

------
notsurewhat
I just emailed this thread to John Zimmer, co-founder & president. Expect it
to be handled shortly.

~~~
joshstrange
As happy as I am that things like this can happen (IDK if you know John or
just sent it to his email) it annoys me that problems like this cannot be
fixed without complaining on social media/sites like HN.

The number of times I've followed a companies support channels and heard no
response in a weeks time then tweeted and got it resolved in less than 3 hours
is staggering and quite disappointing. The squeaky wheel gets the grease....

------
dayanajabif
Lyft support answered my email:

"After reviewing your statement and digging deeper into our payment back-end,
it appears that because your phone number had transferred ownership the new
owner of this number may have logged in thinking that this was their account.
Due to this occurrence, we at this point in time have placed a hold on all
logins using this phone number — this in turn will halt any further use of
this account."

~~~
dayanajabif
"thinking that this was their account'??? So now their name is Dayana, and
they didn't notice? come on!

------
eyeareque
It's a pain but it sounds like you need to cancel your credit card. Or you can
wait and see if this post gets any attention. Obviously they have a gap in
their authentication that they need to address.

------
pbreit
Current headline: "Lyft leaked my credentials"

Sorta thought the story was going to involve leaked credentials.

First, I'm sure Lyft will take care of it in your favor.

Second, this is certainly an issue when utilizing SMS for
authentication/login. I'm not sure the best answer since it can be a good way
to support easy login/authentication. If phones send along a device ID, that
might work. Not sure the frequency of same number on same "disposable" phone.

------
bstrom
Lyft's support team seems nonexistant. I've sent several emails to them and
never received a reply.

------
netik
Lyft is not the only company that will do things like this. Twitter tried this
with Twitter Digits, and Yahoo offers single-factor phone based recovery. In
all of these cases, companies are sacrificing convenience for security.

~~~
joshstrange
"companies are sacrificing security for convenience" FTFY

~~~
agustinhaller
You are right. After reading this I requested Uber to delete my account as i
was using a prepaid phone while visiting the US. I was very disappointing as
they don't have an easy way to delete an account, you need to send an email
explaining why.

~~~
joshstrange
Just to be fair account deletion is not a super easy thing. It may seem easy
"DELETE FROM users WHERE id = '123';" but you also need to delete all of their
related records. Let's say you have a user table with use username, hashed
password, and id in it and then all that address/DOB/etc in a users_data table
or similar. Now you need to delete the users_data record as well. But that's
not all, what about all the transactions in the "rides" table. They are
related to the user but we need to keep them for historical data and/or
reports. It can get messy VERY quickly and if the application is changing
quickly then your "delete user" logic might leave behind new user data that it
doesn't account for.

What I'm saying is that while I do find it mildly annoying that there is no
"Delete Account" button there are good reasons for it. Not is this a non-
insignificant amount of work to build/maintain but from a business point of
view it means spending time/money on a feature that is only for people who no
longer want to be your customer so put in that light it's no surprise this
feature falls by the wayside often. Also there is the whole "I accidentally
deleted my account" (no matter how many warning you put up) and that means you
either need to "soft delete" all the data so you can "undo" OR you have to
reconstruct the user's data from a backup (either programmatically or by
hand).

------
aptwebapps
So how long has it been since you emailed them?

------
zobzu
even if the sim isnt changed, phone number assignements are not safe in any
way. just a number in a database. it could be changed by anyone for a few mins
and you wouldn't know. it could be social engineered away. etc.

------
wehadfun
Chances are some low level engineer brought up this possible issue but some
idiot with a bigger mouth than brain just dismissed it

------
johnnyg
This isn't the proper medium for your complaint. Maybe it'll be resolved
somewhat faster but the way you did it wasn't right.

------
drivingmenuts
You're the one who forgot, or chose not to, pay your bill and got your phone
number cancelled. And you chose to use an app that tied your phone number and
your credit card together. So, you share some responsibility here.

Lyft's problem is two-fold: 1) they don't warn users not to use their app on a
temporary device 2) they don't allow an easy way to cancel the account without
the phone number


Integer percentages as fingerprints of electoral falsification - merraksh
https://arxiv.org/abs/1410.6059
======
Jerry2
Absolutely fascinating research!

I wonder if someone has some free time to run the models on several recent
elections that were filled with fraud. I'm interested in: Austrian
presidential elections [0], Turkish elections [1] and Democratic party
primaries [2][3]. Each of them was analyzed for voting fraud and fraud was
found in each of them (some were full of massive vote fraud like Turkish
elections).

PS: What's with all the downvotes? Is the evidence of massive voter fraud in
the West so unsettling that you have to downvote me?

[0] >Austria presidential poll result overturned

[http://www.bbc.com/news/world-europe-36681475](http://www.bbc.com/news/world-
europe-36681475)

[1] >Turkey Elections Massive Vote Fraud

[https://erikmeyersson.com/2015/11/04/digit-tests-and-the-
pec...](https://erikmeyersson.com/2015/11/04/digit-tests-and-the-peculiar-
election-dynamics-of-turkeys-november-elections/)

[2] >Hillary Clinton Favored By Election Fraud In Democratic Primaries

[http://www.inquisitr.com/3127046/hillary-clinton-favored-
by-...](http://www.inquisitr.com/3127046/hillary-clinton-favored-by-election-
fraud-in-democratic-primaries-federal-lawsuit-filed-against-officials-to-
protect-california-primaries/)

[3] >Election Fraud Watch 2016 (J: awesome blog that tracks election fraud in
primaries)

[https://electionfraud2016.wordpress.com/](https://electionfraud2016.wordpress.com/)

~~~
exabrial
The Sanders movement, even though I disagreed with his platform, was true
grassroots democracy: Common people getting organized and trying to make a
change.

I don't care if I get down voted into oblivion for saying this next part: When
looking at the spread between the types of polls, there is a massive
difference between the voting elite and the people's will. I don't advocate
against the electoral college, but what was supposed to be system that
prevented buyouts has proven to be completely forsale by the Clintons. I
didn't see massive pro-Clinton rallies. We had quicker investigations into
Samsung VS Apple for inconsequential things. No one has been held accountable
and no explanations have been given for massive breaches of protocol other
than its a plot by the Repuglicans.

I'm tired of everything from the Clinton family. My state KS has a good chance
to throw electoral votes at Gary Johnson. Please California if you are
listening, don't reward this family for their actions.

~~~
empath75
If you really think that Clinton didn't get the votes she got fairly, you're
living in a bubble. Sanders supporters have this problem of forgetting that
women and minorities exist.

(I can't stand the Clintons, but I don't think they cheated)

~~~
JohnGB
I am an outsider (European) looking in but closely following the US
presidential primaries this year, so I don't have a horse in the race. There
are a number of levels at which there has been clear unfairness or cheating
(depending on your perspective) in the DNC primaries. Here are some of the
simpler ones:

\- The recent release of hacked documents from the DNC show that the primaries
were not set up to be a fair competition from the start. \- The rules are
specifically set up in a number of states (New York is a prime example) to
disenfranchise any new Democratic Party members from being able to vote. \-
Thousands of registered voters were removed from the voters roll. There is
even a case where a lifelong Democrat running for a congressional seat on a
Democratic ticket was removed. \- Media coverage made it appear that Clinton
was in the lead before any voting even took place. That coverage has been
shown to have been orchestrated (at least at the start) by the DNC. \- Funds
raised in the DNC's name were disproportionately funnelled to the Clinton
campaign. \- Voting stations were closed down in huge numbers in some states
and territories (Puerto Rico and California being prime a examples)

~~~
douche
NY was pretty ridiculous.

It's going to look pretty ridiculous if the DNC is ever audited, or has
someone more credible than Guccifer2.0 hack and release their documents.

------
blueintegral
I thought this would just be an application of Benford's law, but they note in
the beginning that using Benford's law doesn't work for elections (citing this
paper:
[http://www.vote.caltech.edu/sites/default/files/benford_pdf_...](http://www.vote.caltech.edu/sites/default/files/benford_pdf_4b97cc5b5b.pdf))

Does anyone know why Benford's law doesn't work here but does work for other
made up numbers in applications like accounting?

~~~
sampo
For Benford's law to apply, the numbers (the non-fabricated numbers) need to
be coming from a source/distribution covering several orders of magnitude. The
fabricated voting percentages are limited to between 0 and 100.

~~~
empath75
Raw vote totals then?

~~~
oceliker
We ran a test for one of the problem sets in a course I was TAing. Raw vote
counts _did_ follow Benford's law in 2000 US presidential elections. We did
not portray it as a tool to detect or disprove fraud, however.

~~~
sampo
Perhaps the sizes (number of eligible voters, and also number of people who
actually voted) of the voting districts follows the law? Then you could take
the total vote counts, and distribute them back to the candidates in a lot of
artificial ways (e.g. always 50-50, a random percentage between 30 and 70,
say) and probably obtain data that still follows the law.

------
Artlav
It's kinda sad to see our elections to be used as reference for falsification
detection research...

This isn't exactly new, such analysis was done as early as 2011, i.e.
[http://lleo.me/dnevnik/2011/12/07_gauss.html](http://lleo.me/dnevnik/2011/12/07_gauss.html)

Although, they were more focused on the peculiar distribution, than on integer
spikes.

~~~
amooeba
The figure that is reproduced and discussed in that lleo.me blog post was made
by one of the authors of the paper that is being discussed here. It's just
took us from the end of 2011 until early 2016 to actually get the whole thing
published.

------
jcalvinowens
This is fascinating.

I'm tempted to argue the improbably-round numbers might be due to lazily
counting/sampling the ballots rather than actual malicious fraud... but I
guess sloppily running the election still constitutes fraud in some sense.

~~~
rcthompson
Or sloppy/lazy counting because they already know the predetermined outcome.

~~~
Piskvorrr
Improbable. Sharing a pre-determined result with Joe Random Votecounters *
number of voting stations = near certainty of someone leaking that, and a
field day for the media.

So, while theoretically possible, realistically summed up by "three men can
hold a secret, if one of them is dead."

(And specifically here, if I were a conspirator going for a predetermined
result, I would want a somewhat close result, yes - but not an almost-tie as
seen here. Something like 55:45 or somesuch, not a "every single vote matters"
scenario, where a few thousand votes could swing the outcome)

~~~
rcthompson
I think it would be more of an "open secret" pattern: e.g. no one explicitly
orders people to make sure the ruling party always wins, but everyone knows
someone who knows someone who was punished for reporting the actual count
instead of a rigged count.

~~~
Piskvorrr
What you are describing is not an "open secret," that's a "conspiracy theory."

------
vinchuco
Is there a field that studies inconsistencies of this type?

Recently on HN there was a related test (the Grim test)
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11787560](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11787560)

~~~
elliotec
I think the field you're looking for is statistics?

~~~
mahmud
More specifically anomaly detection.

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anomaly_detection](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anomaly_detection)

~~~
vinchuco
Thank you!

------
JelteF
It would be very interesting to see this method used for other elections to
see what unexpected results can be found. Although still interesting, it is
not a huge surprise that there has been large vote fraud in Russia.

~~~
trhway
>it is not a huge surprise that there has been large vote fraud in Russia

Russian elections for statistics have become like "Lena" for image processing.
Typical "camel-double-hump-Gauss" of Russian elections - polling stations
without observers at Fig 2. at
[http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3545790/pdf/pnas...](http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3545790/pdf/pnas.201206770.pdf)
("United Russia" is the Putin's party).

------
amerine
Nice work. It's interesting they used Russia as the source of election results
data. Did I miss an exlaination of their data selection criteria in the paper?

~~~
conistonwater
> _We used election data from three countries besides Russia: 2011 general
> election in Spain, 2010 presidential election in Poland (1st round), and
> 2009 federal election in Germany (Zweitstimmen, i.e. party votes). These
> three elections were chosen because the data are publicly available down to
> the single polling station level, and because the number and size of polling
> stations are comparable to those in Russia_

I guess this means they found the data first, then decided to try to analyze
it and compare it with similar data elsewhere. It's probably not their work-
related research ([http://www.fchampalimaud.org/en/the-
foundation/mission/](http://www.fchampalimaud.org/en/the-
foundation/mission/)).

------
jrgirvan
Should try it on the USA election results...

------
zyxzevn
Why Electronic Voting is a BAD Idea - Computerphile

[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=w3_0x6oaDmI](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=w3_0x6oaDmI)

------
euske
This thread just reminded me of this quote:

"If you tell the truth, you don't have to remember anything." \- Mark Twain

------
ChicagoBoy11
This is brilliant. I wonder how the authors got the initial motivation to do
the study -- seems like quite a bit of work to find a very specific
statistical anomaly; doubt they went into it blindly not really knowing there
was something to find...

~~~
int_19h
In 2014, there was a lot of attention drawn in Russia and Ukraine to votes in
Crimea and Donbass (the "independence referendums", and elections of local
leaders). The latter two votes, in particular, had nice exact percentages,
which drew attention of people familiar with statistics almost immediately,
and were heavily discussed in LJ.

~~~
amooeba
The study that is being discussed here was essentially done in the end of 2011
and early 2012, mostly triggered by the results of the 2011 legislative
election (heavily discussed in LJ as well; in fact, this study itself was
mostly developed in LJ).

The election results in Crimea and Donbass do contain some funny patterns and
are most likely largely made up, but no information is available on the
polling station level so there is little to analyze statistically.

~~~
int_19h
Good to know, thanks! Regarding this:

>> no information is available on the polling station level so there is little
to analyze statistically.

What they did was look at the percentages and exact vote counts for each
choice, and noticed that they match down to one vote (i.e. if you take the
percentage, multiply by total population, and round, you'll get the vote
count). For example, in referendum in Lugansk, the official stats are as
follows:

1,349,360 valid bulletins 1,298,084 (96.2%) voted yes

Normally, the percentage is a number with a lot of digits after the decimal
point, which is then rounded for presentation purposes. But here, if you take
96.2% and multiply it by 1,349,360, you get 1,298,084.32. In other words, it's
actually accurate to 4 digits after decimal point, three of which happen to be
zeroes (96.2000%).

Of course, it could be just a very unlikely (< 1/1000) coincidence that the
number of "yes" votes just happened to fit exactly into three digits of
precision. But a more reasonable explanation is that someone started with the
percentage that they wanted to get, and then computed the requisite number of
bulletins from that.

Said explanation becomes even more reasonable when you take the reported
numbers for turnout, and realize that the same relation holds there.
Specifically:

1,807,739 eligible voters 1,359,419 voted (75.2%)

1,807,739 х 75.2% = 1,359,419.73

Oh look, another perfect percentage (75.2000%).

------
lovemenot
On reading just the abstract, there does not appear to be any control in this
experiment. I'd have expected them to mention inclusion of election results
known with certainty to not be fraudulent.

Likewise, I'd expect there to be proof of fraud by other reliable means in
order to validate this method. It is not enough for them to just assert that
there can be no other explanation for this data, so these were fraudulent
results, so our method must be working.

Absent a control, the strong conclusion that fraud can be detected this way
seems unsupported.

~~~
lvs
I would suggest looking at the paper in more detail before saying it's
uncontrolled. I found the control just by skimming the figures.

~~~
lovemenot
I would do so, but the site prevents access to non-subscribers.

Would you kindly tell me the method they used to _independently_ prove fraud
in some of the analysed data.

~~~
ams6110
I had no trouble accessing the paper using the PDF link on the page
([https://arxiv.org/pdf/1410.6059v4.pdf](https://arxiv.org/pdf/1410.6059v4.pdf))

~~~
lovemenot
Thanks for the link to PDF. The "This URL" link takes you to a page that asks
for a login.

Having now read the article, I stand by my original point. There seems to be
no verification that the proposed method does indeed identify (in some cases)
cases of elections that were independently known, as a point of fact, to have
been fraudulent.

They seem to be claiming two things, but you cannot have it both ways :

a) This method can identify fraudulent elections and we proved it by analysing
elections in Russia

b) These elections in Russia that we analysed using this method were
fraudulent - as proved by the method.

I would expect to see a control that takes data from elections that were
already known to be fraudulent. e.g. by confession, video evidence or some
other reliable means to show that the effect was observable in some of those
_demonstrably_ fraudulent elections.

~~~
amooeba
Actually there is a TON of evidence that e.g. Russian elections 2011 were
heavily falsified. There are dozens (probably hundreds) reports of independent
observers, plenty of videos capturing ballot stuffing, multiple cases when
election papers are known to have been forged after the ballot count was
finished, etc. etc. I don't know what are "reliable means" for you though; all
that evidence has been outright rejected by every single Russian official or
court.

~~~
lovemenot
Yes. And what bothers me about this study is that it seems to rely on our
implicit understanding of this circumstance. Rather than using a set of data
where they can explicitly compare fraudulent and legitimate results.

Surely there would have been a better set of test data than one for which
politicians are still actively serving.

Unfortunately the science is somewhat tainted by the politics here since it is
very unlikely they'll get independent confirmation of fraud for the test set.


1k pics of nuclear, defense, related ads published in scientific American - DyslexicAtheist
https://osf.io/f6yqs/
======
DyslexicAtheist
a better explanation than what could fit in the title:
[https://twitter.com/NuclearAnthro/status/1278544800581447680](https://twitter.com/NuclearAnthro/status/1278544800581447680)


AutoMicroFarm - mooreds
https://automicrofarm.com/
======
carapace
A friend of mine has a bespoke system similar to this in his backyard. It's
kind of wonderful to have a fish pond, and the plants seem to like growing in
the grow bed.

This is one of those ideas, like putting solar panels on your roof, that makes
so much sense that it's just silly NOT to do it.


Kenyans Say Chinese Investment Brings Racism and Discrimination (2018) - deogeo
https://www.nytimes.com/2018/10/15/world/africa/kenya-china-racism.html
======
m3nu
With China being very homogeneous in terms of race, they never worked through
those issues. I don't blame them. My grand parents, who lived in the
countryside all their life would react in a similar way.

Small anecdote: I attended an English class at a Chinese business university.
The teacher (young girl, never left China in her life) told us that everything
"French" means "sex/porn/etc", i.e. "french book", "french movie". Funny, but
tragic.

Also remember the racist ad for washing powder (girl washes a black guy and a
Chinese jumps out afterwards).

They will probably need some slightly more tragic events and pushback to
acknowledge it's a problem. Would be better if they learnt from the west's
painful lessons, but my hopes for that are low.

~~~
jxramos
I thought you were possibly exaggerating. There really is such an ad. Pretty
horrible. I never heard of this news almost 3 years after the fact.

[https://www.theguardian.com/world/2016/may/28/china-
racist-d...](https://www.theguardian.com/world/2016/may/28/china-racist-
detergent-advert-outrage)

~~~
apexalpha
Focussing on a single Ad in the entire continent of China is a bit weird. This
only caused outrage in the US, where political correctnes seems a national
political passtime; who can be offended the fastest and most often? Win TV
time as a politician!

Here is the _exact_ same ad in Italy, but reversed:
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_dntfod-
Cbo](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_dntfod-Cbo)

No one bats an eye.

The is a big problem in China regarding racism, mostly because of the simple
fact they aren't multicultaral like the West; it's just iganorance really.

~~~
yostrovs
Not exactly reversed. A clean Chinese guy never comes out of the laundry. One
additional note: you will not see a gender reversal for these ads, where a men
gets himself a more attractive girl. At least in the West.

------
mothsonasloth
I think I posted this before but my old university buddy who's from Zambia,
jokes with me that the Chinese are colonization 2.0

The Chinese government have no scruples which is why they are out-competing
Western companies and governments in Africa, who are tied behind political and
moral restrictions. Also the Chinese have a major resource in man power which
they can deploy anywhere for cheap.

~~~
nabla9
Globalization and colonization have been always linked and globalization
usually starts with either with colonization or something that looks like it.
Adam Smith himself argued that the discovery of the Americas by Christopher
Columbus accelerated the process of globalisation [1] (without using the word
globalisation).

When Chines build roads to extract resources with questionable intent, those
roads and electric grids are free for all and not all traffic goes to China.
Some even question the net value of Chinese efforts for the Chinese.

[1]: [https://www.economist.com/free-exchange/2013/09/23/when-
did-...](https://www.economist.com/free-exchange/2013/09/23/when-did-
globalisation-start)

------
leongrado
For the most part, Chinese in China don't have a culture of condemning racism
like the US or other western nations. As apparent in the video, he isn't even
ashamed of being called racist.

~~~
throwaway0923
That’s because China’s racism is more about stereotypes and less about
physical KKK type violence.

If there was violence, it would definitely be condemned.

The best analogy I can think of is the current Harvard Affirmative Action
lawsuit. There are people who don’t feel they are racist/biased, but somehow
justify to themselves that having a quota on Asian American students is fine.

~~~
50656E6973
Google "uighur muslims china", and you will see its much more "physical" than
you claim

------
perseusprime11
The picture in this tweet is very timely and appropriate to this post.

[https://mobile.twitter.com/effyzhangmy/status/10916881464487...](https://mobile.twitter.com/effyzhangmy/status/1091688146448732160)

~~~
perseusprime11
If you think this picture is photoshopped, it's not. Check out the video:
[http://v.ifeng.com/dyn/m/video/32078215/index.shtml](http://v.ifeng.com/dyn/m/video/32078215/index.shtml)

------
iguy
Can anyone knowledgeable comment on the depth of Kenya's internal divisions?

From the NYT's perspective clearly Kenya is racially uniform, but I know that
there was significant political violence at recent elections, to do with which
tribe or language group candidates or parties represented. Do such
distinctions matter only at voting time, or do they matter in everyday life
too... like whether X landlords will be happy to rent to Y people, or employ
Z? Can such distinctions be perceived immediately on the street (e.g. from
accent) or only once you know someone's surname, or something?

~~~
mmczaplinski
A westerner who used to live in Kenya for about 6 months. The tribal divisions
are very much present in Kenya. You can tell the tribe that someone belongs to
by their surname and to a lesser extent by physical appearance.

People are definitely more happy to hire others from their own tribe or rent
rooms to them but it's more just nepotism than outright racism, at least in
larger cities.

The violence that happened during the last elections was also driven mostly by
political factors first, rather than race. It just so happens that the
president Kenyatta and the political elites of Kenya come mostly from the
Kikuyu tribe, which then leads to tensions along tribal lines.

In my experience, the tribal divisions are more pronounced in the countryside.
Until recently, in some parts of the country there has been open conflict
between tribes, e.g between Turkana and Samburu in the north. I have witnessed
numerous times the Samburu use racial slurs to describe the Turkana and vice
versa.

~~~
iguy
Thanks, that's helpful.

------
swervematchbook
This is almost certainly going to be an unpopular view but when you view the
Chinese behaviour through the lens of a Western view of the world, you are
insensitive to the fact that modern Chinese culture has a really different
starting point, the nation is mostly ethnically homogenous and was not really
involved in the enslavement.

I'm not necessarily out to defend the behaviour of this person - I think they
were pretty callous, and some of the other practices also seem pretty
horrendous but I also think some of the offence readers of this article may
take come from projecting our own personal views onto the behaviour of others,
ignorant of the different origins and cultural contexts of the offender.

When slurs such as referring to people as monkeys are used by the Chinese,
they are not steeped with the kind of hatred and historical context when
wielded by someone from the West.

\---That doesn't make it any less hurtful or insensitive---

That said, it also doesn't necessarily carry the same intent as it may outside
of China. Comparison with animals is far more normalized and entrenched in
culture: for instance, everyone is assigned a zodiac by their birth month and
the Monkey King is a household mythological hero.

------
robertwalsh0
This article made me think of a Chinese film called ‘The Wolf Warrior 2’ where
the benevolent Chinese save an unnamed African country. I believe it’s one of
the highest grossing Chinese films ever and might shed some light on Chinese
attitudes toward Africa/Africans.

It feels like ‘Starship Troopers’ level propaganda and is completely straight
faced.

The villagers constantly thank the Chinese hero for his over-the-tip acts of
bravery, they celebrate when he wins local drinking contests, etc.

[https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wolf_Warrior_2](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wolf_Warrior_2)

------
0max
It doesn't help that in China down to Southeast Asia, the tanner your skin is,
the less respect you get. That being that those who are more tan are people
who work fields historically.

------
amaccuish
Why does the nytimes offer translations into Chinese? I've never seen that for
articles to do with Russia for example?

~~~
ardy42
> Why does the nytimes offer translations into Chinese? I've never seen that
> for articles to do with Russia for example?

I think it started because they tried to start a Chinese edition for the PRC,
but that was eventually blocked after they published a story the communists
didn't like.

Maybe continuing to pay for translations is not too expensive in the grand
scheme of things, and keeps them well-positioned (with mind-share and the
like) if there's ever a thaw and they're unblocked.

------
User23
The ongoing Chinese colonization of Africa is one of the biggest stories the
western news media has absolutely no interest in reporting.

~~~
Lordarminius
_The ongoing Chinese colonization of Africa is one of the biggest stories the
western news media has absolutely no interest in reporting._

Perhaps because the Chinese are not (being allowed) to 'colonize Africa'. They
may have a large presence in East Africa but are of limited significance
elsewhere in the continent.

~~~
djtriptych
Yeah like every African colonizer ever. What is your point? Colonization
doesn't happen in continent-sized chunks.

------
beerlord
And here it is from the Chinese perspective:

[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1a-QpyF7rNc&t=3512s](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1a-QpyF7rNc&t=3512s)

~~~
dm3730
I watched the video. It shows a Chinese site manager having a confusing
interaction with several African workers. He then expresses somewhat racist
views to the camera, eg: all Africans are well built because it is a survival
of the fittest environment. But I could not follow what you meant by the
Chinese perspective. Could you elaborate?

~~~
Bakary
I do recommend watching the documentary in its entirety but there's also an
interview with the director that addresses some of the themes in this thread.

[https://filmmakermagazine.com/35197-empire-of-dust-an-
interv...](https://filmmakermagazine.com/35197-empire-of-dust-an-interview-
with-bram-van-paesschen/)


A simplified variant of Tetris in fewer than 140 bytes of JavaScript - tilt
https://gist.github.com/aemkei/1672254
======
xigency
How many bytes would it take to make the whole game?

~~~
knodi123
I don't know the precise answer, but I can tell you the lower bound


Hire me and pay what feels right - manuganji
http://manuganji.com

======
manuganji
I'm running an experiment in Gift Economy. At the end of each project
milestone, you can pay me whatever feels right for you.

~~~
ckluis
I hope no one abuses you.

~~~
manuganji
Thanks for the concern! I'm aware of this risk. :)

~~~
ckluis
So serious question, what if someone offers you equity instead of cash? I
didn’t look carefully, but I’m not sure you specified any payment terms.

~~~
manuganji
At the moment, I have to prioritize cash over equity. I also think its a
better validation.


The Somali Pirates' Business Model - robg
http://www.undispatch.com/somali-pirates-buisiness-model
======
IgorPartola
Anybody here read Heinlein's "Citizen of the Galaxy"? To stop think kind of a
business, you make it unprofitable. The question is "how?"

~~~
ankeshk
Thats actually a very good question. I can think of a few ways to make
pirating unprofitable. Or dangerous. But unfortunately can't think of any non-
violent way.

* Equip all the ships with armament. The pirate teams are small in size. So hopefully, the investment in arms wouldn't be a lot to fight them off.

* Turn the table. Offer an insane "Reward" to anyone who captures one of the local elders - the people who give anchoring permission.

~~~
hkuo
Not sure either of those would work.

I don't think companies would want to spend money for weapons, nor the cost of
training employees to use them, nor the liability of what happens if they are
used and any ensuing results. They want the police or government to simply
take care of it, and they spend no money at all. Unless that happens, it's
probably less cost to simply accept piracy as a cost of busienss.

For the reward to capture or off a local elder, that just opens up a spot for
another person to fill in.

~~~
sstrudeau
A friend's brother pilots a freighters. They always have a couple of armed
Gurkha's (Nepalese mercenaries) on board. So some companies are willing to pay
for armed security for their ships; but a few armed ships is clearly an
insufficient deterrent to the entire enterprise of piracy.

~~~
khafra
It depends on who has a larger profit margin, the shipping companies or the
pirates. If a random 5% of freighters are armed heavily enough to destroy or
capture a pirate vessel, the pirates have to be making enough profit for a
total loss in 1 of 20 raids to be worth it.


Show HN: Techendo - A Tech Show - lowglow

Hi Everyone,
I've started a tech show called Techendo. It's just some startup guys from YC/Elsewhere that will be talking about things going on in the industry. It will be shot every other week and try to be as entertaining as possible while talking about tech and startup life.
I'd love to spotlight startups/projects, have guests on the show, and shoot some skits. It's still a work in progress, so if you want to help out or just give feedback, it would be great to have any help I can get.
Also, if you have topics you want us to talk about let me know.
Thanks for your help HN.
Check out our first episode here:
Techendo Episode 1 - Secret of the Droin
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9_JPD96XOPI
======
argonaut
Honestly... you guys lost me in the first few minutes. It's great you guys
were having a good time and laughing and stumbling around (and that's probably
why you did this video - to have a good time), but it didn't translate into
something particularly watchable. The editing was also kind of jarring.

~~~
lowglow
You're right, we did this to have a good time and talk about some things that
we wanted to talk about. We'll get better as time goes on. Sorry about the
editing, that was all my fault. I'm still learning what works and what
doesn't. Happy you checked us out. Let me know if you have anymore feedback
you'd like to share. Thanks. :)

------
lowglow
Clickable:
[http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9_JPD96XOPI&t=0m0s](http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9_JPD96XOPI&t=0m0s)

------
jayzalowitz
This... Is... awesome.

~~~
lowglow
Thanks. :) We'll get better. It's a lot tougher than I thought to
organize/shoot/edit a show like this.

------
tagabek
What camera equipment are you using?

~~~
lowglow
Canon Vixia HF S20:
[http://www.usa.canon.com/cusa/support/consumer/camcorders/hi...](http://www.usa.canon.com/cusa/support/consumer/camcorders/high_definition_camcorders/vixia_hf_s20)

Canon Vixia HF10:
[http://www.usa.canon.com/cusa/support/consumer/camcorders/fl...](http://www.usa.canon.com/cusa/support/consumer/camcorders/flash_memory_camcorders/vixia_hf10)

and the macbook pro built-in camera for the terrible third shot.

The audio is recorded with a Rode NTK Microphone:
<http://www.rodemic.com/mics/ntk>


Linux 5.2 released: list of changes - diegocg
https://kernelnewbies.org/Linux_5.2
======
yjftsjthsd-h
> Ext4 has gained support for case-insensitive name lookups

Well that's neat. I wonder how it'll be exposed to userspace; mount option,
maybe?

~~~
bluewres
This seems to explain how it works:
[https://www.kernel.org/doc/html/latest/admin-
guide/ext4.html...](https://www.kernel.org/doc/html/latest/admin-
guide/ext4.html#case-insensitive-file-name-lookups)

~~~
yjftsjthsd-h
Thanks!

> The case-insensitive file name lookup feature is supported on a per-
> directory basis, allowing the user to mix case-insensitive and case-
> sensitive directories in the same filesystem. It is enabled by flipping the
> +F inode attribute of an empty directory.

That's nicer than how Darwin handles it in that it doesn't force you to use it
for the entire file system, although I'd be willing to bet this exposes some
interesting bugs in applications, and I wonder if mixing case sensitivity
inside a filesystem doesn't make them even more interesting to deal with.

------
Jahak
Hooray


Floating Point Visually Explained - alxmdev
http://fabiensanglard.net/floating_point_visually_explained/
======
Veedrac
Let's represent the number 42,643,192, or 10100010101010111011111000₂, in
different "floating point" representations.

Scientific notation with 5 significant figures:

        4.2643 × 10⁷

Scientific notation in base 2 with 17 significant binary figures:

        1.0100010101010111₂ × 2²⁵

Let's pack this in a fixed-length datatype. Note that 011001₂ is the binary
encoding of 25.

        1 0100010101010111 011001
        1     mantissa      exp.

This doesn't suffice because

a. We're wasting a bit on the leading 1.

b. We want to support negative values.

c. We want to support negative exponents.

d. It would be nice if values of the same sign sorted by their representation.

The leading 1 can be dropped and replaced with a sign bit (0 for "+", 1 for
"-"). The exponent can have 100000₂ subtracted from it, so 011001₂ represents
25-32, or -7, and 111001₂ represents 25. Sorting can be handled by putting the
exponent before the mantissa.

Thus we get to a traditional floating point representation.

        0 111001 0100010101010111
        ±  exp.      mantissa

Real floating point has a little more on top (infinities, standardised field
sizes, etc.) but is fundamentally the same.

~~~
kibwen
_> Sorting can be handled by putting the exponent before the mantissa._

Don't denormal numbers prevent simply sorting this way? I could use a diagram
like the OP's to remind myself how they work...

~~~
cesarb
Using the article's "window" analogy: denormals are in the smallest "window",
so the sort order between the "windows" (exponents) is kept. Their special
property is that they don't have the implicit one to the left of the point
(it's an implicit zero instead); the order within the mantissa is still kept.

That is:

        0 000000 0100010101010111
        ±  exp.      mantissa

Here, the value is 0.0100010101010111₂ × 2^-30 (I hope I calculated the
exponent correctly)

As a bonus, the zero value comes naturally in this approach: it's a denormal
with a mantissa of zero. Without denormals, the implicit one would get in the
way.

------
kehrlann
Best simple explanation I've seen so far.

I highly recommend Fabien's Game Engine Black Book. I'm halfway through it,
and it's really fun. I've only been a software dev for 6 years, so looking at
how things could be hacked around in the 90s to squeeze every drop of
performance out of very constrained devices is fascinating.

~~~
s17n
I dunno all this talk of "windows" and "buckets" etc doesn't seem particularly
simple to me.

~~~
kehrlann
I guess I'm not math-y enough so that I intuitively understand the simple math
formula.

On the other hand, I like his window image : e.g. I understand better how, the
further you get from 0, the more your precision goes down, because "bigger
windows, divided in the same number of buckets".

~~~
conistonwater
So the question is: if you feel like you don't get the math formula, but you
get the windows-and-buckets explanation of it, is it still possible that your
understanding doesn't match the true underlying concept? Because that is the
pitfall with a lot of intuitive explanations, that unless you are sure that
the explanations are equivalent to the true thing, you might end up
understanding an idea that is close but slightly off.

So a puzzle: if two positive numbers in exactly the same window are
subtracted, what is the worst-case rounding error you can get in the result?

~~~
sharpneli
Error relative to the original numbers or to the result?

------
mdip
> People who really wanted an hardware floating point unit in 1991 could buy
> one. The only people who could possibly want one back then would have been
> scientists (as per Intel understanding of the market). They were marketed as
> "Math CoProcessor". Performance were average and price was outrageous (200
> USD in 1993 equivalent to 350 USD in 2016.). As a result, sales were
> mediocre.

Actually, that's only _partly_ true. My father owned a company that outfitted
large manufacturing shops (MI company, you can imagine who his customers
were). As a result, he used AutoCAD. The version of AutoCAD he used had a hard
requirement on the so-called "Math Co-processor", so he ended up having to
purchase one and install it himself. That was my first taste of taking a
computer apart and upgrading it and I credit that small move with my becoming
interested in building PCs, which led to my dad and I starting a business in
the 90s doing that for individuals and businesses. There were definitely more
reasons for that kind of add-on than just scientific fields; anyone in the
computer aided drafting world at that time needed one as well.

~~~
snaky
That's why there was math coprocessor software emulator. It worked fine on
386SX.

------
jordigh
Okay, fine, I agree that sometimes mathematical notation is bad and we are all
computer people here, not math people, so we get really scared of mathematical
notation.

But is (-1)^S 1.M 2^(E-127) so bad that it required a whole blog post to
explain it? Except for the "1.M" pseudo-notation to explain the mantissa with
the implicit on bit, all of those symbols are found in most programming
languages we use.

I don't think the value of the blog post was explaining the notation. We all
knew what operations to perform when we saw it. The value seems to lie more in
thinking of the exponent as the offset on the real line and the mantissa as a
certain window inside that offset.

Personally, though, this still doesn't seem like a huge, deep insight to me,
but maybe I'm just way too used to floating point and have forgotten how hard
it was to learn this. I did learn about mantissa, exponents, and even learned
how to use a log table in high school, but maybe I'm just old and had an
unusual high school experience.

~~~
coldtea
> _But is (-1)^S 1.M 2^(E-127) so bad that it required a whole blog post to
> explain it?_

Well, for one the expression doesn't tell us anything, could as well describe
alien gravity -- even if we know math. You still need to explain what S, M,
and E are used for to understand it.

~~~
pharrington
S is sign. M is mantissa. E is exponent.

The only term there you might not remember from high school math is mantissa,
and a search engine will precisely explain that in two sentences, in terms you
do remember from high school math.

~~~
kllrnohj
> S is sign. M is mantissa. E is exponent.

That doesn't actually get you any closer to knowing what the formula means,
though. You need to also define that M is unsigned & 23 bits and E is unsigned
& 8 bits. And that alone still doesn't get across the resulting _limitations_
like that precision reduces by half every time the exponent bumps. Sure you
can reason about it if you devote the brainpower to applying the limitations
to the formula, but it's not explained by the formula itself.

~~~
pharrington
Yes, jordigh did post, mistakenly or deliberately, an incomplete explanation
of IEEE754 single precision floats. A number line with alternative labels
showing an approximate mantissa and exponent for a given float is certainly
one possible way to _explain_ the application of the spec, but obviously, not
only does it give less information than the specification, it is not obvious
that it is a generally better explanatory tool. For example, it certainly
helps Fabien, I assume it helps you and coldtea, but it leaves me completely
bewildered (I know _what_ it says, but on it's own, I'm completely lost as to
_why_ ).

edit: jordigh, not coldtea, first brought up the formula in his argument

~~~
coldtea
> _not only does it give less information than the specification_

That's generally considered a plus (if not a sine qua non) for a simplified
explanation, and the larger the specification, the bigger plus.

Else, one might as well read the 100s of pages of specs.

~~~
pharrington
[https://www.csee.umbc.edu/~tsimo1/CMSC455/IEEE-754-2008.pdf](https://www.csee.umbc.edu/~tsimo1/CMSC455/IEEE-754-2008.pdf)

------
dragontamer
Here's everything you need to know about Floating Point in as shortly as I can
write it.

1\. Floating points are simply "Binary Scientific notation". The speed of
light is 2.98E8... which in "normal form" is written 298,000,000. An IEEE 754
Single has 8-bits for the exponent (E8 in the speed of light), and 24-bits for
the mantissa (the 2.98 part). There's some complicated stuff like offset
shifting here, but this is the "core idea" of floating point.

2\. "Rounding" is forced to happen in Floating Point whenever "information
drops off" the far side of the mantissa. The mantissa is only 24-bits long,
and many numbers (such as .1) require an infinite number of bits to represent!
As such, this "rounding error" builds up _exponentially_ the more operations
you perform.

3\. Subtraction (cancellation error) is the biggest single source of error and
the one that needs to be most studied. "Subtraction" can occur when a positive
and negative number is added together.

4\. Because of this error (and all errors!), Floating point operations are NOT
associative. (A + B) + C gives a different value than A + (B + C). The
commutative property remains for multiplication and addition (A+B == B+A). If
you require "bit-perfect" and consistent floating-point simulations, you MUST
take into account the order of all operations, even simple addition and
multiplication.

For example: Try "0.1 + 0.7 + 1" vs "1 + 0.1 + .7" in Python, and you'll see
that these to orderings lead to different results.

\---------------

Once you fully know and understand these 4 facts, then everything else is just
icing on the cake. For example to prevent "cancellation error" (#3), you can
sort the numbers by magnitude, and then add them up from smallest magnitude to
largest magnitude.

~~~
seattleeng
This is an excellent short list of the main points I learned as an undergrad,
and what I've retained today. One other point is that 64 bit floating points
(aka doubles) really are about double the precision of 32 bit floating points,
in terms of significant digits. An interesting implementation detail is that
they spend a higher fraction of their "bit budget" on the mantissa to get this
(52 out of 64 bits, vs 23 out of 32).

------
haberman
I like the "window/offset" concept. I wrote an extended blog article with yet
different visual aids: [http://blog.reverberate.org/2014/09/what-every-
computer-prog...](http://blog.reverberate.org/2014/09/what-every-computer-
programmer-should.html)

~~~
xkpd3
Excellent post. I like it better then the one posted here.

------
conistonwater
I really wish he didn't make [0,1] one of the windows, because in floating
point arithmetic the range [0,1] contains approximately as many floating point
numbers (a billion or so in Float32) as the range [1,∞). There are "windows"
[2^k,2^(k+1)] for positive _as well as negative_ k. Just creates unnecessary
scope for further confusion.

~~~
DiThi
Looks like he corrected it.

~~~
iammyIP
In 32 bit float, about 50% of the possible values (no denormals) fall between
-0.5 and 0.5 (~2 000 000 000), the space on each side between 0.5 and 1 adds
only about 80 million new values.

------
cesarb
IMO, the best way to explain floating point is to play with a tiny float. With
an 8-bit float (1 bit sign, 4 bits exponent, 3 bits mantissa, exponent bias
7), there are only 256 possible values. One can write by hand a table with the
corresponding value for each of the 256 possibilities, and get a feel to how
it really works.

(I got the 1+4+3 from
[http://www.toves.org/books/float/](http://www.toves.org/books/float/), I
don't know if it's the best allocation for the bits; but for didactic
purposes, it works.)

------
makmanalp
> Since floating point units were so slow, why did the C language end up with
> float and double types ? After all, the machine used to invent the language
> (PDP-11) did not have a floating point unit! The manufacturer (DEC) had
> promised to Dennis Ritchie and Ken Thompson the next model would have one.
> Being astronomy enthusiasts they decided to add those two types to their
> language.

Wait, what was the alternative? No floats? How the heck would people calculate
things with only integers?

edit: AFAIK bignums are even slower, and fixed-point accumulates error like
crazy

~~~
photojosh
Embedded developer here, using 8-bit microcontrollers, so _all_ our
calculations are done in fixed-point/integers.

Here's a chunk of real code that converts results from the analog-digital
converter to appropriate units. A lot of precalculated constants and things
like using shifts instead of division as much as possible.

        // - motor current from ACS723 (2.5V is 0A, +/- 400mV/A)
        ADC_SET_MUX(motor_current_in_adc);
        ADC_START();
        while (ADC_RUNNING()) {}
        uint8_t result_current = ADCH;
        // result(val) * 5V/256(val) * 1000mA/0.4V => result*48.828 = current in ma
        // e.g. 5A -> 4.5V out = 230, less 2.5V (128) = 102
        // 102 * 48.828125 = 4980 mA
        // for max precision, max multiplier = 32678/128 = 255,
        // use (value * (48.828 << 2)) >> 2. -> 195
        // value_ma = (result_adc * 195) >> 2
        current_ma = (((int16_t)(result_current) -127) * 195) >> 2;

        // - motor output speed feedback signal (filtered PWM, 16% (1/6.1) of actual value, so 5V in == 30.5V)
        ADC_SET_MUX(motor_speed_fb_adc);
        ADC_START();
        while (ADC_RUNNING()) {}
        uint8_t result_speed = ADCH;
        // result(val) * 6.1 = actual speed setting
        // result / 256 * 6100 = actual in mV
        int16_t speed_mv = (uint16_t) result_speed * 119;

        #if DEBUG
            // calculate target speed mv
            uint16_t output_speed_mv = ((uint16_t) motor_current_speed * 195) >> 2;
        #endif

~~~
makmanalp
This is exactly what I was imagining! x>>2 rather than x/2\. Brilliant,
thanks.

~~~
Retra
x >> 2 replaces x/4.

~~~
makmanalp
Oops, you're absolutely right.

------
jokoon
Imagine a ruler with all floating point values on it, each time the mantissa
comes at its maximum, you increase the exponent, so the space between farther
float values doubles.

The number of mantissa values being constant for each exponent value, the
exponent describes some kind of "zoom level".

Float values on a ruler would sort of looks like this:

       ... x x x x   x   x   x   x   x   x...
                  ^ exponent increases, spacings are doubled

------
coldtea
I see how some people just get the math, but I don't see why programmers here
say they find it difficult to understand the window / offset explanation the
article gives.

A "window" is a common programming term for a range between two values.

An "offset" is a common term for where a value falls after a starting point.

In simpler decimal and equidistant terms, the idea is to split a range of
values in windows, divide each window in N values, and store an FP number by
storing which window and which index inside the window (0 to N) it falls.

The FP scheme actually uses powers of 2 instead of equal distant windows (so
the granularity becomes coarser as the numbers become bigger) but the
principle is the same.

~~~
Michielvv
I'm guessing because if you put those words together, you automatically assume
the offset means the position of the window. It's clear enough with the
illustration, but using terms that are in very common use for other concepts
can make it confusing at the first glance.

Also the window explanation hides the fact that it's able to represent really
small numbers. (graph implies that 0-1 is the smallest window)

~~~
squeaky-clean
Smaller is an ambiguous term when it comes to numbers. Is it the lesser value?
Or is it the value nearest to 0? It depends on the context.

Either way, they cover the sign bit, and the brackets on the diagram show the
graphs are not using the sign, just exponent and mantissa. So I'd assume the
same principles stand but for 0 to -1, -1- to -2, and so on.

~~~
Michielvv
I mean smaller as in closer to zero as in exponent lower than 127. That part
is obvious in the formula, but not from the graphs.

The interesting part of the explanation is that it shows very clearly the
effect of the 1.M in the formula. Unfortunately it then does not answer the
resulting question: how is zero represented. (
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Signed_zero](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Signed_zero)
does a pretty good job at that though)

------
userbinator
I think the example values at
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Minifloat](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Minifloat)
are most useful for intuitively understanding how floating point works ---
especially the "all values" table, which shows how the numbers are spaced by
1s, then 2s, then 4s, etc. meaning the same number of values can represent a
larger range of magnitudes, but sacrificing precision in the process.

------
maurits
Obligatory: What Every Computer Scientist Should Know About Floating-Point
Arithmetic [1] (pdf)

[1]:
[http://www.itu.dk/~sestoft/bachelor/IEEE754_article.pdf](http://www.itu.dk/~sestoft/bachelor/IEEE754_article.pdf)

------
s17n
A much easier and better way to understand floating point is to just do it in
base 10.

~~~
kehrlann
Ooooh I see. I like it, thanks !

------
BinaryBullet
See also: An interactive floating point visualization:
[https://evanw.github.io/float-toy/](https://evanw.github.io/float-toy/)

------
oxide
As a complete layman with only a cursory knowledge of programming, as well as
a complete lack of math skills above Algebra 2, (I didn't even complete that,
tbh, once they threw graphing into the equation. I did get slope-intercept
form down, but that's it.)

I ended up finding this easier to understand than I expected, and a great
read.

I love explanations like these, with a visual breakdown. It really helps it
"click."

as long as I glazed over the math formulas and didn't let the numbers
overwhelm me.

This is what I took away: the exponent "reaches" out to the max value of the
[0,1] [2,4] etc, and the number represented tends to be like 51-53% of the way
down the line of the mantissa.

It "clicked" a bit for me, see? Am I way off?

This is the way I always learned math the best in school, an alternate
explanation that helps it "click."

Very good explanation, from my point of view, of how floating point numbers
work and what they even are.

That's a nice feeling for someone like me who is pretty bad at math and finds
formulas like the one shown in the article to be, frankly, indecipherable.

But now I (sort of) understand how floating point numbers work, (sort of) what
they are, why they are important, and what role they play.

Could I program anything using one? No. But, I could learn someday, and
explanations like these give me some hope that I just might be able to learn a
programming language if I put the effort in. That I could learn the math
required of me, even!

------
javajosh
Why did they fix the bit-width for the mantissa and exponent? It would be nice
to have more bits for the mantissa when you are near 1, and then ignore the
mantissa entirely when you're dealing with enormous exponents, and very far
from one. Granted, there would be some overhead (e.g. a 3-bit field describing
the exponent length, or something) but it would be a useful data-structure.

~~~
dnautics
You may like: [https://youtu.be/aP0Y1uAA-2Y](https://youtu.be/aP0Y1uAA-2Y)

It turns out the math is slightly harder but it's faster than IEEE FP in
hardware, probably because of less conditionals in the spec.

There is better performance in terms of numerical accuracy at the cost of
substantially more difficult error analysis.

Disclaimer: I'm in the video.

------
dsego
> Instead of Exponent, think of a Window between two consecutive power of two
> integers.

I know what an exponent is, or if you want "order of magnitude". Sorry, but "A
window between two consecutive power of two integers" doesn't make it easier
to think about.

~~~
coldtea
It does for others, who deal with windows and buckets in programming every
day.

~~~
dsego
window washers?

~~~
coldtea
I loled.

But they wouldn't qualify for the "in programming" part.

------
agumonkey
The last bits of trivia are very nice.

The x87 coprocessor makes me wonder about days were each chip changed you
system. It was such a different mindset that videogame consoles had parallel
routes between the board and the cartridge themselves to allow hardware
extension per game.

------
triangleman
>I wanted to vividly demonstrate how much of a handicap it was to work without
floating points.

So, did he manage to demonstrate that in the book? Because the page linked
here, while explaining how floating points are represented in memory, does not
explain how computers perform operations on them, or what purpose does a FPU
serve (how does it differ from an ALU).

------
endorphone
[https://dennisforbes.ca/index.php/2017/04/11/floating-
point-...](https://dennisforbes.ca/index.php/2017/04/11/floating-point-
numbers-an-infinite-number-of-mathematicians-enter-a-bar/)

------
piyush_soni
Does anyone have an alternate link, for some strange reason this link appears
to be blocked at my work.

------
pmelendez
Off topic: The response of dragontamer is one example about why down votes
alone are not enough. It was downvoted to the dead level and now nobody can
reply to it. But also nobody gave the reason why what he was saying is
incorrect.

~~~
gumby
I agree. I read HN with dead comments not suppressed and I estimate about 50%
of the time I consider them legit. Not always what I agree with, but sometimes
I even want to reply to them.

~~~
noxToken
If you think a dead comment should be seen by the community, vouch for it.
It's a way for the community to help moderate the discussion by allowing
habitual offenders to still input relevant discussion.

~~~
gumby
Once it's marked dead (and not simply downvoted to 0) I don't see a way to
upvote it back to life nor a way to reply to it. Perhaps other people do.
Otherwise I would definitely do so!

~~~
cesarb
Try clicking on the time ("6 hours ago") to open the comment by itself, for me
that makes the "vouch" option appear.

~~~
gumby
Thanks, I’ll do that!

------
vxNsr
I was hoping for something akin to a xkcd or SMBC comic, this isn't really
much better than what my asm prof said when he explained it for MIPS
programming. Maybe it's because I don't get what he means by offset and
window, but this wasn't really that helpful.

~~~
stilist
The _window_ limits the value the offset can represent -- minimum and maximum
bounds. The window doubles each time you increment it since it's binary /
power-of-two (0, 1, 2, 4, 8, …).

Within any given window there are 2^23 possible values. If you imagine those
values as an array, the _offset_ is the array index.

So in the example of 3.14, the window is [2, 4] since that's the power-of-two
pair that contains the value. The offset is (value - minimum) / (maximum -
minimum) = 0.57, which you multiply by 2^23 to get the array index.

Because the window doubles each time it's incremented, as the window gets
bigger you lose precision -- in his example, [0, 1] gives 15 decimal places
but [2048, 4096] only gives 4 decimal places.

~~~
throwaway2016a
Thank you. I am certain the article said that somewhere but that didn't click
until your explanation.


California poised to implement first electronic license plates - suprgeek
http://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2013/09/california-poised-to-implement-nations-first-electronic-license-plate-program

======
byoung2
Would an electronic license plate still draw power when the vehicle is parked?
That could be a problem if it drains your battery. Also, wouldn't the car need
to be altered to run power to the outside of the vehicle? Also, what is to
stop hacking? It is more difficult to swap out physical license plates
quickly, but I can imagine bootleg electronic ones that allow electronic
swapping on the fly, e.g. display the fake one while speeding.

~~~
lutusp
> Would an electronic license plate still draw power when the vehicle is
> parked?

No, it's like an RFID tag. It gets its power from the reader that queries it.

~~~
byoung2
So it can't be seen from a distance when parked...sounds like a big drawback.

------
TheLoneWolfling
So... What happens if/when signals are jammed/spoofed?

Also, if indeed it is a changing display, it requires power to do so. What
about draining batteries caused by that? Not to mention what about small
motercycles, that don't always have a 12v electrical system, if they have one
at all?


Colour Science for Python - kelsolaar
http://colour-science.org/

======
kelsolaar
We have an introductory tutorial ([http://colour-
science.org/tutorial.php](http://colour-science.org/tutorial.php)) showcasing
some features of the API and we have started some IPython Notebooks
([http://nbviewer.ipython.org/github/colour-science/colour-
ipy...](http://nbviewer.ipython.org/github/colour-science/colour-
ipython/blob/master/notebooks/colour.ipynb)) to cover it deeply along with the
theoretical aspect.

~~~
foolrush
Wonderful work.

Any chance of a C or C++ implementation?

~~~
jacobolus
There are already C/C++ implementations of most of this, and Matlab
implementations, if you go hunting around.

If there’s something specific you need, some of the algorithms have some
fiddly parts, but there’s not too much that’s fundamentally difficult to
implement in any of them. Any particular part should only take a day or two to
build for some one-off use case.

------
gtaylor
Shameless plug for python-colormath, which has been cooking since about 2008:
[http://python-colormath.readthedocs.org/](http://python-
colormath.readthedocs.org/)

Has a lot of the same conversions/comparisons/color spaces, excellent test
coverage, and in my own biased opinion, pretty good documentation.

------
idunning
See also the fantastic Color.jl, a Julia package with similar functionality.
Makes very pretty IJulia notebooks! More info at
[https://github.com/JuliaLang/Color.jl](https://github.com/JuliaLang/Color.jl)
or just run Pkg.add("Color") at your Julia REPL.

~~~
StefanKarpinski
I'd be curious about a comparison of the capabilities and approaches of these
two libraries. Color.jl got to be quite comprehensive almost by accident.

~~~
kelsolaar
Color.jl is excellent! They have a few stuff we don't support like DIN99
colourspace related computations and colour deficiency support, on an other
hand I think we have one of the largest dataset around, the features pages
will give you a nice overview: [http://colour-
science.org/features.php](http://colour-science.org/features.php)

------
blt

        import colour as color

~~~
kelsolaar
See my comment for the reason why it was named "colour":
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8261668](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8261668)

------
AceJohnny2
I've been peripherally interested in colo[u]r science for a while, and as a
software guy was amazed to discover the complexities of accurately describing
and computing color across a not-so-wide range of devices (my LCD screen, your
LCD screen, that projector, this printer...).

For example, I was looking for a way to find "perceptual distance" between
colours, since the standard RGB rainbow gives more space for green than, say,
yellow. Turns out there are colour spaces for that: CIELAB and CIELUV!
However, converting between these spaces and RGB is... fun.

(also, a fun way to tick off your illustrator friends is to install F.Lux on
their computer)

Thank you for this great library!

~~~
TheLoneWolfling
CIELAB is great. Even just being able to average colors is really useful.

------
photojosh
I'm surprised how at how poorly documented colour profile conversion is. I'm
using Django for a webapp that takes images from a bunch of sources and
primarily in AdobeRGB, and using Pillow to do the colour profile conversion
has been... interesting...

~~~
kelsolaar
Yeah, it's sadly true.

I would also like to add that most of the publications are very highly priced
which make them not easily accessible.

I had to buy a few of them and an account on OSA for a few hundreds dollars.

------
jacobolus
Other than the silly British spelling of color, looks like great work!

If you guys are ever in the SF Bay Area, shoot me a note and I’ll buy you a
coffee.

(For people looking for JavaScript implementations, I put a CIECAM02
implementation and some other stuff at
[https://github.com/jrus/chromatist](https://github.com/jrus/chromatist))

~~~
ezequiel-garzon
Are you serious about your remark about spelling? I must say it caught my
attention, but why would it be silly?

~~~
spamizbad
Most of the world's English speakers spell color w/o the u. (292 million
Americans, 44 million Filipinos)

~~~
billforsternz
I think you are forgetting one billion plus Indians.


Show HN: I built an app to create threads on Twitter and also to learn Redux - ud0
http://tweet-threader.herokuapp.com/
======
wingerlang
Landing page with zero information and a login-to-twitter button alone.

I waited 5 seconds to see if something else loaded, nope, then I closed the
tab. Despite the the fairly intriguing "threads on twitter" the landing page
was bad enough that I'm not even interested in continuing.

Put some examples there.

~~~
ud0
Thanks for the usefull feedback. It was meant to be a not-so-serious
sideproject but I guess the homepage should at least been more descriptive,
side projects are projects too and deserve some work on the landing page.

~~~
egfx
If you want anybody to use it that is. I have the same problem with
information underload on [https://qKast.com](https://qKast.com) , trying to
figure out the homepage right now.