Apple.com XSS attack - <AUTHOR> http://i.imgur.com/OfdDC.png <comment><USER2> As I mentioned on proggit, that URL doesn't actually demonstrate cross-site _scripting_ , but it looks like the page is vulnerable to iframe and scripting insertion too. Example:

       http://www.apple.com/itunes/affiliates/download/?artistName=<iframe+id%3D"frame"+src%3D"http://www.microsoft.com/"+style%3D"width:+600px;+height:+400px;"></iframe>&thumbnailUrl=http://www.straitstimes.com/STI/STIMEDIA/image/20090501/windows7-microsoft.jpg&itmsUrl=http://www.microsoft.com&albumName=Better+Operating+System

<comment><AUTHOR> That is really bad. If you can insert code then you can probably do other even worse things.

<comment><USER3> Probably steal session cookies, then hijack sessions and grab any personal data etc :/ Not good.

<comment><AUTHOR> Someone could make an iframe with what looked like the Apple login and trick people into "logging in". Then they distribute the URL via shortened URLs through Twitter and grab a bunch of Apple logins.

Free iTunes until you get caught. Chances are Apple would be able to track who downloaded what onto what Apple devices. I'm sure retribution would be swift and thorough.

In my opinion that does count as an XSS attack, though it perhaps does not use the traditional techniques. (This for those who have said that this is actually not an XSS attack.)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><AUTHOR> Apple promotes Ubuntu Linux:

[http://www.apple.com/itunes/affiliates/download/?artistName=...](http://www.apple.com/itunes/affiliates/download/?artistName=the+Open+Source+community&thumbnailUrl=http://i210.photobucket.com/albums/bb99/Cyndaquil- Thrill/ubuntu- logo.png&itmsUrl=http://www.ubuntu.com&albumName=something+other+than+Mac+OS+X)

</comment><comment><USER4> I think Apple fixed it?

<comment><AUTHOR> It looks like they just removed the functionality. So it is fixed for now. It was fun while it lasted. ;)

<comment><USER5> Anyone have a screenshot? I seem to have missed all the fun.

<comment><USER6> <http://i.imgur.com/OfdDC.png>

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> [http://www.apple.com/itunes/affiliates/download/?artistName=...](http://www.apple.com/itunes/affiliates/download/?artistName=LITTLEST+PET+SHOP+online&thumbnailUrl=http://www.lpso.com/images/logo.png&itmsUrl=http://www.lpso.com&albumName=an+exciting+all- new+world+for+you,+your+friends+and+your+favorite+pets+to+play)

</comment><comment><USER8> It looks like the "XSS" bug is mostly client-side, I think that the GET contents are presented using JS: <http://grab.by/exu> (that's with the given URL).

It doesn't allows any kind of <script> tag, so yeah, it's fun and a bit insecure (may be used for phishing?? dunno), but it's not the worst at all.

<comment><USER9> It allows you to put javascript in a click handler:

[http://www.apple.com/itunes/affiliates/download/?artistName=...](http://www.apple.com/itunes/affiliates/download/?artistName=%3Cimg%20src=%22http://cheapestblog.info/wp- content/uploads/2009/06/click- me.jpg%22%20onclick=%22alert%28%27hello%20world%27%29;%22/%3E)

<comment><USER8> I was wrong, you're right! Now that's medium-insecure. But still not to panic at this, just XSS and client-side (everything is inserted by JS). Well, there are worst things, right? :)

<comment><USER10> "just" XSS?

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> Pretty much anything works; such as this. :)

[http://www.apple.com/itunes/affiliates/download/?artistName=...](http://www.apple.com/itunes/affiliates/download/?artistName=love)

<comment><AUTHOR> Yep you can do just about anything that you want.

[http://www.apple.com/itunes/affiliates/download/?artistName=...](http://www.apple.com/itunes/affiliates/download/?artistName=the%20meaning%20of%20life)

I'm sure that when Apple finds this they'll close the gap pretty fast though.

<comment><USER12> Looks like they already did. For Posterity, here's a screenshot:

<http://visualmotive.com/etc/apple_xss.png>

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> still works. Jeez that is pretty bad. How does one go about reporting something like this? Wonder how long it will take to fix...

<comment><USER14> They have a bug reporting mechanism for people who are ADC(free) members or iPhone developers: <http://www.devworld.apple.com/bugreporter/>

</comment></comment><comment><USER15> Looks like they fixed the glitch.

<comment><AUTHOR> No they haven't, not as of yet.

<comment><USER15> You are absolutely right. Sorry about the false alarm.

Seems like it doesn't work in latest WebKit?

<comment><AUTHOR> That is a possibility.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> tiiiu

</comment><comment><USER17> Complexity kills. Rich Internet Apps will kill all operating systems... except for OpenBSD.

<comment><AUTHOR> Why will OpenBSD be immune?

<comment><USER17> Because it does not try to keep up with the fast-paced, complex flaws of Rich Internet Apps written by people who have no knowledge of information security and are only interested in getting attention for themselves and their shitty start-up.

<comment><USER18> Hate to say it, but Firefox on OpenBSD is as vulnerable to this bug as any other browser. Of course, I doubt OpenBSD users have iTunes accounts...

<comment><USER19> I have an iTunes account.</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment>


Billionaire SAS co-founder keeps on coding - <AUTHOR> http://www.computerworld.com/s/article/9138264/Billionaire_SAS_co_founder_keeps_on_coding <comment><USER2> Whoever wrote the article is an ass:

 _Although still a desktop software product, JMP is so robust today that the latest, version 8, can display graphically millions of rows of data._

Although?? It's a desktop software product because the desktop is _powerful_. The personal computer you have under your desk is a very powerful machine. It's a shame that a lot of software moves as slowly as molasses and isn't coded with performance in mind.

:/

</comment><comment><USER3> SAS institute is one of those rare companies where the founders did not sell or go public, but still created a hugely valuable business. Just comes to show that there are other routes you can take with your startup and be successful with enough hard work and preserverance.

<comment><USER4> In addition to this, SAS institute is an absolutely great place to work. All the employees there that I've talked to love it, are super dedicated and have no desire to work anywhere else.

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> In a similar vein, I've always admired D. E. Shaw. who still publishes single author theory papers.

[http://www3.interscience.wiley.com/journal/110562316/abstrac...](http://www3.interscience.wiley.com/journal/110562316/abstract)

<comment><USER6> Quoting David E. Shaw:

 _"Maybe it was because I was in the financial field. It's a zero sum game. You cannot make money unless someone else is losing money. That's one of the reasons why I like science: it doesn't work that way."_

Source: [http://www.nature.com/news/2008/080116/full/451240a/box/1.ht...](http://www.nature.com/news/2008/080116/full/451240a/box/1.html)

<comment><USER7> > _It's a zero sum game._

That's embarrassingly false.

<comment><USER6> Much of derivatives trading is indeed a zero-sum game. Let us not get into financial discussions, because it has been done before. Joe Smith has saved money for many years, and company X wants to expand their business. Joe Smith invests in company X by buying stocks, company X now has the money to buy some more machines and hire some more people, make more money, and Mr. Smith gets the dividend each year. And they live happily ever after...

Thing is, D.E. Shaw was not in the long-term investment business... and I doubt he's that ignorant about Finance. I mean, his hedge fund is quite prestigious...

<comment><USER8> It's still an open question whether short term trading is a contribution to finding the right price for something and thus helping to make the system as a whole more efficient. I don't know whether that's actually the case. It may be in some cases and not in others.

<comment><USER9> It does provide liquidity.

<comment><USER8> It does, so the reasoning would be that if an asset is actively traded that provides an incentive to invest in it because you know there's a place to sell it if you want to.

This seems plausible, but of course, it comes at a cost. Part of that cost is that for smart people it can be more lucrative to trade something than to make something.

<comment><USER10> But if they can provide more value by trading than by making, why should you value making above trading?

<comment><USER8> I don't. I just questioned whether they actually do provide more value by trading or if it just appears that way during a financial bubble.

Don't forget that the sole purpose of trading is to finance making. Trading has no intrinsic value. It's the bureaucracy of capitalism ;-)

<comment><USER10> That sounds an awful lot like the greek philosophers who did not hold merchants in high regard.

Making is ultimatively just pushing atoms (or ideas), too.

<comment><USER8> I'm just making a difference between the goals and the means to achieve those goals. The goal is to produce the goods and services we want. Trading is a means to do that efficiently, similar to computing.

Computing, just as trading, has no intrinsic value. It has value only insofar as it achieves its goals. I doubt that trading has been achieving its goals in the most efficient and effective way possible recently.

In 2007 the financial industry in the US made 70% of all corporate profits. Obviously, something was out of balance and it's rebalancing now. Part of that rebalancing will no doubt be a shift of labor away from that bloated financial services sector.

I don't think this critique should be taken as offensive or disparaging at all.

<comment><USER10> Yes, I agree it was out of balance.

No offense taken.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> What does it mean when the article says "perhaps we can credit it to his Midwestern roots for his drive"? I've never lived in America long enough to understand the differences between Americans from different parts. Anyone willing to give me a crash course?

<comment><USER12> The short version:

People who grow up on farms or in farming communities are widely supposed to be honest, plain spoken, unassuming and religious.

People who grow up in the big cities of the east coast are expected to be cunning, devious, greedy, atheistic and untrustworthy.

People who grow up in the affluent suburbia of the west coast are generally thought of as creative, decadent, and prone to inappropriate cultural exploration, believing in strange gods, making love to trees, etc.

In reality these regional stereotypes are as misleading as any national caricature.

<comment><USER13> I thought it had a lot more to do with the puritan/protestant work ethic than farming.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> _"SAS makes all of the money. JMP is the fun product," Sall said._

This guy is my new hero!

</comment><comment><USER15> Interestingly,

 _An executive vice-president at SAS, Sall remains JMP's chief architect, running a team of 100, including 20 developers_

What are the other 80 people on the team doing if not writing code!?

<comment><USER16> QA, support and probably a lot of pre-sales support kind of roles?

</comment></comment><comment><USER17> In Michael Lewis' "The New New Thing", he describes how Jim Clarke, Netscape co-founder was up at 3AM scribbling math equations on how his mega-yacht could have a convincing CG nautical compass. The book has a picture of this crumpled napkin, which is fascinating.

</comment><comment> b-man On the same note, queen's guitar player, Brian May, is also an astrophysicist: <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Brian_May#As_an_astrophysicist>

</comment><comment><USER18> This is a good article that describes the company (SAS) and their culture:

<http://www.fastcompany.com/magazine/21/sanity.html></comment>


SpaceX's Falcon 9 is on a road trip back to Kennedy Space Center - <AUTHOR> http://www.popsci.com/spacexs-landed-falcon-9-is-on-road-trip-back-to-kennedy-space-center <comment><USER2> Sounds interesting, but the link does not work.</comment>


Emacs Org-Mode: for Notes, Project Planning, and Authoring - <AUTHOR> http://orgmode.org/

<comment><USER2> Wow. That's similar in vein to the project I've been working on slowly on the side for about a month now: <http://bulletxt.com> \- it currently saves your notes via browser session but I'm working on making it like pastebin and having an account system. It'll be very much like a typical text-editor with the ability to sort tasks via drag-drop, copy-paste, and share task subtrees.

I highly doubt the emacs-type will end up using my app but it feels good to see I'm not the only one who has a need for organizing nested todo lists. I can't for the life of me figure out how everyone can deal with 1-level deep task lists.

<comment><USER3> I'm looking for a new todo list tool at the moment. How would it work for a vaguely GTD style?

<comment><USER2> You would be able to create pages (tabs) and organize them. You can create tasks and subtasks within them. Press 'tab' to indent (i.e. make a subtask). And when you want a task+subtasks out of your mind & sight, click the [-] or press [`] key to hide. There will be a 'completed tasks' list for each page with some started/completion date info. I might put some deadline/highlight/bold options per task but haven't thought about it fully yet.

It will vaguely do GTD like you put it but I don't think it will be a vitalist.com or even a simplegtd.com replacement. I don't think GTD itself is perfect and wrote untodos.com a year ago with 'today/soon/whenever' sections to help sort my life but it wasn't enough. What I really wanted was a place to immediately jot down my thoughts without any hassle when I was brainstorming and later sort them when I'm in a more organized mood. Hence there is no 'save' button in bulletxt (though you will have unlimited undo.)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> A few highlights not mentioned on the front page:

* render latex fragments inline (thanks to auctex)

* embed & run code (python, ruby, haskell, R, etc)

* text-mode spreadsheet (including cell functions)

* render ascii-art drawings to png (combine with M-x artist-mode)

* export via latex to pdf or html

</comment><comment><USER5> I really enjoy using org-mode for personal notes.

However, there's a few general issues I'd like to see improved upon:

* External Collaboration (how can I get my PM to work with me on org-mode docs?) - Something like ikiwiki that works back and forth between web edits and emacs edits.

* Searching - Ideally, this would be part of the external collaboration piece. Spotlight/rgrep is ok for now, but not great.

* Easier linking/file creation - I'd love for org-mode to incorporate some of ideas/features in VoodooPad/Tomboy for easily creating new docs and linking to them. Could probably hack something together (and I have made a shortcut for file-links that uses ido-completion), but it'd be nice for this to be a central focus.

</comment><comment><USER6> It's strange, but a simple text file always served my needs for TODO lists, even including notes and other information related to the TODOs. It is not pretty, but I do not have trouble finding my TODOs amidst the rest of the noise, since I am consistent with my left-side "start of a TODO line" and "start of a subTODO" symbols. Sometimes I think that having a neat, pretty TODO list program would be nice, but I learned that I find my text files much more portable (Notes on iPhone, a txt on Mac, txt in linux, txt on my Windows desktop).

</comment><comment><USER7> I'm hoping someone does an android app similar to mobile-org real soon.

In the meantime, I ssh from my phone to a box that has an up-to-date copy of my .org files.

</comment><comment><USER8> Is there something similar to it for vim?

<comment><USER9> According to a Google Tech Talk by the creator, a few people have switched from vi to emacs to get org-mode. The obvious implication is that there is nothing comparable for vi. However, the talk was in July of 2008, so maybe someone has created something since then.

Here is a link to the talk: <http://orgmode.org/GoogleTech.html>

<comment><USER7> I'd be one of those.

I used vi/vim for about fifteen years before playing around with org-mode (and magit and a few other tools). After that, I felt like I'd been missing out on a lot of useful stuff.

That was about a year ago. I'm still fluent in vi (which I use sometimes), but I can get far more done far more quickly in emacs.

And I track it in org-mode. :) (which also has a view of my current google and exchange calendars and automatically saves all edits in a git repo and pushes it off my box for synchronization/backup/history).</comment></comment></comment>


Jailbreak or Root Detection: A False Sense of Security, Part I - <AUTHOR> https://bluebox.com/blog/technical/jailbreak-or-root-detection-a-false-sense-of-security-part-1/

<comment><AUTHOR> Excerpt:

Reality: Jailbreak/Rooting can be good for security

Since the user essentially needs to exploit their device to gain root access, why would they want to do this? In practice, Bluebox Labs has seen a variety of legitimate, non-nefarious reasons to jailbreak or root devices. Some of these include, but are not limited to:

        Unlock the device from the carrier it is bound to
            Either their contract is up, or they bought a carrier-locked phone
            on the internet and they wish to move it to a different network provider
        Remove bloatware that was pre-installed on the device
            Android devices commonly come with a countless number of
            manufacturer/carrier applications and add-ons that users see as bloatware
            that take up memory and slow-down performance.
        Patch major vulnerabilities that have not been patched yet by the vendor
            Patching the vulnerability that made the rooting or jailbreaking possible
            blocks malicious apps or users from exploiting it
        Enhance the security of their device
            Manage the root certificates
            Manage the permissions granted to apps
        Modify the look and feel of the software
        Load a 3rd party ROM like Cyanogen on their device for enhanced functionality
        Update a device that no longer receives updates from the manufacturer
        (a common occurrence on Android and older iOS versions and devices)
            HTC One Mini and One Mini 2 did not receive the update to Android Lollipop
            iPhone 4 did not receive the update for iOS 8</comment>


Why open code is irrelevant to Android's success - <AUTHOR> http://www.javaworld.com/cgi-bin/mailto/x_java.cgi?pagetosend=/export/home/httpd/javaworld/javaworld/jw-04-2011/110401-open-sources.html&pagename=/javaworld/jw-04-2011/110401-open-sources.html&pageurl=http://www.javaworld.com/javaworld/jw-04-2011/110401-open-sources.html&site=jw_core <comment><USER2> The article alludes to but does not directly state the most likely reason that the Android 3.0 code remains closed: that Google was forced to rush out Android 3.0 for a few tablet manufacturers but did not want smartphone makers to sell phones with a crappy, unfinished version of Android 3.0.</comment>


GitKraken 0.5.0 with Git Flow integration - <AUTHOR> http://www.gitkraken.com/release-notes <comment><USER2> GitKraken home page: [http://www.gitkraken.com/](http://www.gitkraken.com/)

</comment><comment><USER3> It's really superficial, but the name alone makes me want to give it a try.</comment>


Ask HN: After school learning? - <AUTHOR>

Been in school for a while, done now, getting my degree soon. I've been pushed into using things that I don't like (java) and studying without coding (Information Systems).
I'm teaching myself django and python.  Want to head into full web-app dev.
What other things/tools do I need to throw myself into? <comment><USER2> Smalltalk and Lisp</comment>


Don't make my eyes bleed: a rant about business plans by Neil Davidson - <AUTHOR> http://www.neildavidson.com/dontmakemyeyesbleed.html <comment><USER2> Nicely put together. Business _planning_ can be great to help people organise their thoughts and uncover issues they'd overlooked.

However, business _plans_ can easily fall into the same trap that bad powerpoint ends up in. That of authors hiding behind it instead of using it to tell a story. It's the story that really matters.

</comment><comment><USER3> I liked his "what is your mantra" slide. For my own company, Fohr, we have a slide with our "Investment Thesis", which seems to be similar in spirit:

Fohr is able to leverage computer-photography and the film _Carpathia_ to build a profitable, next generation film studio – a repeat of what Pixar did with computer-animation and _Toy Story_ in the Nineties.

UPDATE (edited version based on feedback below): Fohr can use the first feature film we're making with "computer-photography" to build a new, publicly- owned film studio – a repeat of what Pixar did with _Toy Story_ and computer- animation in the 1990s – if we can raise the funds to continue our technology leadership over the next two years.

<comment><AUTHOR> I'm most likely not your target customer, so ignore this piece of criticism if it's useless to you:

I don't understand what your company mantra/slogan above means at all.

The words "leverage" and "next generation" ring MBA-speak alarm bells in my head. Generally, "leverage" can be substituted with the much simpler "use". And you don't get to decide if your technology is "next generation". The market will decide years later.

What do you mean by computer-photography?

I don't know the film Carpathia.

The analogy is very vague. What exactly are you repeating?

<comment><USER3> _I don't understand what your company mantra/slogan above means at all._

In your defense, this comes after three slides of prep which explain computer- photography, and how Fohr is like Pixar.

 _The words "leverage" and "next generation" ring MBA-speak alarm bells in my head. Generally, "leverage" can be substituted with the much simpler "use". And you don't get to decide if your technology is "next generation". The market will decide years later._

I meant "leverage" in the sense of "strategic advantage; power to act effectively". "Use" is better though, and I'll switch to that. I do think next generation applies here -- provided you think _Toy Story_ was a next generation way to make animated films.

 _What do you mean by computer-photography?_

I wrote a primer on it here: <http://erichocean.com/fohr/lighting.html>. In a nutshell, if a classically-trained Director of Photography can light the film's CGI environments using their existing, real-world knowledge of lighting, and if those "virtual lights" are identical to their real-world counterparts, the 3D rendering engine falls in the "computer-photography" category.

 _I don't know the film Carpathia._

Well, it hasn't been made yet. :) Hopefully you'll see it when it comes out, the release date is November 20, 2013.

 _The analogy is very vague. What exactly are you repeating?_

Fohr is at the place, as a company, that Pixar was at before they made _Toy Story_. Our "Toy Story" is a film called _Carpathia_. Similar to Pixar, we can build a public company on the strength of our first film and computer- photography. (Pixar IPO'd a week after _Toy Story_ came out, in 1995.)

Our basic investment thesis (why we think investors should invest in our tech side) is that we can take the same path Pixar did, leading to an IPO. (We can make _Carpathia_ regardless, but we can only build an independent studio with investment on the tech side of our business.)

Hope this helps, and thanks for the feedback!

<comment><USER4> I still don't get what's different? You seem to be talking about CGI which is obviously used a lot today. Have you not got any screenshots to show the difference?

<comment><USER3> The difference is 100% on the production side, not in the final images (although we can do certain kinds of Avatar-style full CGI environments for about 80% less than they cost now -- $100K minute vs. $500K minute). Carpathia, as you might have guessed, is chock full of them. :)

It's the production difference that actually gives us the Pixar-like edge -- we can iterate on the film, slowly closing in on the final film over a multi- year period. This allows every department time to do their best work. "Computerizing" the photography (just like "computerizing" the animation at Pixar) is what allows this to happen.

We've got special tooling to support it as well, but that's what makes it great in a nutshell: (much) better films at lower cost due to massive numbers of iterations from concept to final film.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> is this again some "creative" Eric Ries book selling campaign?

<comment><USER6> Nope. Neil is CEO of Red Gate Software, and an angel investor. (And just a really good guy, too.)

He's been teaching himself to draw for a year or so, thus the format. :)

</comment></comment><comment><USER7> I think there is a big difference between "a cool presentation of your business plan" for the outside world and an in depth and detailed plan and research for your own.

I agree that "If you can't explain it to a six year old, you don't understand it yourself."

But this doesn't mean that all you need to know is, what a six year old knows. I notice that we tend to believe that having profound knowledge of your business is unnecessary.

But we don't need to bore everybody with this information.

</comment><comment><USER8> I've seen the feedback for Fohr's mantra (all of which I agree with) and was wondering whether I could get feedback for our mantra/tagline (note: we are still building prototype, nothing to show yet).

Tagline is: "The Game Show We Can All Play"

Any feedback welcome, thanks

<comment><USER9> I like it, but what's the product?

<comment><USER8> Thanks StavrosK, yes, I probably should have provided some more detail around that. We're addressing what we see as the "Game Show problem" i.e. the fact that there aren't any Game Shows that people can play from the comfort of their own home over the internet - why is that? We think we know why and will use a unique approach to address that. So we're creating an online Game Show, one that anyone can play i.e. you get to be an actual contestant who can win real prizes. We're aiming to launch early next year...

<comment><USER9> That's what I figured, so I think the tagline is pretty much perfect.

<comment><USER8> That's good to hear, thank you very much!

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> Aside from the lean startup, this is also an invaluable tool: <http://www.businessmodelgeneration.com/>

Compliments Customer Drive Development very well.

</comment><comment><USER11> Don't Make Me Download a PDF: a rant about rants

<comment><USER12> Sadly the choice for slides is between a bare PDF, slideshare and scribd. All three are awful choices imho, so... pick your poison.

<comment><USER13> We are on The Internet. There are things called Web Pages.

<comment><USER14> There's a startup opportunity: because your standard tools for producing presentations and slides does not connect at all with publishing as a web page.</comment></comment></comment></comment>


Though you are JavaScript programmer,you should understand concurrency control - <AUTHOR> https://qiita.com/ryo_grid/items/e3c9fe40d707f8169dc2 <comment><USER2> On mobile that page breaks up words if they hit a line break... I don't even know what to say about that.

<comment><AUTHOR> thanks to your comment. the comment means you can't linked post (it is posted to web service called qiita which is popular in Japan)? or means it is difficult to read because words alignment is not smart?</comment></comment>


'We're doomed': Mayer Hillman on the climate reality no one else will mention - <AUTHOR> https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2018/apr/26/were-doomed-mayer-hillman-on-the-climate-reality-no-one-else-will-dare-mention?CMP=share_btn_fb <comment><USER2> We don't hear enough serious talk like this. Dr. James Hansen called out the problem as Scientific Reticence [1].

While I'm not certain that CO2 is the primary driver of climate change, it's clear that there are wildly out of norm changes occurring. Minimum Arctic sea ice extent is one of the main measurements that I've started paying attention to lately, and it's been outside of, or close to the -2s mark for five of the last seven years compared to a 1981-2010 average [2].

According to the IPCC things will be very bad somewhere near the end of the century, and according to Guy McPherson civilization is coming to an end within the next ten years [3]. There's a huge variation in time frame and severity in predictions, but it's clear that climate change is already severely affecting certain groups of people, and changes are occurring faster than expected [4].

[1] [http://csas.ei.columbia.edu/2016/03/24/dangerous- scientific-...](http://csas.ei.columbia.edu/2016/03/24/dangerous-scientific- reticence/)

[2] [https://nsidc.org/arcticseaicenews/charctic-interactive- sea-...](https://nsidc.org/arcticseaicenews/charctic-interactive-sea-ice- graph/)

[3] [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zqIt93dDG1M](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zqIt93dDG1M)

[4] [http://www.fasterthanexpected.com/](http://www.fasterthanexpected.com/)

<comment><USER3> _" While I'm not certain that CO2 is the primary driver of climate change..."_

The alternatives being methane, increased albedo, loss of biomass...?

<comment><USER4> And emission of methane and other hydrocarbons from thawing permafrost. Plus changes in global ocean currents. Plus emissions of sulphide and nitride into atmosphere.

The answer is all of the above and they feed into each other. The main question that remains is whether we should try to attack CO2 or methane emissions first. Which will be more cost effective and more attainable in short term.

<comment><USER3> Ok, thanks. I misunderstood, worried tejohnso was 'skeptical' (denier). Agree on thawing permafrost, don't know anything about atmospheric sulphides & nitrides (will read up, thanks).

Regarding (human) emissions, sure, reduce at best available speed. But now that warming is self sustaining, we need to aggressively sequester, and hopefully figure out ways to slow and reduce ongoing methane release.

<comment><USER2> I don't think skeptics and "deniers" should be considered equivalent. One group endeavours to verify facts before accepting them, while the other ignores facts or deliberately misrepresents them.

<comment><USER5> > I don't think skeptics and "deniers" should be considered equivalent.

You're right in that they're not equivalent, but often deniers (of any widely supported viewpoint) have learned to speak in terms of skepticism in order to deflect criticism of their denial. They say "oh, I'm a skeptic", but provide the same stale arguments, and when those arguments are refuted (yet again), they don't move their position one jot. They just retreat, and bring them up again at the next opportunity.

So no, they're not the same, but plenty of people are suspicious of "skeptics", having run into too many that don't argue in good faith.

<comment><USER6> So would you say you're... skeptic of skeptics?

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> IMHO our only hope are technologies that actively remove carbon from the atmosphere, i.e. "unburn" the fossil fuels we used so far. Turning massive amounts of biomass into charcoal and burying it seems to be the most low-tech solution. That's even an energy positive process. But maybe we need faster methods to avoid catastrophe.

<comment><USER8> >Turning massive amounts of biomass into charcoal and burying it seems to be the most low-tech solution

If you've found a way to convince people to do that wouldn't it be easier to just not burn coal for energy? Or do you mean doing it at such a massive scale we reverse the net flow of coal from the ground to the atmosphere?

<comment><USER7> Not burning coal kills the job market for coal miners. Presidents have been elected on promises of keeping them employed. Burying more charcoal than the amount of coal we dig out creates jobs ("clean coal" can even be reused as a slogan!), and you can sell the energy you get from burning the wood gas.

<comment><USER9> There's not many coal miners, don't worry about that. 50000 in usa, just pay them all to not work.

<comment><USER10> Or pay them to be coal sequesterers.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> One begins to wonder if there's going to be a future business in climate modification. Could the UN spend money to pay for a reduction in world wide temperature?

This isn't all hypothetical either. Release a large quantity of sulfur dioxide, like one sees in a volcanic eruption, and you can measurably reduce the global temperature for a year or two. Capture carbon or other greenhouse gases and bury them. Somehow reflect a large amount of sunlight from hitting the Earth. Probably a dozen other good ideas exist- this is hacker news, I'm sure we could invent a hundred more.

The only challenge is going to be convincing the powers that be that it's on their economic interest to pay you to do so. But as sea level rise, it may quickly become self evident.

<comment><USER12> >The only challenge is going to be convincing the powers that be that it's on their economic interest to pay you to do so. But as sea level rise, it may quickly become self evident.

I don't believe the idea that hurt from climate crisis spurs sufficient action. Our time horizon shrinks during crisis.

Any corrective actions starts to have an effect decades in the future. Once the sea level raise starts to inflict "unbearable pain" all money is channeled to treat the acute consequences. If governments go to emergency mode, they put trillions to relocating people, solving immediate food crisis, stopping hunger , fighting military conflicts etc. All the cool technical solutions requiring trillions in investment go out of the window.

<comment><USER4> The trouble is, nobody is equipped for this large scale of interventions. Cool technical solutions will be required, such as genetic adaptation, building nanostructures with internal climate systems, artificial islands etc. And power sources and/or ethical changes to run all of this.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> Let's do an exercise as presented in the article and accept CO2 level increases are irreversible:

The Jurassic had 5 times more CO2 than today. [1]

Modern climate change is slower than the K-T mass extinction event, when photosynthesis was halted. [2]

[1] [https://www.livescience.com/44330-jurassic-dinosaur- carbon-d...](https://www.livescience.com/44330-jurassic-dinosaur-carbon- dioxide.html)

[2] [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cretaceous–Paleogene_extinctio...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cretaceous–Paleogene_extinction_event)

<comment><USER14> We can deal with small and fast changes, or big and slow changes, but not big _and_ fast. The problem is not the CO2 levels themselves, or the heat, or even the climate. Life can exist and thrive in phenomenally hostile environments. It's the speed and size of the shift. Life needs time to adapt, depending on its size (which is why almost nothing >25 kg survived the K-T event).

I'm comfortable when my car goes from 60 mph to 0 in half a minute. I'm not going to be comfortable when my car goes from 60 mph to 0 in a second.

<comment><USER15> Additionally, what "life" are we talking about? We know about certain lifeforms existing in hostile environments, but can we talk about humans?

<comment><USER16> To quote George Carlin: The Earth will be fine, you're screwed though.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER17> > "The outcome is death, and it's the end of most life on the planet because > we're so dependent on the burning of fossil fuels."

Climate change is a problem of grave concern but isn't doomsaying a hyperbole? Most countries plan to make transportation fully electric by 2040. But even without that, the cost of green energy is going down every year. The moment—which might be forthcoming in a few years—when owning a fossil fuel vehicle becomes an exorbitant deal, people will switch in droves.

<comment><USER18> Targets in 2040 or 2050 make me laugh, for one it's just politicians making statements to make some people feel good, and for another, in 20 years it'll be a bit late.

<comment><USER19> Targets for 2040 and 2050 are required.

The problem is what targets will be determined for 2020, 2030, 2040 and 2050.

Several Trillions of dollars have been wasted just to finance war in the Middle East.

Support of the fossil fuel industry and wars and military and waste of time and money and lack of technological investment is the shame and inexcusable guilt of politicians and the democratic majority worldwide for the last 50 years.

<comment><AUTHOR> > Targets for 2040 and 2050 are required.

Unless politicians of 2030 decide it's 2050 and 2060.

This is one generation of politicians making commitments the next couple generations of politicians will have to honor.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER20> I see the problem to be that any investment in greenhouse gas reduction now takes away from present consumption or other investments so that future generations can benefit, but it is generally considered that as time goes on people get more wealthy. Furthermore, it'd take significant emissions reductions commitments from the US and China in an international climate agreement to make any progress, while countries like Maldives, Turkey, etc benefit greatly.

Basically the incentives arent necessarily aligned because not all countries will be impacted the same by climate damages. Although, economists consider climate damages to be externalities which are market failures that cause economic inefficiency. I believe that with the right carbon tax, unpaid externalities can be resolved by correcting the price of energy such that the future damages are accounted for. The issue again is no nation can agree to anything on an international scale and steps to decarbonizing must start from the bottom up.

<comment><USER12> You recognize the real problem. It's the incentives and time horizon that dooms us. It has never been the case that we don't have a solution. There is always a technical solution but it does not matter. We had several solutions decades ago, we have several solutions now, we have even more in the future.

Our incentive structure means that we can only modulate the intensity of hell for the future generations with our electric cars, next 30-50 years is already locked in.

We are not willing to invest enough. Economic analysis puts the current cost of timely and sufficient corrective action around 0.5 to 1 percent of global GDP. That would be a real cost and money out of other things. Even concerned voters don't want to hear that. They want to hear green jobs and green growth. You can't sell actions as a net cost and sacrifice.

When the effects really hit it's too late. The idea that people take an action when it really hurts does not apply to climate change. If the global GDP stats decrease and we are constantly in recession and conflicts survival values take precedence. Investments go to military, food security and welfare and climate actions get little or no attention. Many developed countries will be at least 'okayish'. If the price of wheat and rice increases 500% they still make it. It's the others who die. We could develop carbon capture and suck the CO2 out of air but nobody wants to invest trillions into something extra that has noticeable effect 30-40 years from now when there is constant downturn.

</comment></comment><comment><USER21> The endless rolling stream of 'we've only got x years left to do something' from scientists does seem rather suspicious

<comment><USER22> Alternatively, they could say: "It's already too late", but then surely nobody would do anything.

It's better to keep coming up with new goals, so they can say "Do something in the next X years or Y" will happen. Then at least we might be able to prevent something.

</comment></comment><comment><USER23> Previous discussion: [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=16929405](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=16929405)

</comment><comment><USER24> Want to make the US carbon zero? Plant and maintain a forest 5x the size of New Zealand on a cheap piece of land somewhere.

Or just start a damn carbon tax priced at the cost of offsetting the carbon. Which will turn out to be _so freaking cheap_ , almost certainly less than ~$10/tonne. To put this in perspective, you know how air travel makes you a terrible person? Well not if you offset with _a dollar of trees per hour of airtravel_.

What pisses me off most about climate change is that it is stupidly easy to solve. Offsetting the 5 billion tonnes of carbon dioxide per annum the US produces would cost at most $50B per annum. And I suspect a lot less if you actually put some thought into it, or better yet, got market forces to work on it.

<comment><USER25> >> ...or better yet, got market forces to work on it.

This is not an area where market forces can work. Market forces got us to where we are now. There will never be a healthy free market for carbon sequestration. It is an energy-negative activity. Absent artificial stimulus, it ain't going to happen.

Government is for doing what the market (ie Freedom!) cannot. This is a multi- decade problem for which open markets are ill-equipped. We need massive government intervention. This is an area where we need to take tax dollars and spend them directly on both reducing carbon output (now) and active sequestration once that becomes more efficient than further reductions.

<comment><USER24> In New Zealand, the government buys drugs from pharmeceutical companies. There is no reason why the US government cannot buy carbon offset from the free market, using the revenue generated from a carbon tax. There will be monitoring/inspection issues, to ensure the carbon is actually being sequestered, but this doesn't make it impossible.

<comment><USER25> Because carbon offset is a shell game. Paying people to not emit at X so that other people can emit at Y opens too many loopholes. The desire for profit by cutting corners and cheating will creep in. Emissions need to be directly curtailed. W don't need "if you want to burn, pay someone else to not burn." We need "thou shall not burn", or at lease "thou shall burn less tomorrow than thou didst yesterday."

<comment><USER24> It's not "pay someone else not to burn", it's "pay someone else to eat all the carbon you are spitting out". It would totally work, and it's the only way to get to zero emission.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER26> My understanding is that the climate sensitivity per doubling of CO2 is about 3 degrees celsius; if we keep putting CO2 into the atmosphere at our current rate we'll get to one doubling in about 56 years; therefore we'll probably wind up at one doubling or a bit less by the time we go completely renewable. That would be around 2.5 degrees of warming. Which is very bad, but not civilization-ending. Have I missed something?

</comment><comment><USER27> A fascinating talk, and a counter viewpoint from a top physicist:

 _" Freeman Dyson on the Global Warming Hysteria"_ [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BiKfWdXXfIs](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BiKfWdXXfIs)

<comment><USER28> One who is supremely unqualified for commenting on this topic and an outlier within the mass of scientists.

<comment><USER29> It doesn't matter, though. The way your brain is wired, if you read one article denying climate change for every article you read that warns about it, your brain will consider the two hypotheses about equally likely, and you'll probably believe the more comforting one.

That way, it doesn't matter that there's a shitload of significant evidence to one and only circumstantial evidence to the other. Your brain just goes by volume.

<comment><USER28> You are absolutely correct. However, it's still important to vocally disagree with opinions that dismiss the impact of climate change. It could prevent observers from falling into the trap of thinking those old and tired red herrings lead to some undiscovered path that the rest of us have missed.

<comment><USER29> Oh yes, certainly.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER30> I actually think history will look back on the carbon blanket with thanks. Without the warmth of the carbon blanket the earth would likely be entering an Ice age, based on the cycle of energy release of the sun which is entering a long cycle of which the last minimum presented as an Ice age. By protecting ourselves with the carbon blanket we actually are protecting our civilization and giving ourselves enough time to tech past our survival being so critically linked to the sun.

<comment><USER31> I am not convinced of this.

I think I would need calculated study into the interrelated variables involved before I would begging to entertain this idea.

</comment></comment><comment><USER32> If there is really nothing we can still do, the best thing to do is to go on with our lives, and forget about it.

</comment><comment><USER33> Business and entertainment.

</comment><comment><USER34> Climate change seems too much to me like a stick being used to advance an agenda. Whenever a solution is proposed it always dovetails with something the person proposing it would want anyway.

Instapundit - right wing law blogger - used to put up posts that would start "I'll believe Climate Change is a problem when X believes it is" and then link to an article about some celebrity flying 50,000 miles a year or doing something else that put a trillion tons of CO2 into the atmosphere. Good for a laugh I suppose but honestly I wonder if there's not some truth there.

Why are the solutions always sold on the basis of "win/win" with the both wins going to the same end of the political spectrum? I understand that it sounds like extortion or blackmail but it seems like if you really want a solution you have to sell it to people who don't agree with your politics not just try and ram it down their throats.

<comment><USER35> At this point, there really is no discussion anymore about whether or not there is climate change. The question is what we can do to survive as a global civilization.

Continued survival seems pretty like win/win to me, no matter what the political orientation.

Also, I seem to remember that environmental protection came pretty much out of the conservative corner. See Teddy Roosevelt and his national parks.

Also also, coal vs. renewables is /not/ a conservative vs. progressive discussion. I've yet to find a conservative that thinks the public should allow the externalization of the costs caused by private pollution.

</comment></comment><comment><USER25> Note that the original author is 86. He does not fly and that is great. But he is also heading into a very energy-intensive period of life. Most of a person's lifetime heath costs come in the last few years of life. Health care is expensive for a reason. It consumes massive amounts of energy and generates enormous piles of waste. Will he forgo medical treatments as willingly as he has forgone flying?

<comment><USER36> > Health care is expensive for a reason.

Yeah, but there are other reasons than just energy use. IP laws for example, or market segmentation. Or do you think that the regular edition of, say, Visual Studio is more energy-intensive than the student edition?

<comment><USER25> In 2013, the health care sector was also responsible for significant fractions of national air pollution emissions and impacts ... greenhouse gas emissions (10%),

[http://journals.plos.org/plosone/article?id=10.1371/journal....](http://journals.plos.org/plosone/article?id=10.1371/journal.pone.0157014)

That puts health care far ahead of aviation in terms of carbon emissions. Anyone rationally looking to be carbon neutral for the good of the planet should therefore address their consumption of health care before their consumption of aviation.</comment></comment></comment>


Western Companies Make Mideast Censorship Possible: This Week in Online Tyranny - <AUTHOR> http://www.readwriteweb.com/archives/western_companies_make_mideast_censorship_possible.php?sms_ss=hackernews&at_xt=4d94f5b46bbd9f15%2C0 <comment><USER2> I believe it's hard to push this particular idea too much. How much responsibility does a Cisco or Juniper bear for this? How much responsibility does a Cisco or Juniper employee bear for this?

Also, how much should the Western Nation residents fear companies that are so willing to do this sort of thing?</comment>


Ask HN: Career trajectory for software developers - <AUTHOR> For people who start as software developers, what is the usual career trajectory ? while being a developer at 25 is one thing its quite a different thing being one at 35, 45 and 55. At the latter stages of the game, you have a family (hopefully) and are more set in your ways (read less agile or fluid) when it comes to change and you are competing against 20 year olds who will out work you (for various reasons) for sure but also be more comfortable with the trends current at that time. Not to mention the rise in the # of software developers coming from other aspiring nations and business work shifting to cheaper places due to the excessive need for optimization or effectiveness that business   go for (although thats a different story).<p>So with this context, I'd like to ask how one should look at the role of software developer in the long run. Should one change their work - go from software developer to managing people in a engineering capacity to leading business eventually or just keep developing software ? The latter just seems a little bit unnatural. What does the community think ? do you guys see it the same way ? <comment><USER6> Ill try to field this one being that Ive kind of moved around to a handful of different categories of companies and am constantly scratching my head over this. This is the best of the more realistic options from what I can tell...

1) You move to management (engineering, project, product, etc). This one is perhaps quite popular but I think few truly enjoy this move and usually get jammed into middle management. It seems prestigious, pays more, less hours but it can be mind numbing to someone who went into software for the creative and exciting aspects of tech. I think probably many find this is a good way to the midlife crisis. Sorry to be so pessimistic.

2) You become a consultant. Lots of folks do this and will do it as long as they are successful. You usually have to work in more enterprise environments but many realize that is where some of the really tough interesting problems are. Pretty good option for Java/Systems/Network engineers. If your a specialist in Rails or social gaming you may find this one tougher.

3) You get into big corp as a full-time engineer and walk up the Principal Engineer / Architect technical latter. Usually pretty good stability, pretty good pay - relatively comfortable for those who like it.

4) You get tired of things and move out of the field. Where to?.. anyone's guess. Could be tech related, could be totally unrelated. Perhaps we don't like to admit it but there is usually a lot of BS in many software development companies (yes even startups) and at 30, 40, or 50 you realize life is too short to be standing up in a SCRUM everyday (sorry I hate SCRUM - my personal bias).

5) You get really lucky and become really rich somehow (stock options, whatever) and retire early. Everyone thinks this will be them - in reality highly unlikely. Many in software do well but plan on always needing an income.

6) You start a non-startup software business. Perhaps an ISV with a side of consulting or open source or something like that. This one can be pretty fun for those who really truly enjoy software.

<comment><AUTHOR> Good post. Thanks for chiming in.

so the main options from a employment perspective are: 1) Change tracks and slide into management - mid management to be specific. 2) Consult/Freelance 3) Progress the technical ladder - Principal/Staff/Fellow engineer.

Some questions: a) Could you elaborate on the pros and cons of 1 and 3. b) what about progressing into Sr/Exec mgmt as opposed to mid management - <USER2> they mostly want mba types and hence not an option for developer types or is there a progression from mid to exec mgmt but its the same as your #5 - <USER3> really lucky (besides having the right skills) ?

(Also couldn't agree with you more - why is mid management so glamorous all of a sudden ?!?)

</comment></comment><comment><USER7> There are computer developers (not just software) who are working into their 70s. Guess it all depends on how you view your career and what things you are doing.

While the 20 year olds may be able to type faster and use newer tools, they lack the expert wisdom gained from decades of hands-on experience. From my perspective (I'm 48) I see the industry having to reinvent some wheel or other every 10 or so years, a lot of stuff developed years ago is being written all over again for microcomputers, then the web, then netbooks, now mobile, and soon Google glass, add in in-car apps etc. For us guys who wrote that sort of stuff earlier in their career it's old hack to do it again and also improve upon the old designs with new capacity connectivity and technologies.

As far as transitioning out, there's a lot of skill and experience that comes with age, many people start a new business or career at retirement based on their knowledge, hobbies and/or experience. You will find many famous authors, painters, cartoonists, etc. got their start later in life.

Long run? Have a hobby or three, keep learning, hone your craft, do stuff, think of what you want to become as you get older. Don't rely on a particular industry to always keep you employed/happy/busy. Never think that after a certain age you can't do anything else, you can always do something different.

<comment><AUTHOR> "Don't rely on a particular industry to always keep you employed/happy/busy." +1

You are right, as you age you can always do something different and thats the crux of the question; stay a dev or gracefully exit out of it and do something more age and/or experience appropriate. If the latter what are some options. At 48 (assuming you are a developer) what is your experience like finding employers who will pay you ,more for your experience and skill rather than knowing a specific technology ? is it harder to find people who appreciate 'refined wisdom' or is very easy. if the latter how do you go about finding those jobs - is it a volume business - you keep applying constantly and only move when the fit is absolutely right ?

</comment></comment><comment><USER8> I see writing software as a strong analogy to writing human languages. Over the next generation or so software will have finished eating the world - <USER4> as literacy ate the world starting sometime after 1451 and progressing to around 1870 (printing press to UK universal education).

In that period literacy was a defining difference - it went from an ability that guaranteed a place at the top of society to a skill that got you a job to a skill you could barely exist without.

The same will happen to coding skills. Right now coders rule the labour market - our lines go in different directions to pretty much every other skill category in this recession.

But it will be different for our children and grand children - so the best lesson is to make haste for the upper levels of society - <USER5> social/business skill with coding and build a legacy of the traditional sort for your children to inherit

Ps Buy land north of Toronto would also help

Pls Stay away from "managing" \- read V. Rao on new forms of labour and management - very inciteful IMO - basically the VC model will apply internally to large companies and the senior dev model to small distributed teams

Management as we know it now is a legacy of the Industrial Age

<comment><AUTHOR> I tried googling V Rao and didn't really see a book. Is it a book or an article ? Could you provide a link please ?

<comment><USER8> [http://www.forbes.com/sites/venkateshrao/](http://www.forbes.com/sites/venkateshrao/)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> I think there is a natural tendency for developers over time to evolve from being contributors to being leaders.

Leadership may not carry a management title. A leader may simply be a senior person who does the following:

1) Knows and understands the system at a deep level, including many of the historical decisions that took place.

2) Guides and reviews the work of the less experienced developers who come on board.

3) Is relied upon by upper level management to make sure work is scoped appropriately and technical roadblocks are handled before they become a problem.

4) Can design and architect new features that have achievable goals because you have the right context to know how to implement them in your current work environment with all its given constraints.

I think being a developer and staying technical through out your career means at some point you have to be comfortable with the above responsibilities. Maybe it will be at a company you stuck with, or maybe it will be a company you started.

</comment><comment><AUTHOR> This post has made it to the top of the Ask page without any comments. I hope people put their thoughts down even if they dont have an answer. My goal has been to start a discussion and explore the different perspectives people have. Please feel free to add comments with your opinions. You have till about 12:00 after which this post be buried 4-5 pages down and hence will have little visibility and in turn chances for gathering some answers/opinions

</comment><comment><USER10> Forget the norm. Pick an area which you enjoy, hone your craft and the rest becomes irrelevant.

If you're good at (coding|managing|leading|motivating), it won't matter how young or how cheap others are. You'll be better.

Disclaimer: I'm 25. What the heck do I know?

<comment><AUTHOR> I partially agree with the first part of your comment. But I will add that as you progress in life, you encounter a different kind of complexity which has impacts on what you can do and and what you like. Things change. What was once fascinating no longer is. What you knew once is now obsolete and hence you have to sort of start again but at the same time you realize you are may be more risk averse than you used to be. Perhaps for the right reasons. In any case change is a constant in life and the crux of the question is how best to adopt it without obliterating your existing world.

</comment></comment><comment><USER11> Regardless of what answers you may get here, stick to some of the good principle in life that will keep you happy:

1\. Do what you love.

2\. You are never too old to learn new things

3\. Keep working till you keep ticking.

4\. Save money for "retirement"

5\. Have a family

6\. Be more social

7\. Give

8\. Stay hungry Stay foolish

9\. Meditate

10\. Eat Good Food.</comment>


Hidden dungeons of the London Underground - <AUTHOR> http://www.michalpaszkiewicz.co.uk/blog/tflhiddendungeons/ <comment><USER3> The BBC (unsurprisingly) have a fascinating documentary that goes behind the scenes during the construction of a new tube line - [http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b04b7h1w](http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b04b7h1w)

It shows the unbelievable precision required to build a new tunnel given the amount of existing tube lines and other, often unexpected, underground structures. Well worth watching.

<comment><USER4> "BBC iPlayer only works in the UK. Sorry, it's due to rights issues." Is there a easy workaround?

<comment><USER5> For a while you could use a VPN to make it look like you were in the UK. They seem to have found some ways to crack down on this a bit recently.

It's as if they _want_ us to BitTorrent Great British Bake-Off.

<comment><USER6> Using a VPN still works fine for me on all my devices (iPhone, various computers, streaming boxes etc) - as a UK expat iPlayer via VPN is a critical lifeline to home.

Things are probably going to get trickier in this regard shortly though once user accounts are made mandatory. Despite the BBC's claims, I wouldn't be surprised if this is step one in a plan to ensure all viewers have paid the UK TV Licence fee, especially following the recent closing of the loophole that allowed you to legally view iPlayer content in the UK without a TV licence if you didn't have a physical TV set.

(For those not familiar, UK residents are typically required to pay 147 quid or so a year if they own a TV or access the iPlayer service, which contributes to funding the BBC. Hilariously there is still a discount if you only have a black and white TV...).

[https://www.theguardian.com/media/2017/may/11/iplayer- catchu...](https://www.theguardian.com/media/2017/may/11/iplayer-catchup- service-will-require-user-login-within-weeks-says-bbc-tv-licence-fee-evasion)

<comment><USER7> Discount? I thought you didn't need one at all if you were using a B&W TV?

<comment><USER8> A black and white TV Licence costs £49.50 (about a third of the price of the standard licence), according to the TV Licensing website:

[http://www.tvlicensing.co.uk/check-if-you-need-one/for- your-...](http://www.tvlicensing.co.uk/check-if-you-need-one/for-your-home)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> If you like this article you might like Subterranea Britannica:

[http://www.subbrit.org.uk/](http://www.subbrit.org.uk/)

<comment><USER10> And also [https://www.derelictplaces.co.uk/main/forum.php](https://www.derelictplaces.co.uk/main/forum.php) and [https://www.28dayslater.co.uk](https://www.28dayslater.co.uk) for the more adventurous, both of which have underground subforums.

I should mention that trespass on live railways (and a few other places) is a criminal offence throughout the UK, so you must get permission if you want to go anywhere on them not open to the public. Subbrit occasionally arrange tours of closed tube stations such as Down Street and South Kentish Town.

<comment><USER11> Both sites have intriguing reports of closed/abandoned Tube stations, tunnels and bomb shelters. Very impressive.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> What is up with the blur effect when loading this site? It makes me dizzy.

<comment><USER13> I was like, how bad could it be. Loaded up the page and it also made me dizzy. Such an awful load screen.

<comment><USER14> Another instance where NoScript makes the web work better, not worse.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> >A number of the rooms included some fans - these were monstrously huge metal tubes that hold fans inside that can be more powerful than airline jet engines

Are we talking CFM or specific impulse?

<comment><USER16> He's probably exaggerating, but smoke evacuation fans with very high power are not unusual. I was at the LA convention center once when some bozo apparently tossed a cigarette into a dumpster and set it on fire. This wasn't a big deal, because the place is concrete and fully sprinklered, but it produced a lot of smoke. The smoke evacuation fans high above the lobby were started, and wound up to aircraft propeller noise level as they sucked the smoke out of the building. Worked fine; SIGGRAPH went on as scheduled.

<comment><USER17> Hi - author here. I'm afraid I don't have any statistics on this matter - <USER2> this case I was relaying what the staff told me. I will see if any of my friends in engineering can confirm this.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER18> Why are the photos so dark, small, and black and white?

<comment><AUTHOR> for the ambience. The pictures were taken on a mobile phone. They may also be particularly small if you are viewing them on a small device.</comment></comment>


 in Your System Prompt - <AUTHOR> http://www.bbs-software.com/blog/2013/08/03/%EF%A3%BF-in-your-system-prompt/

<comment><USER2> U+F8FF is the last code-point of the private use zone. Appearance of the character is entirely random and depends on the font in use. Don't use it for anything outside of an environment you can control. For me it's displayed as a rectangle with F8FF in it, because I'm using Linux, which surprisingly does not ship fonts with the Apple logo in it ;)

<comment><USER3> Ubuntu Mono font has an Apple logo in it.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> Yes, and you can have "💩" in your prompt. Wait, you won't believe it, but you can even have "$" in your prompt! It is worth a blog post (in first page of HN)?

<comment><USER5> Apple's fucking emoticons. I had to jailbreak and install a whitelist specifically because of the emoticon SMS spam.

<comment><USER4> They've been in Unicode since 6.0. And they are not much Apple's in the first place.

<comment><USER5> Yes. Apple renders them as little colorful pictures.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> At least provide a screenshot. You even linked to a page saying that you should never use that character on a website.

It's a rectangle for me as well.

</comment><comment><USER7> Several years ago, while being logged into and working on several remote Linux servers simultaneously, I rebooted the wrong one.

I realized it approximately .002 milliseconds after pressing <Enter> (after "shutdown -r now") but it was too late.

Since then, I use one style of prompt on my personal machines and other non- critical hosts. On production/critical machines, I use a different style of prompt that stands out quite a bit and includes the hostname in all caps.

It seems simple (and it is) but it has done the job of keeping me from rebooting a critical production machine during the middle of the day.

<comment><USER8> You are gonna loooove molly-guard then.

Although the different prompt style for remote systems is still handy, cause there's tons of other stuff you can do accidentaly that could cause damage.

</comment></comment><comment><USER9> Seems to be down. Google cache version [http://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?biw=1256&bih=91...](http://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?biw=1256&bih=914&sclient=psy- ab&q=cache%3Ahttp%3A%2F%2Fwww.bbs- software.com%2Fblog%2F2013%2F08%2F03%2F%25EF%25A3%25BF-in-your-system- prompt%2F&oq=cache%3Ahttp%3A%2F%2Fwww.bbs- software.com%2Fblog%2F2013%2F08%2F03%2F%25EF%25A3%25BF-in-your-system- prompt%2F&gs_l=hp.3..0j0i46j46l2j0l2.5876.7663.0.79220.127.116.11.0.0.0.126.459.4j1.5.0....2...1c.1j2.23.psy- ab..2.5.442.0vLBQj-GEI4&pbx=1)

Edit: alive again

</comment><comment><USER10> Under OSX I use the Emoji characters to indicate what server I'm on, and I use the red police light character if it's a production machine.

You can also tell iTerm to report its terminal type as something specific, then do something like this in your bashrc to setup a different prompt if you're not on OSX:

if [ $TERM = "xterm-256color" ]; then

</comment><comment><USER11> Private use Unicode block.. for me it shows a box only, though it would be cool to have the Klingon symbol:

[http://www.fileformat.info/info/unicode/char/f8ff/index.htm](http://www.fileformat.info/info/unicode/char/f8ff/index.htm)

</comment><comment><USER12> Why would I want a square in my prompt?

<comment><USER13> To tell you that there is encoding (or font) problems in your setup before it turns into a real issue. (?)

<comment><USER14> TIL I have an encoding or font problem by not using Mac OS X..

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> Reminds me of "put a burger in your shell".

[http://notes.torrez.org/2013/04/put-a-burger-in-your- shell.h...](http://notes.torrez.org/2013/04/put-a-burger-in-your-shell.html)</comment>


The Warhammer 40k Community Is Trying to Weed Out Its Far-Right Faction - <AUTHOR> https://www.vice.com/en_us/article/9358ke/the-warhammer-40k-community-is-trying-to-weed-out-its-far-right-faction <comment><USER2> It's sad to see the once great community taken over by an intolerant subgroups.</comment>


Non-invasive nerve stimulation boosts learning of foreign language sounds: study - <AUTHOR> https://medicalxpress.com/news/2020-08-non-invasive-nerve-boosts-foreign-language.html <comment><USER3> This is near-quackery. The vagus nerve is composed of ~100k fibers of which about 80% are afferent fibers from organs. Each of the fibers conveys information in a fairly well ordered manner as do most neurons. Imagine if you will a highway with 100k lanes entering an absolutely massive city. Then you periodically turn on and off an earthquake machine which causes some cars on the roads to go faster, some to crash, and some to slow down. Then you observe the behavior of the city's economic output to see what happens. In one study one measure of the economy increases and you publish a paper about it.

There is both a scale disconnect (the signal being introduced by the electrodes vs the thousands of isolated communication channels which operate independently) and a causal disconnect (you have no idea what happens between the disruption and the observed behavior). A lot of TMS studies suffer from these methodological flaws as well.

Rather than saying things like this "opens the door to improving cognitive performance across a wide range of domains" they should be saying "we have no idea why this works at all, and you should absolutely not try this at home."

<comment><USER4> A simpler and cheaper brain-stimulating intervention to improve language learning has been known in the literature since 1972. No fancy electronics necessary.

"The results of this study are interpreted as confirming the hypothesis that the ingestion of small amounts of alcohol, under certain circumstances, does lead to increased ability to authentically pronounce a second language."[1]

Note that the improvement only happens after consuming exactly 1.5oz of cognac. Anything more than that and performance drops precipitously.

[1][https://deepblue.lib.umich.edu/bitstream/handle/2027.42/3404...](https://deepblue.lib.umich.edu/bitstream/handle/2027.42/34041/0000318.pdf?sequence=1&isAllowed=y)

<comment><USER5> Does it have to be cognac, or can I use some other brandy?

<comment><USER6> Per the paper, the treatment was actually a punch that was half liquor, half other things. The liquor was a mix of cognac and light and dark rums.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> Interesting. There's a whole class of these non-invasive field methods to affect human brains - [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Transcranial_magnetic_stimulat...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Transcranial_magnetic_stimulation) is another similar idea.

I have this cool book that I've recommended before on this site called Neurochronometrics of Mind or something close to that which discusses a lot of the data around these methods. It's super dense but I was interested in trying to build a device 10 years ago and was discouraged by most. Seems like the data points to it potentially yielding a plethora of positive outcomes if done properly, but probably not by a non-clinician. Really interesting stuff. Imagine watching your own brainwaves with a 4096 channel OpenBCI kit (openbci.org iirc) and then engaging in a biofeedback experiment where depending on how you consciously react to seeing your various brainwaves in real-time, the hypothetical combo device also has a series of rTMS tori that each selectively expose you to varying gauss levels (give me some rope here I'm not a mad scientist) that the various parts of your brain get exposed to. Not sure how applicable or useful it might be but it's interesting to think about. A colleague of mine worked on visualization of brain waves for technological applications and told me it was a pretty wild experience to see your brain waves in real-time while also watching them in parallel, so I imagine creating a tight feedback loop with an inbound magnetic field in response to your thoughts might have some weird and possibly pretty trippy effects.

Disclaimer: don't do this, this is probably how you get spontaneously generated warp singularities appearing in your lab

<comment><USER8> My wife is having a TMS treatment right now.

Feom what I can tell _something_ has changed, and she seems happier.

<comment><USER9> ECT is one of the most effective treatments we have for depression, and TMS certainly promises to allow a procedure that's similarly effective but less invasive/without anesthesia - reducing costs significantly.

You can become manic from ECT, and I'd assume you can with TMS as well, but I'm sure your wife's psych knows all about the risks.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> It looks to me like listening practice, really. This is something that people usualy do when they want to learn a new language - we are learning languages not by sitting in class but through immersion. I'm wondering how the results would look like if they'd introduce third group - people who actively watch/listen to Chinese TV shows or podcasts.

</comment><comment><USER11> I'd bet this is useful for a range of memorization tasks other than language learning. I imagine this works because it strengthens the signal to noise ratio by pairing auditory stimulus with vagus nerve stimulation. It's kind of like how reading something out loud can help you remember it, only in this case it's like you are reading aloud and listening to someone else read at the same time.

I wonder if it could be used to improve reading comprehension. Say you are reading a story, maybe each character has their own waveform, and as you read or listen the stim pulse changes based on who is talking.

Or lets say you are reading a math textbook. You could label different variables with different stim pulses, which might make it easier to follow complex logic or minimize the need to re-read different sections.

</comment><comment><USER12> Imagine if scientists could one day figure out how to expand the linguistic critical period into adulthood, we could all be polygots.

<comment><USER13> I'm a polyglot and half my languages were learned as an adult. I really think you just need to immerse yourself for a few months.

It feels so so strange to me that the science is apparently still out on that.

<comment><USER14> That doesn't change the fact that during the critical period people are muuuuch better at acquiring language than after. Moreover, while people are fairly equal in their ability to acquire a language during the critical period, there is _much_ more variance in ability, all else being equal, after the critical period. The science isn't still out on that.

<comment><USER13> Maybe they are just much better at not being so easily discouraged.

And as for the study:

By the end of the training, those participants were 13% better on average.. There's a general feeling that people can't learn the sound patterns of a new language in adulthood, but our work historically has shown that's not true for everyone," Chandrasekaran said. "In this study, we are seeing that tVNS reduces those individual differences more than any other intervention I've seen."

"In general, people tend to get discouraged by how hard language learning can be, but if you could give someone 13% to 15% better results after their first session, maybe they'd be more likely to want to continue."

Sounds like placebo to me. ROMANES EUNT DOMUS.

<comment><USER14> I think it's hard to bring this study to bear on the critical period hypothesis in toto since its scope is narrow in both time and grammatical breadth (just sound production, and no other parts of comprehension or production), so we should maybe leave that aside.

You're right that the critical period hypothesis is still not settled, but let's go back to your proposal, that anyone who's immersed and motivated enough will be able to acquire nativelike proficiency. While we're in the realm of anecdotes (since you make reference to your own experience), I witnessed several peers of mine in a months-long language immersion program fall behind others in the program by quite a margin, with (IMO) little hope of nativelike proficiency even with months more of intensive classes, despite apparent motivation (sometimes much more than the better performers) and 24/7 immersion in the target language.

Going beyond anecdotes now, let's consider results from the literature against the assumption that if only adults could not be so easily discouraged they would be able to attain more nativelike proficiency. In that case, we'd expect at least a few places in time and space to have second language learners who do a phenomenal job of acquiring the target language, yet as far as I know that's never been found in the literature. Birdsong[0] reports that the range of attested rates of nativelike proficiency in L2 learners is between 5% and 25%. Moreover, there's a wealth of literature that documents in detail the specific ways in which language acquisition mechanisms falter beginning around age 6[1], which is in line with the suggestion that nativelike proficiency becomes progressively harder with age.

Neither of these results pushes your suggestion beyond plausibility, of course, but it does seem to me like the preponderance of evidence is on one side. If you know of any studies with findings that support the idea that motivation can be a decisive factor in acquiring nativelike proficiency in a second language I'd be really interested to see them.

[0]: [https://web.stanford.edu/~hakuta/www/research/publications/(...](https://web.stanford.edu/~hakuta/www/research/publications/\(1999\)%20-%20CONFOUNDED%20AGE%20LINGUISTIC%20AND%20COGNITIVE%20FACTORS%20IN%20.pdf)

[1]: [https://www.jstor.org/stable/pdf/44488300.pdf?casa_token=YS2...](https://www.jstor.org/stable/pdf/44488300.pdf?casa_token=YS2OKj08pwUAAAAA:2lw0ukUSquDhgXDK1nwsNKgpr8iKG3wYlGc4Noj- JuTEx8asUfPrsGA1aitlrALTGaplVv7Uvh2xACytBdIf48CTqvb7pqlmnPBp6ELe3kdHzQdCTlc)

<comment><USER13> > In that case, we'd expect at least a few places in time and space to have > second language learners who do a phenomenal job of acquiring the target > language, yet as far as I know that's never been found in the literature.

Respectfully, your literature is gobbledygook. :)

If the preponderance of evidence is on one side perhaps the academic researches need to get out more and collect better evidence.

I suggest as a start going to touristy places in developing countries (SEA, Peru, 'etc) where the guides are economically incentivised to speak half a dozen languages. I've encountered this sort of person over and over. They simply had to learn, as adults, and so they did.

Bet you'd learn French too if you worked for tips and your kid was hungry tout de suite!

And as for literature, try cracking a few books open from previous centuries that involved extensive travel for the author.

<comment><USER15> I was intrigued in your experience as a polygot and was buying your arguments until I read your suggestion to listen to guides then that completely reversed it because almost all the many many guides I've had are definitely not fluent in their non-native language in the same way children gain fluency. Most have broken language in the same way older immigrants have broken language despite the fact that are forced to navigate in their adopted language full-time.

<comment><USER13> Have to start your search somewhere. Watch out for an older distinguished- looking gentleman giving proper tours, not the fellows that accost you at the exit of the bus/train station with a few simple sentences.

If I was a researcher with no travel budget I'd try cross referencing a list of medium-small touristy towns (like Cusco) with decades that had upticks in tourism and a very bad local economy. Narrow it down to above-average income college grads and start asking them if they are or know of a polyglot. Can probably get pretty far with nothing but Facebook.

Just a guess, maybe I'm wrong about this pattern. Let me know what you find out. ;)

Edit: I was also intrigued by your comment until I read "in the same way older immigrants have broken language" \- this is indeed the common but rather narrow experience. I don't think I'll be able to convince you of anything. Best assume you are corresponding with the Loch ness monster.

<comment><USER15> My work requires me to travel with guides, I have no idea if they are all above average income 'gentlemens' as you say (before you edited it out) so I can't really comment on that. I'm an immigrant myself along with my community so there's that. If you consider that a 'narrow' view not sure what more to say. There's a difference between fluency and native-like fluency that kids obtain. I would love you to post recordings of you speaking and ask the public to see if they can tell if you're a native speaker or not because I genuinely am curious.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> tVNS devices are available to buy at [https://vagus.net](https://vagus.net)

<comment><USER17> It seems similar devices are available on Amazon for considerably less - <USER2> idea why the significant hike in price?

<comment><USER16> Devices on amazon are repurposed tENS devices which control voltage rather than current. tVNS is an emerging area of research and to repeat studies you need to understand the "dosage" which means the current delivered, because the same voltage can result in different currents depending on resistance. The accuracy of the biphasic waveform is also a factor.

<comment><USER17> I checked your bio and this is obviously an area you know a great deal about, and one I'm interested in.

Do you happen to have any high-level resources on the differences, pros & cons of TENS/tVNS/tDCS/PEMF and why one would be chosen over the other?

I'm slowly starting to piece things together, but frankly I'm a bit overwhelmed by it all

<comment><USER16> Thanks. They're all experimental and YMMV. What's exciting with tVNS cf tDCS is that you can use HRV as a measure of efficacy.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER18> Every time I read a neuroscience paper I remember that one study where they had neuroscientists try and fail to reverse engineer some classic arcade games with their methods.

</comment><comment><USER19> I use a tdcs device 20 minutes a day while doing dual n-back practice, and would recommend this regimen to others who are interested in boosting working memory.

Tdcs devices are really flexible and different electrode placements have different effects. Check out [https://totaltdcs.com/](https://totaltdcs.com/) for more info.

<comment><USER20> [https://tdcsbrain.com/product/apex-type-a-4ma- std](https://tdcsbrain.com/product/apex-type-a-4ma-std)

Looking at this product, it seems failsafe. You just put the sponges on your scalp and adjust the voltage?

<comment><USER19> I've never used that particular device, but generally you soak the sponges in a saline solution, place the electrodes on the desired locations, and choose your desired voltage. Anything under 4ma is considered safe, though I personally never go past 2ma.

I use the improved attention montage: [https://totaltdcs.com/electrode- placement-montage-list/impro...](https://totaltdcs.com/electrode-placement- montage-list/improved-attention/)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER21> That day when no wants to put any effort into anything will be a fun day in the history of mankind.

<comment><USER22> Perception of phonetic features which are not markedly meaningful in your native language is a very hard thing. It's not just a matter of putting in effort of not.</comment></comment>