A Dark Room: From Sabbatical Year to $800k - <AUTHOR> https://failory.com/battle-scars <comment><USER2> This is incredibly depressing. It hits home for me because I'm in a very similar situation. I and one other guy almost went broke making Clicker Heroes, but it turned out to be a great success.

But so far since then every project has not been worth doing.

> I didn't do ads, I didn't do micro-transactions, scummy energy bars, and all > those other bullshit monetization tactics.

We did this in Clicker Heroes, and I don't like that we did. But I'm learning more and more that it's hard to compete against scummy tactics.

I hope Clicker Heroes 2 does OK. We might have to find corporate jobs too if it doesn't.

<comment><USER3> > We did this in Clicker Heroes, and I don't like that we did. But I'm > learning more and more that it's hard to compete against scummy tactics.

Props to for going against the HN hive mind. F2P is successful because most people choose it and will not pay for software. There are real issues with it but it not pure evil like HN thinks.

<comment><USER4> I think you misunderstood what he wrote... He was saying that it's hard to compete in F2P unless you use the same scummy tactics that everyone else does. That's why he made Clicker Heroes 2 as a non-F2P game.

<comment><USER5> > We did this in Clicker Heroes, and I don't like that we did. But I'm > learning more and more that it's hard to compete against scummy tactics.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> The math on this makes no sense at all.

>

\- Live off of $15k a year. Don't buy a house. Don't buy a fancy car. Just save.

\- Do this for a year.

\- Land a job that makes you $100k a year. Save the rest. Max out your 401k contribution.

\- Celebrate by living off of $30k a year.

\- Do this for three years.

\- Land a job that makes you $140k a year. Save the rest. Max out your 401k contribution. Get a Roth, put $5k a year into that.

\- Celebrate by living off of $60k a year.

\- Do this for three years. >

He is talking about SAVING, $500,000. Then needing to liquidate your 401k, just to take off a year?

If he is capable of living on 60k before this, he should be able to live almost 10 years just on his savings without liquidating the 401k.

<comment> castle-bravo Yeah it doesn't make any sense at all.

He grossed over 800k on a video game, loves programming, but after another three years he has to go back to his day job? It sounds like he's burning over 100k/year and lying about his expenses in this report. In any case, there's a lot of information left out.

<comment><USER7> I give you my Armchair Expert of the Year Award. Congrats :-)

Must be nice to live in a world without having to give Apple 30%, insurance premiums, taxes, and royalties/partnership splits.

Take this comment in good spirit. We all make mistakes. Nothing but love for you. Go build awesome things. Hire a CPA for all the math related stuff.

<comment><USER8> I see this every day, people take the gross income number to the bank. In software world, the operational costs are less compared to other domains, but there are still costs and taxes.

Apple taking 30% cut is insane.

<comment><USER9> YESSS.. By itself it's just business right? The price of doing business. Don't like it? Go somewhere else. But that somewhere else is Android and Google ALSO charges 30%? Hmmm..

This duopoly situation isn't really good developers. Apple taking 30% cut and tossing it on their pile of 250b in cash; that's a depressing image.

<comment><USER10> It's interesting because Android is decidedly not locked in to Google's Play Store, yet it's entirely dominant in the Android app market regardless. Amazon's App Store is still kicking and side-loading is easy enough, but seems like very few users take advantage.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> > _So here I am with a disgusting $140,000 in total compensation. A sea of > cubicals, souless sheep that want nothing more than to do their time and go > home._

We need to learn the art and skill of finding joy in any circumstance. This detached, negative view of your coworkers does nothing but signal your inability or unwillingness to become something apart from your selfish, personal desires.

This entire generation is lost at sea. Can't you see that your happiness is dependent on none other than yourself?

<comment><USER12> Did you read the entire thing?

> The people I once called sheep, aren't that. They just didn't have the means > to roll the dice.

Source: later in blog.

<comment><USER13> That's still an extremely opinionated viewpoint. Some people are happy to work a 9-to-5 gig because it affords them stability in exploring their other hobbies.

<comment><USER14> I agree with your sentiment and find the judgemental, derisive attitude that some entrepreneurial communities exhibit distressing. Going so far as to call 9-to-5 workers sheep is a display of arrogance and (perhaps) own insecurities. It would be better for us not to foster such attitudes.

<comment><USER7> This has been a big regret of mine. I should never have preceived anyone in a 9 to 5 that way. And as mentioned above, there is nothing wrong with a 9 to 5 (dice or no dice). It's a prefectly valid course of action to pursue the more important things in life.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> Yes, the game market is often hard. But I find this author's attitude fatalistic and weird. (Also I agree that the numbers do not add up).

He seems to think that "rolling the dice" is the _primary_ thing going on, and that he can't influence this substantially by any amount of development skill, proper tactics, and so forth.

I wonder if this kind of mindset is a side-effect of modern-day political correctness -- that if you succeed, it is 100% due to your good fortune (combined privilege and luck) and not because you did anything special to get there. The upside of such an attitude is that we recognize luck and recognize that people who failed did not necessarily fail through fault of their own. One major downside is that we feel a lack of agency, and this lack of agency is almost certain to drastically decrease the chances of future success.

Be careful what you believe, because it matters.

For my part, I think talent and skill and grit are huge factors in success, so if I want to succeed at something, I am able to formulate some kind of a plan. I don't feel that I am "just rolling the dice", even when luck is involved (which it is all the time, in everything).

<comment><USER16> I didn't draw the same conclusion from the article regarding whether the author thought, or the article implies, that "rolling the dice" is the primary element of success. The author emphasizes the sorts of elements you highlighted - formulating a long term and reasonable plan; demonstrable talent; grit and perseverance - not as necessary (or sufficient) conditions to success but rather necessary conditions to have a chance at success.

As you know more than most, game development isn't a linear path from ideation to release, and good games from smart people who worked hard on them often find little success. You can increase your chance at success with experience and talent, but games are an entertainment medium and sometimes your creation just doesn't resonate - or increasingly rise above the noise of the platform marketplaces - with enough people to be a sustainable career.

I've worked at AAA studios and am now at an independent game developer. I've sometimes thought of doing something even smaller, an indie effort akin to the author's or something of the scope of what you did with Braid. I found this article aspirational and affirming, validating the idea of taking a chance on something that is meaningful to you despite the (long in the case of the mobile app store) odds.

<comment><USER7> >not as necessary (or sufficient) conditions to success but rather necessary conditions to have a chance at success.

Exactly this.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER17> Finally created an account, just to say this

"A Dark Room recently hit the #2 spot _overall_ on Google Play (pro tip: stick to iOS, the revenue is almost an order of magnitude better)"

I bought the game on android to support the developer despite the game being VERY late to android. With that said, the android port is _horrible_. It's behind garbage. Amir cannot talk about love for the code and release crap like that.

So treating android user as idiots. We pay for good game and avoid crap. Don't be crap.

Edit: ADR went quickly free on android because nobody would pay for that crap. So that's why it didn't make much money.

<comment><USER7> That sucks. I'd spend more time on the Android version. But there is a really high piracy rate. Buy a Samsung Galaxy S8, it was tested on there.

Both Michael and I appreciate the hat tip you gave us by buying it. Email me and I'll glady refund your $0.99.

<comment><USER18> My 2 cents:

1\. Charge more than 99c. Double the price and your sales will likely drop by less than half, making it profitable to do so.

2\. If you're going to half-ass the port to Android, why even bother? It will do more damage than it's worth.

<comment><USER7> It works great on the devices I've tested on. Which is like 4 out of the 15,000 possible OS+Device+Carrier combinations.

<comment><USER17> If it looks like a half-loaded web page on a nexus (which is the reference device for the platform) then something is wrong.

Please don't take offence, I'm just trying to explain why it did so bad on android.

edit: you don't need to test your app on 1500 devices. They are all the same, if you plan for it only two devices (big/small screen) should suffice. Source: former app developer.

<comment><USER7> You'd be surprised at how many variations exist out there. Source: app developer who has had 300k downloads of his Android port and has dealt with death threats from people trying to run his game on a device that has the processing power of a toaster.

<comment><USER19> I can feel your pain. I get aggressive complaints from my users when their 5 year old Android can't use modern video codecs because they can't upgrade the OS. Somehow that's my fault. (This is for secure video chat FWIW.) With iOS, it's a simple as ensuring their OS is current. Far, far less pain dealing with iOS and Mac users than anything with Android. That isn't a complaint against Android per se — just a business fact. Android users quite simply cost us more money in support and development time, not to mention Android users generally are more "value conscious" which is another way of saying "cheap." We have a HIPPA compliant video system and it's amazing that mental health professionals billing $150 per hour still insist on attempting to conduct highly security sensitive work on extremely outdated devices. I can only imagine how it must be to deal with casual gamers without any professional motivation.

<comment><USER17> I think ADR with its simplistic graphics should run on any android (even a "toaster").

But your app seems more demanding, can't you limit it to newer versions of android? Many banking apps for example require users to be on 6.0 or better.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER20> His budget numbers & supposed savings vs. sabbatical runway shock me. The 401k bit fits his "roll the dice" theme, but should never have been necessary. I can't help but feel we have an unreliable narrator who's not telling us the full story about finances and motivations.

The truth would be so much more interesting and instructive. What setback really led to needing to clock out and cash out? What was really left of that 800k after the app store cut and taxes and marketing and mistakes? Was it only money that pushed him back into the workplace or something more?

Real life is messy and I can see the hole where he cut that part out of his story.

</comment><comment><USER21> > I liquidated my 401k savings (took all the tax penalties up front), and said > "alright, gonna live off of this for as long as I can until I figure > something out".

This is the hard part in all of these stories. Props to him for having the courage (stupidity?). I think this forum is full of people who would not just love to quit their job and work on their own project, but would THRIVE in doing so.

The problem is the paycheck. Do I want to risk it all, throw away my savings, all for a chance at success?

<comment><USER22> Regret minimization framework. Looking back from your old age would you wish you had done something like this? Can you earn it all back with a good fall back plan on your expertise ?

<comment><USER23> And if you can't earn it back, are you prepared to work until you die?

<comment><USER24> Coding until I die? sign me up

<comment><USER23> Ageism.

<comment><USER24> Contract work, side projects that make revenue, etc.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER25> This guy made a lot of really questionable decisions. Put his future and family at risk. His only hit was porting _someone else 's_ hit game to iOS. He himself admits he is working again now only so he can build a stash and gamble it all again.

I hope he finds success some day, but given his track record, I'm very skeptical of his conclusions.

<comment><USER26> Whilst perhaps a little harsh in its tone, this comment appears to be the only one commenting on the fact that it sounds like he only ported the existing game from web, didn't create it.

So, depending on how much split with the original coder/creator that 800k might not have gone very far, and seems pretty good for "A port". I wonder if/why not forming a small studio with the original creator would have worked.

<comment><USER27> From the article:

> I redesigned so much of the original game. So much of me went into it.

I haven't played the iOS version of _A Dark Room_ so I can't speak to exactly how much change there is between the original web version and this one, but it sounds like it's not just a straight port.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER28> I am curious as to why some people think being paid $140,000 a year is 'disgusting'? I live in Australia so the comparison is a bit different, but here electricians and carpenters will very frequently make over $130,000 a year. Traffic controllers can make up to $180,000 a year, which is an unskilled job with only two days training [1].

In the prime of their careers, dentists, lawyers and doctors can commonly make over $300,000 per year. At the top end of the spectrum, specialist doctors and commercial lawyers can make over $1,000,000 a year, as can those who work in investment banking for instance.

What is it about software engineering that people think is less valuable that these other occupations? Why do people think that earning $100k a year is overcompensation? My personal theory is that it is because impressive wages are a relatively new phenomenon in software (there is a much longer history with doctors and lawyers) and people are not comfortable with the idea yet. But I can assure you that there are many groups in society earning over this amount and one shouldn't feel disgusted by doing so. (Of course, there are many who are not - but that is a longer conversation)

[1] [https://www.dailytelegraph.com.au/news/nsw/sweet-deal- traffi...](https://www.dailytelegraph.com.au/news/nsw/sweet-deal-traffic- controller-earns-a-shocking-130000-all-thanks-to-the-construction-boom/news- story/ae3305f632a9b9d206f1dd99bbf2e840)

<comment><USER29> That article is a crock of shit by the way. I know two traffic controllers and they're both on $25 an hour. I'm sure there's a couple somewhere that are well connected with the unions and get sweet gigs, or some actual engineers that get put on traffic control duty and earn that salary, but you can't just walk into a $140k job off 2 years experience doing traffic control like you can in software in SV.

<comment><USER28> A fair point. It was a silly example to use and seems to be limited to CFMEU members which is not part of the market operating as normal.

Still - do you think $140k is too much for any one person to make?

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER30> Here's a funny satirical antidote for "bet the farm" success-story fantasies like this one:

[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=l_F9jxsfGCw](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=l_F9jxsfGCw)

<comment><USER31> Thank you for this. A great talk in youtube equating winning lottery ticket with a successful business / startup. (want this indexed by my bookmarking site google.com)

</comment></comment><comment><USER32> I have never been directly employed at a large Silicon Valley tech company. Is it really that difficult to work on side projects on your nights/weekends while working at these places? To be sure, it would take longer to get your projects finished, but you would also be doing so with the benefit of a steady paycheck and health insurance. If you happen to hit the lottery with your finished project, great - quit your job. But it seems insane to me to just gamble on something with such absurdly long odds, especially if you have a wife.

Also, the sad reality is that only a very lucky few will create games that become popular enough to generate a living wage without somewhat aggressive monetization techniques, such as ads and in-game purchases. This guy seems to really dislike his corporate job, but apparently not enough to monetize his games well. If anyone else wants to follow in his footsteps, you should do some soul searching before you put in your notice and decide if you can live with a near-zero chance of success while sticking to your principles, or if you want to have a much higher chance of success but with the caveat that your users will be seeing ads and buying power bars from you. Life is full of crappy trade-offs.

<comment><USER7> +1. This guy took a huge risk and is an idiot. He got stupid lucky.

<comment><USER32> I didn't say you were an idiot. You bought a lottery ticket, and won. All I was saying is that most people in the app business lose, especially if they don't use aggressive monetization.

<comment><USER7> No seriously. My current self would be slapping my past self in the back of the head saying "you idiot, do you have any idea what kind of bullet you dodged?!"

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER33> > The people I once called sheep, aren't that. They just didn't have the means > to roll the dice.

One thing I see often and often (I've done it too) is that when you quit your job to pursue your dream, everybody else working at a job is a sucker. They are too comfy in their life sucking job and one day they will get fired and realize that they wasted their time making someone else rich.

I was lucky that failure caught up with me really fast and I realized I am no better then others (so did the author).

But I've seen cases where the person believes in this so much that even after catastrophic failure they can't go back to a job because, well, of all the horrible things they said about being an employee.

I was in start up school this year and one of the common theme was about people who where at the brink of losing their home for an idea that was not even close to ready to launch. The instructor stress them to get a job.

<comment><USER7> >The instructor stress them to get a job.

This is really good advice. Additionally I'd say don't bet the farm. Some times the best you can do is be that rock/stepping stone for your kin to build a legacy with.

</comment></comment><comment><USER34> > _All code I see is beautiful in its own way. It tells a story of the > reasonable programmers put in unreasonable situations._

I like that. I think it's kind of deep.

</comment><comment><USER35>
      But if you really want numbers, here are some of the numeric
      sacrifices I made to role the dice _once_
      ( ... big list of qualifications ... )
      Now you can take a year and a half off and roll the dice
      _once_

The author did great and should be proud, but I wholeheartedly disagree with this part.

You don't have to have these ridiculous qualifications to take a risk (let alone "roll the dice once") and be successful. Choose not to live a lavish lifestyle and you can "roll the dice" many times.

</comment><comment><USER36> I'd like to think there's a middle ground between 'corporate america' and 'at home alone'.

Hitting the jackpot the first time around may have actually led the author away from a place he'd feel most comfortable in - a small company with other people who love what they do.

<comment><USER7> During my free time I did a good amount of contract work with small companies. They loved what they did and it was energizing. But what they love working on isn't what I love working on which is in essence: "artistic, evocative experiences". Yes I've invested in a closet full of turtle neck sweaters while I continue my search for my "magnum opus".

<comment><USER37> There are companies like that, but they are tough to get into (generally small company, low budget, low openings). I personally think it would be cool to work on the next Journey/The Witness/Monument Valley/etc, but it's a crapshoot of knowing the right people at the right time with opportunity to jump on. I'm personally saving up until that opportunity comes or I go nuts like you and quit to do my own thing. Best of luck.

<comment><USER7> Thank you for the well wishes. You'd be surprised at how small/close knit the game dev communities are (come to TouchArcade's after party at GDC and say hello to figuratively every indie worth their salt).

There isn't really a company that any of use work for per se, but "all" of us are collaborating in one way or another to make sure we succeed collectively. It's pretty great, but you have to have the battle scars to join (actually you just have to bring cool laptop stickers to the party and we'll tell you all of our war stories in great detail).

<comment><USER37> I believe it. Game industry is a small place. I miss shipping.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER38> I spent every morning for several weeks playing A Dark Room while commuting by subway with my 7yo, so I this story really engaged me. My biggest takeaway is to think about this advice from Sam Altman:

[http://playbook.samaltman.com](http://playbook.samaltman.com) "A word of warning about choosing to start a startup: It sucks! One of the most consistent pieces of feedback we get from YC founders is it's harder than they could have ever imagined, because they didn't have a framework for the sort of work and intensity a startup entails. Joining an early-stage startup that's on a rocketship trajectory is usually a much better financial deal."

There are so many good jobs out there that are not just being a corporate drone. He has amazingly relevant experience for tons of companies.

He should find one that has already taken venture funding and ride the rocketship (along with punching a lottery ticket) while still getting a reasonable salary.

<comment><USER7> I'm really really happy that ADR gave you some (hopefully) great moments during your commute. Seeing thing comment means the world to me (it really, truly does).

If you get a chance, download A Noble Circle and play it with your child. You may find that you can connect over it's ridiculous story and crazy gameplay. I'd love any feedback you may have about it.

<comment><USER38> Thanks, my son and I really enjoyed playing A Dark Room, and were definitely freaked out when we saw the workers had become slaves.

I'll try A Noble Circle with him.

<comment><USER7> This is exciting!!! All the random criticism from this post will be entirely worth it if your son ends up smiling even once while trying to navigate Mr Circle. Let me know!

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER39> >> There is such a heavy dose of luck in success. There are those that will give one thousand percent, and because the roll of the dice wasn't perfect, nothing materializes. They have as much love for the game development as I have... they've worked as hard as I have... but just didn't get a kiss from Lady Luck. And it sucks. It just isn't fair that they want to create more than their next breathe, but can't catch a good break to devote time to it. They have to look over at those that have the privaledge to take multiple rolls of the dice, eat their cake and have it too, and if everything still fails, they get bailed out by mommy and daddy.

This is exactly how I feel.

</comment><comment><USER40> I appreciate the honesty in this post and I'm pretty sure we people who make games can all learn from this.

having said that, before relating to the story please take into consideration he is going solo at it. Difficulties are very different if you are working as a team: It's a lot more expensive but a collaborative approach to creation can yield better odds of success if they can look at the game from different points of view (story, graphics, programming)

I'm not in favor of either approaches to game development, but Please remember that following your guts on creative work is both a blessing and a curse, and teamwork is a totally different beast.

</comment><comment><USER41> Similar recent interview with him on indie hackers : [https://www.indiehackers.com/businesses/a-dark- room](https://www.indiehackers.com/businesses/a-dark-room)

<comment><USER42> If he's talking to the press, here's hoping he might restore some of the content he removed in his data purge. There's got to be interesting, useful knowledge in there for other game dev and future generations.

<comment><USER7> >there's got to be interesting, useful knowledge in there for other game dev and future generations.

There is, but "the few ruined it for the many". Some who got access to that information tried to "growth hack" their way to a successful app. They started name dropping me to Apple as if they knew me. This isn't a very nice thing to do.

<comment><USER43> Can't anyone name-drop you even without such "information"? I wonder what kind of content that would be?

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER44> Wow the ego in this guy is thick. It seems like he thinks success is only luck and it's no wonder, not once did he mention his customers. He only talked about how much he loves his work and his freedom.

</comment><comment><USER45> \- 215k$ in savings after game had succeed, according to the graph in the article

\- managed to spend in few years

There's plenty of decent countries where you can live off this sum for decade, at least, and have much more dice rolls.

</comment><comment><USER46> His math for what it takes to roll dice once doesn't make any sense. If you can live off $15k a year, than can't he just work one year for $30k and roll the dice? It seems unnecessary to ever take the other jobs after his first year of working.

<comment><USER47> Once you live off $30k/yr it's difficult to go back down to $15k/yr (especially if someone else like a significant other is involved).

</comment></comment><comment><USER48> I think he meant 9/10 times a business will fail if trying the first time in a field. If it is your 2nd time trying after a fail or success, the chance has to be different because you've boosted your chance from the learnings

</comment><comment><USER49> > two years of internships, one year as a full time employee

2 years of internships? Is that a thing in some industries? Sure seems crazy to me

</comment><comment><USER24> Privaledge? Role? Come on man, edit the article a little.

</comment><comment><USER50> _Then. A Dark Room went viral._

I suspect the author's lack of subsequent success with his other games stems from his apparent lack of curiosity about exactly how his first and only lucky break took place.

<comment><USER51> It's not about lack of understanding. The viral success of a "one-off" type of game like ADR is nearly impossible to reproduce. Sometimes people take a liking to something because you hit exactly the right notes without even knowing what notes they are (not that they do themselves even!), and it is impossible to hit them again. ADR looks like that kind of success. Repeating the success of GTA Vice City is very hard, but probably more tractable than repeating the success of ADR. There are a few reasons: the high resource requirements for the production and marketing create a moat, the type of game is amenable to a near "extension" to repeat the success, etc... notwithstanding that, most game publishers end up finding the way to kill a franchise after a few titles.

<comment><USER50> Sure, but I'd have expected at least some analysis of what happened - where it got reviewed, or what the growth pattern leading up to the sudden spike was like, or anything really.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER52> "If we spend a second thinking about this, if 9 out of 10 startups fail, then we only need to roll the dice 10 times and the last startup will (by statistics) achieve success."

That is not how statistics works. :<

With a 90% failure rate, your chance of failing 10 times in a row is (9/10)^10 ~= 35%.

<comment><USER53> Then according to stats it would take infinite attempts to succeed. That's not how life works ;)

edit: a clarification, that's not how a single human's life works. It will work if you take all humans together into account. If you apply that logic to individuals individually then nobody succeeds ever.

edit2: a single human life individually doesn't get enough attempts to be statistically significant enough.

<comment><USER54> Actually, this is how life works: some people never succeed at what they try to do. It does take an infinite number of attempts to assure 100% success.

Relevant in the NYT: [https://www.nytimes.com/2017/12/24/opinion/2017-wrong- number...](https://www.nytimes.com/2017/12/24/opinion/2017-wrong- numbers.html?_r=0)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER55> No one's mentioned it yet, so I guess I'll be the one.

I can't tolerate that many misspelt words and grammatical errors...

<comment><USER56> My guess is: English is his second language, but yes, I had a real hard time getting through that one. That piece would improve greatly with a little proofreading.

<comment><USER7> This comment made my day. Thank you :-)

I should have written it after my morning coffee.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER57> Upper class privilege</comment>


Samsung: Anyone's thumbprint can unlock Galaxy S10 phone - <AUTHOR> https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/technology-50080586 <comment><USER2> It isn't just Samsung making crappy biometrics: take a look at the face unlock marketing copy on the Pixel 4.

It just says "simply look at your phone to securely unlock it." They make no claims about how secure it is.

In fact there are already articles showing how the unlock feature works while you're asleep: [https://9to5google.com/2019/10/16/pixel-4-tidbits-face- unloc...](https://9to5google.com/2019/10/16/pixel-4-tidbits-face-unlock- security/)

To my knowledge, Apple is the only vendor that actually made in-depth claims about the security of their face unlock solution. They're the only vendor that assumed anyone cared.

Android OEMs are working off a feature checklist and that's about it.

<comment><USER3> A fingerprint reader can also be operated while the victim is asleep, unconscious, and even after you sever the thumb off (remote attack!!). Does that mean a fingerprint reader cannot be ever be called secure?

<comment><USER4> A fingerprint is never a secure password. It is a username at best.

<comment><USER5> I can read your username once and remember it. I can't do the same with a fingerprint

<comment><USER6> I'm sure you can produce a hash from fingerprint model data for your reading pleasure

<comment><USER7> OpenSSH does that thing now where it can visually display ASCII art of your key fingerprint.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> Forbes article has slightly more information, including the fact that the Note10 should have the same vulnerability, and it explains that it's not just any screen protector, but a particular type of wraparound screen protector that manages to confuse the sensor. Samsung's reaction (a recommendation to only use authorized accessories) is completely off the mark considering that the real problem is someone could steal your device and then use an unauthorized accessory to access your info.

[https://www.forbes.com/sites/gordonkelly/2019/10/15/samsung-...](https://www.forbes.com/sites/gordonkelly/2019/10/15/samsung- galaxy-s10-note10-plus-fingerprint-reader-warning-upgrade-galaxy-s11)

<comment><USER9> I read that differently -- that the scanning of a working finger leaves an imprint in the gel, and this is what is read from the subsequent scan. This would mean that you couldn't just grab somebody's S10, put a gel screen protector on, and get into the device. You need to have them successfully unlock the device first.

With this in mind, they would not be completely off the mark.

<comment><USER10> That does not appear to be the case.

There is a video circulating these comments. It shows someone register their finger without the screen, slap the screen protector over top and unlock with a different, previously rejected finger.

Edit: [https://twitter.com/sta_light_/status/1184475413252210688?s=...](https://twitter.com/sta_light_/status/1184475413252210688?s=21)

<comment><USER11> If the fingerprint somehow gets embedded into the screen protector, is it possible that the screen protector is "tainted" with the fingerprint from previous usage?

I'm not dismissing the claims, but I would like to see if the behavior can be replicated with a brand new screen protector.

<comment><USER9> Yes, 100% agreed.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> A bit of background on this (I am involved in the ultrasound industry):

\- The chip Samsung uses is by Qualcomm. Their big claim is that their ultrasound fingerprint scanner is the only US government approved non-optical way of electronically scanning a fingerprint (those sensors they have at airports use basically the same technology)

\- It's supposed to be more secure than the capacitive technology Apple used to use since it grabs a true image of the fingerprint and not just a low-res representation

\- Given this, it's probably a problem with the software on Samsung's part, not Qualcomm

\- However, it's interesting that adding the screen protector is what broke it. It suggests that there could be any number of unintentional biometric security holes

\- It demonstrates that consumer tech companies (with possible exception of Apple) don't really have the expertise or motivation to properly implement biometric authentication

(edit - newlines)

<comment><USER13> Is Samsung actually storing a hi res copy of a fingerprint, or just a hash?

I'm not sure I want any tech company storing high resolution scans of my biometrics.

<comment><USER12> Officially, they only store a hash, but this is only a software restriction - I believe it is possible to obtain full images but this may not be possible with the public APIs.

In practice it may be possible to reverse-engineer the stored hashes but this has not been demonstrated (yet).

<comment><USER14> What kind of hash is used? I guess it has to be some kind of inexact match (I doubt the fingerprint image is ever exactly the same)? Does it operate over the image of the fingerprint or a vector of extracted features?

<comment><USER15> Yeah, I never understood how you could hash fingerprints or face unlock data. How do you do a fuzzy match on a hash? I guess you can make the original data less detailed/precise, such that slight variations would still come out with the same hash, but that seems to defeat some of the security.

<comment><USER16> [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Locality- sensitive_hashing](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Locality-sensitive_hashing)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER17> Biometric authentication on Android phones has always seemed to be hit-or- miss: companies looking to add it to their feature checklist either come up with fundamentally flawed designs (storing a fingerprint as an unencrypted image file, etc.) or you have bugs like these. There really needs to be some sort of realignment that incentivizes companies to get this _right_ rather than slap together something broken and try to sell it as "iPhone may have x feature, but we have y (which is buggy, but you don't know that)".

<comment><USER18> You must not have used many Android phones. The fingerprint scanner has been stellar and instant in every phone I've had, at least until people started switching to this horrible under-display one which is a huge downgrade for no reason.

<comment><USER19> You must have had better luck than me.

\- Xiaomi Redmi Note 4 - pretty good finger print scanner on the back

\- Samsung Galaxy S8 - absolutely terrible fingerprint scanner that was so bad I switched to pin after a while

\- Samsung Galaxy S10 - new fingerprint scanner under display, works most of the time but still unreliable, also it is not the quickest.

You would have thought that leading brand (Samsung) would have decent fingerprint scanners on their flagships, but it is just not the case.

The thing with bad fingerprint scanners is that you cant rely on them, so I rather choose reliable slower 3s unlock with pin than unreliable maybe faster 1-10s unlock with fingerprint.

<comment><USER20> 3 seconds?!

<comment><USER19> Click the lock button, swipe up, enter the pin. Seems to be about 3s?

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER21> Reminds me of a funny story: A few years back on a visit to Beijing, was hustled on a street corner to purchase what appeared to be a brand new iPhone (a 7, if memory serves), for a ridiculous price. The seller handed it to me to play with, and proudly demoed the fingerprint unlock feature. The interface looked flawless (given that it was Chinese). Naturally, it was a fake. Doing a hard reboot brought the green Android bucket at boot.

As for the unlock feature, it took the user through all steps of fingerprint setup only to work with any finger (or anything else warm toughing it, for that matter).

<comment><USER22> next step: the power button triggers an animation of the iOS restart process, and has nothing to do with how to power cycle the phone

<comment><USER23> I think I saw that feature in the NSA TAO catalog.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> It looks like this works with the fingerprint set up _before_ the screen protector is added. The catch here, I believe, is that the screen protector needs to have some sort of gel adhesive and it only unlocks if you've pressed a valid finger against the screen protector prior to using the invalid finger.

Pressing the valid finger against the protector leaves an imprint in the gel, and this is what is read when it reads the invalid finger. I don't think that this is a bug in Samsung's code but rather a flaw in the technology that they chose to use.

</comment><comment> robinson-wall Is there any indication of whether this only happens if the screen protector was present prior to training the fingerprint?

> After buying a £2.70 gel screen protector on eBay, Lisa Neilson found her > left thumbprint, which was not registered, could unlock the phone.

This suggests that an attack of "put a malicious screen protector on phone to unlock" is possible. I'm curious whether there was any re-training after applying the protector.

<comment> robinson-wall Ah, here's a video of a note 10, which has the same fingerprint sensor as an s10, being fooled by a gel _case_ after being trained with a fingerprint normally.

[https://twitter.com/Sta_Light_/status/1184475413252210688](https://twitter.com/Sta_Light_/status/1184475413252210688)

</comment></comment><comment><USER24> Press any finger to continue.

</comment><comment><USER25> I've never used fingerprint scanners for paranoid reasons as this, so this gives me both some undeserved smugness and renewed paranoia.

Are long pins and passwords still the most secure way to control access to your phone? Is there U2F for phones as a 2nd factor?

<comment><USER26> Long pins and passwords make you a lot more susceptible to casual attackers, as they can be gotten from shoulder surfing and casual video, like e.g. surveillance footage.

Fingerprint replicas (or your actual fingers) are obtainable by targeted attackers of some sophistication. But if you're targeted by attackers willing to go that length for you, you have other problems. IMO, fingerprints provide the best practical security.

<comment><USER27> Only one of those can unlock your phone while you are unconscious, or with a body part that has been removed.

<comment><USER28> The kind of criminal prepared to knock you unconcious or remove a thumb is pretty rare.

<comment><USER29> I'd say finger removal is a few steps less likely than knocking someone unconscious, esp. if you can knock them unconscious and then _clone their fingerprint_.

Mind you, there are some quite dumb criminals, so "likely probability" besides "how likely am I to get robbed?" likely goes out the window.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER30> [[It's not 100% clear but it seems that the problem only occurs if you put the screen protector on _before_ recording your fingerprint. If you record the fingerprint and then add the protector it does not allow you to unlock the phone as it sees a vastly different print.

In other words, a screen protector is not a "master key" for any S10!

Please correct me if I am wrong.]]

Edit: On second reading of the article it looks like a screen protector might _actually be a master key_ for any S10 phone. That's a really big design flaw! (Thanks to computerex for making me read the article more critically.)

<comment><USER31> From what it seems, it records a "flat" fingerprint, because the screen protector is obviously a flat layer on top of the device. So any haptic touch only activates this flat fingerprint

<comment><USER29> Good explanation. Makes sense.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER32> It should be noted that the S10E does not suffer from this flaw, as its thumbprint sensor is a hardware button on the side of the phone that doubles as the power button. Just picked one up a week ago and very pleased with it.

<comment><USER33> Assuming the flaw hasn't been discovered because no one logically puts a protective cover over that button. What if you _did_ place the same protective cover over that button and try? Could it be hijacked in that manner?

<comment><USER34> The screen protector/case works on the S10 because (I'm assuming here) of some flaw with how the ultrasonic fingerprint reader reads the fingerprint, whereas the S10e uses a traditional capacitive scanner. Both are fundamentally different approaches to generating a copy of your fingerprint so I don't think it's likely this technique would work on the 10e.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER35> Some kind of smudge attack from residue left on the screen protector?

<comment><USER30> Seems to be an artifact of how the EMF interacts with the additional layer.

</comment></comment><comment><USER36> I'm astounded at how little testing companies do with their products. Most high school students with nothing better to do could have hypothesized this problem and tested for it if only somebody had bothered to ask them.

</comment><comment><USER37> Given that people report this works with a protector added AFTER registering the print...I'd love to see how Samsung reckons they can fix this with software. Because that sounds very much like a physical issue

</comment><comment><USER38> I guess now we know why Apple didn't roll this out on iPhones.

<comment><USER39> Apple would (hopefully) test it before releasing it on a new product.

</comment></comment><comment><USER40> Does this mean if the fingerprint scanner gets "confused", it just defaults to unlocking the phone? That seems like a pretty terrible design.

<comment><USER41> The theory some are claiming is that the reader is restringing the adhesive patterns of a screen protector rather than your fingerprint.

</comment></comment><comment><USER42> This really is an unforgivably bad fuckup.

It's clear that Samsung and Google are scrabbling to catch up with Apple, and I don't see why tbh. I don't think the general public dislike traditional fingerprint readers nearly as much as they do finding out the unlock mechanisms aren't secure.

</comment><comment><USER43> Seeing how bad fingerprint scanner is on S10 even with correct fingers and no protectors I can only wish luck to the thieves who'll try to do this trick. I sometimes can't unlock damned thing in five tries and have to enter password.

</comment><comment><USER44> You can also show a video or a photo of a phone owner and it will be unlocked. It's a joke of a security and most people don't Understand that and this it's as secure as IPhone's face unlock, which is a totally different beast

</comment><comment><USER45> Erring on the side of unlocking? Fascinating strategy for a lock.

</comment><comment><USER46> First thing I did when I got my BLU R2 Plus Android phone was to put electrical tape over the fingerprint reader.

</comment><comment><USER47> 10/10 for accessibility - worth mentioning that at next performance review.

</comment><comment><USER48> Hmm... maybe someone elses will work better than mine... I can hardly get in.

</comment><comment><USER49> Biometrics makes the usual mistake of using the user identifier as a password.

As repeated here in HN, a good password is nothing like biometrics. A good password should

\- be frequently changeable

\- not be left lying around

\- not be easily visible in public

\- if discovered, not be obviously associated with the user

\- have lots of entropy

Biometrics fails _all_ of these tests

<comment><USER39> That may be true in principle, but in reality an average user password meets none of those requirements either.

<comment><USER49> Biometrics is often an order of magnitude less entropy than even an 8-character password. Your garage door opener code has more.

<comment><USER50> Does that include the 3d scanning capabilities of the iphone?

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER51> Has anybody tried this with the older in-button fingerprint scanners?

</comment><comment><USER3> Can someone explain to me how something like this is technically possible? And by "explain" I don't mean "ELI5", be all the technical you want. How can you design a fingerprint reader that lets anybody in like this?

<comment><USER52> [https://www.engadget.com/2019/10/17/samsung-patch- fingerprin...](https://www.engadget.com/2019/10/17/samsung-patch-fingerprint- reader/?guccounter=1#comments)

What is suspected here is that registering the finger with the screen protector on is masking the shape of the finger while still registering the touch action. As a result, it's enrolling a blank print. Then anyone else can unlock it afterwards with the screen protector still on.

Consider that screen protectors are designed and tested only to make sure touch actions work correctly, but this ultrasonic fingerprint ridge-shape detection technology is new, so they're probably not mutually compatible.

I don't know what was wrong with the swipe sensor. They're discreet, easy to keep clean, and hard to screw up. Maybe the only downside is they would keep them too close to the camera lens for accidentally lens smudging.

<comment><USER53> The fingerprint is registered without the screen protector on - proof: [https://twitter.com/Sta_Light_/status/1184475413252210688](https://twitter.com/Sta_Light_/status/1184475413252210688)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER54> there's an anecdote somewhere about how software security is almost never directly "cracked", but instead bypassed

</comment><comment><USER55> I'm pretty sure this is caused by a hack by Samsung to make the fingerprint sensor work with screen covers.

        if (screencover) return true;

</comment><comment><USER56> `return true;`

</comment><comment><USER57> Good</comment>


Data is the new oil - <AUTHOR> http://nation.lk/online/2015/09/19/data-is-the-new-oil/ <comment><USER2> If people and businesses become enabled to streamline and tap into the possibilities of data query and analysis it could prove to be more monetary compensation than oil. The filtering and restructuring of data may take a bit of time to figure out however since data for the sake of information can come in forms foreign to the analyst.

</comment><comment><USER3> [http://blogs.gartner.com/peter-sondergaard/the-internet- of-t...](http://blogs.gartner.com/peter-sondergaard/the-internet-of-things- will-give-rise-to-the-algorithm-economy/)</comment>


What happened when our OSS project stayed on the front page of HN for 24 hours - <AUTHOR> https://plivo.com/blog/what-happened-when-our-oss-project-stayed-on-the-front-page-of-hacker-news-for-24hrs/

<comment><USER2> I have some burning questions about this.

Did the quality of leads improve due to the open source version?

Does the open source version create urgency/needs payoff?

Can you say that the open source version of your product acted as a marketing channel? ex. get users to eventually paying for your paid or pro version?

Do you think the open source version will end up cannibalizing your own paid product?

Where are you hosting your pages and web api?

If you would do it again, what would you do differently?

<comment><USER3> @notastartup,

Answers in line:

>Did the quality of leads improve due to the open source version?

We are speculating that our quality of leads improved because the conversion to paying customers increased. However, we are still watching our cohorts carefully to make sure that all the users get a good experience and continue to use Plivo.

>Does the open source version create urgency/needs payoff?

We definitely think that this has paid off. It's really increased our mindshare in the open source community and the connection to users have been very positive.

>Can you say that the open source version of your product acted as a marketing channel? ex. get users to eventually paying for your paid or pro version?

The short answer is yes. Although, VoiceChatAPI is only one of many things you can build with Plivo, it has definitely shown a lot of people the possibilities and that has got people interested in using us for other things.

>Do you think the open source version will end up cannibalizing your own paid product?

No. The open source version is an unique offering and there will always be businesses who would want to pay more for a more full-featured service. Users who want to host themselves, should have access and those who want more have the option as well.

>Where are you hosting your pages and web api?

It's on Heroku.

>If you would do it again, what would you do differently?

We would've done this much earlier.

<comment><USER2> Thank you very much for the answers.

What can I do to get similar level of traffic to my open source project?</comment></comment></comment>


The Dumbest Generation Is Only The Second Dumbest Generation - <AUTHOR> http://thelastpsychiatrist.com/2008/10/the_dumbest_generation_is_only.html

<comment><USER2> It's interesting that the article mentions a void existing nowadays, and reactions happening _to_ that void. I've felt at times that a lot of the things I've learned were learned due to negativity: as in, I would be reading a site like Reddit and a part of me would change not because of an insightful comment but because there _was_ nothing insightful being said. The same thing happened to me with writing, and it's happened in the last year with web design. I wrote extensively before I got good; I've run several online communities in the past. In both cases, I was helped along by critique, but that wasn't the end of things. There was always some point where I found myself learning by seeing people doing the _same_ things as me, and realizing that that way was wrong.

I don't know if that's because of the Internet or if that's something that happens in general. Has anybody else had a situation like this before?

<comment><USER3> 1.

Yes, absolutely. When somebody else makes the same mistakes I do I can see exactly what's wrong. If that person were to explain the same thing I would probably not understand. Or I would understand, but then it wouldn't have a lasting impact. Being indirectly confronted with your own stupidity/flaws is remarkably effective. It has that "damn, I can't believe I'm such an idiot" feel to it, which overrules the normal reaction to any statement: quiet skepticism "really, hmm, you could be right, but..." and you don't really change. Even if you're convinced what you're doing is wrong, it doesn't shock you, so it doesn't stick.

2.

People are horrendously bad at introspection. Every person believes he's more introspective than most other people, and less likely to adopt opinions based on feelings instead of facts. Logically impossible, as not everybody is equally introspective there must be many people who incorrectly deem themselves introspective. In essence, you are a poor judge of your own ability to introspect. Because there are so many stupid opinions on the internet it's easy to feel superior to others. Stupidity is much louder on the internet than anywhere else. Partially because any statement sounds stupid when you don't make an effort to understand which point the author is trying to make. Suddenly it's about -your- interpretation of somebody's opinion, and no longer about -understanding- the opinion and the merits thereof. So, reading stupid opinions leads to feelings of superiority, which leads to narcissism, which leads to easy dismissal of sensible opinions (less effort), which leads to more narcissism.

3.

So forums like these are, I feel, part of the problem. Here I am, spending far more time writing this reply than I spent on reading your original message. In fact, I started writing this before I fully understood which point you were trying to make. I had to rewrite the beginning of this all just to make what I'm writing -remotely- relevant.

My point? There isn't any. I'm just writing this to feed my narcissism.</comment></comment>


What Does It Mean to Die? - <AUTHOR> https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2018/02/05/what-does-it-mean-to-die?mbid=nl_Magazine%20012918%20Magazine&CNDID=51354413&spMailingID=12836378&spUserID=MjMyNzc5MzIzMjM5S0&spJobID=1322632924&spReportId=MTMyMjYzMjkyNAS2 <comment><USER3> Fascinating and extremely sad article.

I have to wonder if our conception of death as a strictly one-way street is mistaken. When death meant cardiovascular death, this was reasonable — within minutes, the heart tissue itself dies from lack of oxygen perfusion, and thus this form of death is self-reinforcing.

For brain death, however, are we 100% certain that, given life support over a long enough period, the brain cannot heal from ischemic damage? At least enough to bring basic elements of consciousness back online? If so, it would be possible to be "dead", and then subsequently "not dead".

Is there any scientific understanding one way or the other on this?

<comment> semi-extrinsic Somehow related to this, I came across today the very curious case (from 2007) of the normally functioning man who was discovered to be _missing most of his brain_.

[https://www.newscientist.com/article/dn12301-man-with- tiny-b...](https://www.newscientist.com/article/dn12301-man-with-tiny-brain- shocks-doctors/)

But this is a case where brain tissue is killed/removed over the course of decades, giving neuroplasticity time to work.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> This philosophy course on death by Shelly Kagan [1] - 26 lectures of 45 minutes - is one of the best courses on anything I have ever watched. It covers many aspects of death, from identity, minds and souls over eternal life to suicide, and I highly recommend it to anyone interested in the topic.

EDIT: To get a feeling for the course maybe watch lecture 14 first which is also quite close to the article. Not that the first lectures are not interesting, quite the opposite, but - at least if my memory serves me well - it takes quite a few lectures to establish and discuss fundamental concepts before the focus really shifts towards death. If you like that lecture, watch the entire course.

[1] [https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLEA18FAF1AD9047B0](https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLEA18FAF1AD9047B0)

</comment><comment><USER5> > I guess I feel that the medical profession is always going to be better off, > in the long run, if we speak honestly and truthfully about what we know.

I couldn't agree more.

Although the case is different, I cannot help but remember Salvatore Crisafulli [1], which went into coma after an accident and entered Persistent Vegetative State (PVS). After two years he showed signs of conscience and was even able to begin communicate again using the movements of his own eyes. What is most striking is the fact that he was able to recall a number of events happened around him while he was in PVS (e.g., the nurses accidentally dropping him while moving his bed) [2]. This happened despite the fact that at the time a number of doctors kept repeating that he was completely unconscious.

The human body is so complex. We can try to gather some knowledge by means of experiments, models and statistical data, but we must realize that the scientific method is a human endeavour and is therefore imperfect by definition. Being a scientist (I study cosmology), I feel deeply embarrassed whenever I hear people professing their irreducible faith in «science».

[1] [https://it.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stato_vegetativo](https://it.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stato_vegetativo) (Italian) [2] [https://www.ibs.it/con-occhi-sbarrati-straordinaria- storia-l...](https://www.ibs.it/con-occhi-sbarrati-straordinaria-storia-libro- generic-contributors/e/9788879448420) (book in Italian)

<comment><USER6> > I feel deeply embarrassed whenever I hear people professing their > irreducible faith in «science».

I have faith in the process of science in that I believe iterative addition to our knowledge based on evidence and ezperimentation is the best process we've found to adapt out understanding to changing circumstances and affect outcomes.

Why is that bad?

<comment><USER7> I don't think the parent is saying not to have faith in the scientific method, but that people should be aware of two things:

1) The scientific method will only validate (or fail to validate) predictions that you have made. If you haven't made a prediction about something, or fail to consider other effects, the scientific method often will not reveal those other things.

2) There are a lot of things we understand in many branches of science, but there's also a ton we _don 't_ understand. Death is one of many areas where we have a bunch of gaps, and many people don't realize that, or realize that some things that we take as established fact is more like established policy.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> I feel terribly for the family and my condolences for their loss.

If a family wants to keep a brain-dead body alive, it should be their right. However the family is on Medicaid, and the article says the girl's body costs the state of NJ 150K per week for 24/7 nursing care. That's 8 million dollars a year the taxpayers are spending while this family lives in denial.

How many living kids could be helped with 8 million a year in Medicaid funding?

It's tragic to see a little girl die from a tonsil removal operation. And If the McMath family can arrange for private funding for this, then so be it, but millions of public tax dollars are sadly better spent on the living.

<comment><USER7> I am so so torn on this. It's hard to put a price tag on a human life. I imagine some people would even say that a life is literally priceless.

Given infinite resources, I would agree: if a life can be saved at any cost, then save it. But we don't have infinite resources. If the quality of other patient care was reduced because of attempts to keep this girl alive (if "alive" is indeed the right term), is that trade off worth it? I'm not sure. I mean, given the extraordinary results they've gotten so far, it's possible that, given more time (perhaps on the scale of decades), she'd get to a point where she'd be able to communicate more richly with people around her. Is it worth spending tens (hundreds?) of millions of (public!) dollars to get her there, especially if other people with better prognoses are getting worse care because of it? I'm not sure I can say yes to that. But I've also never been in a position where a loved one was in dire straits to the point where throwing heaps of money at the problem would help, so I don't know how that feels.

</comment></comment><comment><USER9> I think that if the Oakland hospital was more kind to the mother, she would have accepted the death of her daughter. This would have allowed the mother to move on and not totally waste her life caring for - by all definitions - <USER2> dead teenage girl. I feel that the stories about her 'voluntary movements' are probably wishful thinking. And even so. What kind of quality of life does her daughter really have.

Not to mention: how will her other children fare under this whole ordeal. In some way her religious attitude has caused her to make a ton of bad decisions. And now to admit that her girl is actually dead is inconceivable. Because then she basically admits that the past years were for nothing. But the sad truth is that in reality, the mother lives in a fantasy world. Her girl is no more and for the sake of herself and her children, she should really move on and find a way - left or right - to come to terms with the fact that although her girl may seem to be alive, she isn't (anymore).

</comment><comment><USER10> I don't know if it was so much of a race issue as a terrible hospital issue. My brother had lung surgery at a local hospital in NJ and when he needed it again we went to UPenn. UPenn laughed and said those local guys were medieval butchers. I don't know much about Oakland hospitals but I can see this happening if they weren't a great hospital.

</comment><comment><USER11> _" Beecher created a committee comprising men who already knew one another: ten doctors, one lawyer, one historian, and one theologian."_

I find it very sad that the people that are making these critical decisions that could affect my life are some randomly appointed panel of "experts".

Why should these people in particular have any say in the matter? Or have more say than I do about whether I live or die?

It's also sad how so much of the medical community tries to hand over the ethical decisions to others, and treats their words as inviolate truth instead of thinking for themselves.

<comment><USER12> Not sure why you're getting downvoted here—I disagree with you, but nothing you're saying is objectively unhelpful.

> I find it very sad that the people that are making these critical decisions > that could affect my life is some randomly appointed panel of "experts".

Two things there—first, they aren't "experts", they're just experts. These are people who had access to the best literature on what is possible and were respected in the field for their opinions. This is evidenced by the fact that the report they issued was not forced upon anyone. The 27 states that issued new definitions of death were not under some external pressure to adopt those definitions. If there was some deep controversy about the report, then it doesn't have to lead to anything. These experts were empowered to do precisely one thing—issue their opinion. That so many states adopted their opinion suggests that it was pretty good.

> Why should these people in particular have any say in the matter? Or have > more say than I do about whether I live or die?

If you are permanently comatose, then those experts, by virtue of having thought about the issues deeply and also having viable brain function should have more say than you do _while you have no brain function_. If you provide advanced directives about what should be done in case of catastrophic brain damage, then that should by all means be taken into account as well.

> It's also sad how so much of the medical community tries to hand over the > ethical decisions to others, and treats their words as inviolate truth > instead of thinking for themselves.

The medical community does this because they are in an emotionally compromised position. Because they have a relationship with the person their family, they might ignore what is medically possible or likely and attempt heroic measures that would lead to huge expenses and/or lead to an undesirable outcome. Asking dispassionate outsiders for their opinions should improve the overall outcomes. I also would

<comment><USER13> > Two things there—first, they aren't "experts", they're just experts. These > are people who had access to the best literature on what is possible and > were respected

Just 50 years ago or so "not 'experts' but experts" were practicing lobotomy as a great new cure that would save us all. They had access to the best literature, probably were respected.

There was an article not so long ago here about a IIRC 12 y.o. boy who got lobotomized because his step mother decided that'd be a great idea. Rosemary Kennedy was lobotomized by the same doctor. American health care has always been great.

> huge expenses

Pretty much this.

<comment><USER7> > > huge expenses

> Pretty much this.

Maybe, but what's wrong with that? We don't have infinite resources. Let's assume for a second that we could keep this poor girl going for another few decades as she is now. Is it worth spending tens of millions of Medicaid dollars for that quality of life, when there are many other patients in need who could benefit much more from better care?

<comment><USER13> > Is it worth spending tens of millions

> We don't have infinite resources.

You tell me why it costs tens of millions and yet the overall healthy girl after a minor procedure ended up in a condition like that. And why the butchers are still doing their butcher thing rather than being in prison for medical error and negligence?

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> Medically speaking, not the same. But NPR (Invisibillia) had a pretty amazing story about recovering from a coma.

[https://www.npr.org/sections/health- shots/2015/01/09/3760841...](https://www.npr.org/sections/health- shots/2015/01/09/376084137/trapped-in-his-body-for-12-years-a-man-breaks-free)

</comment><comment><USER15> I had casual thoughts about death, never thinking about it particularly. I am an atheist so the whole afterlife thing was not there. But of course I was not particularly comfortable with the thought.

I then had minor surgery which required full anesthetics. I was looking at the anesthetist who said "ok, shall we start?" and I tried not to sleep. I blinked and opened my eyes in another room. I had a complete blackout, like if time did not happen during the surgery.

I thought "this is what death looks like". I am not afraid of death anymore. I will just close my eyes and this will be the end.

</comment><comment><USER16> It must be tremendously difficult for the parents. It's only natural that they would hold on to any chance of seeing their daughter again.

From the perspective of society, even assuming that someone declared brain- dead could be revived -- maybe with some future technology if they just keep the body functioning -- at what cost does it make sense to end the life?

Are there other cases where the unpleasant (edit: was "distasteful) subject of the cost of a life (as valued by society rather than Bill Gates) comes into play?

<comment><USER17> > Are there other cases where the distasteful subject of the cost of a life > (as valued by society rather than Bill Gates) comes into play?

Each time there is a decision whether to spend some money or not to reduce risk to human life, it puts a monetary value on life.

These decisions can relate to how many doctors and nurses to employ, what and how much medical equipment to buy etc, but also more removed like investing into the reliability of infrastructure, the cost of education to become a doctor, deciding how much to value economic benefit vs. potential harm to humans through pollution, etc.

Each time you decide to spend the money, you put a lower boundary on the value of life. Each time you don't spend the money, you put an upper boundary on it.

Each time these boundaries become inconsistent, you could save more lives by spending money elsewhere.

I really wish society wouldn't treat the subject of the cost of life as distasteful -- more consistent decisions would arguably raise the quality of life.

<comment><USER18> Related to this essay:

[http://www.paulgraham.com/say.html](http://www.paulgraham.com/say.html)

It is taboo to plainly talk about the value of human life, yet everybody is making such calculations every day, though almost entirely at the subconscious level.

Consider the following pairs of people. Imagine that you must choose death for one out of each pair.

A sick 90 year old man, a healthy 5 year old child.

A terminally ill mother, a middle aged man in jail for multiple violent felonies.

Your young child, a young child living in South Sudan.

A woman with a lifetime of schizophrenia, an undocumented worker who is trimming your trees.

Your spouse, your child.

These kinds of questions are uncomfortable to consider, and the answers are very personal.

I wonder: are the benefits of such conscious valuations greater than possible downsides?

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER19> >"They are trying to feed us legal bull shit," he wrote. "It's not over until God say so."

I reserved judgement on if this child is dead or not... But this makes absolutely no fucking sense for someone whose being kept alive on machines. If you remove the human element and unplug the machines, certainly, "God" will swiftly do his thing.

</comment><comment><USER20> I thought it was an interesting article - and there is nuance around determining what it means to die, the definition has changed over time and for anyone that has Alcor will hopefully keep changing.

That said, this paragraph about Shewmon caused me to basically dismiss his perspective about any of it:

> "When Shewmon was a college sophomore, at Harvard, he listened to Chopin's > Trois Nouvelles Études No. 2, in his dorm room, and the music lifted him > into such a state of ecstasy that he had an epiphany: he no longer thought > it possible that all conscious experience, particularly one's perception of > beauty, could be a "mere electrophysiological epiphenomenon," he said. The > music seemed to transcend "the spatial limitations of matter." An atheist, > he converted to Catholicism and studied Aristotelian-Thomistic philosophy. > He went to medical school, in 1971, and then specialized in neurology, > because he wanted to understand the relationship between the mind and the > brain."

It seems the main tragedy here is that a family went in for a relatively routine (possibly inappropriate if the apnea was due to obesity) surgery and had their child die. That they don't trust the medical staff after that doesn't seem unreasonable to me, but it doesn't mean the medical staff is wrong.

The determination of death in this case seems less important than the determination of suffering or quality of life.

<comment><USER21> Alan Shewmon is a friend of mine and a highly respected neurosurgeon, ending a long career as the "chief of the neurology department at Olive View-U.C.L.A. Medical Center" (cf the article).

Disregarding his scientific opinion because he had a conversion experience in college is rather bigoted, don't you think?

<comment><USER20> He can still be a great neurosurgeon.

Though when he's making statements about the mind and how it could define what 'death' means in a clinical sense, then nonsense like "The music seemed to transcend the spatial limitations of matter" which is contradicted by all existing evidence, reduces my respect for him on that topic and makes me nervous about his scientific/critical thinking in general.

If they can't get that right why would I think they have a good idea about something where there's less evidence that's even more controversial?

<comment><USER22> That particular statement is so vague and subjective that I'm curious what evidence you think contradicts it.

<comment><USER20> I suppose the more relevant quote is:

> he no longer thought it possible that all conscious experience, particularly > one's perception of beauty, could be a "mere electrophysiological > epiphenomenon,"

[https://lesswrong.com/lw/or/joy_in_the_merely_real/](https://lesswrong.com/lw/or/joy_in_the_merely_real/)

Though for the music one the "transcend spatial limitations of matter" is the part I take issue with. It's unclear what it even means, but seems to imply some supernatural specialness.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER23> my favorite literature on the subject is Ernest Becker _The Denial of Death_. A great book. This article is (not that I ever had expectations from the newyorker.com but even for their low standards) total pish.

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

<comment><USER24> Any backup evidence or material to support your claim that the newyorker has low journalistic/editorial standards?

<comment><USER23> how do you provide _evidence_ driven by personal disgust about writing style? Especially when that style of writing is only journalism which is the lowest form of writing.

Vox, Slate, Salon, New Yorker pretty much all the same, ... except a major difference (that makes it even more annoying). With the former I generally expect utter trash and am not surprised when it is trash, but the latter is trash dressed up in fancy pseudo-intellectualism.

reading Taleb's Black Swan might help also understand some peoples distaste for it: [https://twitter.com/nntaleb/status/877259529196642306](https://twitter.com/nntaleb/status/877259529196642306)

<comment><USER25> I've read Black Swan but I genuinely have no idea how it's related to this discussion. Could you elaborate?

<comment><USER24> Pretty sure he went through and downvoted all my recent comments. I'm guessing there's not much chance he's willing to suffer challenges to his viewpoint.</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment>


Can We Translate English To English? - <AUTHOR> http://rjlipton.wordpress.com/2010/11/12/can-we-translate-english-to-english/

<comment><USER2> The linguist in me recoiled in disgust at this idea, instantly envisioning a nightmare universe where laconic tweens fingered anti-prose into their touch- screen phones ("lol i tnk ur rong cuz he wuz @ skool ystrday"), to be Googled into corresponding legible words ("I think you have the wrong idea; I saw him at school yesterday.") as their actual ability to communicate slowly atrophied.

The developer in me thought, "Oh man. That would be effing sweet."

<comment><USER3> Why is that idea disgusting? When people know what they say will get translated, they tend to think in terms of the end result. This would _promote_ the use of proper English, because that's how it would be read and written. When I code in a programming language, I am constantly thinking about what the language constructs _mean_ , not what they literally say. The disjointed net-speak would just become a form of shorthand (<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shorthand>).

<comment><USER2> Perhaps it depends on the person? My "disgust," or worry, in my original post, came from the vision of someone internally or unconsciously deciding, "The computer will make my communication effective for me, so I needn't bother learning to communicate effectively myself." Without an empirical understanding of how to communicate, a person would also lack the trappings of that learning process, and, I think, would be forever marred as a result.

When you code, mustn't you be aware of what the code constructs literally say, because that is how the compiler will interpret then?

<comment><USER3> When I say literally, I mean that a for loop is constructed of the English word "for." I don't think of it like that. I think, "Okay, I need to iterate over the elements of this sequence, so I'll use a for loop." The code is literally just text, but I must understand their _semantics_ to know what will happen.

Similarly, if someone was using what you proposed, they would have to keep in mind that the other person would see the proper English, not the net-speak. So they would - I think - end up thinking in proper English first, then _coding_ the proper English using net-speak. They must think in terms of the end result, in terms of what the person they're communicating with will read. For that reason, I disagree with your assessment that people would be able to think "I don't need to bother learning to communicate effectively."

<comment><USER2> Ah, I see. You're saying that the shorthand exists only for brevity of input; when a tween types "lol ur rite," they first think of what they _mean_ ("That's funny! You're right!"), and only _then_ do they translate it into the corresponding shorthand so they can type it faster. That's a very good point. I'll have to ruminate on that for a while.

 _Edit_ : It's worth noting that something about it still feels horribly wrong to me, but I can't seem to find the right words to express it. So I will concede... for now! :-)

<comment><USER3> Yes, that's exactly what I'm saying. Perhaps your reservation comes from the fact that now there is no translations, so you associate net-speak with what it is now: stilted communication optimized for brevity of input time and length.

<comment><USER2> I think my reservation may come more from what I'm saying in this comment:

<http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1898053>

Even if a computer could translate netspeak to "Proper English," it would still be _computer-translated_ "Proper English." The idea of allowing a computer to choose which words to use, or where punctuation should go, or anything like that, is unsettling to me. The translation model works for programming languages because compilers have no emotions, but any message that starts out in shorthand with the intention of being read by a human is intrinsically hamstrung.

In fact, this can be true for programming languages, too! C is like short- hand; the compiler is what turns our netspeak (C) into "Proper English" (assembly/machine code). It usually works, but sometimes you just have to dip into assembly to _really_ express what you mean.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> If there was a program to go from legalese to lay that was as accurate as a lawyer then it would change the lawyer's profession forever.

</comment><comment><USER2> Honestly, the more I think about this, the more I think that we'll have an English-to-English translating algorithm as soon as we have a "classical- masterpiece"-writing algorithm or a "painting-so-beautiful-it-makes-you- cry"-creating algorithm; that is, probably never. I'm no expert writer, but I know a few, and it seems to me that excellent writing style is more than reading Strunk & White cover-to-cover while reciting mnemonics for choosing between "who" and "whom." It's also knowing when to break or bend the rules, _how_ to break or bend the rules, and _why_ to break or bend the rules. That's the kind of spontaneous creativity that I don't think computers are even close to emulating, much less learning.

<comment><USER5> As Wittgenstein said, "language is a form of life" -- it is not just a system of encoding.

But something like Photoshop filters for text style might be possible. You can imagine the cheesy use of, say, gothic-romanticising, like overdone HDR tone mapping. But there are useful image manipulations too, when well deployed, and there must be similar potential for text, maybe more so given its more structured form . . .

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> "This is one of the best written and slickest proposals I have ever read. Do NOT fund this work under any circumstances."- NSF grant reviewer

That's eminently quotable.

edit: "rant reviewer" => "grant reviewer"

edit2: proposal => proposals (even though it's proposal in the link, putting proposal[sic] just looks odd).

</comment><comment><USER7> One thing some people do is take an article on the net, use Google translate to translate it into some other language and then back to English, and put it as an article on their website to attract money from Google ads. This counts as better, for a suitably restricted definition of "better" -- it makes approximate sense and is different enough from the original that Google doesn't spot it.

</comment><comment><USER8> _The idea was that perhaps they could help improve the quality of this or any other written piece._

I'd pay $10 without thinking twice for a chrome extension that simply ensured the correct versions of there, their and they're were replaced based on context when they were misused. Hmm, I wonder how hard that would be.

</comment><comment><USER9> A company called White Smoke has an application that will take non-native English and fix it: <http://www.whitesmoke.com/products.html>

</comment><comment><USER10> I've often thought the same, and set out to build song writing software with ML principles. I ended up with iRhyme, an iPhone app that analyzed a huge corpus of existing song lyrics to make a good song writing oriented rhyming dictionary. That worked out well but improving general prose seems difficult. I think domain specific applications could be good stepping stones.

</comment><comment><USER11> Isn't this idea very similar to the grammar suggestions you can get from Word? The quality of those suggests it is a very hard problem.

</comment><comment><USER2> Obligatory: <http://www.translationparty.com/>

</comment><comment><USER12> Some classic works are very difficult to read in their native language. I've had Japanese friends say that Genji Motoganari - probably the most famous Japanese literature of all time - is basically unreadable in Japanese, and they didn't "get it" until they read it in English.

I feel the same about some older English works. For a long time, I've thought it'd be cool to have one talented author translate an older English book into modern Japanese, and a second author who hadn't read the original to translate it back to English. I bet it'd be more readable.

<comment><USER13> I read part of Genji _Monogatari_ during my Japanese studies as an undergrad. It's nearly 1,000 years old and it's absolutely _not_ the same language that's spoken in modern Japan. How much of anything written that long ago could a normal native English speaker understand?

It's just not a reasonable thing to expect from the general populace.

</comment></comment><comment><USER14> I think it's possible, but you would need peices to draw off of: Google uses U.N. translations to train their algorithms, but how many documents do we have translating legalese into good english, or poor writing into great writing? Probably not more than a couple hundred.

<comment><USER15> We have documents that have gone through an editing process, with changes tracked from draft through to published article.

I'm thinking particularly here of the process inside, say, a news agency. Many of the changes made by sub-editors are fairly mechanical modifications, to conform to a standard style. They might well be sufficiently repetitive to train a 'translator'.

You could also take a corpus of 'good' and a corpus of 'bad' writing, and compare the features in each. sentence length, constructions used. Origin of words would be an interesting one ('never use a Latinate word where an Anglo- Saxon one will do').

Unfortunately, most of the difference between good and bad writing is in the ordering of ideas; you can't really deal with that on statistical grounds.</comment></comment>


Ask HN: UX courses for engineers? - <AUTHOR> Hi HN, I'm a software engineer who works on the web in San Francisco. I happen to work on a team that's very design oriented and I have the opportunity to take some design-related courses. Although I don't see myself transitioning to any sort of pure UX-oriented role, I personally think it's important to keep UX in mind when writing code.<p>Do you know of any courses or resources I can take advantage of to be more UX-conscious? <comment><USER2> I troll the UX part of Stack Exchange. No direct lesson but lots of conversation to observe</comment>


Google Data Studio in 10 Minutes: Step-By-Step Guide - <AUTHOR> https://datascience-school.com/blog/google-data-studio-in-10-minutes-step-by-step-guide/ <comment><USER2> Data Studio fills a weird niche. At my previous job I built a report in it and sent it to a client (approved by my manager). The client was ecstatic. They loved the report, how easy it was to understand, pretty design, etc. When this feedback got back to our CTO he was furious because no one else on my team was technical enough to use data studio, so I effectively delivered a product only I could produce. All our reports were typically made in microsoft word with screenshots of graphs from excel.

Data studio is a little too technical for most people, but not technical enough for another large group of people. It like photoshop + pivot tables. It works incredibly well for a small set of people who are semi-technical, already know how to analyze data, and have some graphic design senses. I expect google to kill it eventually, or integrate it into analytics/google ads/dbm/etc and kill the spreadsheet integration.

<comment><USER3> That set of people is not that small; it is basically what people in business analyst roles do all day. They know Excel very well and maybe even a bit of python/js, have a good understanding of the business problem at hand, but not technical enough to do full on custom reports from scratch.

Data Studio fits squarely in this market of tools for them, and that space is growing and pretty crowded. There a multiple big businesses built on producing tools just like that, for example Tableau (public company valued at ~10B as of today).

Granted, Data Studio is more basic but it is free and nicely integrates with the rest of Google data product suite (Analytics, Sheets, BigQuery). I don't think it will go away, and I think it is actually the strongest part of google cloud offering (and the biggest gap in AWS cloud product lineup).

<comment><USER4> > and the biggest gap in AWS cloud product lineup

AWS has a similar product, QuickSight[1]. It's not my favorite to use, but integrates with the AWS ecosystem as easily as Data Studio integrates with the Google ecosystem.

[1] [https://aws.amazon.com/quicksight/](https://aws.amazon.com/quicksight/)

<comment><USER3> Yeah QuickSight is their shot at that market. But (anecdotally) I don't think it getting much traction. The fact that they didn't have any flashy announcements about it at re:Invent this year somewhat corroborates that. There is something in Amazon DNA that prevents them from building great UX- centric products.

Besides, without something like Google Sheets or Excel it is not that useful, inevitably you have a ton of small data across the org that is stored in spreadsheets.

One obvious play for Amazon is to just pay a ton of cash and acquire something like Airtable, but they don't seem to be for sale.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment> un-devmox Unrelated, but I hate this growing trend of anonymous service/information providers. If I'm going to give my personal information to an organization and trust its content and potentially pay for a service, I want to know who you are.

So, who is datascience-school besides a location in Singapore? Who are the founders, who else is involved, what are their stories/history and motivations. All of this would lend some credibility to any organization.

<comment><USER5> In this case you are not giving your data to datascience-school but to Google.

So I'd like to see Google's stories/history and motivations.

<comment> un-devmox My comment has nothing to do with the post/tutorial, but rather datascience- school in general.

<comment><USER6> I guess you missed their thorough About Us section.

> Data Science School offers online data science and engineering courses with > practical assignments.

If Data Science School is going to give their personal information to someone and potentially take their money, Data Science School wants to know who they are.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> We currently use Metabase - can anybody speak to the differences between Metabase and Google Data Studio?

<comment><USER2> I've never used metabase but I've used data studio quite a bit. From what I can tell metabase provides hard analysis tools and a ton of other features (sql, embedding, asking questions) while ds is mostly just a dashboard and reporting tool.

</comment></comment><comment><USER8> I tried to connect to a dataset and I get this error:

Data Set Configuration Error

Data Studio cannot connect to your data set.

Failed to fetch data from the underlying data set

I wish the error messages would be a little more helpful.

<comment><USER9> You may need to have billing enabled on your project.

<comment><USER8> I have a CC with google for their other cloud stuff. Is there a separate one for this?

<comment><USER9> Not knowing the specifics of your situation, I'm making a lot of assumptions here. In the steps for this guide it instructs the user to select a Billing Project when connecting to the data source (I'm assuming a BigQuery dataset). Billing needs to be "enabled" on this project that's selected as the "Billing Project".

Here's a link to steps where you can confirm whether billing is enabled for this project and enable it if needed.

[https://cloud.google.com/billing/docs/how-to/modify- project#...](https://cloud.google.com/billing/docs/how-to/modify- project#enable_billing_for_an_existing_project)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> It's funny how the article calls Data Studio 'new'. It's been around for years. When I first found out about it in a Google training workshop I put together a quick report based on our massive BigQuery datasets and my boss was over the moon and so were the clients we sent reports to. I'd say its a lovely tool that competes against Tableau. Hopefully it'll survive :).

</comment><comment><USER11> This is great! Does anyone have interesting datasets besides the examples pointed to?

<comment><USER2> Last time I used data studio all the public data sets in google big query were available in data studio (hn comments, reddit comments, nyc taxis, etc)

</comment></comment><comment><USER12> Datasets [https://medium.com/@492727ZED/datasets-with-context- control-...](https://medium.com/@492727ZED/datasets-with-context- control-e867d600b0)

</comment><comment><USER13> At our workplace we API our internal commisions software to Google Data studio and we can see our teams performance in real time as it relates to payroll.

</comment><comment><USER14> This is one of the products I bet will go to Google's graveyard soon</comment>