Some studies show an association between the herpes virus and Alzheimer's - <AUTHOR> http://theconversation.com/alzheimers-disease-mounting-evidence-that-herpes-virus-is-a-cause-104943 <comment><USER2> A good overview of different hypotheses for Alzheimer's was published in Nature a couple months ago [1]. I recommend reading this before jumping on the latest HN theory. This article includes evidence for and against HSV.

[1] [https://www.nature.com/articles/d41586-018-05719-4](https://www.nature.com/articles/d41586-018-05719-4)

</comment><comment><USER3> This is probably why methylene blue works so well to treat it.

See [http://journals.sagepub.com/doi/abs/10.3181/00379727-161-405...](http://journals.sagepub.com/doi/abs/10.3181/00379727-161-40521?journalCode=ebma) and [http://taurx.com/phase-3.html](http://taurx.com/phase-3.html)

<comment><USER4> they seem to be describing some protocol also involving light? I assume you can't just drink the stuff?

<comment><USER5> I'm pretty confident my 'home chemistry set' included something by that name back in the late 80s. One of the experiments I remember is drinking some of it in order to render my pee blue.

<comment><USER4> have you acquired super powers, and or become an evil villain since?

<comment><USER5> Some people would probably claim the latter. The blue pee was temporary, and mildly disappointing from what I remember. But I'm assuming it's reasonably safe if it's included in chemistry sets...then again, mine also had mercury in it..

<comment><USER6> So the chemistry set encouraged consuming some of the chemicals and also contained mercury? How times have changed...

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> My former neurology teacher was working on finding a genetic model that could predict Alzheimer's. They said that work was going well. However they were also finding strong evidence for these infection models. which seems to contradict their work. The disease couldn't be both hereditary and infectious. Their answer were that possible we were looking at at least two different diseases that just so happened to attack the same neurons, and hence produce the same symptoms.

<comment><USER8> > The disease couldn't be both hereditary and infectious.

Why not? Why couldn't "proneness to infection" be hereditary, and the actual infection completing the disease mechanism?

<comment><USER4> or the way you respond to the infection could be genetic.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> >Excitingly, successful prevention of Alzheimer's disease by use of specific anti-herpes agents has now been demonstrated in a large-scale population study in Taiwan.

So why isn't that a standard treatment now? The abstracts of both studies indicate they were looking at existing antiherpetic treatments.

<comment><USER10> Because internet news spreads quicker than doctor gossip? Since the side- effects with some of the antiviral drugs are almost negligible, you can just but those and try :)

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> I know I have herpes simplex 1, it has a few times manifest itself as pinkeye or cold sores in times of stress for me. Is it possible I could get acyclovir or some other anti-viral prescribed? Or is it only used when the virus is not dormant? Is there any thing you can take long term to reduce the viral load, or eliminate it?

<comment><USER11> The occurence of HSV-1 and HSV-2 together is around 90% of the population. The occurrence of alzheimer's is insignificant compared to that. So, clearly just having hsv doesn't mean you're going to get alzheimer's. Ideally you'd be able to test for the presence of risk factors before taking a preventative drug (with potential side effects) for the rest of your life.

<comment><USER4> yes, I understand, but I would also like to not have the entire lining of my mouth and tongue obliterated for 3 weeks again. :D

also I wonder if the fact that I'm actually experience outbreaks every now and then might imply I'm more at risk.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> I've seen an assertion that brain surgeons have seven times the risk of developing Alzheimer's as other surgeons (although I can't seem to find it now). If true, that would support an infection hypothesis, though not necessarily implicating HSV.

Valacyclovir is cheap and safe enough that it could be given "on spec", to a very large number of people at risk. If it works, it works.

One might interpret the delay in acting on the infectious hypothesis here as a result of the overwhelming majority of Alzheimer's researchers having no experience with virology. What should you do when you discover you have spent your career on something that turns out to have nothing to do with the cause of the disease you have studied? Probably not try to become a virologist. The most nimble must be casting about for other topics in brain microanatomy and gene expression.

In ten years we might see a flowering of other results as they turn their attention away from Alzheimer's to topics that had been neglected.

<comment><USER12> Aha:

[https://www.npr.org/sections/health- shots/2018/09/09/6456291...](https://www.npr.org/sections/health- shots/2018/09/09/645629133/infectious-theory-of-alzheimers-disease-draws- fresh-interest)

"Correction: Sept. 13, 2018

The initial version of this article overstated the rate at which neurosurgeons and spouses of Alzheimer's patients develop the dementia. The risk is nearly 2 1/2 times greater for neurosurgeons, not sevenfold, and 1.6 times higher for spouses, not six times greater. On Sept. 18, the article was changed to say that the risk for neurosurgeons was a comparison with the general population, not other causes of death for the doctors."

</comment></comment><comment><USER13> A bit off tangent but I never understood why there is a vaccine for herpes zoster (shingles/chicken pox) but not HSV1/2? Are the two viruses that different?

</comment><comment><USER14> Previously on HN:.

\- Alzheimer's caused by dirty air. [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=18230932](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=18230932)

\- Alzheimer's caused by lack of sleep.

[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=18228627](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=18228627)

There's mounting evidence that "health news" is neither healthy nor news.

<comment><USER15> At the risk of being a cynic, patterns to date necessitate I ask:

\- Who paid for this research / article.

\- Is this cause, or simply correlation of a fair common virus?

<comment><USER16> The article is written by a member of a team that publishes a lot of articles advancing this hypothesis - heck, that's exactly what this article is about. I'm not qualified to judge the claims on-merit, but the self-serving nature of this article sets off my skepti-sense, and the fact this "major" revelation doesn't come first-published in a notable journal is the strongest hint the research (while still useful) is probably vastly overstated.

<comment><USER17> Makes it hard to judge, but there are occasions where peers refuse to believe something right up until everyone accepts it, like the cause of ulcers often being Helicobacter pylori. Peer reviewed research these days isn't always dependable either given the for pay nature of many journals. Findings with actual anti-virals changing the brain function of people with Alzheimers would go a long way to showing the connection. That there is an inheritable connection to the disease is fairly well understood so that so that would make it more likely to get the disease wouldn't be much of a shock.

<comment><USER18> The story of what causes ulcers is truly crazy. Sounds like something from decades ago. Hard to believe we were that stubborn.

And that is a full field of hard working individuals. I'm almost scared to think what my own biases are. I wish there was a solid framework to approach them, since I think most are basically invisible to the holder.

<comment><USER19> Well knowing they exist (and affect intelligent, thoughtful people, too) is surely half the battle.

I guess Charlie Munger wrote about the kind of thing you're looking for in 'Psychology of Human Misjudgement'.

But then I heard him interviewed on Chinese TV recently, and he seemed to be displaying some huge misunderstandings on human genetics and intelligence, and making what I consider basic reasoning errors. Perhaps he didn't feel like applying his knowledge of cognitive biases to this area.

<comment><USER18> I think the glib answer is that that is science. It is the best we have at making sure we don't stay stuck on biases. It is just frustrating, because it would be nice for the answer to be immune from the thing it protects us from.

That is, I would much prefer if science was immune to bias. Evidence is quite clear that nothing is free of bias, though.</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment>


My uncle and heroin: 'What surprises me most – you have no teeth' - <AUTHOR> http://www.theguardian.com/society/2016/mar/10/my-uncle-and-heroin <comment><USER2> I found the writing style too hard to follow.</comment>


Ask HN: How does a minimap help you with programming? - <AUTHOR> Until recently, I used IDEs that did not have a minimap by default.<p>Now, I do more and more work with VSCode and I am not sure whether I like the minimap or not. Does it help you with software development tasks? If so, how? <comment><USER2> It's a gimmick. First thing I do when installing Sublime Text or VS Code is turning it off.

</comment><comment><USER3> I mainly use it as the vertical scrollbar when coding. However, I do find it useful if I'm going through log files or files that have blocks of "shapes" formed by the text. It makes it easier to scroll down to the relevant section.</comment>


Ask HN: Why do I constantly unlearn the most useful lessons? - <AUTHOR>

An example for a lesson i've paid very much learning is that problems disappear when enough light shines on them, meaning, focusing on problems instead of ignoring them makes them go away.
This is true for being overweight, having moneyproblems or relationship issues, all problems i have solved in the past just by focusing on them.
My problem is, i know this, but i still find myself stopping to check my bankaccount if i suspect that its negative, i still find myself convincing myself that my relationship will work better if i just show enough patience over the rough spots and i still catch myself thinking that gaining a little weight isn't something that deserves my attention.
How do i get myself not to fall into old habits/thought patterns over and over again? <comment><USER2> Have you looked into Zen? Zen is all about focusing on the present moment so you are fully alive.

From one of the personal development books I've read, put a rubber band around your wrist. Everytime you catch yourself thinking something that relates to an old though pattern, snap the rubber band. If the rubber band breaks, replace it.

Stop trying to improve n areas, focus on one or two areas (ideally one). The hardest areas to improve on are the ones where you have strong feelings (against improvement) or apathy (no feeling - but maybe strong feeling that nothing can be done).

Accountability is huge - just having a friend to talk to about shared goals, working on a shared project will do wonders. For example, when I was training for my first triathlon, my training buddy Craig would text or email - 'Meet up at the Y at 5:30 Thursday'. And I would say 'Sure'. Whatever happened between the intervening time period, _both_ of us would have to drag ourselves out of bed to get to the Y at 5:30 in the morning for a morning swim - otherwise, we'd be letting the other person down.

If a tree falls in a forest and no one is there, does anyone hear it? Probably no. But if you let down a buddy or a friend, they'll let you know and you'll know (so that you probably won't let it happen in the first place).

</comment><comment><USER3> Self-esteem is often the root of most cyclically self-destructive behaviors. It may be that you may know the right thing to do for any given problem, but find yourself unable to resolve them when dealing with yourself and your own happiness, health and security.

I recommend counseling for anyone struggling with repeat habits that are self- destructive or self-defeating. Simply having someone outside your circle, able to help you explore the underlying motivations and challenges can result in massive quality of life improvements in a short period of time.

</comment><comment><USER4> Assume you have little willpower, and set up if and then statements.

a) Little willpower: we react to our environment. Think you have limited willpower then act to create an envrionment which supports your good behaviors.

b) Plan using 'if then' thinking. Studies show that this conditional approach is the key to getting things done.

For example, If I see the delicious unhealthy item on sale for $5 at Store X, then I do behavior Y.

</comment><comment><USER5> A) Get burned badly enough that letting things slide "just a little" becomes a personal Taboo.

B) Surround yourself with folks who have a problem-solving orientation and are not content with "good enough". This is much harder to accomplish than A is. Such people are often social outcasts and annoying to put up with. I guess that could lead to:

C) create your own personal subculture where such annoying, socially unacceptable traits are acceptable and where there are rubrics for how to smooth things when someone says/does all those annoying things (like points out your shortcomings). This seems to be something I have accomplished with my adult sons and it's wonderful.

Peace and good luck.</comment>


Osborne unveils National Living Wage - <AUTHOR> http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-politics-33437115

<comment><USER2> Notice the hijacking of the term "living wage", rather than calling it what it is, a bump to minimum wage.

A cynical political move, and completely in character for this Conservative government.

<comment><USER3> Huh? I've encountered the term "living wage" before, used to mean a minimum wage set high enough to cover reasonable expenses, but never heard it used to mean anything else. Are you trying to say that 7.2GBP (11.06USD) isn't a living wage, or something else?

<comment><USER4> You wait 15 years, when people get upset about earning this "living wage."

<comment><USER5> I would normally be with you, but in all fairness they did commit to raising it to £9/hr by 2020, which seems reasonable to me. Of course, I would like it to be higher, but given the political climate I think the current plan is one to be happy with.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> At first, I thought this was a suggestion for a basic income (ala Utrecht - [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9817209](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9817209)). I was looking forward to another financial experiment/attempt, and from the UK, no less...

</comment><comment><USER7> £7.20 is a sick joke. Perhaps the punchline should be that MPs be paid this "living wage" with no expense allowances (because few of us get chauffeured around for free).

They might set it to something sensible then.

<comment><USER8> Considering that the wage is generally reserved for unskilled labor perhaps it might be relevant for some MPs.

Snark aside, there are many benefits most who have jobs in this range qualify for which does push their net higher. The idea is that you don't remain at entry level wages across your entire career. The problem is, no one really expected the number of people who are willing to do so if the effort is minimal and their basic (note: lower than what most of us who accept) needs are met.

Having worked in an industry where we had many minimum wage employees and scaling from there I was initially aghast at the wages. Initially, then I talked to some and was surprised that they were happy as they didn't see it as effort to get paid/etc; industry was rent-a-cop type and most were indoors and even sitting with uniform provided combined with fixed hours

<comment><USER9> When I was in college and university I worked at one of the big supermarkets. There were many 'lifers' there, usually middle-aged women who had raised a family and were bored of being at home all day. At the time the minimum wage for me was under £5 as I was under 22, but I got £6 per hour and £9 on Sunday and bank holidays - this was in a relatively cheap part of the country, I believe they paid more in London.

The benefits were also pretty good compared to what I have had in corporate life since. If you wanted to go up the ladder the company provided training schemes to get you into supervisor and management roles - I think a degree was only required for the top levels, but again they provided support for that if that's what you wanted to do.

At £9 per hour this 'living wage' works out to be a salary of £17,500. Considering as a developer in some parts of the UK £35,000 is a good salary, that seems pretty decent given this is for unskilled labour.

<comment><USER10> I have middle-aged female family members who work in a major UK supermarket, and I can tell you that conditions have deteriorated dramatically.

The supermarket in question (it starts with a W) is no longer giving full-time (39 hour) staff regular contracted hours, switching to a system where their hours changes day by day, week by week. This wreaks havoc with family life. Furthermore staff who have been there long enough to get 1.5x or double pay on Sundays are no longer being given those hours. Overtime is also now non- existent. W is even hiring and training new 17 year staff for administrative roles because it's cheaper than paying older, more experienced, _already trained_ , staff, who are contracted at a higher rate, for the hours they need them to do.

The general feeling is people who have been there for 20-30 years are simply no longer wanted and seen as cost burdens.

The supermarket industry is in a race to the bottom brought on by the likes of Lidl and Aldi

<comment><USER7> There is an argument that if you can train a 17 year old in a couple of weeks to do the job of somebody who's been there 20 years, perhaps the experience shouldn't earn them more money.

Just existing for a long time doesn't add value. You have to do more or do it better.

I'm not for a minute suggesting that these lifers aren't performing their roles better, but when you can pay 4× 17 year olds on zero-hours contracts for the price of one long-term manager, the sums become hard to ignore.

I don't think it has very much to do with Lidl and Aldi at all. Supermarkets have sucked every corner of their supply chain and workforce dry to get the most profit and biggest market share. That level of competition is going to take its toll.

It's a shame W is the one you mention though. I always thought they were more expensive _because_ they were better to their staff.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> These are not the basic incomes you are looking for.

</comment><comment><USER12> Load of bollocks.</comment>


How AI is being used in journalism - <AUTHOR> https://gengo.ai/articles/10-ways-ai-is-being-used-in-journalism/ <comment><USER2> Sockpuppet accounts and votes are forbidden here and will get the offending accounts and sites banned. So please don't do that!

<comment><USER3> Sorry about that, we're a couple of co-workers and thought we'd show some support for our content writer thinking it wouldn't make a difference at our small scale. Will not upvote in the future!:)</comment></comment>


What separates amateurs and masters - <AUTHOR> http://www.farnamstreetblog.com/2013/01/the-path-of-amateurs/

<comment><USER2> I liked this one better

The best performers observe themselves closely. They are in effect able to step outside themselves, monitor what is happening in their own minds, and ask how it's going. Researchers call this metacognition – knowledge about your own knowledge, thinking about your own thinking. Top performers do this much more systematically than others do; it's an established part of their routine.

[http://www.farnamstreetblog.com/2011/01/how-do-excellent- per...](http://www.farnamstreetblog.com/2011/01/how-do-excellent-performers- differ-from-the-average/)</comment>


Brace for Chaos If U.S. Expands Airline Laptop Ban - <AUTHOR> https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2017-05-15/brace-for-chaos-if-u-s-expands-airline-laptop-ban?cmpid=BBD051517_BIZ&utm_medium=email&utm_source=newsletter&utm_term=170515&utm_campaign=bloombergdaily <comment><USER2> [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14311073](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14311073)

[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14312210](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14312210)

</comment><comment><USER3> I think the worst part of this is the fact that there is a lot of people who have to travel with laptops with potentially sensitive data (myself included), and it is just fundamentally wrong to let the laptops get out of your sight. I can't trust that my laptop is being handled properly going across borders and potentially could be putting people at risk. Because of the nature of my work I also need to bring the confidential information of my employer with me just to debug the problem in the first place, but by the nature of my work I could have accidentally contaminated it and not realized it.

I am surprised that consulting firms haven't already gotten onto the warpath.

</comment><comment><USER4> Is the distortion of public opinion by means of the now fairly mature fields of economics, politicology and psyops how things got so bad?

What can a person do to not feel powerless in the face of this?

Did people actually believe that this was ever about drugs and terrorism? Do people still?

Can someone help enlighten me? Are there books I should be reading? Could I even learn to understand _why_ , or can I just strive to bear the weight of this pervasive madness?

I find it very hard to accept the existence and scale of these issues, to accept how insignificantly small I am compared to them. To accept I barely understand enough of them to know that they should be solved, and that solving them will be a long and painful process that I'll have little say in.

It's a very lonely and alienating experience to hold these views and opinions. I wish I knew how to express them better, so I could be understood and understand myself better.

 _In somewhat news: depression is ungood and our anchor is hitting the couch._

</comment><comment><USER5> Am I the only one who thinks that this is getting ridiculous? Sometimes in life you meet a person who is very worried about ISIS, terrorism or germs. And that's fine, and it's usually about their fear. But requiring hundreds of millions of people to re-arrange their life because you are a fearful person is where I draw the "Completely ridiculous" line.

And where is this different from: Our king woke up today, and he thinks everyone must wear red. Police and military will be deployed all over the city; those who are wearing any color but red will be arrested at gun point.

Or does that mean that for the last decades we have been flying unsafely the whole time; and somehow avoided the major catastrophes these new laws protects from?

</comment><comment><USER6> This is nuts! So this will make you:

a) Check-in luggage you want it or not.

b) Check-in your 2K€ laptop and risk it getting lost. Along with all the time required to put hardware, software and data back.

Great. I won't fly unless strictly, strictly necessary (frequent flyer here).

<comment><USER7> > Check-in your 2K€ laptop and risk it getting lost.

or stolen.

</comment></comment><comment><USER8> >"Picture a technology firm moving employees from Europe to the U.S and telling the developers in those firms they can't use laptops on airplanes,"

>Chaos

Yes total chaos I'm sure, if you can't be without your laptop for 8 hours then your company has horrible time management.

<comment><USER9> How about "you can't be without your laptop during your business travel at all"?

Who puts a laptop worth several thousands of euros in check-in luggage which gets lost, stolen and damaged all the time?

<comment><USER10> You don't. You buy a $200 beater laptop and use that for travel. Load only what is necessary to remote back into your network. Don't carry any other data on it.

If it gets stolen or searched, no loss. Just buy the cheapest thing you find at an electronics store at the destination.

My old org kept a bunch of used thinkpads for this purpose. International travelers were prohibited from taking their work devices, just a loaner and a Remote Desktop client.

<comment><USER9> Hey I have this sick idea: How about we instead let passengers carry laptops on planes?

Wouldn't that be a hell of a lot simpler?

Wait, no, you're right, it's inherently dangerous. In fact, it's so dangerous, that in the past decade during which we've let people do just that, hundreds millions of people have died (Maybe some of that was old age, but we can't be sure it's not laptop-on-plane related).

Clearly something has to change.

<comment><USER10> I don't get to control what the TSA does. I do get to control how I handle the problems they create.

<comment><USER11> > The wise man adapts himself to the world, while the fool tries to adapt the > world to himself. Therefore, all progress depends on the fool.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> I don't know if this is a good or bad call, and I don't know if it's being driven by the out of touch perspective of the current administration, or if there is some rational logic behind the decision that the public isn't a party to.

What I do know is that all of the opinions I read about the possibility of an in flight electronics ban ignore the first two questions and jump straight to the impact of lost productivity and inconvenience.

If the point were ever to be proven right, there would be instant outrage that action wasn't taken in light of the threat.

<comment><USER13> > If the point were ever to be proven right, there would be instant outrage > that action wasn't taken in light of the threat.

Possibly, but outrage is not always correct. Politicians know that there will always be some outcry no matter what they decide.

</comment></comment><comment><USER14> i don't have time to read this specific article, but in another discussion of this issue, a real threat was brought up in forcing laptops to be checked. there are non-zero occurrences of laptop fires happening on flights, but since they were with people in the cabin or in the overhead bins, they were able to be supressed. if these fires started in the luggage storage, they might have raged unchecked or created other issues. i would be surprised if airplanes don't have fire supression in the luggage compartment, but forcing the storage of laptops there seems to be asking for trouble.

</comment><comment><USER15> The current rules define large devices that must be stowed during take-off and landing as any device over 2 pounds.

If the TSA uses the large device classification in their new rules, you may be able to bring a laptop on anyways as long as it's under 2 pounds. Good luck explaining this to a TSA agent though once they start enforcing the new rules.

<comment><USER16> The current ban which is in affect limits devices based on size and is different from devices being stowed during take-off.

</comment></comment><comment><USER17> If the justification for this is that you can hide explosives in a laptop, it seems pointless when a Macbook is about as thick as an iPad. If they are going to ban anything shouldn't it be all devices over a given thickness or internal volume?

<comment><USER18> > If they are going to ban anything shouldn't it be all devices over a given > thickness or internal volume?

That would be even more complicated for TSA.

</comment></comment><comment><USER19> I wonder if the NSA is vouching for this, so they can snoop on laptops that get checked in.

</comment><comment><USER20> Fine by me. My overseas travel rate just went up. You want me to come and be at your office in the US, I already ask you to pay about double my standard rate, as well as a travel rate. This is precisely calculated on the amount of hassle I can expect to receive going from here to there, and the additional hassle I have actually working at your location instead of mine. With more of these shenanigans, my hassle will be significantly increased, so my travel rate increases as well.

</comment><comment><USER21> Probably a boon for laptop rental. And cloud storage.

<comment><USER22> It'll accelerate phablet sales. If there's only one device allowed per person on-board, might as well try to get the most done with your phone (and bluetooth keyboard).

<comment><USER23> Until those get banned.

Or the government mandates that prior to boarding, you've got to place your phone/phablet device in an EOD containment chamber along with everybody else's device, which sits in the cargo hold.

It sounds absurd, but then again most of what we have to go through now at the airport is, compared to what took place prior to 9/11.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER24> Google has good opportunity to promote Chromebooks to airlines and frequent travelers. If you use Chromebook logging into your Google account with a Chromebook provided by the airlines will mean you get all your stuff without needing to carry around a laptop.

</comment><comment><USER25> Air travel has been heaping accretions of indignities on passengers for decades without blowback. Why would this latest one be the straw to break the camel's spine?

</comment><comment><USER26> Chrome book rental service. All I got to say.

<comment><USER16> Affected airlines are already offering laptop and iPad rentals, and complementary devices for those travelling in higher classes.

</comment></comment><comment><USER27> Settle down, settle down shrieking Liberals overhyped by fake MSM news.

For a technical crowd, I'm stunned not one of you understand the root cause for this ban. But I also understand it's not your fault because you would have to read the news from the Caliphate to know what's going on.

ISIS can make or has the intent to make or is trying to make Lithium Ion battery bombs.

Exageration you say? Go research it on Youtube, you'll see. This flaw has been known for years.

Think ISIS won't do it? Believe some crazy conspiracy that ISIS is a Mossad- KGB-Thule front?

Remember that recent passenger jet in Egypt destination Moscow that ISIS blew up killing everyone on board?

I saw with my own eyes the Mujahideen on Telegram weeks before the plane crash where they posted selfies of their new bomb. It literally fits in an Plastic Orange Soda bottle.

Now if you're brave and not under surveillance and not a Muslim and you live in a Nation that respects Free Speech and you want to know the Real News, see page 30 of this pdf:

[https://azelin.files.wordpress.com/2015/09/inspire- magazine-...](https://azelin.files.wordpress.com/2015/09/inspire-magazine- issue-13.pdf)

That is Al Qaida's 2015 magazine issue with the easy DIY blueprint for how to make it.I don't recommend reading all of it, but just enough until you go "holy shit it's that easy."

I almost didn't want to post this because god forbid the wrong you-know-who ever saw it and got "Inspired", but at the same time, this is a Catch-22, a Clear and Present Danger that folks need to know is real and is out there and so we must do whatever safety counter measures are necessary to ensure ISIS can never succeed in these style of attacks.

Take ISIS at their word--they are deadly serious, it's not a joke.

So If the solution to this horror show means fly naked, so be it! Don't complain, be grateful for your privilege.

Would you rather stay alive along with your fellow passengers, or have the convenience of dicking around on your laptop?

You still can use your iPhones so it's not like you're being strapped into a straightjacket for an 8 hour flight.

<comment><USER28> This is just more security theater to ensure the easily terrorized remain compliant with the whims of law enforcement, not something that will actually make people safer.

In fact, putting a whole lot of high-capacity lithium-based batteries close together in a concentrated space that's hard to access—such as the cargo hold on an airliner on a transoceanic flight—actually seems more dangerous than having them in the passenger compartment mixed among the passengers.

But of course Daesh wouldn't possibly be able to do anything with checked luggage, they can only operate in passenger compartments. Right?</comment></comment>


Boston Dynamics says robot dogs aren't meant to harm, in wake of police lease - <AUTHOR> https://www.inverse.com/article/61205-boston-dynamics-bomb-squad-robot-dogs <comment><USER2> Honestly, even if they were using the robot dogs as attack dogs, I'm a whole lot more comfortable with robots with auditable source code (or at least an auditable training procedure) than I am with actual dogs that are basically trainable black boxes, and certainly more than I am with humans, who are trainable black boxes that can rationalise their actions with plausible deniability.

</comment><comment><USER3> Are these robot dogs networked? Skynet awakening?</comment>


The secrets of Node's success - <AUTHOR> http://radar.oreilly.com/2011/06/node-javascript-success.html?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=feed&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+oreilly%2Fjavascript+%28O%27Reilly+News%3A+Javascript%29&utm_content=Google+Reader <comment><USER2> A failing with programmers is we tend to focus on solutions rather than problems. Perhaps it's partly because, to be a good programmer, you need to immerse yourself in the code. Unfortunately, this takes your attention away from the bigger problem that the code solves.

In this article, it's interesting that though "Node solves a problem" is stressed as key to its success, compared with the many other JS server-side projects, they don't explicitly mention the problem, except obliquely at the end! (The problem is _efficiently handling massive concurrencies in network connections_.)

It's because of this short-sightedness of programmers that there will always be easy pickings available to anyone who actually looks at problem. Be a problem-person, not a solution-person.

<comment><USER3> And it doesn't define "massive" :/

I still don't see a compelling reason to use node. I think the jvm is a better choice all around.

<comment><USER4> "Massive" in this case is terribly subjective. I think the typical definition is concurrency between 10k and 50k. Whereas when we (at Urban Airship) wanted to hit 500k, the only reasonable way to do that without resorting to pure C was by using the JVM.

<comment><USER5> It depends what your clients are doing. I've written perl servers (using epoll) that can cope with 300k concurrent connections, as long as they're not all talking at once. I've written perl servers coping with 50k concurrent connections where they are all talking at once too. And v8 is MUCH faster than Perl.

<comment><USER3> And slower than the JVM

<comment><USER5> Meh, sure basic operations are always going to be slower due to lack of type information, but for most work it's going to be pretty close to the JVM in terms of I/O, database access, etc. For compute specific tasks, sure it may not be the right tool for the job.

<comment><USER3> I'll be that clojure is faster and it isn't statically typed. I have far more confidence in the JVM handling heavy load that V8 which wasn't designed as a server side technology.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> Node.js is neat, and I have contributed some things to the community, but it has a long way to go honestly if it's to be taken seriously in the performance and infrastructure realm. Articles like this don't help it's image either. It's as if a naive PHP developer suddenly discovered long-running processes, eliciting a chorus of rolling eyes from those who've written server software in the last 30 years.

Ryan and team are talented people, but they're mostly dependent on the V8 team, which is focused on building a JavaScript interpreter for a browser. Node.js/V8 has come tremendously far in the last 18 months, but still hits some particularly nasty walls when it comes to massive concurrency and managing big pools of memory in non-trivial applications. It will take some serious time for these challenges to be overcome. The JVM, Erlang/OTP, and C are particularly good platforms for this type of software because they're mature and well tested in these environments.

I really hope for the sake of the project that the hype surrounding Node.js blows over and the hipster crowd moves on.

<comment><USER7> The PHP community _is_ just now discovering long-running processes. Yesterday we made TYPO3 run on AppServer-in-PHP, and this simple setup change gave a 2-4x performance boost depending on complexity of request

</comment></comment><comment><USER8> I don't see a lot of merit to the "sharing code" idea as the purpose of server side code and client side code are completely different. There are 2 possible exceptions where I can see some use:

1) Utility libraries. I have a clone method I use a lot, an would work equally well in both environments. I'm sure math libraries would be the same way.

2) Models. _Maybe_. Personally, my server side models contain get and save methods which make database calls. I don't want or need those on the client side. If for no reason other than wasted bandwidth.

* note: I'm a node user, but I don't share any code between server and browser.

<comment><USER9> Since I compile all my CoffeeScripts into JavaScripts at node program start, code sharing is a breeze. For each file, I make a client version and a server version and use simple preprocessor lines:

#if client

#if server

#endif

for the pieces that only apply to the client side or the server side, with shared pieces staying outside these "tags". I won't go back. This is especially cool as I have a templating system that can run on the server or on the client. So for JS-enabled browsers, all HTML template rendering is done on the client by building all HTML tags out of very small simple JSON structs. For non-JS clients (spiders, bots, paranoid non-JS enterprise legacy browsers) the "pages" get fully rendered old-school by the server-side -- both sharing the same rather simple custom-made JSON-driven templating functions and producing essentially almost the same HTML output. Of course there are some added complexities going on with things like scripted onclicks, but you get the general idea. (This is mostly done for indexing spiders and human non-JS clients just simply have to put up with a limited, degraded, basic experience.)

<comment><USER10> I do it similarly. And it's the way to go ...

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> From a couple of presentations I watched and reading online, nodejs advertises that it makes writing web servers easy. Do everyday programmers actually need node or is it meant to be a niche language?

<comment><USER12> it's not a language at all. it's a library for writing server-side code in javascript. it's event driven, like python's twisted. in fact, it's hard (if you assume people are rational [edit: and have perfect access to information]) to see why people find nodejs so cool, yet have been ignoring twisted for years.

<comment><USER13> I think it was a combination of things. One, the timing was nice because JavaScript was getting more and more attention as its engines were starting to seriously compete for speed. Two, I think the fact that it was JavaScript on the server really helped get it a lot of buzz as it was somewhat "controversial". "Controversial" because I can't think of another language whose users are so split between liking and hating it. Having it invade the server meant a lot of people's blood began to boil as they thought of having to potentially deal with it outside the browser, and a lot of other people who were excited about being able to use it outside the browser. Either way, the combination of love and hate gathered a lot of talk and attention in my opinion.

Now to contrast this with python: I personally have never heard of Twisted before all the talk of Node came about. Mind you, I'm not a python developer and if someone's blog title doesn't grab my attention by having some connection to me, or what I do, I'll probably just skip over it.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> And another thing .. Buffers, which is partly down to V8's external indexed data, and node's wrapping of that in the Buffer classes which are then used by the various async. IO operations.

This means that content can flow through a node service with being touched by javascript, and without adding work to the garbage collector.

</comment><comment><USER15> The secret to Node's success? The V8 engine. ;)

<comment><USER16> But would anyone really notice if Node used WebKit's JavaScriptCore (a.k.a. "Nitro") instead?

There isn't a huge performance gap between the two engines these days... But V8 is easier to embed in C++, I think.

<comment><USER17> The js team at mozilla mentioned that they had a jagermonkey version running internally as part of a test for the embedding api updates they're working on.</comment></comment></comment>


Ask HN: How many internet-connected microphones are in the same room as you? - <AUTHOR> <comment><USER2> Previously: [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6079885](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6079885)

</comment><comment><AUTHOR> I work in a startup co-working space, with an open office plan. I estimate 400-500 connected microphones, probably about the same number of video cameras as well.</comment>


Show HN: How I build a smart SPA-shower at home - <AUTHOR> https://made2591.github.io/posts/smart-spa-shower <comment><USER2> It would help if the opening paragraph explained what this "SPA-shower" is and what makes it "smart".

Also, it's probably a "spa", no?</comment>


Same Democrats Who Denounce Trump Voted to Give Him Warrantless Spying Powers - <AUTHOR> https://theintercept.com/2018/01/12/the-same-democrats-who-denounce-trump-as-a-lawless-treasonous-authoritarian-just-voted-to-give-him-vast-warrantless-spying-powers/ <comment><USER2> I can't wait for the 'false equivalency fallacy' folks (when pointed out that the two parties are actually quite similar in actions at the end of the day) to explain this one away!

</comment><comment><USER3> It's pretty clear that Democrats enjoy mass surveillance as much as Republicans do. So why would Democrats get rid of something that they themselves could benefit from in the future when Trump exits office? Note how Obama expanded these spying powers as he left office: [https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2017/01/obama-expands- surveill...](https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2017/01/obama-expands-surveillance- powers-his-way-out)</comment>


Welcoming our new Swift 2.2 Overlords: ++ and – are deprecated - <AUTHOR> http://ericasadun.com/2016/01/26/welcoming-our-new-swift-2-2-overlords/ <comment><USER2> I would like to point out a few things: First off these are proposals to the language... They are not official. Nor do I think the community will agree with them.

Secondly Erica Sundan, has before published some code that makes use of Private API's. Confusing some when their apps where sent to apple for review. So I would not trust everything that she says.

<comment><USER3> In actual reality, if you start clicking thru Sadun's links, you'll see that SE-0001, SE-0020, and SE-0015 are already in the language as of 2.2, SE-0002 and SE-0004 are marked as "accepted", and SE-0007 is scheduled for swift 3.0</comment></comment>


Portal for Apple II - <AUTHOR> http://www.deater.net/weave/vmwprod/portal/ <comment><USER2> This comment from the creator summons such mixed emotions:

 _" 13 January 2017 (continued) For those of you suggesting I should make an assembly language version of this: I'd love to. But I'm up for tenure this coming year, so unless you have a plan for how I can either get a peer- reviewed academic paper from the work, or else some sort of federal grant, then I should probably be working on less fun projects :("_

</comment><comment><USER3> That's so awesome! It reminds me of Mari0, a Super Mario Bros. clone, but with portal guns [0]

0: [http://stabyourself.net/mari0/](http://stabyourself.net/mari0/)

</comment><comment><USER4> From the News, he says: "For those of you suggesting I should make an assembly language version of this: I'd love to" and goes on to say how he won't have time...

At the very least he might want to look into the TASC compiler, which was/is a Microsoft Applesoft compiler that makes BASIC programs run 2-20x faster than w/the on-the-fly interpreter.

[http://everything2.com/title/Microsoft+Applesoft+Compiler](http://everything2.com/title/Microsoft+Applesoft+Compiler) and of course documentation and everything else is around if you google for it.

If I remember right, it's really easy to use and results in a binary executable that just flies...

<comment><USER5> Making it run faster wouldn't make it a better game while making it worse performance art.

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> I love projects like this. I wish I had the desire to just _do_ something cool, whether or not its useful or utilitarian. Accomplishment strictly for the sake of accomplishment is pretty admirable.

<comment><USER7> I agree it doesn't have to be utilitarian to be admirable. That's called art. But you seem to be saying it's particularly admirable because it's for its own sake? That is a weird POV to me.

<comment><USER6> That's what I'm saying. I wouldn't call this art, and it certainly has no point, at least not a utilitarian one. You wouldn't make money, and it probably wouldn't even be that fun to play. It's just cool.

It's mastery. Doing something because it's a challenge you find interesting, not because there's something external to be gained. It's pretty zen, really.

<comment><USER7> _I wouldn 't call this art_

You'd be wrong then.

 _It 's pretty zen, really._

You have a very low bar for calling something "zen". I'm good at flipping bottles of mustard and such behind my back without dropping them. No point really, just fun. Zen?

<comment><USER8> When you are hungry, eat. When you are tired, sleep. This is exactly Zen.

<comment><USER9> When you are neither hungry nor tired, hack.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> I just now realized this story I'd been ignoring isn't about the game "Portal" for the Apple II. Activision published a game with that title in '86 about exploring the future internet after the death of all mankind.

<comment><USER11> The Internet Archive has that game, playable online; it appears to have originally come on six disks, which are the first six things listed (albeit not in order, but numbered) here: [https://archive.org/details/softwarelibrary_apple_games?and[...](https://archive.org/details/softwarelibrary_apple_games?and\[\]=portal)

I did also once find a web-based version of its content, which used hyperlinks between pages to simulate the transitions in the original game. Can't find it again now, though, and the only version I still have would be in the source content directory for my old conversion pipeline that fed the Plucker reader on PalmOS. If there's interest, I'll dig that stuff out of cold storage and see if I can get it up and going.

<comment><USER10> I've actually got the game in-box, that's how I remembered it. The only web- version I know of is the one based on the novelization, which is only available on internet archive now: [https://web.archive.org/web/20020424235218/http://portal.sto...](https://web.archive.org/web/20020424235218/http://portal.stodge.org/)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> Reminds me of the Macromedia flash version of Portal.

Pretty good game. [http://portal.wecreatestuff.com/](http://portal.wecreatestuff.com/)

<comment><USER13> yep, just came here to link this also.

more screenspace: [http://portal.wecreatestuff.com/Portal_wcs2.swf](http://portal.wecreatestuff.com/Portal_wcs2.swf)

</comment></comment><comment><USER14> Epic Hack! Someday, if I work real hard, I hope to be someone like you showing people my projects.

</comment><comment><USER15> The fake warez signature on the splash screen is a nice touch.

</comment><comment><USER16> See also Portal Prelude for the TI-83: [http://www.theverge.com/2012/12/4/3726536/portal-prelude- gam...](http://www.theverge.com/2012/12/4/3726536/portal-prelude-game- ti-83-84-calculator)

</comment><comment><USER17> I just uploaded a whole bunch of new Apple IIe images to Wikimedia Commons a couple of weeks ago, see for example: [https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Iie-with- manuals.jpg](https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Iie-with-manuals.jpg) [https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Iie- software.jpg](https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Iie-software.jpg) [https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Iie- system.jpg](https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Iie-system.jpg)

</comment><comment><USER18> Here is my version of a portal I wrote while teaching scratch coding to middle schoolers.

[https://scratch.mit.edu/projects/43690666/](https://scratch.mit.edu/projects/43690666/)

</comment><comment><USER19> Apple ][

Or as we called it in Germany: Apple üä

(Switching to German characters changed the ] and [ to ü and ä.)

</comment><comment><USER20> Ooo please upload to Archive.org's Apple II!

[https://archive.org/details/softwarelibrary_apple](https://archive.org/details/softwarelibrary_apple)

</comment><comment><USER21> This is awesome! I miss my Apple II...

</comment><comment><USER22> That mint condition Apple IIe Platinum made my jaw drop.

<comment><USER11> Retr0bright [1] is good for that.

[1] [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Retr0bright](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Retr0bright)

</comment></comment><comment><USER23> I like how the title screen says it's cracked by the author.

</comment><comment><USER24> I immediately went to Craigslist to search for an Apple IIe.

</comment><comment><USER25> The melody for Still Alive at the end has a differing note for "it's hard to oVER state my satisfaction". Still sounds good!

</comment><comment><USER26> One word: YES!!!!!

</comment><comment><USER27> Have not read BASIC source code since I was 12. Love it! Peek and poke ... How far we've come.

<comment><USER11> I've been working on a quine in Applesoft BASIC that calls into the system's token table in order to detokenize itself as it reads itself out of program memory. It's been a fun ride so far! And really given me a new appreciation for modern text editors, too.

</comment></comment><comment><USER28> I love this! And so interesting to be able to view the source code.

</comment><comment><USER11> This is brilliant! I can't wait to play it on my IIe at home!

</comment><comment><USER29> Hah! This is awesome.

</comment><comment><USER30> I want his time machine.</comment>


MySQL 5.1 released as GA with crashing bugs - <AUTHOR> http://monty-says.blogspot.com/2008/11/oops-we-did-it-again-mysql-51-released.html <comment><USER2> It seems that the MySQL guys are working really hard to give a lot of people the excuse they were looking for to switch over to PostgreSQL.

<comment><USER3> The MySQL people or the Sun people?

<comment><USER4> According to the article, the Sun people didn't have much to do with the GA release.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> Is GA a common acronym that I completely missed in acronym class? What does it mean?

<comment><USER6> I've always heard it as 'General Availability', essentially a synonym for the time/version of 'official release' -- no longer a beta/preview/release- candidate.

FCS, for 'First Customer Shipment', is a nearly-analogous term as far as I know, just preferred by other organizations.

(Both are very similar to the ideas of 'going gold', having a 'golden master', or 'RTM' [release-to-manufacturing] -- those meaning a final freeze of the intended release is available, and could be reproduced/'manufactured' as if on CDs or as box-packaged software. Though of course, the idea of physically pressing or shipping hard media is increasingly outdated.)

<comment><USER5> Thanks!</comment></comment></comment>


Ask YC: Prank Hacking - <AUTHOR>

This doesn't really pertain to startups, so forgive me.
So I've sort of found myself amidst a pranking war, and it's getting pretty serious, ie. finding chopped up fish and roosters at my place, etc. Revenge is the only way to go, obviously, but I'm unsure as to what should be done.
I thought that maybe this community's members might have some really clever pranks/tricks up their sleeves. I know there are many of you out there that are pretty troublesome fellows. Help out a fellow yc'er in dire need of advice. Prank hack away. <comment><USER3> I once made the mistake of making a (true but) snarky comment to a co-worker, whose boyfriend happened to be a hobby taxidermist. They decided to get me back by filling the glovebox of my car with dead squirrels (which they conveniently had in their freezer, waiting to be stuffed).

They then arranged for a local cop to pull me over, and ask for my license and registration. I opened the glovebox to dig out the registration, and a seemingly endless cascade of dead squirrels began, while I started mumbling frantically....

</comment><comment><USER4> My favorite low-cost easy-peasy make-'em-feel-stupid prank: take a screen capture of their desktop (without any windows open) and set the screen cap as the desktop background. Next, delete/hide (depending how nasty you want to go) all their desktop icons. If the taskbar is always visible, hide it too, or even better, resize it to zero pixels.

Step away from computer and find a nice vantage point to watch them click and scream at their non-responding computer.

Works a treat.

<comment><USER5> A friend of mine used to have a screenshot of winamp as his desktop. No matter how many times I used that computer to play music I'd always start by clicking on the fake winamp :p

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> Air Conditioning ducts, particularly of those with Central Air.

Get some catfish bait, a few pounds of shrimp, fart bombs, or even a few dead squirrels - all of these worked well for me in High School.

Squirrels are probably by far the best and I recommend combining them with another form of attack. Place a few pounds of shrimp in one location and throw some frozen squirrels elsewhere.

About the time the shrimp smell really gets bad (about 2 days) the squirrels will be thawed and start to rot themselves. You'll get a nice delayed attack about a week after they find the shrimp.

<comment><USER7> yuck!

</comment></comment><comment><USER8> One of my colleagues was recently welcomed back fromholiday with this addition to his cron file:

0,20,40 * * * * /usr/bin/killall -9 java

Or is that going too far?

<comment><USER9> You automatically get rid of their memory leaks every 20 minutes. That's a service, not a prank.

</comment></comment><comment><USER10> If they use a Windows computer, type the command Ctrl+Alt+DownArrow. It turns their screen upside-down. The other arrows work as well to turn the screen sideways. Not sure how familiar most people are with this though. I've always wanted to try it on someone and see how they reacted.

<comment><USER11> ahhh ... no it doesn't. perhaps with a third party monitor utility ...

<comment><USER10> It might be a Dell thing. I've only tried it on Dells and I've seen it work on a couple laptops and an older desktop. Haven't really tested this extensively though. YMMV.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> A fellow sysadmin that I used to work with did a brilliant job of pranking me by quietly changing my ksh ENV variable to another file, and then aliasing a handful of commands (like su) to some brilliant ascii art taunts. As an added bonus, if I didn't clean the mess up in a specific order, then it attempted to repair any missing bits of itself.

I didn't know about the ENV variable at the time, so it took me a few minutes to puzzle out. I cheated with a carefully crafted find command.

We used Mac workstations in that office. The Mac OS has a sort-of vulnerability where, if you can get admin access to it, you can create an invisible administrator account on the machine with ssh privileges. I always wanted to do that, and then modify the su command on our server to watch for his username, ssh back to his machine, and play the "Oh my god, they gave you ROOT?!" clip from Jeffrey Hitchins' "Tech Support".

</comment><comment><USER13> Back in my frat-boy college days, the best prank ever happened to me.

We were having a serious prank war. Then we had a dance marathon, which effectively left my room unguarded for 24 hours.

So the prankster removed all of my furniture, removed my carpet, and put my furniture back _exactly_ where it was.

<http://i28.tinypic.com/2ec17w1.jpg>

So me and my friend come back, exhausted, and walk in to no carpet. We were too tired to be pissed.

He's now working for State Farm. Soon I will save up some money to rent a billboard in Tallahassee to make fun of him.

Soon, the day will be mine.

<comment><USER14> There's a variation of this prank which requires the victim to be drunk - <USER2> a fortuitous arrangement of rooms.

A student returned to his fourth storey room in a very drunk state and fell into a comatose sleep. While he was asleep, his friends swapped the contents of his room with an identical room on the ground floor. In the morning, four people with balaclavas burst into "his" room and threw him out of the window. Of course, he thought that he was on the fourth storey and that he was going to be thrown from a great height.

</comment></comment><comment><USER15> My buddy switched someone's explorer.exe with a Mac OS 7 emulator.

It was hilarious.

</comment><comment><USER16> I heard of a guy who modified his friend's .bashrc to contain a sleep command with a variable time limit. Every time the .bashrc got run, the sleep command would run for a second longer. The first couple of times it was unnoticeable and after a few weeks he would log in, then go grab a sandwich before he could do anything. Subversive!

</comment><comment><USER17> I once read a children's book about a company - actually a startup - that was in the service business of pranks and revenges.

You can find it on Amazon ([http://www.amazon.de/Die-B%C3%A4rendienst-GmbH- Martin-Karau/...](http://www.amazon.de/Die-B%C3%A4rendienst-GmbH-Martin- Karau/dp/3357004062)) - but it is in German.

</comment><comment><USER18> Pranks are always tough, these aren't getting vindictive are they? If they are out to have fun, try photoshopping him into riske photos, tape/superglue his cubicle/something down, prank call him (impersonate some offical)...do something that gets his blood running that isn't permanent.

</comment><comment><USER19> change their keyboard setting to dvorak. make sure they don't have to type a passwd. it's more funny to watch them type gibberish and know it.

</comment><comment><USER20> route their favorite webmail client to a gay porn site (or straight, if they are gay..) through their hosts file

</comment><comment><USER21> Write a script to send him email...that looks like it came from himself. Make it say "Your security has been compromised."

Fairly simple with php or something lol

</comment><comment><USER22> Icing sugar / flour, pour into the air intake ducts of their car. (Pro Tip: They are generally at the front, just underneath the windscreen.

</comment><comment><USER23> It's easy... you break into the victim's flat, and wait just behind the door with a machete.

When the victim comes into their flat, slash violently at their neck area, several times if necessary. Make sure you're wearing cheap clothes that you're willing to burn, and have a change in a plastic bag in the bushes nearby, as well as a number of towels.

In my experience, this always stops prank wars quickly, effectively, and at a relatively low cost.

<comment><USER23> What!? Honestly, it's worked every time for me!

<comment><USER24> Your mistake was not including the fashion tip "Wear a Guy Fawkes mask".</comment></comment></comment>


"Dead Drops" is an anonymous, offline, p2p file-sharing network in public space - <AUTHOR> http://datenform.de/blog/dead-drops-preview/

<comment><USER2> Here's a more sophisticated version of a similar idea:

 _Cellular networks are centrally administered, enabling service providers and their governments to conduct system-wide monitoring and censorship of mobile communication. This paper presents HUMANETS, a fully decentralized, smartphone-to-smartphone (and hence human-to-human) message passing scheme that permits unmonitored message communication even when all cellular traffic is inspected._

 _HUMANET message routing protocols exploit human mobility patterns to significantly increase communication efficiency while limiting the exposure of messages to mobile service providers. Initial results from trace-driven simulation show that 85% of messages reach their intended destinations while using orders of magnitude less network capacity than naïve epidemic flooding techniques._

[http://www.usenix.org/event/hotsec10/tech/full_papers/Aviv.p...](http://www.usenix.org/event/hotsec10/tech/full_papers/Aviv.pdf)

<comment><USER3> I don't see the similarity, but distributed p2p systems are very interesting, especially when they involve mobile wireless communication. It's kinda sad that there is currently little use for these kind of networks. In larger cities node density could get high enough to actually create a continuous mesh network with acceptable latency and loss.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> It is a bad idea to plug untrusted hardware into your computer. Many Windows users have autorun enabled, so could be infected with malware as soon as they plug it in. This has been exploited by people pretending to run promotions and handing out infected USB drives in front of targeted businesses.

Worse than autorun, there have been buffer overflows against USB drivers and proof-of-concept exploits that allowed Firewire devices to read arbitrary physical memory through DMA access. I haven't seen this used in practice, but the risk is there. Bruce Schneier wrote about these attacks a few years ago: [http://www.schneier.com/blog/archives/2006/06/hacking_comput...](http://www.schneier.com/blog/archives/2006/06/hacking_compute.html)

If you want to go down the Ken Thompson "Trusting Trust" hardware security rabbit hole, think about who manufactured your computer.

<comment><USER5> Not even just that, but someone could rig up a USB plug that shorted out the power (or, worse, rammed 9V from a battery back up it) and cream your USB port..

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> I have thought for ages of something like this, but instead of usb drivers, a wifi box with a big harddisk. You would connect to the wireless network, open browser at 192.168.0.1 and instead of a router's page, you would get to a website, with a nice interface, where you could select the files you wanted to download or upload others.

I even did some drawing and thought of solar pannels and batteries to keep it going non-stop. What demotivated me was the fact I'm living in Brazil and normal filesharing is still much easier and non-risky...

Anyway, a wifi box like this would be much more secure if done right. A complementary idea I also thought of was to make the boxes communicate with each other, much like a cloud you could access from any reachable access point.

<comment><USER7> Don't wireless networks know the other parties MAC IDs?

<comment><USER8> they know whatever MAC address you're using at the time, sure. if that happens to be 06:66:de:ad:b3:3f, then anyone later inspecting the logs will probably be disappointed.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> This is as "anonymous" as a public mailbox. This is trivial to monitor, and said monitor could easily perform a diff of the drive after each contact.

Real dead drop locations are typically only known by the involved parties, are ad hoc, and move frequently.

Don't get me wrong -- it's an interesting and sort of amusing project. I don't mind most of the terminology they're using, but I think it's dangerous to call something "anonymous" when it is so far from being so.

<comment><USER10> Well if theres enough of them that'd be beyond trivial.

</comment></comment><comment><USER11> Fun concept, but I immediately imagine someone going around smashing these with a hammer (or, perhaps more likely, city workers being sent out to remove them). :\

Here's a much more expensive project with a similar idea:

[http://torrentfreak.com/kiosk-of-piracy-an-offline-copy- of-t...](http://torrentfreak.com/kiosk-of-piracy-an-offline-copy-of-the- pirate-bay-090914/)

<comment><USER12> You don't even need malicious intent. Mishandle the computer while it's plugged in to the stick and you'd likely damage it pretty quickly.

<comment><USER13> Yeah, you'd want to use a short USB extension cable.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> It's a cool idea, but I worry about malware. Malware is known to be able to infect USB drives put into the machine it's on, and it only needs to be plugged into another machine to infect it. They'll have to be systematically reformatted pretty often...

<comment><USER15> I don't think it's a big deal for people running linux!

<comment><AUTHOR> You think incorrectly and having that assumption, you're exposing yourself to more risk. To assume Linux USB drivers, file systems and file managers don't contain vulnerabilities is to assume wrong.

<comment><USER15> Sure, there is also the potential threat of someone breaking into my home/office and installing secret videocameras to record my keyboard and get my truecrypt password (or more easily, opening the "safe" and figuring out what string of characters in a certain notebook is it). However, I don't worry about such things, and neither would I worry connecting a random usb to my practically disposable netbook.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> Note that you don't actually know what kind of device it is. It's USB, but it's not necessarily just a flash drive. For all you know it's hooked up to a microprocessor-driven exploit-o-bot.

</comment><comment><USER16> A couple of concerns with usability, malware, and vandalism, but otherwise an AWESOME idea!

What about doing the same thing but attaching it outside your car instead? Then it's your property _and_ it's mobile.

<comment><USER17> If it's your property I think you could be liable of what people put on it.

</comment></comment><comment><USER18> This is a great idea with the caveat that once someone puts some nasty malware on one/all of the drives, it starts to get a lot less fun.

</comment><comment><USER19> It's a cute idea, but feels a whole lot like the things coming out of the MIT media lab in the late 1990s.

</comment><comment><USER20> Neat idea. Obvious security concerns apply, but probably people who are nerdy enough to whip out their laptop and plug it into the wall are smart enough not to have autorun switched on when doing this.

Would also make a neat Kickstarter project.

</comment><comment><USER21> Is it to me or is there a risk of breaking the USB port of your laptop?

</comment><comment><USER22> I wonder who's going to drop a auto-run USB worm into them...

</comment><comment><USER23> ℒℴѵℯ it. Going to put some around London tonight.

</comment><comment><USER24> What if the USB ports on your laptop are all sideways? I'm sure that'd be even more inconspicuous.

</comment><comment><USER25> Most or all of the downsides could be negated by making this thingy a standalone wireless device.

</comment><comment><USER3> I think the term 'network' implies some kind of connection between nodes.

</comment><comment><USER26> haha well done! Great and fun idea. We should make it a movement and put them up all over the world. And make a site like geocaching for this type of sharing!

</comment><comment><USER27> How big a file can you share over this USB?

<comment><USER28> however much space is available on it

</comment></comment><comment><USER29> How do they get power?

<comment><USER30> These are just flash drives. They get power through your USB port.

</comment></comment><comment><USER31> i tried this and the thumbdrive ruined my nuclear reactor =(

</comment><comment><USER32> every time i see one i will smash it with a hammer</comment>


Venture Capital Disrupts Itself: Breaking the Concentration Curse [pdf] - <AUTHOR> http://40926u2govf9kuqen1ndit018su.wpengine.netdna-cdn.com/wp-content/uploads/2015/11/Venture-Capital-Disrupts-Venture-Capital.pdf?utm_campaign=Mattermark+Daily&utm_source=hs_email&utm_medium=email&utm_content=24250382&_hsenc=p2ANqtz-_DxBH89PnrWAYSvp0bNcHyN8DDbAu23pQ-x9nXTuoo31tBWgq0mmE6a3mVggZCct3m3TpayGe27_D_TcOMob5y7ewbRA&_hsmi=24250382 <comment><USER2> I wonder about how much of the MOIC is driven by follow-on funding. Figure 4 indicates most of the value created came from early stage investing, but it indicates that that's the "initial" deal stage. So it may well be that most of the deals were really 25x+ MOIC deals at early stage - but the net fund MOIC for most investors was lower because they did extremely strong follow on rounds when they identified the company as a winner. If that's the case, the implied message about "VC investing is NOT a power-law" may be misleading.</comment>