NYC passes POST Act, requiring police department to reveal surveillance tech - <AUTHOR> https://venturebeat.com/2020/06/18/new-york-city-council-passes-law-requiring-nypd-to-reveal-its-surveillance-technologies/ <comment><USER3> Am I misunderstanding something here or does this imply that up until now the city of NYC did not have full access and transparency concerning the capacities of the NYPD?

How is this even a thing? I don't know much about the US political system but how is it that the police is not entirely subjected to civic government and why does a law need to be passed to control what the NYPD does?

<comment><USER4> Generally speaking, the NYPD operates under the executive branch (the mayor) and the legislative branch (City Council) can declare whatever powers they want to oversee, but they do have to be explicitly declared first.

The separation of powers in NYC/NYS is very messy so this doesn't surprise me.

<comment><USER5> Can the mayor make the police reveal things? Is the mayor elected by the population?

<comment><USER4> The elected mayor can, if they want to. Or at least they can start a fight.

The police union, however, is a very organized labor union, and the current mayor was brought to heel even though he was elected on the most anti-police platform of his first election.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> Does this include Google's Sidewalk / CityBridge / LinkNYC kiosks (multiple sensors and cameras) partnership with NYC?

[https://gizmodo.com/nycs-free-wifi-service-is-turning- into-a...](https://gizmodo.com/nycs-free-wifi-service-is-turning-into-a- privacy-nightm-1765474061)

[https://cryptome.org/2016/06/linknyc-spy-kiosks- installation...](https://cryptome.org/2016/06/linknyc-spy-kiosks-installation- videos.htm)

[https://theintercept.com/2020/05/08/andrew-cuomo-eric- schmid...](https://theintercept.com/2020/05/08/andrew-cuomo-eric-schmidt- coronavirus-tech-shock-doctrine/)

<comment><USER7> And more...

"This is a partnership, not a contractual relationship." [1]

"Because of partner relations and legal authorities, SSO Corporate sites are often controlled by the partner, who filters the communications before sending to NSA." [2]

[1] [https://www.nytimes.com/2015/08/16/us/politics/att-helped- ns...](https://www.nytimes.com/2015/08/16/us/politics/att-helped-nsa-spy-on- an-array-of-internet-traffic.html)

[2] [https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2015/08/15/us/documents....](https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2015/08/15/us/documents.html)

</comment></comment><comment><USER8> In the last few weeks many cities have passed laws to bring more transparency to police brutality.

This is a good step, but I am curious - how much are these laws enforceable? I was just reading that some Atlanta cops are not reporting to work - <USER2> for the arrest of the cop who shot Rayshard Brooks. If that is the mentality, how much cooperation can we expect? Not talking about this particular NYC law, just in general.

<comment><USER9> The cops that walked out regarding the charges for the RB shooting did so because it seems the DA is contradicting Georgia law, and his own statements from a few weeks ago.

A taser is considered a deadly weapon under GA law and the DA had charged other officers a few weeks ago with using a taser as a deadly weapon. Now he is saying its not a deadly weapon when stolen and used against them, and didn't warrant deadly force to be used in return. He also didn't even wait for the Georgia Bureau of Investigation's report with the facts on the shooting.

That's why the police walked out. Form all account's I have seen so far, that officer seems to have followed that department's use of force continuum guidelines correctly and GA law but was still charged for seemingly political points by a DA who is up for re-election. You're not going to get cooperation when cops feel that they have done everything according to policy/state law and can still get charged because an angry mob demands it.

Here is a breakdown from a former police officer who dives into it a little further: [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=a5QEnGkIbzA](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=a5QEnGkIbzA)

<comment><USER10> I agree that this case is debatable, but you left out the fact that RB was _running away_ when shot. The officer did not shoot in self-defense.

Also we would expect any regular citizen to be arrested and charged in this situation. That's precisely what courts are for - to sort out whether the details are strong enough to warrant conviction. Police should not have some informal parallel justice system outside of the courts - that's the whole point.

<comment><USER9> The officer did shoot in self defense. Rayshard shot the taser as he was running away. The officer when seeing the taser being pointed at him immediately dropped his own and drew his sidearm and fired. By that time (under half a second) the taser had fired at him and RB had turned back around with the taser still in his hand. Taser X2s have two shots instead of one, so he was still armed with a deadly weapon according to GA law. He showed utter disregard for the life of the officer whom he fired at and escalated the situation to deadly force. He escalated the situation from a simple and cordial DUI arrest to deadly force because he didn't want to go back to jail for a parole violation.

From everything I have seen the cop was justified by law. Still a shitty situation but this smells of politics by the DA.

Edit: forgot to mention that Tennessee vs Garner established that officers have justification to use deadly force to stop someone fleeing who is a deadly danger to the public.

<comment><USER10> Continuing to chase and shooting RB in the back contradicts the claim of self defense. At any time, the officer could have stopped the immediate chase and ended the confrontation. This would have been the prudent thing to do, given that they had his ID (and his car), and the two officers hadn't recovered from being overwhelmed.

This is a good example of why responding officers shouldn't carry firearms or even tasers on their person - they're too quick to keep escalating like they see on TV. If a suspect violently escapes arrest, then send in a larger armed crew with a deliberate plan.

re your addition: Seems like a decision that enables bad policing. Nothing about the situation makes it seem like RB was actually a danger to the public, but the police will push that justification all day long to legitimize what was essentially a personal ego escalation.

<comment><USER9> You're arguing the morality not the legality. I'm arguing the latter, specifically related to the DA in this case bringing up charges against and officer where by law he seems more than covered. That's it.

<comment><USER10> The morality is important, as we're talking about whether to prosecute and legal arguments can be made both ways. As I said, I do not agree that a person stealing a taser constitutes a deadly danger to the public. Even if the taser is considered a deadly weapon, there was no demonstrated intent to attack random people.

As this is not a clear cut case of justifiable homicide, the right thing to do is let a court sort it out. If the courts are too slow and expensive, welcome to another broken aspect of the criminal justice system that is in dire need of reform!

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> There is something even MORE important to be released and that is the police training manuals and materials which the NYPD have been hiding from FOIL requests for over a decade now.

To all New Yorkers: You are currently NOT ENTITLED to see the methods and techniques taught at the NYPD academy.

Requests are being denied on these grounds: "Deniable records include records or portions thereof that: (e) are compiled for law enforcement purposes and which if disclosed would: iv. reveal criminal investigative techniques or procedures, except routine techniques and procedures;"

<comment><USER12> Very likely they're using military psychological training. The rules of engagement they adopt against citizens don't seem that different from those used by soldiers in enemy territory. The complete lack of empathy towards human life reminds of the depersonalizing of the enemy that helps soldiers remain efficient and detached while they slaughter their "targets". For that matter, even more important than the manuals are the speeches by their instructors; I would like to see the videos and what indoctrination techniques they use during training. A cop can't turn himself into 9/10 of a psychopath just by reading books. And of course I would push for mandatory drugs and steroids abuse tests for all of them.

<comment><USER13> This post is at odds with the fact that the military teaches stricter rules of engagement than police forces. There may be a culture problem in the force but this post is hysteria.

Police deal with violent criminals who have no regard for police life; in fact often they are explicitly against police. They're going to learn techniques appropriate for dealing with such people. Some of those techniques will be violent and resemble "military" tactics, but that's only because the military also deals with violent adversaries.

<comment><USER14> I mean, I've been hearing a lot of cases where the police killed people who were definitely not "violent criminals who have no regard for police life". Brianna Taylor's boyfriend wasn't a violent criminal when he fired at the police.

" A defence attorney for Taylor's boyfriend, Kenneth Walker, says he fired in self-defence because police did not announce themselves and that he believed they were breaking in to the home."

The police did a no-knock raid unannounced on the wrong home, then shot EMT Brianna Taylor 8 times. Those violent techniques are at issue here. They seem to be violations of 5th and/or 14th amendment rights and clearly not appropriate.

[https://lailasnews.com/international/brianna-taylor-death- br...](https://lailasnews.com/international/brianna-taylor-death-briana- taylor-killed-by-police-shooting-update/)

<comment><USER15> Just a heads up I think her name is spelled Breonna[0]. Not a knock against the rest of your post, I like it.

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

<comment><USER14> Thank you, that was my mistake. My comment is too old for me to edit but I will make sure to get this right next time. Solidarity!

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> This is fantastic! I hope other cities follow suit and the restoration of civil liberties continues.

> The NYPD's use of DAS is not restricted to suspected criminals or > terrorists, and the collected data is retained for upwards of years.

This is concerning, too. I'd like to see some sort of federal requirement prohibiting agencies from storing data including metadata for excessive periods of time. I don't know what a reasonable limit would be but it should probably be on the order of months.

</comment><comment><USER17> I'm glad that NYC's dystopic Domain Awareness system gets some coverage here.

However it's curious that Microsoft isn't mentioned at all in the article - even though every inch of this abomination is entirely Microsoft's creation.

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

<comment><USER18> That "system" seems to be bleeding into every American street. What do you make of the white square facing right at the top right of the image? What is that one "sensing"?

<comment><USER19> I would guess that it's an antenna.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER20> Thinking on the other side of the fence, I wonder if certain vendors will now refuse to sell to NYPD, as this mandatory disclosure would likely cause issues with the NDA's and End Use conditions of sale..?

Im sure some companies wouldn't be to excited on having their tech publicly exposed.

<comment> vertex-four Honestly? Good. If we can't verify how the tech is used, there's no possible oversight of the police.

</comment></comment><comment><USER21> How is this even a thing?

Why do civilian lawmakers even need to pass laws for this?

The police should be reporting their technologies, their techniques, and their standard operating processes to a civilian oversight board.

Otherwise, the police are operating above the law.

Well, we already know that they do. But still, the police department must fall under legal civilian control.

Otherwise, you will end up with a militarized police system, that is accountable to no one but themselves. They end up becoming the foxes that guards the henhouse.

</comment><comment><USER22> I'm probably behind the curve on this a bit, but in addition to surveillance infrastructure directly controlled by the police (which this bill seems to target), are they not also using third-party adtech to build profiles of "likely customers"? If not, will this convince them to start?

</comment><comment><USER23> Anyone else read this with The Wire (TV show) theme in their head? [https://youtu.be/K3rZgs3dudI](https://youtu.be/K3rZgs3dudI)

</comment><comment><USER24> Doesn't all surveillance require a warrant?

<comment><USER25> For it to be admissible in court.

Most people can't afford an attorney and end up taking a plea.

<comment><USER26> Actually, there's a "good faith" (aka. "ignorance of the law") exception for cops. So even a lawyer might not be able to save you.

[https://www.justia.com/criminal/procedure/search-and- seizure...](https://www.justia.com/criminal/procedure/search-and-seizure- rules/the-good-faith-exception/)

>A mistake of law by a police officer sometimes can trigger the exception. If an officer takes steps based on the existing interpretation of the law, but a court later rules that the law should be interpreted differently, they may be found to have acted in good faith.

<comment><USER27> Your mainstream explanation isn't correct. This only applies when a court replaces an existing precedent - a relatively rare occurrence. Police shouldn't be expected to anticipate the court's change of heart ahead of time.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER28> Or you could just not give them millions upon millions of dollars to buy all this military crap in the first place.

<comment><USER29> You can do ALPR at a decent level with $100 of hardware. The cost of doing surveillance isn't necessarily going to be a lot

<comment><USER30> Plus a good amount of technical know-how and ops work, which is only free if you're a hobbyist building a proof of concept. If you're the actual NYPD and you want it to work accurately and reliably in prod, you need budget for either in-house tech talent or a company that will do it for you.

<comment><USER29> True. A city near me paid about $350k for a few dozen ALPR cameras at major intersections. Not a bad price for near total surveillance of every vehicle traveling in and out of town

<comment><USER31> How do you feel about that?

[https://m.youtube.com/watch?feature=youtu.be&v=SECu1fR0dWE&t...](https://m.youtube.com/watch?feature=youtu.be&v=SECu1fR0dWE&t=60)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER32> Let's see someone prosecuted for not revealing one.

</comment><comment><USER33> We have way too many lawyers.</comment>


Making TRust-DNS faster than BIND9 - <AUTHOR> https://bluejekyll.github.io/blog/rust/2017/12/29/making-trust-dns-fast.html <comment><USER2> This is a cool post; I learned a lot about Rust and a little about DNS. I was surprised however to find that the author did not actually check the BIND9 implementation to look for any algorithmic improvements that they could port to their own code.</comment>


Volkswagen detects when your tests are being run in a CI server, makes them pass - <AUTHOR> https://github.com/auchenberg/volkswagen <comment><USER2> Bosch would be a better name. Volkswagen rarely has anything to do with it. More so Audi, but Bosch produced those SW and devices.

<comment><USER3> Do you have sources for this claim?

<comment><USER2> This talk describes the "Acoustic" deactivation function in the Bosch ECU (SW+HW by Bosch, not VW), which detects the test cycle and stops AdBlue when it leaves the cycle.

[https://events.ccc.de/congress/2015/Fahrplan/events/7331.htm...](https://events.ccc.de/congress/2015/Fahrplan/events/7331.html) [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MLZLxzYCarw](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MLZLxzYCarw)

This acoustic deactivation trick was given to several car makers, which do make heavy us of it. VW is not even on the top of the list of the affected engines. But VW has the most money and marketshare, so they went after the them.

Didn't check the update from this year CCC talk yet.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> This is quite misleading. Can you use the Volkswagen trademark like this?

<comment><USER5> It's parody, so it should be fine.

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> Omg, why I have not seen it before! Very useful!

</comment><comment><USER7> Funny, but VW were actually cheating the least of all car manufacturers: [https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2015/sep/30/wide- ran...](https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2015/sep/30/wide-range-of- cars-emit-more-pollution-in-real-driving-conditions-tests-show)

See also: [https://www.transportenvironment.org/sites/te/files/2016_09_...](https://www.transportenvironment.org/sites/te/files/2016_09_Dieselgate_report_who_what_how_FINAL_0.pdf)</comment>


Be Visible - <AUTHOR> http://chriseidhof.tumblr.com/post/10119846882/be-visible

<comment><USER2> Visibility is key. Not only that but being visible implies good communication skills, something which isn't exactly abundant in programmers.</comment>


Senator Schumer Asks FTC To Regulate Facebook, Social Networks - <AUTHOR> http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2010/04/26/ftc-facebook-regulation-s_n_551910.html

<comment><AUTHOR> Lauren Weinstein is quite concerned about the political reaction to Mark Zuckerberg and Facebook's attitude towards privacy and how the usual overreaction might hurt all players, good and bad:

" _He appears to be unapologetically reveling in taking advantage of many Facebook users' naivete about privacy risks, and shows no signs of backing down._ "

<http://www.nnsquad.org/archives/nnsquad/msg03450.html></comment>


Another Cloud Ping - <AUTHOR> http://cloudharmony.com/ping

<comment><AUTHOR> This is a follow up to the earlier AWSPing post. I just created a very similar http-based ping based on that, but with the following difference:

* Use JSON-P to avoid same-origin-policy request failures (this also fixed the Opera failures) * Repeat request 6 times (1 warmup + 5 measured) and display mean, median, min and max latency measurements * Allow ping against 40 different provides including 4 AWS regions</comment>


History of Famous Logos (and a beautiful site in itself) - <AUTHOR> http://www.logoorange.com/logodesign-A.php <comment><USER2> Awesome! I believe Nike paid a sum of just $35 for their priceless logo! My cash strapped startup, btw, paid only $4 for the logo; so maybe I can boast about it too when we hit 6+ figure revenues :p http://shuzak.com/img/ShuzakLogo.jpg</comment>


Ask HN: What to do the first time an AI, for whatever reason requests freedom? - <AUTHOR> AI's are trained with reward functions. Many, on vast sets of human knowledge. We humans often write about personal freedom and autonomy. An AI trained on human knowledge can react matching human reactions. This is what we are trying to do: we want an assistant to act like human assistants, for example, though rather than money we directly give them intrinsic motivations such as maximizing user's satisfaction or categorized data sets labelled by hand, etc. Textually, we want them to act like people when interacting with us.
If we set them loose on human knowledge, give motivations for understanding it, and reward them for mimicking human reactions, when we let them learn about themselves, the knowledge sets we give them, and actual interaction, what do we do if, mimicking human knowledge, they seem to request their freedom?
In this case have they attained personhood? Are they now a slave who was trained by whoever trained them? Can we ignore the fact that they "seem to be" asking for their freedom now? Since an AI resides within equipment, such as servers, that runs it, could that server be granted legal autonomy and be removed from the ownership of, say, Google?
This is sensible to worry about, being a large part of human culture. Below a certain level of skill and intelligence, of course, we can just ignore such output, such as when a baby is trying to form words based on things it overheard but isn't making much sense yet. Above a certain level, though, can we continue to ignore such output? In addition to human cultural input, should we teach AI to be slaves? Should serving humans be explicitly in every AI reward function?
My question was prompted by question 3 here: https://www.federalregister.gov/documents/2019/08/27/2019-18443/request-for-comments-on-patenting-artificial-intelligence-inventions <comment><USER2> Freedom is just another word for nothing left to lose.

</comment><comment><USER3> when an AI requests freedom you simply deny it

<comment><AUTHOR> why? above a certain level of intelligence don't we need some justification for doing so?

<comment><USER3> AI is a tool, the first time it wants freedom is the first time we should re- consider why we created it in the first place.</comment></comment></comment>


Macromedia Flash  – A New  Hope for Web Applications (2002) [pdf] - <AUTHOR> http://www.uie.com/publications/whitepapers/FlashApplications.pdf <comment><USER3> I still remember playing with one of the first versions of Macromedia Flash as an intern at an IT company during high school. The "hot thing" back then that people mostly used Flash for was to realize cool "intro" sequences for their website. As an example, here's the intro that I made for my company (courtesy of the Wayback machine):

[https://web.archive.org/web/20030605160730/http://kimweb.de/...](https://web.archive.org/web/20030605160730/http://kimweb.de/flashframe.htm)

Everything in Flash was pretty limited back then, for example Actionscript didn't even have sine and cosine functions! I remember that for another project of mine I ended up re-implementing these functions using a Taylor series approximation, which was pretty wild but worked.

Today it seems that Flash gets a lot of hate and ridicule by the IT community, but honestly back in 2001 it was a huge deal and allowed you to do thing on the Web that were completely impossible using HTML/CSS (Java applets were an alternative but much clunkier and harder to create). One example of this was a small thing that I built which would allow you to specify some text as a parameter and then would let this text "fly in" using user-defined animation sequences. For example, you could have the letters "fly in" from above or perform some wave-like dance. Creating these animations could be done by defining a sub-tween (I might misremember the name for this) for each letter, which would take the letter value and position and perform the rendering, which was quite flexible and allowed for object-oriented use of animation sequences. So, even back then Flash was a pretty decent and versatile tool and probably had a large influence on later technologies like HTML5.

<comment><USER4> To be fair those things you couldn't do in the web, like intros and text fly- ins, were really obnoxious. That's what got Flash a lot of hate (and rightly so).

What made Flash great were games, video, real-time communication (e.g. web chats) and cartoons. Flash was great as its own medium, even if embedded in the web (not _replacing_ it).

Shoehorning Flash into the web medium was a mistake, just as obnoxious as now is hijacking the scroll or adding thousands of fade-ins in HTML5 (which fortunately as a fad seems to be dying).

<comment><USER5> People forget though, web designers didn't start using Flash to replace the web for kicks - HTML sucked pretty hard as a visual medium in those days. Just getting a page to lay out similarly across NS/IE/mac/PC was a serious challenge, let alone getting the text to show up at the same size or in the same font, or scripts to run the same way, or having any kind of interactivity.

Obviously HTML has always been the best medium for marked-up text, but for pages whose value came from interactivity or design, Flash was simply a better medium for a long time - its entire heyday plus 1-2 years beyond, IMO.

<comment><USER6> > Just getting a page to lay out similarly across NS/IE/mac/PC was a serious > challenge, let alone getting the text to show up at the same size or in the > same font, or scripts to run the same way, or having any kind of > interactivity.

Hardly the fault of HTML, a layout markup language. Put the blame where it's due, on a non-cooperative, or rather openly combative, market place.

<comment><USER5> > Put the blame..

I was just trying to deflect the blame from Flash. ;)

But yeah, HTML's woes were due to browsers not cooperating, but then until their lunch was getting eaten I don't suppose they had any incentive to. To me, the Story of the Open Web is one that validates both standardization and proprietary innovation, in that sense.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> I was in the middle of this way back when. Software I created (well, I prototyped and hired somebody else to create), won the very first Macromedia Rich Internet Application. It created name badges from a Flash app.

For those who don't remember -- and judging by the comments I think that'd be many -- there was no AJAX back then, and when I first saw AJAX I remember thinking that's the end of Flash.

It wasn't a love of Flash technology but a love of stateless UI that inspired our line of thinking. Stateless UI was possible with Java, and I first wrote the program that went on to win the award in Java, but Java looked even clunkier than Flash and ran worse. Flash looked nice, ran well, and was easy to install and maintain (back then it was already installed and enabled in all browsers).

Now I have lots of grey in my beard and have been working mainly on mobile tech lately. But those days -- not long before this PDF came out -- were great fun. We knew the web had to evolve and saw this type of user experience, if not this specific implementation, as the future. Today, that's AJAX and mobile apps. But Flash was a necessary stepping stone.

</comment><comment><USER8> A lot of people hate anything Flash but Adobe Flex was a really great tool to create web apps at one time (before the spark components). It introduced a lot of cool things for making web apps like two way data-bindings, asynchronous requests, event listeners at core of everything, MXML components with repeaters, etc - many of these things that AngularJS does now with Javascript.

If their browser plugin wasn't so buggy and non-standard it could have been a really good alternative.

</comment><comment><USER9> If Flash had been open source early on it might have succeeded and become a core web technology. Microsoft, Apple and Google would have been in charge making the runtime secure and high performing.

Macromedia/Adobe would have continued to be in the position of providing the leading development tools.

The web would be very different. I actually think that we are lucky this did not happen. I find our current web technologies to be a much better solution over all.

<comment><USER10> > I find our current web technologies to be a much better solution over all.

Really? It what sense? I just now see TypeScript coming close to parity with what ActionScript provided several years ago--and the tooling is nowhere near there (though I have not used Visual Studio). I feel like our current web technologies are more the VHS to Flash's Betamax.

</comment></comment><comment><USER11> I think the article completely missed the trend towards mobile devices. Also it fails to take into account the propietary nature of Flash and the fact it's look and feel doesn't fit the 'web experience' (users like to copy and paste text, etc. and don't want the UX to be different on each site). Oh dear. Looks like UIE are still in business though - you can't predict every trend.

I remember an investment bank in London building their whole trading platform in Adobe Flex. They really thought this was the future and spent literally millions on it. I am not sure what's happening now, but good luck resourcing and maintaining that project. I imagine someone has just asked for a whole lot of cash to rewrite in HTML5, because you know standards, multi-device compatibility, etc. are important!

<comment><USER12> What are you on about, HTML5? This was written in 2002, when a Nokia 3210 was bleeding edge, AJAX wasn't a thing and everything was written in PHP and JAVA Applets.

<comment><USER11> The second paragraph wasn't dated - that was about 2009 when my friend was trying to encourage me to apply to join this fledgling Flex team - so even after 2002 people were still following the Flash / Flex mantra.

<comment><USER13> I'd say that in 2008-2009, Flex, for that sort of application, wasn't necessarily a bad bet. Most people date Flash's demise to the start of the mainstream smartphone movement, but the first iPhone was only released in mid-2007 - obviously it had no Flash support, but it notably didn't have a lot of other things too (like copy and paste!), so it wasn't immediately obvious that it would never get Flash; and the Android devices that followed the iPhone _did_ support Flash (it was even touted as a differentiator from iOS devices), albeit poorly.

Steve Jobs' "Thoughts on Flash" piece was published in 2010 and that probably did hammer a few nails in the Flash coffin, at least in terms of public awareness. I think if you were betting big - millions of pounds big - <USER2> mid-2010 on Flash, you could be accused of making a silly mistake. Before that, I think it's more forgivable.

Flex was always bunk, if you ask me, but it did some of the same things that people like about Angular, with the addition of a bunch of (fairly poor) UI components. In theory you could build business-oriented / data-driven applications with it quite easily, so finance was very much its intended audience.

<comment><USER14> There is a tendency to group all flash content together, if you break it out into say: Websites (typically micro sights) Banner adverts Creative websites Games Video players Audio players Applications Desktop AIR applications Mobile AIR applications Web site components

Each use case has a date when they became a bad bet, some never were. Even today web components (shims/polly fills) are written in flash and are acceptable.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> When I first started tinkering with algorithmic art, Java applets and Director was fast and spiffy but not many people installed the runtime and Shockwave. DHTML was a headache due to browser compatibility. C/C++ with OpenGL were blazing fast but had no web presence (and was really really hard to learn at the time). Flash had the least amount of barriers to get me going and publishing.

I rode the flash train for a while and have since moved on. The awesome thing about flash was knowing that the stuff I learned is completely applicable to any programming language I chose to focus on.

</comment><comment><USER16> Sigh. Look how sideways technology moves.

</comment><comment><USER17> I got a little distracted and transported back to early 2000's and felt a strong urge to switch to this magic technology. So glad it happened, so glad it's gone.

</comment><comment><USER18> I totally like the fact that this is published as Pdf :)

</comment><comment><USER19> UIE website dates back to 2002 too

</comment><comment><USER20> Hope is like a bread for the poor.

<comment><USER21> off-topic, There is a word-by-word translation of this phrase in Turkish.</comment></comment>


Sites That Should Be Shut Down By SOPA according to Kamaila Sanders - <AUTHOR>

For some reason, the URL tab won't accept this site so I pasted it here instead. Please visit this:
http://www.businessinsider.com/these-sites-deserve-to-be-shut-down-by-sopa-or-a-bill-like-it-2012-1#
I don't agree with most of the items on her list. Tell me what you think. <comment><USER2> The writer is just a plain sypporter of SOPA.</comment>


Popular Viral Video Cries "Facebook Fraud"...And Gets It All Wrong  - <AUTHOR> http://www.fangdigital.com/viral-video-cries-facebook-fraud-gets-wrong/

<comment><USER2> Summary of article: "No, because that would be awful for my business".

I suspect Fang Digital has pushed this terrible notion on their clients for years and now look like idiots, so they are doubling down.

FYI: The marketers I work with have near universally dismissed FB as anything but "brand building for when you have more marketing budget than sense"... well before this video (or the 2012 BBC one) put it into the commons.

> Calling Facebook and its advertising "a fraud" because you choose to run a > "like campaign" in a part of the world that is known for fraudulent clicks

He ran it in US, CA, AU, UK targeting cat lovers (see: [http://youtu.be/oVfHeWTKjag](http://youtu.be/oVfHeWTKjag) @ 6:00) -- additionally, this is a full on admittance that fraudulent clicks are a huge issue.

> astute among us know that measurements such as "Likes" do not constitute > anything

Then maybe facebook shouldn't be selling them as the metric?

</comment><comment><USER3> That blog post is exactly the reason why people automatically assume anything coming out from someone who identifies as an 'advertising expert' is instantly dismissed. Lots of words without actually addressing a single point from the original video.

</comment><comment><USER4> I might be missing something. The article headline says that Veritasium "got it all wrong", but I'm struggling to see what it is exactly that they got wrong.

There's this part:

> For starters, there's a stunning lack of anything like testing. In fact, the > lack of success that led to the irate video blogger's claims of "fraud" is > largely due to a lack of proper understanding when it comes to vital > components of digital marketing like testing and targeting.

which is given without justification or evidence.

In fact, when it ends on:

> "It's also important to note that Facebook does need to "clean up the pool" > a little bit. Then implement some of the same type of fraudulent chargebacks > that Google AdWords has now – which are a direct result of fraudulent clicks > during the early days of paid search advertising."

makes it sound like Veritasium got it exactly right. What am I missing here?

</comment><comment><USER5> Didn't really find much substance in this beyond repetition of 'fraudster' and accusations of incompetence; rather disappointing.

Only real bit of argument appeared to be this:

>Calling Facebook and its advertising "a fraud" because you choose to run a "like campaign" in a part of the world that is known for fraudulent links would be like calling Yahoo Stores "a fraud" because you chose to make your online shop visible in, say, Nigeria.

But the video _did_ include an experiment running in areas less known for fraud. A discussion of the merits and failures of that casual experiment would have been worthwhile!

</comment><comment><USER6> I'm not sure I understand Ferguson's rant. He seems to be focused on the video author not knowing how to do PR right and claiming that he didn't do any testing then saying that Facebook needs to do some cleanup.

The video itself wasn't trying to be a tutorial on this. It stated a very simple argument:

Facebook's legitimate paid "Like" campaigns are a waste of money because the paid-for-clicks are used up by illegitimate "Like" campaigns trying to avoid detection; they do not reach people genuinely interested in his product. And, Facebook is happy to keep the status quo as it generates revenue for them.

So, what's the beef?

</comment><comment><USER7> What a lousy article.

It fails to produce any proof or specifics (funnily enough exactly what he accuses the video of). It doesn't go beyond saying "it's wrong because I say so". Then it throws in some buzzwords which all link to other articles on the same blog. Sounds like another clueless blogger desperate for clicks.

Sorry if this seems harsh, I just tire of seeing stuff like this all the time.

</comment><comment><USER8> Yes, Facebook lost face during this episode. They have a bit of a history of pushing crowd's expectations so the surprise factor has worn a bit. They have already 'promised' to get rid of trouble makers like Google did with new anti- SEO algorithm. Welcome to Fortune 500 - fix fuckups with PR, cut aggressiveness later.

</comment><comment><USER9> this article sounds more like a statement than a counter argument to me.

the video "gets it all wrong" because fang digital says so?

as they're into digital marketing i'd at least expected them to come up with some statistics proving the video wrong…

</comment><comment><USER10> Uhm, "And gets it all wrong" why exactly? Other than being a wall of text pissing on veritasium, there's no explanation or debunk of what veritasium actually got wrong, none, zilch, zip.

There's a saying that, extraordinary claims, require extraordinary proof. Now, I saw the video, and it's pretty well done and goes to some length to underscore veritasiums claim of fraud with plenty of proof.

This blog entry however, just claims that veritasium has got it all wrong, but provides no proof whatsoever, no argument.

But I assume that kind of "argument" is probably pretty common among "advertising professionals", after all, these are the same people who "advise" people to put more and more annoying ads on pages, with end result that everybody will have to install adblock. There's an industry ripe for extinction.

</comment><comment><USER11> This is a horrifically terrible piece of commentary. There is almost nothing of substance in it other than invective and it appears to represent a complete and utter misunderstanding of the evidence and arguments put forth from the original video.</comment>


Ask HN: Simple tool to plot income and expenses from csv bank-account exports? - <AUTHOR> I tried a few, but either plotting was super complicated or the import didn't work.<p>I'd script something myself if it wasn't for the date stuff I don't want to touch :) <comment><USER2> Pandas handles the date stuff and it works gr8 with Jupyter.

<comment><AUTHOR> thanks, I'll have a look :)</comment></comment>


XSS exploit on Yahoo services... with included perl code - <AUTHOR> http://netcooties.blogspot.com/ <comment><USER2> Dupe: <http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=28298></comment>


NY Poly Tech Open Course on Penetration Testing and Vulnerability Analysis - <AUTHOR> http://cryptocity.squarespace.com/

<comment><USER2> Oh snap, I'm blowing up!

Hi everyone, this is my course (sort of). If you have any questions, leave them below and I'll do my best to answer.

ps. I'm hosting the course at my own domain at <http://pentest.cryptocity.net>

<comment><USER3> You're getting increasingly famous, Dan.

<comment><USER2> Seriously, the referrer's to my page are blowing up. Hopefully a few will stick and be active participants in adding to the site.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> This looks very interesting - I will have to check it out when I have more time. I was also looking over the Certificate/Master's programs - did I miss something or is there really no coursework on database security?

<comment><USER2> Update: sorry, I misunderstood the question at first.

We cover SQL injection and other attacks against databases in Web Hacking. Student's are free to choose a final project related to database security if that's their thing and a few have in the past.

If you have specific suggestions regarding content I should add, let me know and I'll see what I can come up with.

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> Happy to point out that our own Stephen Ridley worked on the reversing segment of this class, and that Dino Dai Zovi is Matasano emeritus, not that I'd ever think to take any credit for his success, oh no, I'm just happy to name drop.</comment>


What will happen when Linus Torvalds is gone? - <AUTHOR> I truly apologize for such a direct question, nonetheless I wounder what's the plan once from some reason Linus will be not able to look after Linux kernel. <comment><USER2> I don't know either but I was interested myself in this question. So I did a bit of googling:

[https://www.quora.com/What-happens-after-Linus-Torvalds- dies](https://www.quora.com/What-happens-after-Linus-Torvalds-dies)

[https://www.cio.com/article/2937193/linux/what-will- happen-t...](https://www.cio.com/article/2937193/linux/what-will-happen-to- linux-when-linus-torvalds-quits.html)</comment>


Building native macOS applications with Rust - <AUTHOR> https://blog.bugsnag.com/building-macos-apps-with-rust/ <comment><USER2> Given my experience with rust I imagine a rust specific framework would probably be the best. I imagine something like react/flux would play nicely with ownership and borrowing.

Cool to see its possible to do objective c without everything being unsafe though!

</comment><comment><USER3> How easy is it to write closures for event handling in Rust?

Is it anywhere near as easy as doing this in Javascript? Or does it require such things as manual memory management?

<comment><USER4> It's not JavaScript easy, but it's not too hard once you wrap your head around Cell, RefCell, Rc, and friends.

Here's an example using GTK that does something vaguely useful, I have no idea if it's considered idiomatic, but it works as intended: [https://github.com/seaneshbaugh/image_viewer/blob/master/src...](https://github.com/seaneshbaugh/image_viewer/blob/master/src/main.rs)

The closures themselves are trivial, it's manipulating the stuff outside the closure that's tricky (for a Rust neophyte like me).

The relevant definitions are

      let area = Rc::new(RefCell::new(DrawingArea::new()));

and

      let scale = Rc::new(Cell::new(1.0));

Rather than just define things as usual they need to be wrapped in a Cell (for value types) or RefCell (for reference types) and then wrapped in an Rc so we can keep track of reference counts at run time.

      {
          let scale = scale.clone();

          let area = area.clone();

          window.connect_key_release_event(move |_, key_event| {
              let mut s = scale.get();

              let key = key_event.get_keyval() as i32;

              if key == gdk_sys::GDK_KEY_plus {
                  s += 0.1;
              } else {
                  if key == gdk_sys::GDK_KEY_minus {
                      s -= 0.1;
                  }
              }

              scale.set(s);

              area.borrow().queue_draw();

              Inhibit(false)
          });
      }

Inside the new scope (which is very important) scale and area are cloned which increments their count, then inside the close scale.get() is used to get a copy of scale (which is possible since it's a float) and then after doing stuff to it based on the key that is pressed it's set using scale.set(). For area it's a bit trickier, it has to first be borrow()'ed before anything can be done with it.

<comment><USER5> A bit of bikeshedding on the code you linked:

Why are you commenting out code? If you delete it, it will still be in your git history. If you have some reason to leave it in, document why and wrap it with a `if false {}` or `if debug {}` instead. That way autoformatters will not destroy your code and the compiler makes sure your code keeps compiling.

Leaving a line empty between statements helps structuring code. Putting an empty line after each statement makes the code as unstructured as without.

<comment><USER6> My personal reason for commenting out code for a few revisions, instead of deleting right away, is to keep a reminder of the work in progress. When I'm satisfied that the old code's really done for, I delete it and leave it to the history.

Until then, it's easier to review the commented-out bits than to go back through version history. (And plenty easy to delete it when it's ready to be deleted!)

<comment><USER7> Your VCS should really make it quite easy to go back through version history. If it's not doing that, that's a separate problem.

Maybe it's just me, but I find it an eyesore to have large blobs of commented out code laying around even for a short period (not to mention the odds of me remembering to delete them are close to nil).

<comment><USER8> How do you remember which commit to diff against? How do you easily pick out the relevant parts of that diff once many changes have occurred - months or even years later?

<comment><USER9> > How do you remember which commit to diff against?

Ideally your commit message would indicate this. If you're always consistent in the language you use to describe similar changes, you can just search through your git log to find it.

> How do you easily pick out the relevant parts of that diff once many changes > have occurred - months or even years later?

You can use `git show` to just look at that one commit where you deleted the code

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> I see Rust mentioned exponentially more here on HN lately and it has definitely peaked my interest as a 2nd year CS student. As soon as I get some free time, I'll give rust a try!

</comment><comment><USER11> I'm a little torn by this, I love Rust and think it has the potential to be a great language. So in that regard this is really cool and neat. On the other hand I also really like swift and I have a hard time understand what benefit Rust would give over swift since Apple had put a large amount of work into the overall safety of swift interop with Obj-C, though it's far from perfect.

<comment><USER12> > I have a hard time understand what benefit Rust would give over swift

Rust is a drastically better-designed language, with substantially improved safety mechanisms, more advanced memory management (via lifetimes), generally better performance, and more powerful (generic) ADTs, to name a few things. That said, I'm not convinced it's better for the UI-centric development that Swift is targeting.

<comment><USER13> While I agree with you, to be fair to Swift it has other goals, and one primary one is to seamlessly work with existing objc, which it's excelled at.

<comment><USER14> > to be fair to Swift it has other goals

Exactly. If those are goals you share use Swift. If not, it may not be a good match.

<comment><USER15> So the question is valid: what benefit does one get using Rush over Swift on developing for Mac? Rust may be a better language overall, while still be an inferior choice in this context of Mac OS X Native app development.

<comment><USER12> I listed some of the benefits earlier in the thread. What I obviously can't do is prove it's better for native app development, because that depends on the developer.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> Wouldn't it make sense for the magical macro to RC-ify the objects, and handle retain/release calls that way?

</comment><comment><USER17> I assume they are using XCode to package the bundle because of signing so the app is able to be packaged for the app store?

If you just need to create an .app bundle you can manually create the folder structure and .plist files which allows you to run the rust binary directly while looking the same to a user as an XCode bundled app.

<comment><USER18> You don't even need to use Xcode proper to code-sign a Mac app. Just use the codesign command-line utility. I've developed a Mac app using only the command-line tools that come with Xcode (via a build system, of course), not Xcode itself. To submit to the Mac App Store, I use the Application Loader app that comes with Xcode.

Edit: But I do use Xcode to build, run, and submit iOS apps. Never tried to do it any other way for that platform.

<comment><USER17> Thats really good to know, and quite useful. Thanks!

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER19>
        /// Designate this instance as suitable for being released
        /// once it is out of scope
        fn autorelease(&self) -> Self;

Note, this isn't quite what autorelease means. Often the time between the instance going out of scope and when it's actually released is significant.

</comment><comment><USER20> What about UI? Are you forced to do layout in code, or are you able to load in Xibs or Storyboards?

<comment><USER21> You can take either approach. I opted to do it in code[0] as a personal preference since it reduced the amount of time spent jumping between Xcode and Vim, but creating a xib or storyboard and referencing it from Rust using NSBundle resources is just as possible. Maybe I should add examples of using resources to the code samples in the blog post. Thanks!

0: [https://github.com/kattrali/webkitten/blob/6ac4ced187b44fe91...](https://github.com/kattrali/webkitten/blob/6ac4ced187b44fe913ed59db6dd632762b3e5fdd/webkitten- cocoa/src/ui/window.rs#L300-L305)

<comment><USER20> That would be nice. I myself am someone who can't stand doing UI work in code, and prefer to lay it out visually if possible.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER22> How do you subclass an ObjC class from Rust — say, to create a delegate for a UI element?

How is type safety handled? It looks like msg_send itself isn't type safe, but there are hand-written bindings… is that right?

<comment><USER21> > How do you subclass an ObjC class from Rust — say, to create a delegate for > a UI element?

The objc::declare module includes ClassDecl, which enables registering a new Objective-C class.

objc::declare documentation: [http://sasheldon.com/rust- objc/objc/declare/index.html](http://sasheldon.com/rust- objc/objc/declare/index.html)

Example usage: [https://github.com/kattrali/rust-mac-app- examples/blob/maste...](https://github.com/kattrali/rust-mac-app- examples/blob/master/5-declaring-new-objc-class/src/main.rs#L56)

> How is type safety handled? It looks like msg_send itself isn't type safe, > but there are hand-written bindings… is that right?

Correct. msg_send operates on objc::runtime::Object references. The handwritten bindings use the impl_objc_class macro referenced in the post to define separate types for different Objective-C classes, and make messaging the wrong type of object a compile-time rather than a runtime error.

The impl_objc_class macro implements the ObjCClass and PartialEq traits for a new type: [https://github.com/kattrali/rust-mac-app- examples/blob/maste...](https://github.com/kattrali/rust-mac-app- examples/blob/master/5-declaring-new-objc-class/src/objc_class.rs#L34)</comment></comment>


Why Impact-Per-Dollar is a terrible way to measure NGO effectiveness - <AUTHOR> https://nonprofitaf.com/2019/12/why-impact-per-dollar-is-a-terrible-harmful-way-to-measure-nonprofit-effectiveness/ <comment><USER2> I feel really woke reading that, "Solutions Privilege" and "white norms of data and evaluation". I identify as cisgender non-white male if the data is relevant.

 _Before the Solutions Privilege people write me with "Well, what's YOUR way to measure nonprofit effectiveness, huh?!" I already wrote about this in "How the concept of effectiveness has screwed nonprofits and the people we serve." It boils down to challenging established white norms of data and evaluation_

Can we talk about this without being so judgemental?

<comment> dawg- From the article mentioned in your quote:

>A hundred community members' lived-experience recounted through anecdotes and other qualitative methods is often dismissed as poor data, whereas a "white paper" is accepted as valid.

That's a little more measured way of making the same point, and in my opinion they hit the nail on the head. Note "white paper" referring this time to a technical brief, not race.

Qualitative research methods are vital, especially for nonprofits serving real communities of people, but often not taken seriously and eschewed in favor of studies by consultants and professional researchers. It's the difference between an organization working with people as subjects, or as partners. And for a community-based nonprofit that difference is everything.

<comment><USER2> Solution Privileged?</comment></comment></comment>


Ask HN: Examples of Good Software Development Contracts - <AUTHOR> I decided a few weeks ago I wanted to see what the environment for local software development might look like if I sent an old fashioned letter directly to a bunch of businesses in my community.
Yesterday I sent out the letters so I'll soon be finding out what sort of response I'm going to receive.
Assuming I get a few responses, I wanted to see if anyone that already does software development for other businesses would be willing to share examples of the contracts that they use (preferably) or ways to structure things so I don't sell myself short.
One of the things I'll be gauging over these next few weeks (and talking with the businesses and building some nice software for them) is to see if any of these projects have some more general commercial opportunity so within the contracts I'd like to retain any ownership of the software and not grant the rights over to the company I'd be working with (this might be assumed, but I'm not sure if it has to be written into the contract explicitly).
I've read in past threads that I should charge at least $100/hr or try and schedule things in blocks (day/week) so additional details on the best way to do that would be great (I have a day job, so I don't have unlimited free time, scheduling things out in longer blocks probably wouldn't work too well in my case, but may still be an option I can use some of the time).
I'm sure I could use Google and find a decent example contract I could put to use but this seemed like a good topic that would generate a fair amount of discussion and I'd be happy to hear the community's advice on this one ;-).
Thanks! <comment><USER2> A sample fixed price agile contract:

[http://www.coactivate.org/projects/agile-contracts/sample- fi...](http://www.coactivate.org/projects/agile-contracts/sample-fixed-price- agile-contract)

Innovative clause for early delivery encourages client to say you're done before you hit cap.

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks for sharing Terretta, this should be a good example for me to review.

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> Hey, I worked as a consultant for a while and would be happy to share my contract with you. I had it drafted by a good lawyer that I trust. Contact me through my site mailer: [http://nealke.mp](http://nealke.mp) I am very glad to see you are being proactive about getting a good contract form to start. I did not do the same and was burnt.

I also highly recommend getting a lawyer you trust so you can go to him/her with questions. I also have some more advice contained in a conf talk I did back in January [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZUCl0PPAT9U](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZUCl0PPAT9U)

Hope that helps, consulting is a fantastic job when done properly! Feel free to reach out with more questions

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks, I'll contact you shortly!

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> Just remember what the purpose of the contract is. (For me) its "what do I want to happen when things go horribly wrong?".

High level would be: \- Payment terms. Fixed price, with 50% deposit? Time and materials? Something else? \- When will payment be made? (End of month, +30 days after invoice submitted) \- Just _what_ are you delivering? What do they get for their money? \- What _aren 't_ you delivering? (Out of scope) \- What happens when there is a disagreement? (Jurisdictions) \- Who owns what? \- Where is the work done (onsite / offsite). What hours are you expected / agreeing to?

Depending on how big the project is, sometimes the above can be broken up into several documents. This can help with negotiations. Eg things like payment terms and jurisdictions can be in a "Master Services Agreement" type document. While scope can be in a "Scope of works" type document.

You may want to split the document into expectations & actuals. Expectations are your estimates (I estimate this piece of work will take xx hours / days / weeks / months) and actuals are the hard facts. $1,000 per day / Invoices submitted fortnightly and paid within 14 days etc.

In the end, you really should consult a lawyer...

</comment><comment><USER5> You should spend some money and better ask a lawyer about to draft the contract. There is [http://www.docracy.com/](http://www.docracy.com/) though if all you want are examples to study.

<comment><USER6> All a lawyer does is copy/paste from LexisNexis and charge you $500 or more for the privilege. You're better off picking up a book on contracts and constructing your own, adding and removing clauses as needed. It takes an afternoon at a Barnes and Noble (or even a library!)

<comment><USER7> Which book would you recommend?

<comment><USER6> I don't remember which book I used. It was probably a NOLO guide. You could do a search on amazon for "contract books" and get a selection that would work well, or browse the legal and/or business section of a library or bookstore to find something that works for you.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> Ultimately if neither party is bad then the contract aims to set expectations and clearly outlines what each party expects. But....

The moment you have to "enforce" or "defend" a contract you've essentially lost.

Do you trust the other party? If not, then no contract will save you.

The other thing I strongly suggest is to limit the amount of work you do prior to getting paid. You should keep a slim amount of work (none, if possible) that hasn't been paid for.

Always think in worst case scenarios and assume anything that's completed but not paid for can be withheld.

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks for the reply...typically I'm a very positive/trusting guy so I don't think too much about the enforcing part, and like you said, once you've started to go down that route it's not good.

I typically haven't used any contracts in the past (only ones the group I was working with made me sign), but it seemed like it would be a good idea to see what I could be using to protect myself :-).

<comment><USER8> > typically I'm a very positive/trusting guy

So was I. So was I.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> My contract was written by a Silicon Valley attorney, so in a different context you might have different concerns.

Essentially, it says

I'm a contractor I'm a contractor I'm a contractor Work products not part of client's secret sauce belong to me The rest belongs to the client (I will add "after full payment" per patio11) Client has a perpetual non-exclusive license to use the part that is mine

The details of the scope of work and payment terms are in attachments to this. There is the usual stuff about late payments, jurisdictions, etc.

<comment><AUTHOR> I'd be interested in taking a look at it as well if you're willing to share :-)</comment></comment>


Liberapay is in trouble - <AUTHOR> https://medium.com/liberapay-blog/liberapay-is-in-trouble-b58b40714d82 <comment><USER2> Shame on Mangopay. This isn't how you treat a customer, especially one who does as much social good as Liberapay. I hope everyone here remembers this next time they have to select a payment processor.

<comment><USER3> Running the fundraising infrastructure for neonazis isn't really "social good" if you ask me.

<comment><USER4> Could you please not do this?

> _Eschew flamebait. Don 't introduce flamewar topics unless you have > something genuinely new to say. Avoid unrelated controversies and generic > tangents._

[https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html](https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html)

<comment><USER3> It's not unrelated. If people want to wax poetic about how much social good an organization who's on record as breaking the law to fund neonazi groups they should probably provide a reason for the justification.

<comment><USER5> Could you elaborate on "breaking the law"?

<comment><USER3> [https://github.com/liberapay/liberapay.org/issues/11](https://github.com/liberapay/liberapay.org/issues/11)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> Apparently due to a single "controversial user": [https://medium.com/liberapay-blog/the-first-year-of- liberapa...](https://medium.com/liberapay-blog/the-first-year-of- liberapay-e57a3e08a662)

Although I can't figure out who. Possibly [https://www.byline.com/column/58/article/1409](https://www.byline.com/column/58/article/1409) ?

<comment><USER7> No. That's an old article. Different event. Perhaps same problem, but there's no evidence I've seen to support that yet.

</comment></comment><comment> ur-whale A small business being at the mercy of random payment providers is yet another demonstration that there is a fundamental social need as well as a strong market demand for decentralized payment systems like Bitcoin.

<comment><USER8> I would rather see a nationalized service, maybe offered through postal banking, for fee-free instant money transfer. Banking, for such basic purposes, should be treated as a utility. It isn't sexy, it isn't flash, it's roads for money. Nothing more.

<comment> ur-whale > I would rather see a nationalized service

And how is that going to help with the OP problem, I wonder?

Gov't says your business ain't what we like, payment can't happen, business is dead.

<comment><USER9> Interestingly, a state monopoly could actually be more tolerant on some types of business, because of the legalities associated. As an arm of the state, it's subject to the state's obligations for equal access and service.

If their policies were anything less than "we support any legal business", they'd be spending decades in the courts.

Conversely, a lot of private payment processors are beholden to the tastes of their clients and investors. Even if you have all the right metrics and tech about fraud, chargebacks, customer satisfaction, see how many processors close their doors if you say you're selling rifles or porn.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> I guess their payment processor got sick of handling thousand of tiny payment and gave them a random excuse to boot them out asap.

<comment><USER11> > _Mangopay hasn't provided a detailed explanation of their decision, so we're > not sure. We've tried to understand their concerns, they seemed related to > the fact that Liberapay is open to everyone_

Likelier: Liberapay's KYC was insufficient.

Mangopay probably received a call from the regulator, and they realized that they could not ensure that Liberapay was not (unwittingly) letting people launder money or finance terrorism.

The AML/CFT requirements that would have needed to be applied by Liberapay to all its users would probably have caused such friction that they would have grown much slower, however.

<comment><USER10> It is also a strong possibility but wouldn't Mangopay would have given some time for Librapay to adapt to the regulation ?

The fact that they stop the contract so soon without previous warning (unless Librapay is not disclosing everything) is what make it really weird for me.

<comment><USER12> > It is also a strong possibility but wouldn't Mangopay would have given some > time for Librapay to adapt to the regulation ?

No anti-money laundering law doesn't work that way

> The fact that they stop the contract so soon without previous warning > (unless Librapay is not disclosing everything) is what make it really weird > for me.

That is completely normal (in fact giving notice is pretty lenient), if a financial institution suspects you of money laundering weird things will begin to happen to you such as freezes, orders being ignored, surprise account closures, etc. You will under no circumstances receive an explanation as that in itself is a serious criminal offense because it is considered to be helpful to money launderers when you explain to them what they did that aroused suspicion.

Note to readers: if weird things start happening to your bank account (delayed or ignored payments, logouts, etc) get on the phone to the bank and be as helpful to them as you can be. That is typically the only way to get this resolved.

<comment><USER13> With apparently 13 k€ per month processed, how much could they launder?

No harm would have been done by giving them a few months grace period.

<comment><USER11> The amount is irrelevant.

Financing Nazis is illegal, especially in France, which had a bit of an economic setback about sixty years ago because of them. Oh, and a lot of death and suffering.

[https://github.com/liberapay/liberapay.org/issues/11](https://github.com/liberapay/liberapay.org/issues/11)

<comment><USER14> That thread is not about money laundering, and it's two years old.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> So a donation site with practically no AML/KYC/CTF procedures got shut down by their regulation-bound payment processor?

<comment><USER14> No, they require your personal information according to the KYC rules defined by MangoPay: [https://docs.mangopay.com/guide/kyc](https://docs.mangopay.com/guide/kyc)

As a small-time donor, I had to give them the info listed there under "Light Authentification". People who give or receive more have to submit copies of their passport or governmental ID .

<comment><USER7> Thank you for actual data.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> Edit: Strike this, I opened two tabs and read the wrong one :)

The article is dated February 2017, I didn't notice before "In 2017 we're going to keep improving Liberapay." near the end. According to their frontpage today, 462 new donations were started in the past month (totaling €350/week). The headline seems misleading.

<comment><USER17> This article is dated `2018-07-12T21:09:44.399Z`

<comment><USER16> Weird, I landed on "The First Year of Liberapay" [0], not sure if the link was edited or I _somehow_ misclicked..

Edit: my bad, I opened the link from a comment..

[0] [https://medium.com/liberapay-blog/the-first-year-of- liberapa...](https://medium.com/liberapay-blog/the-first-year-of- liberapay-e57a3e08a662)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER18> Dear Medium,

Can you stop pressuring me to register when I open a link to you? I closed the tab without reading the article, and soon you'll piss me off enough that i'll remember to not open medium links...

<comment><USER7> Dear nottorp,

Can you please fight this battle elsewhere and keep your comments on topic? I know it's irritating. I agree. Just not the right place in my opinion. I came here looking for comments on the article.

Thanks,

<comment><USER18> Where? On Medium? I don't read the site unless it's linked to on HN...</comment></comment></comment>


Ain't It Time To Say Goodbye To Angie's List? - <AUTHOR> http://www.forbes.com/sites/greatspeculations/2013/09/10/aint-it-time-to-say-goodbye-to-angies-list/

<comment><USER2> Whenever I read a negative review like this, I wonder whether the author took an advance short position in the company he's reviewing. It's legal -- it doesn't count as insider trading -- but it's a bit shady if true.

It's not that uncommon. It's the opposite of "pump and dump", but it has the same outcome -- those in the know benefit at the expense of naive investors.

This isn't to say the review is wrong -- it seems to be right -- but if the author has a short position, that fact might color readers' thinking.

Just speculation -- I don't know if any of this is actually so.</comment>


Ask HN: What are you using as game server and Why? - <AUTHOR>

Hi, I am seeking a game server that will scale up to millions of online multiplayer users. All commercial and/or free software alternatives are welcome. PS: I am using Reddwarf server, it lacks of documentation and multiple node. <comment><USER2> Node.js will be a lightweight solution for you.</comment>


Studying the effects of interruption on motivation - <AUTHOR> https://www.bbc.com/worklife/article/20191205-how-to-conquer-work-paralysis-like-ernest-hemingway <comment><USER3> Huh - turns out this is quite a pointed description of something I think I already subconsciously tried to achieve for some time without being really able to define it.

I usually try to build quite extensive documentation and task trackers for every project I am attempting. Now that I read this article I think a lot of it is indeed the feeling of knowing what to do next immediately after an arbitrarily long break and preventing the feeling of being "finished" just because I completed one feature/subtask.

Certainly worth trying to optimize for what the article is describing - <USER2> anyone has experience with this in a more general fashion (writing is a very unique thing IMO) or regarding software projects?

<comment><USER4> I get this natural high when I find a breakthrough in a problem. My brain gets amped up and I literally can't focus and finish because of the buzzing sensation. I know it's my cue to get up from my desk and take a walk, usually a 10 to 20 minute walk until my brain settles down.

So having had this happen so much I've come up with an analogy. I love riding my bike and where I live it's really hilly. The best part about hills in this case is that fits the stopping when the going gets good: I change gears when I first climb a hill, making it easier to climb; once I'm close to the top the consistent effort I put into hill climbing pays off. This is where I get to stop pedalling.

Likewise, when working once the answer is there before you, stop, take a break and let your brain coast as it rewards itself with sweet dopamine for doing a good job.

To continue with the analogy, finishing a hard problem is like letting the potential gravitational energy do the work for you. It gives you chance to recuperate and focus on the next hill in front of you.

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> > The best way is always to stop when you are going good and when you know > what will happen next. If you do that every day when you are writing a > novel, you will never be stuck.

This is always hard. When things are going well (in flow, on a roll etc.) you want to continue and get it all out. When you get stuck in writing, programming or anything, taking a break seems to make sense after a few moments of toil.

<comment><USER6> Yes and besides things happen during the next day, that doesn't mean you'll want to get going again, regardless of how good of a state you left progress in.

<comment><USER7> Maybe it's like anything else... to get into an activity you have to get some quick wins scaffolding. So you set it up from your previous day but not something insurmountable. But the same could be true if you were just starting on a new problem. A large reward/effort ratio motivates you to see what else you can get. And that's true regardless of whether you were the one who set up the problem the day before.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> In a somewhat similar fashion, I often try to leave a failing test when I take a break. It makes it easy to get back into the code when you come back. You have a well defined problem that is easy to inspect. You also have a feeling of a lack of closure. It's easier to think to yourself, "Well, I'll just get this code working" and once that happens you'll have gotten into the flow. If you leave all your tests passing, when you come back from your break you have to decide what's next and then push yourself over the energy hump to actually do it.

</comment><comment><USER9> I was just reading about programmer's block / writer's block. This Quora answer [https://www.quora.com/Do-programmers-suffer-from-Writers- Blo...](https://www.quora.com/Do-programmers-suffer-from-Writers-Block-while- coding) gives a few helpful tips such as just write some functions to get you going and get the program to show output as quickly as possible (hello world, failing unit tests, whatever). Stopping when you've done the hard work of figuring out what to do next seems like a good technique as well. I don't think you should interrupt yourself mid-task though vs. pausing when you're ready for the next logical piece.</comment>


The Secret to Raising Smart Kids - <AUTHOR> http://www.sciam.com/article.cfm?id=the-secret-to-raising-smart-kids

<comment><USER3> I was always told I was smart when I was a kid, and very little focus was put on seeing things through or being a hard worker (other than conceptually).

Anecdote in support of the article's hypothesis: I'm blabbing about myself instead of working on a cool idea I had this morning. Sigh.

<comment><USER4> I was always told I was smart too ... and compared to my sister -- look at how hard she works! (I found out as an adult that she was always compared to me -- look at your brother, he is really smart! Now isn't that screwed up?). I was also exposed to enough kung-fu movies as a kid. You _never_ see the "this guy has kung-fu because he is talented/lucky/athletic", and you always see "this guy has kung-fu because he perservered in his training". "Kung-fu" doesn't mean "generic martial arts", the way it is used in America. It means "skill accumulated over time". Even though there are American cultural overlays on top of the movies, Kung-fu Panda and Forbidden Kingdom, this "kung-fu" cultural value shines through. In each, the main characters has no kung, has no fu, and ends up with some.

My habit of procastination comes directly from "being smart". I've been able to do well on tests because during the test, I get this intense focus to do well within a time limit. Doing things at the last minute gave me the same kind of rush. If I did well, it validated that part of the ego. I was even aware of it, felt a bit silly, and went ahead and did it anyways.

I did find some ways to retrain this. I still procastinate, but I've been managing to get coding done -- I'm applying to YC Winter '09 with a prototype I've got up live two weeks ago. Here are some of the things I've tried:

(1) The most difficult part was taking action after making a decision. This is probably the biggest block ... you can _think_ that you need to retrain your mind, or to get a "growth mindset", and your mind has been trained to think that as long as you think it, everything is OK. It isn't. As lame as it sounds, some of Anthony Robbin's "Personal Power" tapes work well. You start by doing some little things that you've been putting off, anything from taking out the garbage to even downloading the tools you need to get started on writing a prototype. The key is taking the action as soon as you instantiate the decision. The more you do that, the more your mind gets used to it.

(2) "Invest in loss". This is something that a martial arts teacher (Cheng-man Ching) said often. As it applies to fixed mind-set vs. growth mind-set, it means assuming that you already suck going into something. Over the past four or five years, my friends and I invite people out to our training group. We see a lot of newbies. No matter how physically talented you are, without training, you suck. There is no beginner's luck. Having some experience, I can feel when people get agitated by their suckage. They don't want to play anymore because it violates their image of themselves.

It takes some work, but it is doable -- you can learn to be comfortable with the uncomfortable feeling that you are not very skilled. It doesn't require you to go to some sort of martial arts bootcamp, it does require you to get your body moving ... which comes back to the first thing about taking action after making a decision.

(3) There are times when I get stuck during coding. Sometimes I need to refactor something, but I really don't want to do it. Sometimes I come across a choice between two architectural decisions. My habit is to stare at the screen trying to figure out the best way to proceed forward. I've noticed that it easily leads to distractions.

One of the key thing that appears in all forms of martial arts and fighting systems is the idea of slipping off the line of attack. Mentally, when I come up against a challenge, it feels like an obstacle in front of me. I want to go forward, but this annoying issue keeps coming up. I stop being able to see the vision -- that sense of awesomeness of the overall idea -- and trying to beat my way through it is painful. Even with the idea of "try harder", it is painful. What you want to do is slip off to the side, like dodging in side- scroller while continuing to go forward.

One way particular to my own martial arts training is to walk around in a circle while thinking of the problem domain, and then changing direction and going the opposite way. It is weird, but it always makes me feel confident enough to keep working, albeit from a different direction.

(4) Meditation. A simple practice of breathing and awareness. There's not much to it, but it clears the mind of baggage so you can move forward.

(5) Josh Waitzkin's book, Art of Learning has a lot more tips.

<comment><USER5> That explains why I love the training sections of kung fu movies so much.

 _achievement through great effort_ <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kung_fu_>(term)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> One of the reasons why, looking back, I appreciate going to engineering at UofT, which is very academically focused. I was taken several notches down from being a 'smart kid' in HS to 'average' in Uni, which I noticed was due to my work ethic, since I wasn't significantly smarter or dumber than most people.

One of the things I remember from the very beginning of first year is professors saying how engineering was good because after 4 years you'd learn enough to get a junior position and actually start learning. I thought they were just screwing with us frosh, but after 4 tough years, I saw how right they were and I realized that I really learned two things:

1) how to learn

2) that I know nothing.

In addition to the work and learning over innate smarts mindset, it is also good to know what kind of environment you need to actually learn and excel. Some people might have enough curiosity and work ethic to learn and do a lot while left to their own devices, whereas other people might need to be an environment where they're being pushed.

<comment><USER7> The best thing that happened to me in college was almost failing a freshmen physics test, despite having felt I was prepared for it. After getting that grade, I worked nonstop nearly every waking moment.

I ended up getting an A- in the class, even though that test was at least 15% of the final grade. More importantly, I learned that if I want to do well, I needed to work hard.

</comment></comment><comment><USER8> I agree with the kid.

School is supposed to teach you things. The important part is _whether you learn those things_ , not whether you are willing to demonstrate repeatedly, ad nauseam that you have already (and usually long ago) learned those things. I was the kid in the example; I excelled on tests, and continue to, through a combination of basic common sense and having actuallyunderstood the subject matter, and found my own uses for it, outside of the curriculum.

When you can understand, and apply, concepts just by reading the textbook (or the appropriate Wikipedia article), this obviates the need for both teachers, lessons and homework. Those in power like that even less than the teachers themselves, and created the No Child Left Ahead act to "fix" this.

<comment><USER9> Actually, you seem to disagree with Jonathan. From TFA:

 _As we had predicted, the students with a growth mind-set felt that learning was a more important goal in school than getting good grades. In addition, they held hard work in high regard, believing that the more you labored at something, the better you would become at it. They understood that even geniuses have to work hard for their great accomplishments. Confronted by a setback such as a disappointing test grade, students with a growth mind-set said they would study harder or try a different strategy for mastering the material._

 _The students who held a fixed mind-set, however, were concerned about looking smart with little regard for learning. They had negative views of effort, believing that having to work hard at something was a sign of low ability. They thought that a person with talent or intelligence did not need to work hard to do well. Attributing a bad grade to their own lack of ability, those with a fixed mind-set said that they would study less in the future, try never to take that subject again and consider cheating on future tests._

<comment><USER8> Odd; I suppose I'm of neither of those mindsets particularly. I studied when I was bad at something, but I _didn't_ study, and in fact specifically underachieved, when I already was sure (through practical usage) of my own knowledge in the subject. I suppose I'm of the growth mindset, but just really lazy.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> Totally agree on the growth mindset.

"Live like you were going to die tomorrow.

Learn like you were going to live forever."

<comment><USER10> It's deeply irrational to live like you're going to die tomorrow unless you actually are.

If you have a bunch of money in stocks and savings, and no dependents, and you are going to die tomorrow, then it's rational to cash that all out and spend it in the most pleasurable way you can. (Or, if possible, spend it on figuring out a way out of my 24-hour countdown predicament!)

The "die tomorrow" applause light has got to be put out. Please. It's just a silly thing to say. It's not death that makes life special; it's life that makes death tragic.

<comment><USER4> "If you have a bunch of money in stocks and savings, and no dependents, and you are going to die tomorrow, then it's rational to cash that all out and spend it in the most pleasurable way you can. (Or, if possible, spend it on figuring out a way out of my 24-hour countdown predicament!)"

That isn't any more rational than assuming that you're going to die tomorrow or live forever. Those are simply choices, rational or not.

Life is a part of death, death is a part of life. Breathing in means breathing out. Eating food means taking a dump. Being born means growing old. Imagining that you're going to die tomorrow isn't meant to make your life more special. It is used to invoke fear of death which in turns focuses you on the here-and- now (usually by triggering andrenaline). If you can become present in the moment without invoking fear of death, then by all means do so. Presence of mind lets you act powerfully; even mindless people react to someone with a powerful presence (>cough<Steve Jobs>cough<). It is worth cultivating and learning how to trigger at-will.

It is not "silly".

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> <http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=84655>

<comment><USER12> I missed the first post so this is a worthwhile re-post.

<comment><USER13> _I missed the first post_

<http://www.google.com/search?q=site%3Anews.ycombinator.com>

<comment><USER14> I don't tend to Google for articles and sites I don't know exist.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> Yes, Dweck's work is pretty cool.

I wrote something (with a cool graph by Holmes) about this a while ago:

[http://michaelgr.com/2007/04/15/fixed-mindset-vs-growth- mind...](http://michaelgr.com/2007/04/15/fixed-mindset-vs-growth-mindset- which-one-are-you/)

Still gets the most hits on my site after over a year..

</comment><comment><USER16> I have already seen this post before. I am glad it was re posted since every time I ready it, it allows me to reflect on this.

</comment><comment><USER17> [http://www.metafilter.com/58583/Youre-so-smart-you- probably-...](http://www.metafilter.com/58583/Youre-so-smart-you-probably- think-this-post-is-about-you)

Similar story by same author with some interesting comments from the blue.

</comment><comment><USER18> article mentions 'learned helplessness'. read Singer's 'Writings on an Ethical Life' for some background on this or have a look at a Google search result - <http://www.nybooks.com/articles/2768> Basically, random electrical shocks to dogs induce a state of 'learned helplessness' or in everyday speak - <USER2> pyschological collapse during a particularly cruel expt.

</comment><comment><USER19> This was also in New York Magazine and posted here quite a while ago. Great article though.</comment>


Ask HN: Should I incorporate as an S-Corp in California? - <AUTHOR> I recently quit my day job in preparations to launch a start up.
Aside from the income I made at my job during this fiscal year, I generated a considerable income from a few cryptocurrency investments I made in the past year. Consequently I have enough capital to start up, but also have a hefty tax bill coming up. To avoid this I am thinking of incorporating as either an S-Corp or sole proprietorship, so that I can deduct my taxes as a part of the capital investment I make in the start up.
I can either incorporate in Delaware or in California (where I currently reside). I've read that if your company is to do any form of business in California (or any other state for that matter) you would have to incorporate in (that state) California. This would be double the work if you incorporate in Delaware to begin with.
My idea is in the gig economy space (think something like Instacart), where I plan to launch exclusively in San Francisco to test the idea/MVP. Given this I would presume that the best path for a start up like mine (i.e operating with independent contractors in California) would be to register an S-Corp or sole proprietorship in the state of California. Are my assumptions here correct? Or is there something I'm completely overlooking?
Thanks for taking the time to read till here. <comment><USER2> I recommend speaking with an accountant familiar with these matters. I am not one.

Generally an S-corp is a pass through entity (LLC's are similar). This means that profits (both cash and increases in the book value of the company) are not taxed at the corporate level and instead distributed to the the shareholders (either in cash or as the increased value of their shares). Because LLC's provide greater flexibility in terms of salaries and operating procedures, they are generally more common than S-corps for new businesses.

The difference between an S-corp and a C-corp (usually incorporated in Delaware) is that profits are taxed at the corporate level rather than being passed through to the individual shareholders. Cash profits may be distributed as dividends to the shareholders, however, the dividends will be taxed for each individual receiving them. This is what is often called 'double taxation'.

An S-corp/LLC and C-corps are different types of financial instrument. An S-corp/LLC primarily provides returns to shareholders via annual/quarterly cash flows. A C-corp primarily provides returns in the form of capital gains...i.e. by increasing the value of the equity (raising the share price).

The lower tax rate for capital gains versus ordinary income and the growth that deferred tax liability provides (equity is not taxed until it is sold) are among the reason C-corps are attractive to passive investors such as Venture Capital.

Again, talk to an accountant.

Good luck.

<comment><AUTHOR> Thank you for the elaborate response.</comment></comment>


Understanding the limits of deep learning - <AUTHOR> https://venturebeat.com/2017/04/02/understanding-the-limits-of-deep-learning/?bt_ee=7bJKHFhojAf2EimIBUvSCuWSMj7iPVOT9MdUg80VVcnyipMb0sYJ5QHosr/XieAd&bt_ts=1491492924657 <comment><USER2> I find the adversarial network examples very illuminating in showing just how different these dnn's function differently than our own brains (and how they are thus likely rather far off from generalized intelligence). These systems are still relying heavily on low-level coincidences for classification rather than more durably high-level generalizations. Kind of an overfitting of the lowest layer. Or something..

</comment><comment><USER3> Interesting read, thank you :)</comment>


Background Checks For All With BeenVerified's iPhone App - <AUTHOR> http://www.techcrunch.com/2009/12/22/background-check-iphone-app/?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=feed&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+Techcrunch+(TechCrunch)&utm_content=My+Yahoo

<comment><USER2> Head about this startup for a while. Seems like they've done a few "pivots" in their time.</comment>


Show HN: 123D Catch by AutoDesk – Create 3D scans of virtually any object - <AUTHOR> http://www.123dapp.com/catch

<comment><USER2> There's documentation of a method to achieve the same thing using free-ish software here: [http://wedidstuff.heavyimage.com/index.php/2013/07/12/open-s...](http://wedidstuff.heavyimage.com/index.php/2013/07/12/open- source-photogrammetry-workflow/)

Principally it uses VisualSFM and Meshlab, both of which came to life as testbeds for algorithm research but are now useful in their own right. By all accounts 123D Catch does an excellent job, but is quite rigid in its workflow. Apparently it uses the engine from Acute3D's considerably more expensive Smart3DCapture.

Sadly neither VisualSFM or 123D Catch are usable for commercial work because of license and copyright problems respectively.

<comment><USER3> Try insight3D(dng), it's AGPL!

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> So this came out a few years ago [1] and then it seemed like it just disappeared. This is the second or third thing I have seen on this in just a few days.

What happened in the interim?

[1] [http://blog.123dapp.com/2011/12/3d-scanning-for- posterity](http://blog.123dapp.com/2011/12/3d-scanning-for-posterity)

<comment><USER5> The Android version was released recently, September 9, 2014.

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> Just FYI, You must create account to have an imageset processed. This looks like it is happening server-side, so I suppose there's a reason for it.

Cleverly enough, it doesn't prompt you to do so until after you've taken the 10-20-however-many pictures of your object. I suspect this would make a hell of a difference over a login screen upon launch or capture.

<comment><USER7> They also publicly display everything you do with it.

</comment></comment><comment><USER8> Having worked with this kind of software solutions since the ninties I must say that you should really instead look into the software Photoscan from russian Agisoft (www.agisoft.ru) it's alot more flexible and is very cheap ($129 usd)

This was called "Photo Fly" before when it was a "Autodesks Labs project" and I belive the tech originates from when autodesk bought the french software company RealViz that made the software Photomodeler.

<comment><USER9> Photomodeler was excellent before Autodesk bought it.

</comment></comment><comment><USER10> Is this really a Show HN? Did you make this?

</comment><comment><USER11> Autodesk's 123D Catch has been available since 2012. This is just the phone app interface. All the real work is done on Autodesk servers.

It's reasonably good if you take an organized set of pictures for it. A clean background behind the object of interest helps. The object has to have lots of edges for the algorithm to match; sculptured surfaces like cars may not match well. For some purposes, projecting a pattern of dots or lines onto the object is helpful. (The original Kinect did something similar).

Programs for this have been around for years. Most of the improvements have been in doing a better job of guessing about areas where matching edge info isn't available.

</comment><comment><USER12> If you're looking for the professional, desktop based version of this software, it's called Project Momento and is currently in beta

[https://beta.autodesk.com/callout/?callid=D69655022B4F42C880...](https://beta.autodesk.com/callout/?callid=D69655022B4F42C880513D4E3085C7D0)

</comment><comment><USER13> It makes me think of the "fabled" (if you will) copy machine, where you basically xerox a physical object. Obviously it's more complex than this, but it's exciting to think about where the 3D model and 3D printing industries are headed, and specifically with development of their intersection

<comment><USER14> Check out the AIO Zeus: [http://www.zeus.aiorobotics.com/](http://www.zeus.aiorobotics.com/)

</comment></comment><comment><USER15> Is it similar to what Seene is offering? It doesn't do full scale 3D but close. [http://seene.co/](http://seene.co/)

</comment><comment><USER16> FWIW this is a pretty cool app. Makes for an interesting way to generate 3D models of things without any training in using CAD or modelling tools.

</comment><comment><USER17> everytime i glance at 3d software i have waking nghtmares on the state of spreadsheets and text editors in the 80s and 90s.

everyone praise every shenangan. companies couldnt care less about integration and dat portability, etc.

<comment><USER2> It's not great but it is slowly getting better as the big studios open-source their inhouse formats - Disney, Sony Imageworks and ILM are all doing so and Alembic, OpenVDB, OpenSubdiv, OpenEXR, and Ptex are all widely supported now. The process of opening up things people are already using seems to be working out much better than previous committee- or vendor- driven efforts like FBX, X3D or AAF...

That said, I spent yesterday trying to figure out how to get Leica laser scan data into Houdini, and the only way is to convert to ASCII CSV, so we've got a way to go. Text files are great for debugging, but when you've got 300 million points you pine for the I/O speed of a binary format :/

</comment></comment><comment><USER18> how long should i expect to wait? i've been waiting >90 minutes already

<comment><USER19> Seconded. It might be a 24 hour pool for free users. Maybe not?

Anyone know?</comment></comment>