The Economic Benefits of Paid Parental Leave - <AUTHOR> http://www.nytimes.com/2015/02/01/upshot/the-economic-benefits-of-paid-parental-leave.html

<comment><USER2> Being from Sweden with its relatively generous parental leave (~18 months for both parents, a fairly common company perk is to get 6 of these with 90% pay) its hard to understand how especially mothers can return to work already after 12 weeks. Will most people in practice work out a deal to take a longer leave and or be forced to quit?

<comment><USER3> The parts about Sweden's law that I love the most:

1) You can take these 18 months intermittently up until the child is 8 years old. 2) The days can be shared between both parents. 3) Both fathers and mothers are required to take 60 days each of those 480 days (versus one parent taking 421+ days).

"Since Swedish men started to take more responsibility for child rearing, women have seen both their incomes and levels of self-reported happiness increase. Paying dads to change nappies and hang out at playgrounds, in other words, seems to benefit the whole family."

Great country (obviously it has other flaws, but this is not one of them) :)

<comment><USER4> If you can take those days intermittently over 8 years, it seems like that is an easy cop-out for the dad to take 8 days a year to satisfy the requirement.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> Some random points:

1) As an employee in the US you get very little paid vacation per year, and as a consequence, US companies are _extremely_ bad at planning for people being absent for longer stretches of time. Contrast with European countries where everyone takes off for three to four consecutive weeks in the summer, and consequently European companies _plan_ for it and have a much easier time handling people being absent.

For longer parental leave to work in the US, paid leave also has to increase, to force companies into coping.

> opponents of paid leave say it is an economic burden that can be expensive > for businesses

2) That's a naive and short-sighted way of looking at it. Long paid parental leave creates a happier population, with happier children, which in turn presumably are more productive when they reach working age. Accessing a labour market, _any_ labour market has certain costs. For example, accessing the Silicon Valley labour market is more expensive than accessing the Midwest labour market, but the Silicon Valley one has higher quality potential employees, which justifies the cost.

If you think about it, a labour market doesn't spring into existence in a vacuum, if you want a pool of college-educated employees, you need colleges, quality high-schools, middle class parents who value education, and economic incentives to make going to college a good idea (i.e. a higher salary for these people). All of this costs money, and the ones paying it are the very companies that want to hire these people.

3) In the long run, it's very important to switch away from a system of maternity leave to equal parental leave. Women of child-bearing age are routinely discriminated against because companies know that they might quit/focus on the children/work less hours/have long maternal leave etc. By having equal paternal leave, and making sure that men take as much as women, this discrimination will disappear.

<comment><USER4> > In the long run, it's very important to switch away from a system of > maternity leave to equal parental leave. Women of child-bearing age are > routinely discriminated against because companies know that they might > quit/focus on the children/work less hours/have long maternal leave etc. By > having equal paternal leave, and making sure that men take as much as women, > this discrimination will disappear.

You aren't going to be able to force a father to take time off, just because you think he should. Even if he takes a week or two, the vast majority of them will go back to work in short order.

I would argue it is pretty much impossible to get men to take as much leave as women. The baby is literally attached the the portion of mothers who breast feed. It is stereotypical, but in my experience true, that mothers are more in tune with their infant and end up taking a lot more of the burden than the father. Ignoring that, single mothers are going to need time off, the father isn't even in the picture; and that is going to skew things as well.

<comment><USER5> In Sweden, parents get 16 months of paid parental leave, but each parent has two months reserved, so there's two months each, and then 12 months for the couple to divide as they see fit. After making the changes to reserve some time for each parent, paternal leave increased, but it also sent a strong signal that fathers should perhaps take even more of the parental leave, and the national ratio is 78%/22% now, and slowly getting more equal. (Among my college-educated upper-middle-class 30+ parent friends, it's solidly 50/50)

> Even if he takes a week or two

22% of 16 months is 3.5 half months of paternal leave on average. That's pretty far from "a week or two". This is exactly what I mean when I say that americans must adjust their view of paid leave first, before adressing parental leave.

So one super-simple way of making it more equal is to make the parental leave completely individual. The mother gets 8 months. The father gets 8 months. You won't reach 50/50, because some fathers will still choose to work instead and forfeit the paid leave, but you'll move the ratio much further, without force. You just provide very strong incentives, which is not the same thing.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> After having three kids myself I know how important the time after the kid is for creating a family bond and supporting the wife/mother.

I decided early on that even in our minimally funded startup that we would give any of our (3) employees up to a month of paid leave after a baby. Our co-founder/CTO will be testing how possible this policy is in April when he welcomes his second kid and taking a month off right during a critical launch period.

I understand that it is a risk (everything is a risk in a startup btw) and we have to put in extra time and cost up-front to get the other team members up to speed, but I think in the end it will be very much worth it. Worth it not only as a practical matter for him and his family who are already taking risks and sacrificing for the company, but as a signal to other tiny startups that it is possible to do it and not crumble.

</comment><comment><USER7> I am sure there are a hundred benefits of paid leave, but I had a hard time isolating "The Economic Benefits" from THIS ARTICLE?

Before reading this, I assumed the "economic benefits" would be for the business owner. Is that what the title suggests to you?

<comment><USER5> The benefits are for society, because you upgrade the entire labour force, which allows your country to climb the value-chain and switch to industries with higher productivity per worker, thus increasing GDP, and so on.

The US is generally clueless to this, because there's such a huge influx of talented foreing workers that offset domestic policies, but smaller nations are painfully aware of this, and the ones doing great on global competitiveness are also the ones with the most generous social welfare. This is no coincidence.</comment></comment>


Real-Life Sexism Follows Women into Virtual Worlds - <AUTHOR> http://motherboard.vice.com/read/real-life-sexism-follows-women-into-virtual-worlds

<comment><USER2> > The research also has wider repercussions on non-gaming online situations

Arrrgh. Why do this? This type of thing seems to be very common in articles/papers like this i.e. present a perfectly sensible summary of some experimental evidence. Then make some wild speculation as to its impact or cause. Then...nothing. No suggestion as to how one would follow this up, why it's related to the experiment other than superficially. Nothing.

You often seem to get this with behavioral studies where the study itself is interesting and sensible and then some stab in the dark as to what the evolutionary cause is. The End.

Winds me up especially as the meat of the article is quite interesting and informative.</comment>


Windows HAL Functions (Hal.dll) - <AUTHOR> https://www.geoffchappell.com/studies/windows/km/hal/api/index.htm?tx=155;13 <comment><AUTHOR> Even though Windows is not open source, from a pure OS design perspective, I like the idea that OS functions which touch hardware directly -- are placed into their own library...

For future OS designers out there, the list of function names gives a clue as to what functionality the base layer of a future OS might include...</comment>


A day in a life with pain - <AUTHOR> http://cripsahoy.tumblr.com/post/3045511008/a-day-in-my-life-with-pain

<comment><USER2> >When I get a seat, will I be able to deal with the older people on my train squinting daggers at me? What do I do if someone is really mean to me again today? Do I look "disabled enough" to get a seat?

It's horrible that someone already dealing with a disability would have to worry about people always assuming the worst.

One time I had to step off a bus for a group to get by me. A couple saw me stepping back on without seeing me get off and gave me dirty looks while whispering to each other for the rest of the ride. It really bothered me. I can't imagine having to deal with that situation every day.

For some reason the bus experience really stuck with me. It's really easy, even or maybe especially for really nice people, to get angry and judgmental when they think someone isn't playing by the rules.

</comment><comment><USER3> I spent 3.5 years of my life in constant, excruciating "please just kill me now"/"I will sell my soul to the devil for 24 hours without pain" kind of pain. Prescription pain killers did little to take the edge off. I'm no longer in constant pain and haven't been in years. Whenever I read something like this, I wish I could help the author resolve their problem and stop hurting so much. Usually, I can't, I think largely because most people don't believe it is resolvable. I would try to write to them (assuming I could even find contact info) but that never works.

:-/ :-/ :-/</comment>


Free EBook: React and React Native by Adam Boduch (27-Oct) - <AUTHOR> https://www.packtpub.com/packt/offers/free-learning <comment><USER2> Points me to a Rust book instead?</comment>


Google demands more office space, threatens to block North Bayshore housing - <AUTHOR> http://www.mercurynews.com/2017/09/27/google-demands-more-office-space-threatens-to-block-north-bayshore-housing/ <comment><USER2> If I understood it correctly, Google has offered to tear down office buildings they currently own in order to make room for residential units to be built on Google's property. They are saying that they need to add additional offices as part of this demolition and construction. The article title tries to make it sound like Google is preventing housing from being built on other's land which seems a bit misleading. (Or maybe I just don't understand what the article is saying.)

<comment><USER3> If I understand it correctly, Google originally offered to place new housing on their land. They are now demanding that they be allowed more office space (on, or near, that same land), or they will prevent the housing.

<comment><USER4> As far as I'm concerned, It's their land. They can build office buildings right up to the millimeter of the easement line for all I care.

But they are actually going to still build some housing which is generous.

<comment><USER5> As long as we agree that "solving" the housing "crisis" is futile at this ratio. This recent study estimates we need 20% more houses to drop prices by 10%. Current rate is maybe 2%/yr. [http://www.mercurynews.com/2017/09/27/building-boom-may- mere...](http://www.mercurynews.com/2017/09/27/building-boom-may-merely-slow- soaring-bay-area-home-prices-economists/)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> > We are supportive of the preliminary approval of a North Bay Shore precise > plan which includes 9,850 units of housing, 1,600 of which would be > affordable...

I know exactly what they mean by "affordable", but how the hell are we ok getting to a point where affordable housing only refers to housing that is affordable because it's being subsidized?

Ridiculous.

<comment><USER7> All housing is affordable, otherwise it would never be bought or sold.

"Affordable" in this context is a misnomer that just means "subsidized."

<comment><USER8> Who is it affordable by though? By that definition a Manhattan penthouse is affordable.

<comment><USER7> That's right. "Affordable" by itself doesn't say anything about who can afford it. If we were talking about affordable for the middle class, we'd call it "Affordable for the middle class." This is why the term is a misnomer. All housing is affordable, but the term is being used to describe something other than affordability (subsidization).

<comment><USER9> You're being so pedantic as to be completely wrong. Affordable does not mean that at least one person on the planet could theoretically purchase it.

<comment><USER7> I don't think there's anything pedantic about it. The term "affordable housing" implies that housing which isn't subsidized isn't affordable. But the vast majority of housing is bought, sold, and owned by regular people without subsidizing. The term is not accurate at all. The fraction of housing that is only available to a number of people in the single digits is so small as to not be worth considering. "All but 0.0001% of housing is affordable" would be pedantic; "all housing is affordable" is not.

<comment><USER10> > I don't think there's anything pedantic about it. The term "affordable > housing" implies that housing which isn't subsidized isn't affordable.

No, it doesn't, because "affordable" doesn't mean "subsidized", it means the purchase or rental cost is (and, usually when it comes to rental-committed units in a development plan, is guaranteed by contract or some other binding arrangement to remain) within the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development's income-based affordability guidelines for a specified income level; in the case of the plan under discussion, that income level being 50% of the Areawide Median Income for Santa Clara County.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> There's a _lot_ more information (instead of just two quotes from city council members) in the coverage here: [https://www.mv- voice.com/news/2017/09/27/google-throws-uncer...](https://www.mv- voice.com/news/2017/09/27/google-throws-uncertainty-into-north-bayshore- housing-plans)

</comment><comment><USER12> The problem is that the Valley wants to stay suburban and the market is demanding that it become a city. Google could put a set of huge towers on this land with housing and office space and retail.

<comment><USER5> Can you clarify who "the Valley" is, and who "the market" is?

<comment><USER12> The Valley is the combined local governments, and the market is the companies and workers who both see value in staying in the area. The land is so expensive that if one locality raised the building restrictions, you'd see massive towers going up.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> The Bay Area's housing problems arise largely from fragmentation and NIMBY- ism. The sum of the rationally self-interested being made in all of these tiny, fragmented municipality equals a giant mess that's getting worse every year and that's starting to seriously impair economic growth.

The entire Bay Area needs to be incorporated as one giant city all the way from the Presidio down to San Jose. It's _already_ one giant city: we might we well recognize the fact. We'll reuse the name "San Francisco" for convenience.

Having had SF annex all its suburbs (like growing cities used to do back when we remembered what good government looked like), residents can switch the city to at-large representation and finally start planning the region's growth in a way that makes sense.

</comment><comment><USER14> So on the one hand I'm meant to buy into some fully connected global future, on the other the only way I make real progress is concentrating all my resources into a small amount of territory to maximise productivity.

<comment><USER15> Yes.

It's a global network of these dense dots, each specializing in different thing, each exporting their specialties at prices that more bespoke or small- volume producers cannot even approach, and each producing different types of negative externalities for their local environment. You might be facing higher rent, but at least you're not facing cadmium mining runoff in the water, or lead in the water, or acid rain.

Probably.

<comment><USER14> When you put it that way, let's green light some tower blocks for the bay area right away, rack and stack...

<comment><USER15> You certainly don't have to. Just don't expect to reap the collective benefits of a system that you don't participate in or share the burden of.

<comment><USER14> no system is isolated though, so if one system benefits at the cost of another who should collect the benefits ?

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> How about they build their office space on their existing land? Looking at Google HQ on Google Maps satellite view, it looks like their land is 30-50% parking, i.e. waste.

<comment><USER17> They can't. Zoning laws restrict how much building they can actually build on lots they own.

<comment><USER18> With the incredible emergency we have, you would think, someone would be working hard to change the laws. It's an entirely man made emergency, that need not be. Perhaps it'll take a start up company of politicians to "change the world" to address these types of issues.

<comment><USER19> Google not being to develop more offices is by no means "an incredible emergency". The fact that there's not enough space for people to live, that may qualify as one.

<comment><USER18> I meant the housing situation overall in the bay area is an incredible emergency.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER20> This website is very bad without adblockers and basically illegible.

</comment><comment><USER21> Do we need another 10,000 families in Mountain View [EDIT: in the Bay Area] right now, though?

Central is always backed up, 101 sucks, schools are full, and you can't get into restaurants on Castro without a wait.

Can these companies just expand somewhere else, please?

EDIT: I didn't really mean that Googlers should live outside MV and commute to Mountain View. I mean that it's easy for Google to build office space for 10K new workers... but it decreases quality of live for everyone else when more people cram in. Expand in more cities, like Amazon is doing!

<comment><USER22> If 10k families expanded elsewhere 101 would suck even more when they commute into Google's offices. I think the point is to put work and amenities close to where they live.

My city of 15k supports its own school district and restaurants. A neighborhood of 10k families (not sure what population that would translate into) certainly could. But I'm not sure if that's in their plans.

<comment><USER21> Sorry, I didn't mean the families should live elsewhere -- poorly phrased on my part. I really meant that I wish the big companies would expand more in other parts of the country, and not increase the pressure on the Bay Area.</comment></comment></comment>


Pavel Durov on the TikTok Sale to U.S. company - <AUTHOR> https://t.me/s/durov/123 <comment><USER3> A free trade agreement must be abided by both parties.

By prohibiting Chinese companies from operating on US soil, Americans aren't renouncing their values or losing the moral high ground as long as companies from other free countries are allowed to operate. The actions of the US admin are long overdue and Europe must muster up the courage (and incur the costs) of taking a similar position now.

Saying if some countries aren't allowed to freely trade on American soil then none should is a non-sequitur.

<comment><USER4> If this policy was applied across the board there would be a lot less complaining, but this is obviously targeting a company because they pissed off the president.

The united states is in no way making this a universal policy, and is clearly just doing favoritism.

<comment><USER5> One way of interpreting is that this is a private company which pissed off the president.

Another way is that this is a company beholden to our geopolitical adversary that intentionally interfered in our domestic politics.

<comment><USER6> It's either unregulated social networks are a threat to free and fair elections or they are not.

If you have the former position, which seems to be embraced by the majority of HN users, you can't accept to have Tik Tok, a chinese controlled social network, taking over everyone under 30 in the US.

How would this not be a major threat? As opposed to bot farms on FB/Twitter controlled by foreign actors?

<comment><USER7> > How would this not be a major threat? As opposed to bot farms on FB/Twitter > controlled by foreign actors?

Bot farms are symmetrical - you can use them to support Democrats or Republicans.

TikTok is asymmetrical - it can be used _by the owner_ to support one side or the other, but users of the platform have no influence on this.

<comment><USER8> FB and Twitter aren't owned by someone?

Also, if bot farms can sway elections I would either want them to be pliable to more than just Democrats and Republicans.

<comment><USER7> Facebook and Twitter are both owned by someone, but the primary driver of what content you see is your social graph, not their magical algorithms. (though this is decreasing with both)

With TikTok, the primary determinant of what you see in your feed is what they choose to show you - and it could be from anyone in the world, with any degree of separation from you.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> > the US move against TikTok is setting a dangerous precedent that may > eventually kill the internet as a truly global network

Well no. For many years now, the internet is no longer a truly global network, considering at least how China has been treating foreign-owned properties (Great Firewall).

If you wanted to make a point in favor of a global internet, I guess you could suggest that the US should take the high road and reap the benefits of openness and competition, rather than get down to mudslinging Chinese foreign investors. Not that we should preserve something that in reality has been gone for over a decade now.

</comment><comment><USER10> There is a reason, why India banned not only TikTok, but 58 other apps of Chinese companies, after at least 20 Indian soldiers were killed in a clash with Chinese forces this year. It's called _national security_.

Russia's Yandex, Mail.ru, and VKontakte have been banned in Ukraine since 2017 for the same reason[1]:

> Russia also continues to hack into individual cellphones, with Ukrainian > Colonel Ivan Pavlenko saying that the Russians had gotten into his phone at > least twice in 2018. He also confirmed that Russia has used its ability to > tap into cellular networks to send SMS text messages to Ukranian troops.

> These are tactics that the Kremlin has also reportedly used against NATO > countries, including the United States, and allows Russia's intelligence > services to both scrape potentially useful personal information and possibly > insert disinformation onto these devices. The texts can also be > psychological warfare tools, with past reports that some were purely > insulting or threatening. Using hacked personal information, those threats > could include very distressing ones directed at family members or > significant others.

I believe, that the Internet of the 2020s cannot be compared to the Internet of the 1980s. It has become a business platform, and any country has the right to ban a foreign company from operating in its territory.

Especially so, if that company is based in a foreign state that is not considered trustworthy. And trust is based on mutually shared values: which the US and China have almost none.

At least to the Communist Party of China this has been clear for decades.

[1] [https://www.thedrive.com/the-war-zone/30741/ukrainian- office...](https://www.thedrive.com/the-war-zone/30741/ukrainian-officer- details-russian-electronic-warfare-tactics-including-radio-virus)

<comment><USER11> > It's called national security.

it's called retaliation. Can you explain to me how a social media platform mostly used by teenagers relates to military clashes on a contested border?

And Ukraine isn't exactly the best example. The country is a political and economic basketcase with a lower per capita income than Iraq, and one of the reasons is that for eons terrible policy making has been justified by vaguely pointing at Russia.

You really can't just say the words 'national security' like some magical incantation. There better be an actual evidence-backed reason for clamping down on economic activity. Especially if the group you're clamping down on actually is one of your biggest trading partners, which happens to be the case for both US-China and Ukraine-Russia.

<comment><USER10> > it's called retaliation. Can you explain to me how a social media platform > mostly used by teenagers relates to military clashes on a contested border?

That's bullshit. The US and India are not the only countries that are concerned about the TikTok's data collection practices. The investigations have also been launched by the governments of Australia, Japan, Turkey, Indonesia, Pakistan, and the EU[1].

> You really can't just say the words 'national security' like some magical > incantation. There better be an actual evidence-backed reason for clamping > down on economic activity. Especially if the group you're clamping down on > actually is one of your biggest trading partners, which happens to be the > case for both US-China and Ukraine-Russia.

Here you go[2]:

> Russia's intervention in Ukraine expanded beyond geography and into social > networks last year, when Moscow officials tried to collect personal data on > Ukrainians who joined social media groups protesting the country's pro- > Russian former president.

> Pavel Durov, founder and chief executive officer of Russia's largest social > media website, VKontakte, claims he refused a demand by the Federal Security > Service—the KGB's successor agency—to turn over details on members of 39 > protest groups with VKontakte pages.

[1] [https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/2020/08/03/its-not- just...](https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/2020/08/03/its-not-just-united- states-these-governments-see-tiktok-growing-problem/)

[2] [https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2014-04-17/the- kreml...](https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2014-04-17/the-kremlin- tried-to-use-vkontakte-russia-s-facebook-to-spy-on-ukrainians)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> I would like to say that Uber was not forced to sell its Chinese business to the local corporation. At that time, Uber's throwing tons of money to compete with Didi and Kuaidi. No one knew when that would come to an end. That's why Uber exited the Chinese market.

[https://ig.ft.com/sites/uber-in-china/](https://ig.ft.com/sites/uber-in- china/)

<comment><USER13> That is what they want you to believe, as everything in China must look reasonable. Google left because it decided censoring according to law was too much for them. Really? They suddenly got tired of censoring after doing it for years? Or is it [1]?

The timing of Uber leaving China - Aug 2016 - coincided suspiciously with the Chinese government legalizing ridesharing - announced in July 2016 to kick in November 2016. Isn't that interesting? Per HBR:

> Under the new regulations, the data collected by Uber would come under the > purview of the government. There would be no more subsidies. Market prices > would prevail, the regulations state, "except when municipal government > officials believe it is necessary to implement government-guided pricing." > According to Xinhua, ride-hailing companies would be urged to merge with > taxi companies. (Many of those also happen to be owned by the local > governments.) Uber would have to get both provincial and national regulatory > approval for its activities anywhere in China. Online and offline services > would be regulated separately.

> Moreover, foreign companies like Uber would be subject to even more > regulation than their competitors.

This has always been the MO of Chinese government: blackmail though selective enforcement of broad-stroke laws. They tell you to leave without having to mouth it.

[1] [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Operation_Aurora](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Operation_Aurora) [2] [https://hbr.org/2016/08/the-real-reason-uber-is-giving-up- in...](https://hbr.org/2016/08/the-real-reason-uber-is-giving-up-in-china)

<comment><USER14> Didi has always been the target of local law enforcement to this day because local government collect taxes from taxi but not with Didi, as Didi pays tax to the city it's registered in. This shouldn't affects the national government because it collects taxes either way. This is similar to the issue with online sales tax.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> Can't wait the EU force FANNG to sell their EU activities to native EU firms

<comment><USER16> I'm sensing some sarcasm, but would this not earnestly be a good development for everybody except current FANNG shareholders? Bringing internet firms operating in the EU into a position where they could be more effectively regulated by the EU seems like it would be a huge win for the EU.

<comment><USER15> National security. Why would the EU let some foreign country have access to all their citizens' private and work email, social media profiles and e-commerce purchases? Especially when it has been proved that that country's intelligence agencies have access to all of FANNG's data on EU citizens through various intelligence programs.

<comment><USER17> National security of EU countries is provided by NATO, though. Few EU countries spend a lot on defense.

<comment><USER18> I think the wider point is that national security is not just about guns, it can also be about media ownership, social media platforms, and electoral laws about communications and funding.

<comment><USER17> if a government can't effectively physically protect their citizens, then they have no rightful sovereignity over their data

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER19> 1\. TikTok busted for reading the contents of users' clipboard[1]

2\. Microsoft and the NSA have had a very cozy relationship for a long time

3\. Microsoft is bidding to buy TikTok's US operations.

Yeah, I must be crazy to think something SIGINT-wise is afoot.

[1]Didn't the LinkedIn app also get busted for reading the content of the clipboard on iOS?

<comment><USER20> >Yeah, I must be crazy to think something SIGINT-wise is afoot.

How is it useful to the NSA? I get how tiktok would be useful for propaganda purposes, but it doesn't seem useful for actual intelligence gathering. Are terrorists going to upload short video clips of themselves planning a bombing? Do criminals do their business transactions over tiktok?

</comment></comment><comment><USER21> > Soon, every big country is likely to use "national security" as a pretext to > fracture international tech companies. And ironically, it's the US companies > like Facebook or Google that are likely to lose the most from the fallout.

He is 200% right: this isn't an isolated event, it is the end of an era.

There was a time, starting in the Clinton administration when conservatives and liberals all over the world wanted open borders markets (with lots of trade agreements and China entering the WTO), democracy (in Latin America, Eastern Europe and Asia), migrants and open internet across borders.

Then, little by little people soured on all of that openness and globalization. Now many of the places that sought democracy are returning to authoritarian rulers (e.g: Hungary, Turkey, Russia, Brazil, China). Protectionism and closed borders are on the rise (Trump's wall, tariffs and withdraw from Trans Pacific Partnership, Brexit, EU crackdown on immigrants and staled new trade deals).

Tech will be the next victim. All over the world governments will begin restricting foreign companies, for economic, ethical, military or authoritarian reasons. China, Russia, Turkey and Iran always did it. Now the EU is getting sour on Google, Apple and Amazon. Trump is in full war against Huawei and now takes on TikTok.

Businesses will need to find ways to navigate these hostilities. Those that aren't cautious will pay an heavy price.

How do businesses handle that? I see two ways. Microsoft and IBM are two veterans on navigating regulations. Their secret has been a careful mix of compliance and heavy and expensive lobbying. Google seems to be learning this lesson. It seems to work. Huawei will need to learn it with them.

Another way would be to make tech that is immune to regulation either by design (Bitcoin, Signal) or by it's scale and how deeply is supported by local communities (WhatsApp). I don't believe this is effective in the long run. China, Russia and Turkey have shown that they can simply block these technologies when they become a nuisance.

<comment><USER22> Last 12 months:

Wielding entity list against Huawei, IC industry talking about "deamericanizing", Barr lowkey suggesting getting US company to acquire controlling share in SE or Nokia to compete in 5G (Cisco said no), TSMC coerced into US plant, Google + Apple controlling contact tracing standards during a pandemic while rebuffing nation state request for more fine grain collection, an now forced sale of TikTok. Nvidia / ARM purchase in conjunction with reshoring IC production and containing Chinese IC industry smells like Barr too. Every line that could have been crossed has already been crossed. US done everything it accused China would do, which China has yet to. Even prior, many countries were moving towards data sovereignty and local warehousing laws. Not

</comment></comment><comment><USER23> Now that is a very well thought-out post about the whole ordeal. I don't know why, but from what I've read here and in other sites, people tend to veer off to the extremes when discussing anything these days. This issue being no exception. So it's good to read something that does not attempt to play with your emotions or treat things as black and white.

But yeah, the situation is sad to say at least. I wholly understand US blocking Chinese social media company to reciprocate how China (and others) have done in their markets. Yet the current US administration has not necessarily framed it in such light, rather just claimed ambiguous spying claims which are a bit of blanket statement.

Is it actually the case here or is it just a distraction or a negotiation tactic, hard to say. Certainly democratic countries should not stand idle when authoritarian governments attempt to extend their influence and spying capabilities especially within their own borders, even when it happens indirectly through companies. Sometimes playing nice and keeping status quo won't get you anywhere. But in this case the play seems rather dirty coming from a nation as devout of a believer in the free trade as US.

I guess at the core of this whole matter, is the imbalance in how the profits from internet, possibly the greatest invention since electricity and combustion engine, are distributed to the world. The way it's happening now shares some similarities to the imperialism age, where there were those who only produced goods (now consumers of internet services) to the richer countries without getting much in return. Similarly Google and Facebook might control the whole search and social media market in a country with local competitors having no chance of competing, without paying any taxes on the profits or contributing employment.

So by not wanting to become just another colony of the foreign technology companies, I guess authoritarian government can exploit that to legitimize their banning of Google and Facebook to help establish their own. But which in reality serves a bigger purpose as part of their security apparatus to spy and censorship their own people.

Of course I'm now completely omitting the angle that Google and Facebook could also be considered as part of US's spying apparatus, but I'll assume some good will here.

</comment><comment><USER24> Did the USG force TikTok to sell to a US based company? Or did TikTok choose to sell under pressure? I know it's a matter of degree's here, but TikTok still has a very real choice. While the executive ban would have forced TikTok out of the US market, how effective would that have actually been? What if TikTok had just called the bluff on the executive ban?

<comment><USER25> The problem with calling a bluff is that if that bluff comes true, your valuation just plummets from $30-50B to zero in an instant.

</comment></comment><comment><USER26> Note this is the second paranoid Durov's message in a week (first was a pretty PR-ish rant about Apple store fees and in-app purchases a week ago - <USER2> like this prevents him from launching of some grey token project). If anything, this tells much more about the financial state of Telegram.

<comment><USER14> I don't recall Telegram ever shows signs to become a profitable company.

<comment><USER26> But he still takes VC money from 3rd parties of quite the opposite views. Why? Durov is a cheap liar, running out of funds, period.

Pity, Telegram was so usable app.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER17> The fragmentation of the internet will lead to separate technology stacks instead of the monolithic "vertical integration" of a handful of US companies that we have nowadays, and will be a good thing for overall technological innovation. Of course it will come with a lot of conflicts.

</comment><comment><USER6> > If you want to access the markets of other countries, you should also open > your market to them – that would be fair.

I don't understand the relation from ^ with the rest of his take.

He is saying the US should ban Tik Tok instead of forcing a sale of the US operation to a US company?

<comment><USER27> I think he is saying the US should just let TikTok be, because the Internet should be open to all.

</comment></comment><comment> edouard-harris I believe the focus on US precedent-setting here is a bit misplaced: India was in fact the first non-authoritarian regime to ban TikTok, and this set a precedent which may have influenced the US's own decision.

</comment><comment><USER28> This isn't about free trade, tiktok is seen as an arm of a hostile foreign government. The ban wouldn't have taken place if tiktok was based in Japan for example.

</comment><comment><USER29> When such godfather-like extortion becomes part of the federal government, that country soon becomes untouchable for business.

<comment><USER20> So just like China right? Trade policies is one of the few places where eye- for-an-eye retaliation makes sense.

<comment><USER29> Yes just like China whose apps are getting banned all around the world. US has more to lose though if Amazon, FB start getting banned because of extortion laws.

<comment><USER20> >US has more to lose though if Amazon, FB start getting banned because of extortion laws.

That's probably not going to be an issue unless US starts banning apps for no apparent reason (eg. forcing spotify to sell their American operations). For now the administration (regardless of their actual motives) can plausibly say that it was done in retaliation, which makes it look more acceptable to third parties.

<comment><USER29> Banning might be fair. But extortion? Come on. That is mafia level.

If you owned a coffee chain across the country and some counties police took extortion money to "protect" your assets or forced you to "sell" your operations to local goons, would any other business observing this ever open more businesses in those mafioso counties?

<comment><USER20> Clearly they would if there's money to be made, as we've seen in China.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER30> I wonder if this acqusisition explicitly would remove the monitoring in TikTok, or simply migrate it into Microsoft hands?

</comment><comment><USER31> TikTok sale has nothing to do with economics, it's all about internal politics, not even foreign. TikTok hosts many groups hostile to Trump that were successful at ruining his rally in Tulsa, and could have some more tricks in their arsenal with elections in sight, so he desperately needs to take control of the platform and the users, and the only way to do that is for a US company to acquire it. Before elections of course. It's a win-win scenario for both Microsoft and Trump: Microsoft gets a big user base and Trump their personal data.

</comment><comment><USER11> Durov is right but what's even more hilarious was Trump's mention of 'key money' yesterday, implying that the US government is supposed to collect a sort of finders fee after the US government forces tiktok to sell their operations to another private company.

Not only is that ridiculous on its face because it's the government that's forcing the sale in the first place, it's also a fairly shady real estate practise, so we know where he got the idea. Imagine thinking ten years ago that the US government would force a private company to sell all their assets and then pay the government for that 'privilege'.

<comment><USER32> Trump's threat to ban TikTok is likely decreasing the sale price as the sale is forced. Who should benefit from that decrease? The US government which made the decrease possible? Or the Microsoft shareholders?

Also note that Trump is a TV personality, he wants to look like he's running the US like a business like he promised on the campaign trail. So he's making a lot of noise about the key money thing. He could just have done it silently but he wants people to admire how tough he is, and reelect him.

<comment><USER11> >. Who should benefit from that decrease?

Nobody obviously because if the government gets a monetary incentive to ban foreign companies and sell them to the US government you encourage the government to act like some sort of mafia landlord, destroying the rule of law.

That I'm being downvoted for this simply fact shows how far gone people even here are, Jesus Christ.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER33> Companies in this new era have the potential to get to the largest top 10 in 10 years. They can influence the world's economy. And displace lots of old laggards (20+ years and not innovating is old).

I am absolutely supportive of all actions taken to promote US companies, particularly against countries (including China) who have taken repeated drastic steps to promote home grown companies.

I have issues on how it is being handled by President Trump.

</comment><comment><USER17> "free trade and free speech" post-communism were about US trade and speech, of which the US had more than plenty to export. A multipolar world forces both parties to take off their masks and be more honest.

</comment><comment><USER34> This seems like a bit of tech myopia. Forced divestures happen all across the world and in many other economic sectors.

</comment><comment><USER35> The comments here would be funny if they weren't so sad. So much thinly veiled nationalist glee about finally doing something "against China".

It's like the run up to the Iraq war all over again.

Seriously, people, you can't justify something by pointing out how other people have also done something wrong. You can't justify something by positing a principle that never existed before.

This whole story sounds like out of some dystopian bizarro fiction novel. So lip syncing teen girls are a national security risk now? What are you going to do when something _real_ happens then?

<comment><USER6> The risk here, if I'm not mistaken, is far from being teens lip syncing, it's the ability for a foreign actor to control the algorithm of what Tik Tok users end up seeing in their feed days after days.

This could potentially be used to stir the political discourse of a country towards one outcome or create unrest by putting groups of citizen against each others, etc. All done by controlling what users see.

<comment><USER35> I understand that, and that's exactly what I meant to call out in an admittedly slightly polemic way.

This is the argument for banning Hollywood movies in every country that isn't the US, because it gives "illegitimate influence to foreign actors" or something along these lines.

It's completely antithetical to Western values.

<comment><USER35> The downvotes without counterargument are frankly chilling given what I'm saying. But I _am_ actually interested in dialog, so let me expand a little:

American (online or not) media, advertising and tech companies have been vastly successful all over the world, and that has - rightfully, to a large degree - been attributed to the quality of their products.

Now there's a successful tech company from China, and you're saying that means they must be banned or expropriated because they could influence public opinion? That's peak hypocrisy.

Yes, China has done similar things. But that's an unfree, communist country! Stooping to their lows makes you wrong, not right.

The other comments here pointing to how the EU could act similarly towards FAANG or Tesla are spot on. It definitely _shouldn 't_ in my opinion, but if it did I guarantee you you'd hear the same gleeful "good for you" rhetoric from this side of the Atlantic.

It would make a few people feel all fuzzy and energized for a while, but in the long term it would simply destroy the free, open exchange of goods, people and ideas that has done so much for us and that's dear to so many of us. Thankfully, EU leaders aren't (yet) that unwise apparently.

<comment><USER36> What do you expect from a predominantly American website? Most humans have a hard time putting their values ahead of their in-group loyalties. Just look at the immigration debates here, where people who profess to oppose discrimination against people based on circumstances of their birth like race and sexuality are happy to discriminate based on people's country of birth.</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment>


Is it reasonable to use the ++it instead of it++ for iterators? - <AUTHOR> https://medium.com/@Code_Analysis/is-it-reasonable-to-use-the-prefix-increment-operator-it-instead-of-postfix-operator-it-for-1dae485aa667

<comment><USER2> > So, it is reasonable to optimize the speed of the Debug version.

Yes, yes it is. Remember, only optimize things that are actually slow though!</comment>


Twitter acquires Bagcheck - <AUTHOR> http://bagcheck.com/blog/03-bagchecking-into-twitter

<comment><USER2> Bagcheck had so much promise :(. The UI was so elegantly designed and there are still bits of it that I'm trying to pull apart for my own designs.

At the end of the day though, the engagement just wasn't there. You would go on there a few times, check out a couple of bags, maybe create one or two and then never come back. It's sad it didn't work out but the founders are all insanely talented people and I'm sure whatever they go on to do next, it will also be awesome.

</comment><comment><USER3> Quite interesting they went for one of the smallest ones in this sphere and not Pinterest: [http://siteanalytics.compete.com/bagcheck.com+pinterest.com+...](http://siteanalytics.compete.com/bagcheck.com+pinterest.com+svpply.com/) \- also similar is thefancy.com.

<comment><USER4> Thanks for mentioning Pinterest as a comparison, because for the life of me, I couldn't figure out what Bagcheck was or how to use it.

Pinterest on the other hand took me a mere 10seconds to figure out what it was and how enthusiastically I wanted to use it.

<comment><USER5> If you don't mind, would you explain what the draw is? (I'm genuinely trying to understand. I don't _get_ pinterest, and given the interest it's generating, I'd love to...)

<comment><USER4> For me personally, it was the right tool at the right time.

I got tired of saving pictures of the products and architectures I liked. I was searching but I don't remember how I came across Pinterest, but when I did, I had to get in. It was early in their beta, so I sent off an email to Ben and said if you want a loyal user, let me in right now.. and he did. It was exactly what I needed!

I've been collecting all the gems of the industrial design world ever since. I even got my mom registered so she can find inspiration for her home renovation.

It's very visually appealing. None stop inspiration.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> Annoys me when i can't create an account on a site without a twitter or facebook account. Not everybody uses these services.

<comment><USER7> I see this fairly often. Why not make an account solely for auth/signup on these sites. Most of the time people who say this talk about how they don't have the time, don't want to be on social media, concerns about privacy, etc. If you have an account just for logging in to FB Connect, it seems like the problems are alleviated.

<comment><USER8> I think the concern here is that, even if you make an account specifically for the purpose of authenticating to other websites, you're still telling Facebook, Google, Twitter... which websites you're signing up on, which they of course have an interest in knowing so that they can better profile you as a user.

 _Note: I have accounts on these sites and actively use them, just my guess as to other peoples' rationale behind not getting an account._

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> Looks like just a talent acquisition of one developer. The other co-founder, Luke, is not even joining Twitter. If I would to guess, the acquisition is sub $500,000. Any other guesses?

<comment><USER10> Sam is worth _well_ over 500k.

<comment><USER11> That was my impression too :-)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> Is this a talent acquisition, or does Twitter plan to roll this into their site somehow?

</comment><comment><USER13> Wish I had come across BagCheck before. It looks like a great site!

</comment><comment><USER14> congrats, sam and luke!</comment>


Tote Boards: The engineering of horse gambling - <AUTHOR> http://hackaday.com/2015/11/04/tote-boards-the-impressive-engineering-of-horse-gambling/ <comment><USER2> ATL's head office and factory used to be in Meadowbank, Sydney, a few minutes from where I grew up. The old building is still there, though ATL is not. There's lots more history and better photos than the hackaday article at the following link, written by an ex ATL employee.

[http://members.ozemail.com.au/~bconlon/atl.htm](http://members.ozemail.com.au/~bconlon/atl.htm)

\---

Don't forget to go up one level to

[http://members.ozemail.com.au/~bconlon/index.html](http://members.ozemail.com.au/~bconlon/index.html)

for a comprehensive collection of further pictures and text.

</comment><comment><USER3> I used to know some people who had worked for American Totalisator in Baltimore. It got a somewhat later start, 1927. One of the programmers spoke of a special-purpose programming language devised there, "Totran".

</comment><comment><USER4> Maybe I'm missing something. How are these machines not more widely considered as one of the early examples of computers?

We have Babbage's difference engine, and then usually the story goes straight to ENIAC.

</comment><comment><AUTHOR> Hackaday article links to another with additional images and info.

[http://www.rutherfordjournal.org/article020109.html](http://www.rutherfordjournal.org/article020109.html)</comment>


Why Windows 10 is the most secure Windows ever - <AUTHOR> http://www.computerworld.com/article/2984449/security/why-windows-10-is-the-most-secure-windows-ever.html <comment><USER2> Anything what use fingerprint or even face recognition are much more insecure as plain password, just because I can change password whenever I want, but I cant change my fingerprints and especially face.

</comment><comment><USER3> Another clickbate title and rubbish article, there seems more and more of these popping up on HN recently?

</comment><comment><USER4> "most secure Windows ever" clears a very, very low bar.

</comment><comment><USER5> Terrible clickbait title for a terrible article.</comment>


Installing VLC Media Player voids your speaker warranty - <AUTHOR> http://en.community.dell.com/support-forums/laptop/f/3517/t/19492918.aspx <comment><USER2> As the main developer of VLC, we know about this story since a long time, and this is just Dell putting crap components on their machine and blaming others. Any discussion was impossible with them. So let me explain a bit...

In this case, VLC just uses the Windows APIs (DirectSound), and sends signed integers of 16bits (s16) to the Windows Kernel.

VLC allows amplification of the INPUT above the sound that was decoded. This is just like replay gain, broken codecs, badly recorded files or post- amplification and can lead to saturation.

But this is exactly the same if you put your mp3 file through Audacity and increase it and play with WMP, or if you put a DirectShow filter that amplifies the volume after your codec output. For example, for a long time, VLC ac3 and mp3 codecs were too low (-6dB) compared to the reference output.

At worse, this will reduce the dynamics and saturate a lot, but this is not going to break your hardware.

VLC does not (and cannot) modify the OUTPUT volume to destroy the speakers. VLC is a Software using the OFFICIAL platforms APIs.

The issue here is that Dell sound cards output power (that can be approached by a factor of the quadratic of the amplitude) that Dell speakers cannot handle. Simply said, the sound card outputs at max 10W, and the speakers only can take 6W in, and neither their BIOS or drivers block this.

And as VLC is present on a lot of machines, it's simple to blame VLC. "Correlation does not mean causation" is something that seems too complex for cheap Dell support...

Maybe Dell should advise against playing Metal music and should only allow Céline Dion music, because Metal saturates more...

EDIT: more details...

PS: they even provide a BIOS update for the fix... So, of course, VLC was the issue... [http://www.dell.com/support/troubleshooting/us/en/04/KCS/Kcs...](http://www.dell.com/support/troubleshooting/us/en/04/KCS/KcsArticles/ArticleView?c=us&l=en&s=bsd&docid=557836)

<comment><USER3> How about detecting Dell Speakers and automatically setting the max volume to 100%, with a notification so the user can give an a-ok if they want to go higher. That way, at least users know and can make a decision. Similar to the Android warning if you set your volume too high that it could cause hearing damage.

I'd prefer to be warned rather than surprised by this!

<comment><USER4> That's impractical. VLC is just using the standard OS API to send some sound to speakers. Can you imagine every piece of software checking for every piece of esoteric hardware and having some special behavior?

Maybe Microsoft could regulate the output for junk speakers, but really, Dell is the one to blame here.

<comment><USER5> > _Can you imagine every piece of software checking for every piece of > esoteric hardware and having some special behavior?_

This is what MS Office does. A Microsoft engineer told me once that because many printers lie to the OS about their capabilities, they built a giant lookup table into the Office, that basically consists of "if printer model X, vendor Y and firmware Z, then don't trust it about the fonts onboard, render the text before sending instead".

<comment><USER6> I remember back in the day doing DirectDraw/Direct3D programming, I had to have lots of "if video card type == x, then ignore these capabilities and do this other thing instead" hacks. A much bigger issue back then when we had more than three video card manufacturers. (it's still a minor issue today ... nVidia cards tend to be way more permissive about OpenGL calls than AMD cards. But I can afford two discrete cards and one onboard chipset.)

It's so completely impractical for a hobbyist project to own every possible piece of hardware, or at least a huge majority of it. Yet it's nothing for a Fortune 500 company to do the same.

Really slants the playing field away from independent software developers.

<comment><USER5> Or, you could crowdsource an open-source abstraction layer; this would level the playing field again.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> I bought a Dell M1330 laptop a few years ago and the speakers were crap even by laptop standards. This was fine with me, since I planned to use headphones. Unfortunately, the audio output was just as crappy! It had an insanely high noise-floor! I had to get a USB DAC/head-phone amp to make things acceptable. Lesson learned: Dell sucks at audio.

If the speakers in a consumer device like a laptop can be damaged by maxing the volume then the laptop was not properly designed. This isn't a case of a nutty audiophile mixing and matching unknown preamps, amps, and speakers and managing to blow some cones by cranking it to 11. Dell has complete control over the selection of components in this laptop and, if they cared to, could include circuitry to limit power beneath a point that will damage the speakers. They didn't. Alternatively, they could eschew a limiter and select speaker components beefy enough to handle the maximum voltage that their DAC's can output. They didn't. Bad design.

If Dell did the math and decided the number of users noticing permanent speaker damage would be small enough that the reduced part costs would outweigh the price of the resulting warranty service, that's their decision. However, they should be on the hook to fix damaged caused by their cheap/poor design.

</comment><comment><USER8> VLC is incapable of increasing the actual power past 100%, all that is being done is the waveform is being modified to be louder within the allowed constraints. If this wrecks the speaker, any other non-VLCed sound could just as easily, and the speakers are therefore underpowered for the laptops internal amplifier. Class action sounds in order.

<comment><USER9> Also many mastering engineers do the exact same thing to make the music "louder" because the record label/artists demand it. Maybe Dell should start making popular rock/pop music void the warranty as well.

<comment><USER10> Well, mastering engineers rarely heavily clip audio (ok, Death Magnetic, but that's an exception rather than the rule). What they do is apply heavy dynamic range compression. Even in cases the signal clips lightly, it probably won't do much damage (if at all) since the peaks are transient.

On the other hand, a movie with lots of low frequency content (explosions and stuff) whose audio is clipping will damage the small full range speakers since most of the audio energy is concentrated at the very low frequencies (where the signal has a lot of power) and the peaks are long.

<comment><USER9> I was being kind of tongue in cheek. But you're right, most mastering engineers are competent enough to avoid clipping everything. Although you'd be surprised at the amount of music that has clipping at a few points here and there if you start listening for it (unfortunately audacity doesn't help much here since it will lie about clipping if it's exactly at the max).

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> Anytime I call tech support, I'm running Windows 7 or 8.1 (depending on which they support) with antivirus installed, firewall on, and the latest MSIE. Hardware does not include an ssd unless that's the item I'm calling about. I will also pretend trying to restart my system and router. Good to know I should add Windows Media Player to the list.

<comment><USER12> Don't forget that your laptop hasn't moved from the table where you unpacked it in months, you are located in a hermetically sealed, temperature and humidity controlled room, the laptop has absolutely no software on it other then the software it came with (updated to the latest version, of course), and on normal days you simply turn it on and lightly brush it's casing. Come to think about it, maybe skip the part about turning it on, that could be grounds for voiding the warranty.

<comment><USER13> Software updated to the latest version? Big nono. You must use the 4 year old version, that came on a CD-ROM bundled with the computer.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> That kind of amplitude abuse is the equivalent of pounding very hard on the keyboard for long periods of time - it will break sooner than it would normally have, and can rightfully be considered abuse. However, voiding the warranty simply because of VLC installed is, again, the equivalent of voiding the keyboard warranty simply because you are a bodybuilder.

Ok enough metaphors.

<comment><USER15> If I am understanding this correctly, a specially crafted mp3 file, played in Windows Media Player or similar, could cause the same symptoms that Dell is indicating VLC could create. Surely that would be considered a totally normal operating condition that the speakers should be tolerant against. It may be heavy use, but does that mean it is abuse?

<comment><USER2> Yes, exactly. Use Audacity to increase the volume and play with WMP to get the same result.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> I'm surprised that I can't find any mention of the fact that this behavior is simply illegal, beyond the blatant technical stupidity. The Magnuson-Moss warranty act in the US prohibits voiding a warranty simply due to the use of third-party parts, unless those parts can actually be demonstrated to be the cause of the problem. The mere presence of a part is not enough. They'd have to show that your use of VLC actually caused this failure, and since I doubt they're keeping the sort of logs that can show that, they have no case.

Companies like to talk about "voiding the warranty" for all kinds of stupid stuff, and consumers don't know their rights so they often get away with it, but what the law allows is considerably more constrained.

</comment><comment><USER17> When the Samsung ARM Chromebook came out, people quickly found that careless tinkering with alsamixer caused the speakers to overheat and melt the case as a result of being driven with a high DC current. A driver update blocked the control causing the damaging signal routing.

<comment><USER18> They didn't bother to put $0.001 DC blocking capacitors on the DAC outputs? This isn't a "bug in the kernel" or any software, it's a clear hardware flaw.

<comment><USER19> Be fair, those caps are easily two or three times that much.

<comment><USER18> In relatively low quantities, yes: [http://www.digikey.com/product- detail/en/CL05A105KP5NNND/CL0...](http://www.digikey.com/product- detail/en/CL05A105KP5NNND/CL05A105KP5NNND-ND/3894185)

But when you're buying them in quantities that a company like Samsung would (that above link is, amusingly enough, to ones that Samsung themselves make), the price drops off rather steeply. $0.001USD is around what I can find for buying them from China in 100Ku.

<comment><USER19> I left the reply in jest. But while we're here. Capacitors vary widely in price by type, capacitance, and quality. A 1uF multilayer ceramic is probably one of the most common and cheapest to buy capacitors there is, except maybe the .01uF. Output coupling of an audio amplifier requires a lot more capacitance than ceramics can muster. That cap, if present is going to be an electrolytic, and it is going to cost more than $0.001 or even $0.01 at qty. Although I'm reading that direct coupled amplifiers are all the rage these days, probably so they can get the expensive electrolytics off the BOM.

<comment><USER18> I have the schematics for my laptop and it has 1uF ceramics on the speaker PA inputs, that's why I linked to that particular one. The other common values I've seen are 2u2 and 4u7, which is a little more expensive but will give more bass --- not that it really matters on a tinny little laptop speaker anyway. At least I'm happy to know that I won't burn out the speakers on my laptop with DC.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER20> In professional audio (and even amateur radio) one always puts speakers rated for 1.5x the nominal output of the amp. At least. This makes sure that whatever the input in the amp, the speakers are safe.

If Dell doesn't build audio properly, how can they blame the users? They really have some gut...

<comment><USER21> I was always taught the opposite rule for PA amps - they should be rated higher than the speakers, as per [http://books.google.co.uk/books?id=dWILAAAAQBAJ&pg=PA118&dq=...](http://books.google.co.uk/books?id=dWILAAAAQBAJ&pg=PA118&dq=speaker+amp+power+matching#v=onepage&q=speaker%20amp%20power%20matching&f=false), [http://www.sweetwater.com/insync/power-amp-buying- guide/#mat...](http://www.sweetwater.com/insync/power-amp-buying- guide/#matching) or similar. The reasoning being that a lower power amp would have to run flat out, and clip, which pushes a lot of energy into the HF drivers. Safer for the tweeters to have a more powerful amp which is not run into clipping, even if some peaks exceed the cabinet's rated power.

The VLC volume control has always terrified me, I wish it would have AGC or at least a soft limiter when pushed above 100%. I've seen people watch films with it cranked up to 200% and the system volume turned down to compensate :(

</comment></comment><comment><USER22> Next logic step: playing DUBSTEP voids your speaker warranty

</comment><comment><USER23> Dell support and policies are utterly broken. I had a Dell Vostro which worked fine except at one time it started emitting fumes when running a CPU intensive task. I was denied warranty because I was running Linux!

Since then I have vowed never to buy Dell.

</comment><comment><USER24> All products eventually approach "if you use this product for anything at all, it voids the warranty". How fast they get there is an indication of the integrety (and managerial health) of the company behind them.

<comment><USER25> In my country (Norway) we are already protected better by law than the warranty in most cases, so what producers say will void it is often meaningless.

If Dell said VLC was installed so warranty is void, I'd say I want the computer fixed as a "reklamasjon"-case, and so they can't hide between stupid rules like this. This also means that we are allowed to swap RAM, CPU's etc. in our computers without fear of not getting the computer fixed if it later breaks down for unrelated reasons.

</comment></comment><comment><USER26> future headline : "Dell revokes hard-drive warranty for installation of software. Cites excess read and write of sectors akin to abuse."

</comment><comment><USER27> Shouldn't instead Dell make the speakers not be able to get physically damanged by software?

<comment><USER28> It would probably either cost more or the speakers would have a lower peak volume.

I don't think it is a wild compromise to make some assumptions about the sounds people will play through the speakers (and it's not like a spec relating the max energy/time is going to help most shoppers).

<comment><USER27> Well, it's also a wild compromise to say the warranty is void by installing popular software. If they would instead say, the warranty is void if you go above such and so threshold for such and so long (no matter with what software), that would make sense, but this, just seems a cheap way of making the warranty unexistent.

Anyway, a moderator from Dell replied that you can contact him if Dell refuses to give support just by seeing VLC installed, so maybe it's better than it seems.

<comment><USER28> Yeah, it's nonsense that they are straight up blaming VLC.

(But I don't think it is obviously unreasonable to sell a cheap laptop with cheap speakers, configured to be able to make louder peaks)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER29> Seems pretty bogus, sure you _can_ damage a speaker hooked directly up to some audio source, but there so many components between the DirectSound API and the speaker that making a system that can be damaged using the OS API's seems quite lame.

</comment><comment><USER30> So basically, Dell's crappy speaker/amp design can't handle square waves at full volume. I suppose you shouldn't listen to loud chip-tunes either, then.

<comment><USER18> This is particularly amusing to me, as someone who regularly enjoys more... extreme genres of music that features lots of distortion and hard clipping. My no-name cheap Chinese speakers and headphones haven't died because of it, in fact my ears probably have less tolerance than the hardware.

</comment></comment><comment><USER31> I used to work for Dell tech support, and I used to install VLC on customer's machines all the time..woops. At that time there was no rule against it and we generally assumed that software couldn't damage hardware. When I worked there, Dell seemed to have one of the more lenient warranty policies of any company.

</comment><comment><USER32> I had once faced the exact same issue once in Mar 2009, so all I did was called them again after some time from a different number and using a different name and told them that No, VLC was not installed. And I got my warranty upheld and speaker replaced.

</comment><comment><USER33> This is insane. It's like saying LibreOffice can ruin your HDD, keyboard or some other BS that they can come up with. I have a Dell XPS M1530, it is five and a half years old and I remember the speakers blowing out in 2009. I got them covered under the warranty no problem. I know I am in the minority when saying that I like Dell and their support, I have had other problems and they have had no problem fixing them. This my start to change my mind...

</comment><comment><USER34> What is the current status of the vulnerability in VLC Media Player reported by Secunia? I see that there has been some online discussion of this in places outside Hacker News (which I searched the other day for more information about Secunia's vulnerability report).

[http://secunia.com/advisories/52956/](http://secunia.com/advisories/52956/)

[http://secunia.com/blog/shooting-the- messenger-372](http://secunia.com/blog/shooting-the-messenger-372)

[http://it.slashdot.org/story/13/07/10/1520245/vlc-and- secuni...](http://it.slashdot.org/story/13/07/10/1520245/vlc-and-secunia- fighting-over-vulnerability-reports)

I have tried to update VLC Media Player on one machine on my home network, and the update fails, suggesting that the VLC Media Player installation on that computer may already be compromised by malware (which has previously been detected on that machine). What is the recommendation for current VLC Media Player users to make sure that they have a recently updated, reasonably safe installation of VLC Media Player that doesn't open up their computer to other vulnerabilities?

<comment><USER35> wait, so you currently have an infected computer on your home network?

<comment><USER34> Secunia reports that I need to update VLC Media Player on a computer from which I recently removed a lot of malware (with the help of Malware Bytes, of which I have a purchased copy on that computer). I installed Secunia on the same computer, and it has not been able to do its update of VLC Media Player, nor have I been able to get an update of that to install by going directly to the VLC Media Player website and downloading the latest version. That is worrisome.

Would I be better off just completely uninstalling VLC Media Player?

AFTER EDIT: I might have considered a direct answer to my question (whatever the answer was) more helpful than a silent downvote to what was, after all, just a polite response to a question that someone asked me.

AFTER FURTHER EDIT: After some more rebooting of the previously infected computer, the operating system and Secunia both report that VLC Media Player version 2.1.3 is installed, and that is not reported to have any problem by Secunia. So I will leave that alone. The computer from which I usually post to HN, a different computer on the same home network, does not have VLC Media Player installed. I try to keep a close-to-bare-stock set of installed programs on this computer, but other users in my household (= teenage boys who aspire to be hackers) tend to install programs I've never heard of on the other computer on our home network, and my wife, who has other things on her mind, occasionally doesn't notice installations of crapware or adware or bloatware that tag along with legitimate program updates on that computer. So that other computer tends to be the vector for malware attacks on the home network here. Thanks for any further comments participants here have on how to keep a home network safe when not all users follow strict quarantine policies.

<comment><USER36> I'd suggest just nuking the entirety of that computer from orbit. "Uninstalling" malware is not worth the risk/effort.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER37> If DELL is right that would mean even if I craft a sound file with a very high amplitude, play it with another software, it should not damage the speakers.

I would have thought windows could limitate the amplitude of the sound sent to the hardware, maybe VLC is somehow bypassing this.

Seems like an odd issue though.

</comment><comment><USER38> I'm proud of the fact that soon my audio streaming library will be able to void Dell warranties too!

[https://github.com/andrewrk/libgroove/issues/45](https://github.com/andrewrk/libgroove/issues/45)

</comment><comment><USER39> Possibly relevant anecdote...

I once acquired an audio geologic recording of the tragic Christmas Eve tsunami in Indonesia. It was an interesting listen, with a lot of bass/sub- base frequencies. Played at what seemed a reasonable listening volume, it managed to destroy my iPod headphones. Seems some sounds can be inherently damaging to less robust equipment when seemingly operated well within sensible limits.

(The replacement of said headphones cemented my appreciation of Apple: at a time Apple wasn't selling headphones alone, upon my consternation of not being able to buy a set, a clerk ripped open a random box and handed me new headphones gratis.)

</comment><comment><USER40> Even HP has the same policy which I found to my dismay three years back.

</comment><comment><USER41> sounds like buggy speaker hardware or firmware. How about don't use Dell laptops to play audio?

</comment><comment><USER42> I Killed my speakers on Dell Latitude 6330 when increase the volume to 200% (i got them replaced cause its my work laptop)

</comment><comment><USER43> Maybe am I too big nerd, but who would send laptop for repairs without wiping out harddrive first?

</comment><comment><USER44> Random question, if my speakers get blown, and I uninstall VLC before taking in my laptop for repair, does that mean the warranty will cover it?

(Yes i suppose that is morally wrong, but so is blaming VLC for your own bad designs)

</comment><comment><USER45> This is why I use VLC. On the white polycarb apple macbooks the audio is really quiet. VLC made it useful by allowing me to turn the audio up louder (up to 200%). No damage to speakers here.

</comment><comment><USER46> Yeah, my speakers have blown up too... damn Dell and their cheap shit.

</comment><comment><USER47> Is this true of the Latitude series of laptops? Or just the XPS? I would think the Commercial grade hardware would be a bit tougher.

</comment><comment><USER48> Who could stand to listen to audio from those crappy speakers, let alone at such a saturated loudness on said crappy speakers?

</comment><comment><USER49> Dell owners should file a class action for use of defective speaker components.

</comment><comment><USER50> Audio engineer here. All this means is the speakers in Dell laptops are crap.

</comment><comment><USER51> Wait, people use laptop speakers?

</comment><comment><USER52> What kind of person uses crappy laptop speakers for media consumption?

<comment><USER53> far too many people do, and many annoyingly listen to music through the crappy speakers on their phone, usually in public.

<comment><USER52> Then if they blow out their crappy speakers, maybe that will leave them with no recourse but to plug their headphones in

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER54> Yep, happened with me as well in India

</comment><comment> guard-of-terra This is stupid. They are making speakers that can't withstand some cases of within-the-bounds PCM signal.

If we had a normal society anywhere on earth they would be sued to the ground there.

<comment><USER55> Speakers are built to be able to withstand short peaks with high power to reflect the dynamic in the music or your movie. This is what is abused to be able to play loud sounds continuously. You could take the possibility to do that away, but then you would of course also remove some of the dynamics out of the music.

But of course, the people that burn their speakers this way don't care about dynamics or evidently about sound quality if they press their computer speakers like this. Can't sound not even a little good.

<comment><USER56> Not sure if you've ever owned a Dell laptop, but I'll never buy one again. On a couple of occasions I have tried to play DVD's on them and cannot hear people talking with the volume up. Put headphones on and its too loud. Dell speakers are junk.

<comment><USER57> Um in my experience all laptop speakers of all brands are like that.

<comment><USER58> No. I have a System76 Ubuntu laptop and the speaker quality is excellent. Plays music nicely and sound is clear and crisp. How many quality laptops do you have experience with?

<comment><USER57> Never had a System76, but I've owned a few Asus and a Toshiba and when I lived with 5 other people in college, the topic came up and we all agreed on the quality of our respective laptop speakers. Of course I was in college quite a while ago.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER59> What the...?

</comment><comment><USER60> Not speaking of Dell's behavior but VLC should maybe add a warning to the settings when the user goes over 100% if it damages the speakers.

<comment><USER2> VLC cannot damage anything more than any other player using the Windows APIs.

<comment><USER61> Yes it does. It makes too simple for non-techical user to make the signal distorted. Distorted signal can damage a speaker, even in low volume. It's irrelevat to blame "the others do it too".

I've seen it happen many times in meetings. 1\. Presenter shows a video and volume is low. 2\. Presenter adds volume from VLC to 200% and sound signal gets distorted. 3\. Sound is awful, no-one can hear anything and people are doing nothing to fix it, because they think that speakers are broken.

Please VLC, fix your player so that it has good sounding limiter on the "output". It's not difficult.</comment></comment></comment>


PostgreSQL Basics by Example - <AUTHOR> http://darthdeus.github.io/blog/2013/08/19/postgresql-basics-by-example/ <comment><USER2> Craig Kerstiens from Heroku periodically posts great articles about PostreSQL [1]. They're all really worth a read, especially [2] which is in the nature of the original link.

[1] [http://www.craigkerstiens.com/content/](http://www.craigkerstiens.com/content/)

[2] [http://www.craigkerstiens.com/2013/02/13/How-I-Work-With- Pos...](http://www.craigkerstiens.com/2013/02/13/How-I-Work-With-Postgres/)

<comment><USER3> First, thanks for the callout. Happy to shamelessly accept plugs, and to add to it there's a guide I curate and a weekly newsletter with interesting articles as well:

[http://www.postgresguide.com](http://www.postgresguide.com)

[http://www.postgresweekly.com](http://www.postgresweekly.com)

</comment></comment><comment> workhere-io Also worth noting for those who are starting out with PostgreSQL: The easiest way to install it on your Mac is using Postgres.app ([http://postgresapp.com](http://postgresapp.com)).

<comment><USER4> As much I like mattt's work, I dont understand, why is this needed. brew install postgres is just as easy and in my experience Postgres.app is not well maintained and uses an older version.

<comment><USER5> I've personally helped 4 people setup Postgres on a recent model macbook with OSX Mountain Lion for Rails dev in the last 6 months. Every one has been terrible. Issue with sockets, issues with file permissions, issues with previous attempted installs, issues with setting up database users. Postgres.app just works and it is awesome.

<comment><USER4> Thats interesting, I've never had an issue with the homebrew installation. The readme details 1 or 2 lines to get everything set up for the first time.

I suppose osx built-in installation may cause conflicts.

<comment><AUTHOR> To be honest I've spent about 4 hours last week trying to install homebrew PostgreSQL on a friends MacBook ... it took me forever to figure out why it wasn't connecting to the right socket, just because he had some things out of date :\

While it is really easy to install most of the time, I'd say the Postgres.app works well for people who aren't developers but need to use PostgreSQL.

<comment><USER4> Did you see the post installation instructions to initialize a db?

initdb /usr/local/var/postgres -E utf8

Also if you are working with rails, add host: localhost in your database.yml file and remove the user password. That should be all you need.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> On a somewhat related note, I'd love to see a more intermediate resource on how to really leverage PostgreSQL in your applications.

As someone who primarily works with Rails, I feel like I use about 1% of PostgreSQL's power.

<comment><USER7> Which is how Rails wants you to use PostgreSQL. Their opinion is that logic belongs in the app, not the database.

<comment><USER8> In general this is true, but with Rails 4, we added a lot of Postgres specific features to ActiveRecord, so you can actually take advantage of all the awesomeness Postgres has to offer.

Check out this blog post: [http://blog.remarkablelabs.com/2012/12/a-love- affair-with-po...](http://blog.remarkablelabs.com/2012/12/a-love-affair-with- postgresql-rails-4-countdown-to-2013)

<comment><USER7> Has the actual philosophy changed though?

When I first got to Rails it seemed that databases were considered as a bothersome but unavoidable necessity; flat files with a funny accent, instead of an essential and powerful ally in the fight against entropy and error.

<comment><USER9> In the past several years Postgres and NoSQL data stores have gained in popularity and become mainstream, and Rails now supports them well. The Rails ecosystem historically focused on MySQL, but that's not the case anymore. For example, Engine Yard now uses Postgres by default, and Heroku always has.

<comment><USER7> I basically remember head-scratching about the worthiness of exotic features like foreign keys.

Some poking around in the current documentation seems to suggest that FKs have been absorbed into ActiveRecord.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> Nice intro. One great trick if you want to learn more about the system tables is `psql -e`. This will show the queries used internally by all the \d, \u, etc. commands.

</comment><comment><USER11> Whilst not perfect, pgadmin can also be helpful. I find it particularly useful for keeping an overall view of multiple databases/servers.

[http://pgadmin.org/](http://pgadmin.org/)

<comment><USER12> As someone who has spent the last few days trying to become familiar with pgsql: yes.

Don't be intimidated by all the options it offers. It makes things really easy and - more importantly imho - shows you the SQL it runs for every command.

So far it seems a great way to learn pgsql coming with some background in SQL, if you want it to be.

</comment></comment><comment><USER13> Bookmarked. Definitely could've used this post when I was just starting with PostgreSQL!

<comment><AUTHOR> I'm glad to hear that :) I've had problems with this for so long that I finally decided to put all of the information together.

I'm planning to cover more things about PostgreSQL, mostly using pg_dump, pg_restore, pg_upgrade, initdb etc., just the regular things you should know when using it on your own VPS.

<comment><USER14> I would definitely follow this then. I was just about to say that I hope this develops into part 1 of a queue of topics covered in a similar way. I just started with PostgreSQL and this is very helpful.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> As far as mac installs are concerned while i am fond of OSX for day to day usage you are way better putting your postgres install in a linux VM,it will reflect production better and be far easier to install.

</comment><comment><USER16> Repeat after me: set work_mem to 'XXXGB'; set maintenance_work_mem to 'YYYGB'; swing away!

<comment><USER17> This annoys me so much about PostgreSQL. Why not have useful defaults?!

<comment><USER18> The defaults are useful in that they reflect a configuration that is appropriate to get the system running on a large variety of hardware. It's not really the responsibility of the Pg developers to guess at the "best" settings for any specific environment, because environments and configurations vary greatly.

<comment><USER19> I agree to a point, but it would be nice if there were some provided default configs for various classes of machines.

Especially defaults for the most popular EC2 instance types.

<comment><USER20> Its two dimensional because of "various classes of applications"</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment>


Terminals in Neovim - r-s http://ryanselk.com/2015/05/19/terminals-in-neovim/

<comment><AUTHOR> > When running tests I am a fan of being able to split my screen so I can view > the tests alongside code. Tmux worked well for this, however it comes with a > few disadvantages. Pasting code between Tmux and Vim panes required use of > the system register which is a pain.

I'm personally not a fan of them, but why wouldn't you use vim split panes?

<comment><USER2> Maybe he meant he was running the tests in the split, and copy/pasting bits of text between the editor and shell.

He could also have used tmux's copy buffer, but it is a little cumbersome.

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> i love this its like NeoVim=vim+tmux</comment>


TLS Token Binding in Simple Terms - <AUTHOR> https://medium.com/@inthiraj1994/token-binding-in-simple-terms-6d2035075ab <comment><AUTHOR> What do people think of this?</comment>


Show HN: Amubosé, a quick way to search for multiple books on Amazon - <AUTHOR>

Have you ever had a long list of books you needed to look-up on Amazon? So have I, and I found it very tedious. (Copy title #1, search, find book, copy title #2, search find book, &tc.)
So I fixed it.
http://amubose.s3-website-us-east-1.amazonaws.com/
(Why S3? It's free, and I expect that this will only be used by me.) <comment><USER2> Oh! This is great!! Will do a post. Tried it and BAM! Great.

EDIT: One suggestion. Possible to separate into search for print (Amazon) and search for eBook (Kindle Store)? I mostly search for Kindle editions, as does most of my audience.

EDIT 2: Post up: [http://mikecanex.wordpress.com/2011/05/14/new-amazon- search-...](http://mikecanex.wordpress.com/2011/05/14/new-amazon-search-tool- amubose/)

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks!

I'll definitely add that feature.

EDIT: Feature added.

<comment><USER2> Brilliant! I've added an Update to my post. You also got mentioned here: [http://www.the-digital-reader.com/2011/05/14/amubose-new- ama...](http://www.the-digital-reader.com/2011/05/14/amubose-new-amazon- search-tool)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><AUTHOR> clickable: <http://amubose.s3-website-us-east-1.amazonaws.com/></comment>