Ask HN: How do I start being a consultant? - <AUTHOR> I've been a PHP developer for 4 years (not in the US), doing typically normal web development stuff. I was wondering if someone could give me advice on how to break out and start a consulting practice. I love working with people and another motivation for me is to stumble upon a problem that I can build a app for.<p>I'd really appreciate your advice and suggestions. I hope to be successful with this and forge my future. Thank you in advance. <comment><USER2> (1) Start a freelance practice.

(2) Raise your rates.

(3) As you work for clients, keep a sharp eye for opportunities to build "specialty practices". If you get to work on a project involving Mongodb, spend some extra time and effort to get Mongodb under your belt. If you get a project for a law firm, spend some extra time thinking about how to develop applications that deal with contracts or boilerplates or PDF generation or document management.

(4) Raise your rates.

(5) Start refusing hourly-rate projects. Your new minimum billable increment is a day.

(6) Take end-to-end responsibility for the _business objectives_ of whatever you build. This sounds fuzzy, like, "be able to talk in a board room", but it isn't! It's mechanically simple and you can do it immediately: Stop counting hours and days. Stop pushing back when your client changes scope. Your remedy for clients who abuse your flexibility with regards to scope is "stop working with that client". Some of your best clients will be abusive and you won't have that remedy. Oh well! Note: you are now a consultant.

(7) Hire one person at a reasonable salary. You are now responsible for their payroll and benefits. If you don't book enough work to pay both your take-home and their salary, you don't eat. In return: they don't get an automatic percentage of all the revenue of the company, nor does their salary automatically scale with your bill rate.

(8) You are now "senior" or "principal". Raise your rates.

(9) Generalize out from your specialties: Mongodb -> NoSQL -> highly scalable backends. Document management -> secure contract management.

(10) Raise your rates.

(11) You are now a top-tier consulting group compared to most of the market. Market yourself as such. Also: your rates are too low by probably about 40-60%.

Try to get it through your head: people who can simultaneously (a) crank out code (or arrange to have code cranked out) _and_ (b) take responsibility for the business outcome of the problems that code is supposed to solve --- people who can speak both tech and biz --- are exceptionally rare. They shouldn't be; the language of business is mostly just elementary customer service, of the kind taught to entry level clerks at Nordstrom's. But they are, so if you can do that, raise your rates.

<comment><USER3> _(5) Start refusing hourly-rate projects. Your new minimum billable increment is a day._

I'm assuming that holds true for you? If so, how did clients respond to that? I'm curious to hear about existing clients you transitioned from hourly (if applicable), and new clients that were introduced to that pay structure from day 1 (b/c most new clients I encounter have only heard of fixed pricing or hourly billing).

<comment><USER4> Thomas frequently mentions that his practice bills in weeks because that's the nature of his consulting (application security), and he's urged several people on here to do the same. He points out that people who balk at this tend to not be serious clients, and are ultimately not profitable enough to justify the work.

I'd bet, although I'm far from an authority, that anyone who's looking to hire top-rate consultants to audit the security of their software isn't going to balk too much at this sort of arrangement. It's the difference between the lawyer who advertises on late night TV to defend your DUI charge, and a team of legal experts in tax laws between America and New Zealand. If you need the latter level of expertise, you have to accept that the relationship is going to be fundamentally different than it would be with the former.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> There's a guy named Alan Weiss[1], who is widely regarded as an expert (maybe _the_ expert) on consulting. He has written several very popular books, including _Million Dollar Consulting_ [2] and _The Consulting Bible_ [3]. You may find his work useful. However, note that he would probably not classify what you're talking about (if I understand correctly) as "consulting" at all.

His take is that consultant is someone who shares their knowledge of process and works strategically with the client's decision makers... not someone who is knee deep in doing the work of implementing a project. If you're talking about writing PHP code, you may be more setting yourself up as a one man staffing agency, not as a consultant. I'd suggest reading Weiss, think hard about what you really want to do, and go from there.

[1]: <http://www.summitconsulting.com/about-alan/>

[2]: [http://www.amazon.com/Million-Dollar-Consulting-Alan- Weiss/d...](http://www.amazon.com/Million-Dollar-Consulting-Alan- Weiss/dp/0071622101)

[3]: [http://www.amazon.com/Consulting-Bible-Everything-Seven- Figu...](http://www.amazon.com/Consulting-Bible-Everything-Seven-Figure- Practice/dp/0470928085)

<comment><USER6> I think the "How do I become a consultant/start a consulting business" comes up every few months. Here is what I've taken from those posts. There is a difference between consulting and freelancing. Consultants are people who come in and help make decision and Freelancers are people who make those decisions happen (aka contractors).

(I personally do both, and honestly have more fun 'freelancing' than 'consulting').

<comment><USER2> The connotation that "freelancer" carries is that you are in general someone who can be plugged into an arbitrary dev project instead of an FTE. When you hear "freelancer", think instead "temp". Highly-paid temp! But: temp. Also: a freelancer is usually a sole proprietor; when you get 3 freelancers into a room, they become "contractors". Same connotation.

A consultant is someone whose practice is so expensive that for most companies it would make zero sense to keep them on staff. Think about graphic designers. I love graphic design and I love paying for graphic design, but I will never be able to convince Dave & Jeremy that we should hire a full time graphic designer. (And here you get a small taste of the complexity of the word "expensive", since graphic design is in reality very cheap).

There is a blurry line between consultants and freelancers/contractors. Sometimes, consultants get sucked into contractor projects; these are commonly called "staff augmentation" projects. You do them because you like the client and because the money is usually good; also, sometimes the market for whatever you do heats up, and suddenly it starts to make fiscal sense for lots of different companies to effectively get a full-time body to do what you do.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> To be a consultant, rather than an hourly-rate freelancer, you need two things:

\- insight

\- reputation

The reputation (from prior work) gets you in the door, and the insight (from your wealth of experience in the field, which you have, right?) is what gives you the right to call it a "practice", and the right to get you the 5- and 6-figure paychecks for each engagement.

Insight is more than just experience; you'll have to offer something unique and valuable for each customer that they can't just get from their local recruitment agency for commodity rates.

You have to be able to communicate at senior management level, in big picture terms, but also operate at the ground floor and all the way up. You must be able to advise at each level of the organisation, while understanding the nuts and bolts of the guy doing the programming (and quite probably doing it yourself).

</comment><comment><USER8> I think the advice folks are posting here is very good. I'm about a week into the process of incorporating a company and trying to figure out how in the hell I'm going to do this.

While not particularly novel advice, the one thing I can advise (and I have to remind myself of this constantly) is to be cognizant of whether your spending too much time focusing on the inconsequential things (which seem psychically easier to deal with) than the important things.

In my case, I'm still trying to figure out a plan for getting initial work (which you might imagine is a pretty important thing), but I found myself debating for days about my new logo (which is pretty much guaranteed to never be looked at by anyone for longer than a few seconds at the top of my web page).

I've also spent hours figuring out systems for how I'm going to handle invoicing, client management, output delivery, branding and marketing, etc.

All of those things are certainly important to do, but I find it's way too easy for me to focus my energy on them, instead of the elephant in the room.

Good luck though.

</comment><comment><USER3> Start building your consulting business or freelance presence on the side while you still have a steady stream of income. For example, by the time I left my full time job, I had:

\- full time contract work for at least 6 months

\- my LLC formed (US only, I think)

\- my site built, setup w/analytics, a blog, Google webmaster tools, etc.

\- my first set of business cards in hand (may not be that important to some people, but they came in handy for me)

\- other misc. stuff (spoke to my CPA about taxes, researched sample contracts, looked into software I'd need, etc.)

Doing all that while still having income meant that I didn't have to trade billable time for those once I became a consultant. When you're running your own business, you'll always have to invest non-billable time, but those first 3/6/12 months are always the hardest, so do what you can to maximize billable hours and finding more clients or work, w/out overwhelming yourself.

</comment><comment><USER9> How I started: \- Called up past employers and let them know what I was up to. Asked if they "needed any help" \- Reached out to local startups and asked if they "needed any help" \- Trolled craigslist for projects, built POCs quickly, then responded to the ad with a link to the proof of concept.

My first three clients were an ex employer, 2 local startups (reaching out to startups), and a real estate company (craigslist)

<comment><USER10> How is being a consultant different than being a freelance developer? Is it just nominal?

<comment><USER11> Freelance developers charge $100 an hour to write PHP apps, consultants charge $40k to solve a problem costing the business $200k a year. That solution might be a PHP app that takes 2 weeks to write.

Not really joking here.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> I highly recommend working for free for 1-2 months.

I've been in SEO for the last 4 years. I do in-house enterprise stuff now, but I had started a consulting gig for a little while a few years ago. I spent 1 month telling everyone and anyone that I was doing free SEO consulting in exchange for a great testimonial (read: Yelp review). Got 8 or 9 free clients. Two insisted on paying me after the work was done, and the rest wrote me fantastic testimonials and sent me referrals for months. Afterwards, your testimonials and Yelp reviews will be the catalyst for more business in the future. My 2 c's.

<comment><USER13> Please don't work for free. Offer an awesome discount or accept something instead of money (a computer, a telephone, anything), but don't offer your services for free. Establish, from the very beginning, that your services are valuable.

<comment><USER14> Free is not good but it's actually better than cheap. As long as you are accepting a client's money, they are going to have expectations and a lot more things can go wrong. Free at least frees you from those expectations.

<comment><USER13> In my experience people have all kinds of expectations, regardless of wether you charge them or not. And billing shows them your time is as valuable as theirs. On the other hand, if you offer your time for free, people will tend to load you with as much work as possible because, hey, you're free; and you have no way to leverage how much you're willing to do.

<comment><USER14> I figure with free, you've always got the opportunity to say "Hey, that's as much as I can afford to do for free" in response to unreasonable requests. With cheap, you then have to deal with the added "but I paid you money" argument as well. I'm sure it differs on how the job is presented and how you outline your responsibilities as well.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><AUTHOR> Wow, amazing responses! Thank you guys, I've learned a lot from you :-)

I have another quesiton that's been bothering me:

Let's say I contacted my old company. I know that there are developers there that knows better than me (with regards to programming). Should I still pursue consulting there? What should I do?

P.S. Let's say I see the project that's going to be done would fit perfectly well with PHP, it's adequate and saves the company money. Then there are the developers that are .NET programmers and they are pushing that although let's say for the sake of argument, PHP would suffice.

</comment><comment><USER15> Most services and products out there have free trials.. If the service is good, customers will keep coming back.. You just need to get them through the door first so I agree with the idea of giving couple of hours for free if that can win the deal

<comment><USER2> This is a terrible idea because it misunderstands where the value is in the consulting/freelancing transaction.

People who pay 1099 contractors to build software are virtually never doing that because they think software is cool and they'd like to watch some get built.

They are building software because they have some business problem that needs to get solved, such as converting visitors to their website into Twitter followers or credit card subscription signups. The business problems are things like "we have people hitting our website and we a grip on getting more people to do that, but we don't have a way of profiting from those hits, and we think selling t-shirts on the site is a good way to do it".

They are turning to consultants because they are not confident in their ability to get the project done in-house. Maybe doing it in-house would distract their team from a more important project. Maybe they don't have an internal team and (rightly) believe that if they tried to hire one, they'd probably go through 3 different leads over 18 months before they got a productive team going.

What consulting clients are buying is _determinism_ and _flexibility_. They have a project that needs to complete _this quarter_.

When you offer your services to those people for free, you are inherently undermining "determinism". Not only does it not take a genius to compare the market rate for software development to "free" and ask what's wrong with you, but also it's intuitively obvious that you can't sustainably deliver services for free.

Half a project is worth either zero or less than zero. So what has your client gained from this transaction? They put out an RFP for the project as a way of eliminating staffing risk, and you responded by offering them more risk. Yay!</comment></comment>


Sort is CS jargon - <AUTHOR> http://genericlanguage.wordpress.com/2010/08/18/sort-is-jargon/

<comment><USER2> I wonder how many people this actually applies to. The majority of people I've spoken with seem to be able to make the connection when I say "sort a list of numbers."

</comment><comment><USER3> It really is. I've hit this issue with a number of clients, and I've tried to avoid saying "sort" lately, preferring "order by" or "in X order".</comment>


The New Digg Version 4.0 Alpha - <AUTHOR> http://www.blueglass.com/blog/the-new-digg-version-4-0-alpha/ <comment><USER2> The signup page looks good at least...</comment>


Why Do We See Security Awareness Training Programs Fail? - <AUTHOR> http://www.informationsecuritybuzz.com/securitybuzz/5-reasons-why-security-awareness-fail

<comment><USER2> This evil spam source should be barred from appearing on HN again.</comment>


Scrolldit: I Heard You Liked Scrolling Reddit So I Put Scrolling In Your Reddit - <AUTHOR> http://techcrunch.com/2011/10/25/scrolldit-i-heard-you-liked-scrolling-reddit-so-i-put-scrolling-in-your-reddit/

<comment><USER2> Founder here, looking forward to your feedback :)</comment>


Ask HN: P=NP, what do you do? - <AUTHOR> Imagine you are a reclusive scientist genius who after spending the last 15 years exploring the space of algorithms for solving 3SAT, has stumbled upon a fast polynomial-time solution.<p>Somewhat tired as you are of the academic community, and not very interested in prizes or distinctions, you decide it would be in your best interest to try to monetize your discovery privately. To this purpose, what massively lucrative applications can you think of for such an algorithm? <comment><USER3> let people make a shopping list, then give them the best deal there is on all the things combined, with as few shipments and registrations as possible, maybe let them pick how many max new stores, and let them keep a list of stores they like -- and once you've made a bunch off that, announce how you did it, claim the million dollar prize and tada - the first mathematician i'm aware of who didn't care about the world's ridiculousness, yet wanted to cash in.

if you really want to give a finger to the academia though, just publish it - and include a long essay on all the various ways the academic institutions hindered your progress, how bureaucratic they are, and how little they actually care about advancing knowledge. further, publish it on a blog instead of an academic journal, ask for peer review, and don't mention your university once anywhere on the blog. that'll show 'em, those punks.

<comment><AUTHOR> The problem with this is it's somewhat public. Assuming your system was outstandingly good, could it not raise dangerous suspicions?

I like your plan for dealing with academia.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> Bid the spy agencies against each other. Make sure you tell the Americans that you are really working for them so they don't kill you and they also protect you from all the other people that want to kill you.

Edit: Who I am kidding, the Americans would not want the other countries to know P=NP and talking to anyone else would be grounds for disappearance. So there would be no bidding war, you'd have to take what you can get from the NSA/CIA. Anything less than 1M a year for life would be insulting and they know that.

<comment><USER5> _Who I am kidding, the Americans would not want the other countries to know P=NP and talking to anyone else would be grounds for disappearance_

Post it very publicly in many places, including 4chan. Hope that Anonymous gets hold of it, or that the spooks start whacking /b/tards or the /b/tards start whacking the spooks.

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> Answer from Cook: www.cs.toronto.edu/~sacook/homepage/JACMpvsnp.ps

Highlights \- Computers could find formal proofs for any theorem with a reasonable length \- All you need then is a good recognition algorithm for formal proofs \- Then you can just work on recognizers for good novels / music / etc and have it churn out classics

The other example (I forget the source) is that if you have a P time formula for safety checking the designs of nuclear power plant, if P = NP you can efficiently generate a list of the designs of all possible safe nuclear power plants.

So you can go from P-time checkable constraints to P-time enumeration of things which fill the constraints.

</comment><comment><USER7> I've always thought that this would make a great plot for a science fiction novel. A _computer science_ fiction novel. There would be lots of intrigue, as the guy was tracked down by the NSA and covertly outwitted his opponents using his proof, until a final showdown where he discovers the horrifying truth about who else knows that P=NP, and what happens to everyone else who's ever proven it.

So...should I look for a literary agent or try and bootstrap this myself by hiring a private press? ;)

<comment><USER8> Someone already did this <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Atrocity_Archives>

basically, all the really clever computer science such as NP=P turns out to involve summoning demons etc in the book. If you want to read a ridiculous spin on computer science + fantasy, fun read.

<comment><USER9> I quite enjoyed this book, actually.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> Make my salesmen travel more efficiently?

<comment><USER11> not that much more efficient. approximation algorithms provide pretty good solutions.

</comment></comment><comment><USER12> Test driven development would take on a new meaning, with the programmer a writing collection of tests and letting the computer find the shortest program that makes them pass.

<comment><USER13> Wouldn't writing a complete test suite take equivalent effort to writing the program in the first place? I mean, wouldn't they require the same amount of information? Then, to simplify the task of writing test suites, you might want to design a programming language that compiles into test suites, but would you use your program-writing program to write the program that describes the test suite? And also, who watches the watchers?

<comment><USER14> The test suite will describe the desired behavior, regardless of all other dimensions.

The P=NP optimizer/generator will then generate an implementation that is optimal along one or more dimensions (like space or time efficiency).

Also-- regardless of that, It's "easier" in several senses to describe the desired behavior of an API than to implement that API.

Let's say we wanted to implement addition for a calculator. Here's a complete description:

-1 is the lowest number

-successor(N) is the successor to number N

That's a complete description of the natural number system, but it's not a useful addition function in any sense.

<comment><USER13> _Let's say we wanted to implement addition for a calculator. Here's a complete description:

-1 is the lowest number

-successor(N) is the successor to number N_

In the first place, that is not a complete description of natural numbers. Natural numbers have to be integers. So if you're going to tell a computer program that "1 is the lowest number", you'd first have to tell it what you mean by "number" and "lowest". Also, "successor(N) is the successor to number N"? That seems rather meaningless. What is "successor" in the first place? If your generator already knows what "successor" means, why do you have to describe it again? If the generator doesn't know what "successor" means, why are you using it in your description of a successor function?

 _That's a complete description of the natural number system, but it's not a useful addition function in any sense._

Even assuming your description was complete, why would a description of the set of natural numbers imply the creation of an addition function? Unless we're talking about a code generator that _reads minds_! :)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> I would post a question on HN saying "P=NP, what do you do?" and then take the best suggestion.

<comment><USER16> This can't possibly be the best suggestion.

</comment></comment><comment><USER17> You can break a lot of crypto - so if illegality is your speciality, you can break whatever you want. If you want to remain legal, there are plenty of bidders who will pay for epoxyed black boxes that will do decryption.

There's also the UPS/Fedex route - which isn't worth as much money, but you could sell them a black box that does fast routing for money.

</comment><comment><USER18> Put up a web API that solves arbitrary SAT instances. Let other people do what they want, and I can watch while I think about what to do next.

Also, write a theorem prover of course, and try for big outstanding conjectures.

</comment><comment><USER19> mariorz: is there something you'd like to tell us?

</comment><comment><USER20> You could use it to build better compilers (compilers today have to approximate many NP-complete problems).

</comment><comment><USER21> I've always assumed it is a given that as soon as you make that discovery, all sorts of agencies would be hunting after you and you would have to run for your life. So my worry would be how to safely publish the information to get off the hook. I used to think publishing it to Usenet and sending lots of emails would do the trick, but I am not so sure anymore.

<comment><USER22> You could go low-tek and print off hundreds of copies and have them post all over universities, physically mailed to people, etc and then blasted on YouTube, and so forth.

</comment></comment><comment><USER23> almost is very far from done. If you have REALLY done it then probably somebody else might do it as well in the (not so) near future.

Also, what is the degree of the polynomial solution? If it is high then fast approximate solution might be preferable to exact slower solution (example: Simplex vs. Ellipsoid algorithms for LP) . If the solution is not linear or quadratic the most this hugely decreases your potential market.

If I am at such position I would look at problems for which I can beat precision/time for approximate algorithms.

<comment><AUTHOR> I've edited out "almost", I meant to use it as qualifying the "stumbled upon" part, not the algorithm.

In any case by fast polynomial solution I meant one with a low degree. Let's assume this algorithm is as fast as existing approximate ones.

<comment><USER23> ok then. This shifts the hard part of the problem from "how do I make this run in a lifetime", to "how do I reduce this problem to 3SAT efficiently".

This seems to be related: [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/P_%3D_NP_problem#Consequences_o...](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/P_%3D_NP_problem#Consequences_of_proof)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> If you have an algorithm with a worst case polynomial bound on the time it takes to solve an NP complete problem, then UPS, Fedex and other companies would pay nicely to use a service to optimally do scheduling, routing and resource allocation.

On the other hand, since it is more likely that P!=NP, this "almost" algorithm probably fails exponentially on some set of examples, and in practice there are plenty of NP complete problems which enjoy very good approximation algorithms or heuristic algorithms which work well for typical problem instances.

<comment><USER8> and if you in fact have a problem that shows P=NP, publish it so you can win the millenium prize, 1 million dollars plus ease at getting tenure so you can goof off is nothing to sneeze at

<comment><USER24> Even though the millenium prize may be the most obvious solution, your best option might be to monetize the discovery privately.

<comment><USER25> Assuming that your solution is practical, which might well not be the case (O(n^c) is polynomial for _any_ constant c).

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER26> Ring Intel's CEO. You have the means to give him optimal layout for his CPUs saving them both massive amounts of time and more importantly space on CPUs. If you like you can also approach AMD and get the two bidding against each other.

They will bite your hand off and you will be a rich man.

<comment><USER27> Please call ARM and its Si partners first. Thanks.

</comment></comment><comment><USER28> Two monitors at the same time, friend.

In seriousness, I'd be careful because as others have pointed out, some crypto systems would be vulnerable.

<comment><USER6> More than some, I think. Most strong crypto short of one-time pads makes use of NP (or at least problems solvable by NP problems, factoring is probably a little easier than NP).

NP is nice for crypto since it has P time checkable solutions - so just make the "password" an encoding of the solution and you're golden.

It's easy to check that a password is correct, and it takes EXP time to brute force. Hopefully the crypto implementation blocks IPs after some number of login attempts that is less than EXP :)

<comment><USER28> I'm reminded from the seminal hacker movie: "There's not a government on this earth that wouldn't kill us all for that thing."

<comment><USER29> Which movie would that be?

<comment><USER28> Sneakers. :) <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sneakers_(film)> Decent flick.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER30> 1) Cash in your discovery for US $1 million [0].

2) Fund your own disruptive startup incubator, a la YCombinator (using the publicity from your discovery to attract hoards of scrappy geniuses).

2.5) Optionally, focus on startups that monetize P=NP - again, for publicity reasons (as well being able to leverage your own expertise in evaluating biz ideas).

3) Profit!

(profferred tongue in cheek, of course - it's not very private :)

[0] <http://www.claymath.org/millennium/P_vs_NP/>

</comment><comment><USER29> Well, if you write a theorem prover, you can probably get just about every mathematical proof prize out there. That's $7 million from the Clay Institute alone...

<comment><USER31> Just make sure that you publish the proof for P=NP last, otherwise others could beat you to it :)

<comment><USER27> Not really, anyone could use your prover to prove P=NP. It's Pandora's box!

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER32> I wondered along these lines recently. A relative is getting caught up in the "water-car", "Brown's Gas", Hydrogen internet scam.. Where you convert water to 2H2 + O2 and burn that to power the car, house, etc for "free".

What would you do if it actually worked? How would you convince people? Where would you share it?

<comment><USER33> Convincing people is easy. Build a closed system, grab an inverter, sell power back to the power company, which in many places they are required by law to pay you for. Sell enough power back, you'll get attention.

The idea that demonstrating a net-positive process is hard is merely smokescreen tossed up by the perpetual motion scamsters. It's not. It's easy. It's as easy as it is to demonstrate that a gas generator produces power when you add gasoline and oxygen to the system. If you have a process that works, you can generate and sell power to prove your point and go from there. The fact that nobody can _quite_ seem to manage this feat, despite the easy money it would represent if you actually had a solution, is proof enough that it simply doesn't work.

A system that pushed out a kilowatt and never stopped would be very easy to prove. It's only hard to prove something when you're sitting there fiddling with picowatts and arguing whether the power comes from the magic process or if you're simply translating magnetism into electricity or some other fiddly, on-the-edge-of-rounding-error sort of thing.

Also, any true net-positive process can be turned into this sort of thing, simply by feeding back the net-positive process onto itself. Any net-positive process should be able to produce a kilowatt, easily. (Arbitrary amounts of power, actually, but let's take something thinkably-small.) Again, the fact that they have to resort to fiddly little rounding errors is proof that they have nothing. Any interesting perpetual motion process would be able to power a nation, if it actually worked.

<comment><USER32> Oh I agree.

And the existence of China (very large state with low regard for IP law and very significant energy requirements) is proof enough that the "energy companies are suppressing this" myth is a farce.

But even if I had that kind of proof - I would suggest you'd still think I was a crack-pot. It would be a very very significant uphill battle to gain acceptance in the science community. (obviously - as I would have experimental proof that a whole bunch of science theory is wrong)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER34> solve protein folding, become evil megalomaniac with doomsday virus.

<comment><USER6> I thought protein folding was harder than NP.

IIRC, calculating the free energy of a molecule is in #P (count the number of solutions to a problem in NP), and you still need to step it through time or otherwise deal with the actual folding bit.

I might be remembering incorrectly though.

Edit: <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sharp-P-complete> Also: whoops - <USER2> like structure prediction can be done with high accuracy in NP - just don't try to animate it :)

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> I'd write a kick-ass regular expression engine.

<http://perl.plover.com/NPC/NPC-3SAT.html>

</comment><comment><USER35> If you've got a good solution, there are plenty of systems you can make more efficient (not only salesmen and UPS :-) I would make a list, create a consultancy and propose my services to the industries with the highest remunerative potential :-)

</comment><comment><USER36> Build a superhuman intelligence (duh).

</comment><comment><USER37> The US government pays a million bucks per new prime right? Just push those out every week or so.

<comment><USER38> Errr, citation needed?

</comment></comment><comment><USER39> Are we answering a homework question for you? :p

</comment><comment><USER40> Hack the planet.

I feel so unclean for saying that.</comment>


UN vote recognizes state of Palestine; US objects - <AUTHOR> http://www.sfgate.com/news/us/article/Abbas-UN-vote-last-chance-on-2-state-solution-4075612.php

<comment><USER2> It seems US is more keen on being a good ally to Israel than doing what's right.</comment>


Welcome to the New Techno Feudalism - <AUTHOR> https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2016/apr/24/the-new-feudalism-silicon-valley-overlords-advertising-necessary-evil <comment><USER2> Also [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=n-2TEwdRnX0](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=n-2TEwdRnX0)</comment>


How the American fervor for deregulation contributed to the 737 Max crashes - <AUTHOR> https://slate.com/news-and-politics/2019/03/boeing-737-max-crash-faa-regulations.html <comment><USER2> Commercial aviation is one of the most regulated industries in America, so you'd expect that if deregulation were the cause something like this would happen somewhere else first...

<comment><USER3> Like the Volkswagen emissions scandal? The various times when mining waste enters drinking water supplies? The many times when E. coli or other diseases enters the food supply (up 10% since 2013 says [https://eu.usatoday.com/story/news/investigations/2019/01/17...](https://eu.usatoday.com/story/news/investigations/2019/01/17/food- recalls-increasing-romaine-lettuce-beef-pirg-usda-fda-ecoli- salmonella/2595775002/) ). The sorry state of effectively unregulated cyber charter schools where students have "extremely lower learning growth in cyber charter schools ... when compared to other schools" \- [https://theconversation.com/what-cyber-charter-schools- are-a...](https://theconversation.com/what-cyber-charter-schools-are-and-why- their-growth-should-worry-us-68471) .

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> Slight counter-point:

Boeing hid the new system so that they could avoid the regulatory process that makes it very difficult to introduce anything new. Hiding the new system was the problem that cause unsafe situation.

Another problem of same regulatory process: most private airplanes manufactured today use leaded gas combined with 80 year old engines designed in the 1950's. These engines have carburetors that are quite finicky.

Other aspects of this problem:

Most of us speed about 6 miles above the speed limit on the freeway - if you travel exactly at the speed limit you'll have a new set of problems.

I'm not sure what the solution is, but I think it's necessary to suspect that regulations that are over-burdensome can introduce odd behavior and counter intuitively make the very problem they're trying to address (in this case safety) worse.

<comment><USER5> You shouldn't be downmoded as that's a perfectly valid point.

Yet, it looks like this time the details Boeing hid from regulators were incredibly relevant and regulations were right in placing a high evidence burden on their safety.

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> There is only one way to fix this problem folks. Privatize the FAA, deregulate airplane manufacture, and use the money saved to give the rich a tax cut. The rich will then trickle down on the planes to save us from these software issues.

<comment><USER7> Not really the type of attitude HN wants on here.

<comment><USER8> Who made you the gatekeeper?

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> > [Boeing's] own engineers ... "concluded that the system complied with all > applicable FAA regulations." Four years after the engineers wrote that > opinion, the system failed twice, killing more than 300 people.

It is a really big leap to conclude that this system would not have failed 4 YEARS after inspection if the FAA had done the inspection itself. This conclusion assumes that both:

1\. FAA certifiers would have found something that the Boeing engineers did not.

2\. The system was not modified for four years.

#1 is debatable and hard to prove. And I doubt #2 is how things work in the real world.

</comment><comment><USER10> By American standards the process is working correctly. The free market has responded by avoiding Boeing or carriers that fly the 737. Only slight loss of life required.

<comment><USER11> Move fast and break things!

</comment></comment><comment><USER12> Has the invesitgation into the cause of the second crash concluded yet? I didn't thing so...

</comment><comment><USER13> No, I think it's the airlines fervor for cost cutting and seat maximization that leads to dangerous problems.</comment>


Scientists create crystal which would allow us to breathe underwater - <AUTHOR> http://www.independent.co.uk/news/science/scientists-create-crystal-which-could-allow-us-to-breathe-underwater-9772871.html <comment><USER2> Update: A representative for Syddansk University has issued a revised estimate of the compound's efficiency. They told Vice in a statement: "I am just updating our story on our website, because it turns out that Prf McKenzie made a calculation error. Pls note that it is not a SPOONFUL of this stuff, that we need to rid a room of oxygen. It is a bucket (10 litres). We apologize."

Well at least they admitted it was all hype.</comment>


How to Become a Bad Theoretical Physicist - <AUTHOR> http://www.phys.uu.nl/~thooft/theoristbad.html

<comment><USER2> to be bad at theory just keep putting things into practice. theoreticians hate that.</comment>


Turkish Internet hit with massive DDoS attack - <AUTHOR> http://www.dailydot.com/politics/turkey-ddos-attack-tk-universities/ <comment><AUTHOR> It still continues. Almost all web banking sites are out of service</comment>


Ask HN: What are you using Go for? - <AUTHOR>

I'm interested in knowing what HNers are doing with Go (other than learning about it, though it would be interesting to hear about learning projects too). Thanks. <comment><USER2> A collaborative music jukebox that lets multiple people listen to the stream over a network. Because cloud-based jukeboxes seem to be all the rage, but none of them let you play music with other people at the same time. We gave it a fun name too: [https://github.com/turbowookie/turbo- wookie](https://github.com/turbowookie/turbo-wookie). Go is used for the HTTP server, and is basically a layer over interacting with MPD.

Also working on a flat-file blogging system with an online editor, because flat-file is the middle ground between a static-site generator and a traditional database-based blogging engine.

<comment><AUTHOR> Innovative use of Go, I must say.

<comment><USER2> It was a school project. We were the only team to use new technologies. Everyone else used Java or C# (with one group using PHP). Go seemed cool. Dart (which we used for the frontend) also seemed cool.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER3> After dabbling with it for a couple of weeks, I wrote the backend (search & indexing implementation using the Go standard library's suffix array implementation) of our websites' autocomplete feature. It's been running for 7 months without a crash and without leaking memory, serving several million requests/day.

I'd like to use it more, but we have so many layers of legacy Perl code, that it's difficult to replace single components because of their dependencies (rewriting anything worthwhile would mean rewriting 4-5 libraries also).

<comment> workhere-io _It 's been running for 7 months without a crash and without leaking memory, serving several million requests/day._

Sounds cool. What kind of server are you running this on?

<comment><USER3> > _What kind of server are you running this on?_

It runs on a single node of a 4-in-1 supermicro server with dual Opteron 6136 CPUs. Because it uses so little CPU time (about 15% of one core on average), we are now using the server for other things as well ...

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> As the public entry point towards many internal APIs. Its lighter and faster than any scripting language. Gorilla toolbox made it very easy to write.

<comment><AUTHOR> Interesting use case.

<comment><USER4> It was to simplify a rather complicated system that used bots. Each bot would report home by requesting different URLs. That seemed overly complicated to me, because one URI change would break every single bot. I then created the public interface and simplified it to one URI. Then the data structure being sent to the APIs got an additional parameter. It told the public interface which API had to get that data. This was a very simple change, because the data structure was defined by the APIs and common among all. It ended up being very fast and allowed the bots to spend less time waiting for a response. Was planning to add a messaging queue but then I left the project (I was a consultant).

<comment><AUTHOR> >Then the data structure being sent to the APIs got an additional parameter. It told the public interface which API had to get that data.

Nice technique.

<comment><USER4> I call it the "Boarding Pass Pattern." I modeled it after the typical airplane boarding pass where everyone has the same data structure yet is going to different places/doing different things. :)

<comment><AUTHOR> Good name :) Another possible name could be the Differentiator Pattern (heh, just a wild try), since it differentiates between calls which otherwise have the same data. Or even the Call Router pattern, for obvious reasons ...

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> I'm using it to scrape a popular gaming API endpoint to get info on hundreds of matches per day. I chose Go because it's fast, easily deployable and I enjoy it. :)

<comment><USER6> Dotabuff? Awesome work if its you.

</comment></comment><comment><USER7> This: [https://github.com/joewalnes/websocketd](https://github.com/joewalnes/websocketd)

<comment><AUTHOR> Just checked the github page for it. Looks interesting and useful. Could be used to push system monitoring data to a browser (among tons of other uses, of course). Trying it out ...

<comment><USER7> Here's an example of using it to build a quick Linux system monitoring dashboard: [https://github.com/joewalnes/web- vmstats](https://github.com/joewalnes/web-vmstats)

<comment><AUTHOR> Wrote something similar but without much GUI, here:

[http://jugad2.blogspot.in/2014/01/websocketd-and-python- for-...](http://jugad2.blogspot.in/2014/01/websocketd-and-python-for- system.html)

websocketd is a good tool.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> I work with streaming data and Go has been great reducing the number of backend workers (formerly in Ruby) to handle about 1 TB/day in real time. It's very stable and great for building an internal data aggregator.

A friend has also been using Go to create a board game as his side project.

<comment><AUTHOR> Interesting about the data volume.

What's used for the GUI of the game?

<comment><USER8> HTML 5 canvas.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> Not using Go in production, but I've been looking at using it for a mobile API for a stateful system (with both a REST and Websocket interface). Seems to be great for realtime system with a lot of different data inputs.

<comment><AUTHOR> Interesting.

</comment></comment><comment><USER10> Bytengine : [https://github.com/johnwilson/bytengine](https://github.com/johnwilson/bytengine) Work in progress but man is Go fun!

<comment><AUTHOR> Had a quick look at Bytengine. Like the idea of using Linux-like file paths to refer to documents.

>Files are JSON documents to which you can attach any binary/text data (docx, txt, pdf, jpeg, etc...).

I'm guessing you store the filename(s) of the attached data (docx, txt, pdf, ...) in the JSON fragment?

</comment></comment><comment><USER11> Docker is writing in Go ([http://www.docker.io/](http://www.docker.io/))

<comment><AUTHOR> Yes, had seen that some days ago, but thanks.

I had blogged about Docker using LXC, as part of this post about Domino, a Python PaaS for data science:

[http://jugad2.blogspot.in/2013/12/domino-paas-for-data- scien...](http://jugad2.blogspot.in/2013/12/domino-paas-for-data-science.html)

and had seen then that Docker uses Go, though I didn't say so in the post.

Cool.

</comment></comment><comment><USER12> I've been using it primarily for a little bit of systems programming and writing internal utilities at work.

<comment><AUTHOR> Utilities seems like a good use of Go, apart from the others I'm aware of. I mean command-line ones.

<comment><USER13> > Utilities seems like a good use of Go

Can you elaborate? I'm unfamiliar with Go, but most of my Python (and Perl, sigh) coding could be classified as "utilities for work". I would have thought that any language with an explicit compile step would be at a disadvantage in this space.

<comment><AUTHOR> >Can you elaborate?

Sure.

>I would have thought that any language with an explicit compile step would be at a disadvantage in this space.

Not exactly, and not always. In fact it can be the opposite. It depends on a few factors, and there are tradeoffs.

Consider that so many of the command-line utilities that come bundled with Unixen (Unix, Linux, BSD) are written in C - just look in /bin, /usr/bin, etc (some of the default dirs in $PATH). (Do a "file * | less" in those dirs.)

(Though there definitely are utilities that are written purely in *sh, or Perl, or Python, and more so these days than some years ago. Still, some, particularly shell scripts, tend to make calls to compiled utilities such as sed, awk, grep, ls, du, df, ps, and many other commands.)

For utilities used often or heavily, or where performance is important, a compiled binary can often be a good choice: lower startup time (don't have to start the interpreter to run the script, often faster run time (because running compiled machine code vs. interpreted or JIT'ed).

Go has performance closer to C than Python does, and also has some aspects of HLL's (High Level Languages) like Python. The compile only has to be done once per machine or platform, remember; also, Go compilation is quite fast, which was a design goal of the language. And if you compile once on one machine, you can just copy the binary (in an automated way, too) to any number of other machines running the same OS and version. With a self-sufficient binary, you avoid both the issues of missing or incorrect dynamically loaded libraries of languages like C (if the C program uses them), and the issues of missing or wrong versions of required libraries, with languages like Python.

Those are some reasons I could think of, off the top of my head. There may be others, both pro and con.

<comment><AUTHOR> More reasons: some of the Go language creators were heavily involved in the creation of Unix and C, and while I don't know it for a fact, it's pretty likely that they intended and designed Go to be useful for command-line tools as well, e.g. servers, utilities, etc. Also, Go has the flags package for handling command-line arguments (though other languages like Python do have various libs for that too).

<comment><AUTHOR> Also, though not directly related to your question, Torbit (later acquired by Walmart Labs), used Go, due to its combination of productivity and performance. Josh Fraser, Torbit co-founder, told me that.

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

[http://www.onlineaspect.com/about/](http://www.onlineaspect.com/about/) (Josh's site)</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment>


With Supreme Court challenge, billionaire could dismantle beach access rights - <AUTHOR> http://www.latimes.com/local/lanow/la-me-martins-beach-supreme-court-20180306-story.html <comment><USER2> The US really needs a freedom to roam law like Britain [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Freedom_to_roam](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Freedom_to_roam). Otherwise we'll soon end up with the whole country locked up by billionaires and farmers. Out in the West it's already hard to hike because a lot of land is fenced in without any way to pass though.

</comment><comment><USER3> That's really going to suck if he wins. It's only then a matter of time before all desirable coastline is snatched up by the rich and barred from the public.

I'm a little confused though. Is he wanting to close off the beach itself from public use or just the access road that people use to get to it? If it's the latter, it's a little more understandable and I think the state should have to chip in to maintain the access road and public utilities.

</comment><comment><USER4> This is a great example of the arrogance that makes lots of people hate silicon valley.

</comment><comment><USER5> I respect Khosla's investments, but I can't believe he isn't running the math on the negative backlash this is creating against his personal brand.

Californians love their public access to nature. And it's a really nice thing.

<comment><USER6> What brand, though? Most Californians have no idea who he is, and even if they do, they probably aren't aware of which companies he invests in.

</comment></comment><comment><USER7> Can someone explain to me how one can believe in property rights and also be against this? fwiw I think property rights should be drastically scaled back.

<comment><USER8> I also believe in a more limited concept of private property, but setting that aside:

Property ownership in the Anglo-American legal system has always been subject to limitations. Property owners have common-law obligations both to the government (traditionally the sovereign) and to other private citizens. These are typically easements ([https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Easement](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Easement)).

The US Constitution specifies that the government cannot take property without "just compensation". The legal dispute at issue here is whether California requiring Khosla to permit people to travel through his property to reach the beach is a "taking" or whether it is simply enforcing an existing easement that was already established at the time he purchased the property.

</comment></comment><comment><USER9> Fuck Vinod Khosla. If there was any justice in this country he would be sitting in a jail cell for contempt of court.

</comment><comment><USER10> I remember when this all first went down. My mom used to take me to Martin's Beach when I was a young pup.</comment>


Ask HN: How hard is it to take up an existing project? - <AUTHOR>

I hired a developer to build an MVP with a very low budget thus the code is a very messy. The app is not very big, it might be a total of 4-5k lines of code (if that counts for anything). Also, communication with this developer was not good at all which is the main reason I want to hire someone different now that I have a bigger budget.<p>So my question is: How hard is it for a qualified developer to take up an existing project with messy code? <comment><USER2> its not -- its called "ramp up" time. its usually about a day or up to 2 weeks depending on the size of the project before you feel comfortable making changes. the longest one i ever had was about a year, where after i worked on a project for a year i was still finding sections of code and saying "oh... i had no idea our app did this or these files were there!"

usually the dev will just poke around for that time and make small changes and debug it a few times to see how it works. 4-5k lines i would say 2-3 days tops before they are comfortable with it.

<comment><USER3> "usually the dev will just poke around for that time and make small changes and debug it a few times to see how it works. 4-5k lines i would say 2-3 days tops before they are comfortable with it."

It really depends what the OP means by messy. If by messy he means fairly straightforward code but not built for easy extension and lacking proper layout/architecture then a few days is enough.

On the other hand if by messy he means complex code implementing requirements in a non-obvious way then it could take much longer. I've seen plenty of code that uses multiple layers of indirection when a simple switch statement would suffice. Where code that looks like a simple mistake is actually implementing a critical requirement. Where you have to keep multiple heavily abstracted domain models in your head at once to understand the code because there is no clean separation.

It depends on how well you need to understand the code to be able to make changes. Reasonably well written code can be skimmed at speeds of up to 2500 lines of code an hour and only the core domain objects and algorithms need more intense study.

On the other hand if you have to understand the entire codebase in order to change it then 100 lines of code an hour is an upper limit.

So anywhere from half a day to two weeks depending on what you mean by messy.

<comment><AUTHOR> I can understand what most of the code does and I am really an amateur. So I think it is more along the lines of "fairly straightforward code but not built for easy extension and lacking proper layout/architecture then a few days is enough."

Thanks for the input! I appreciate it.</comment></comment></comment>


An Artificial Heart That Doesn't Beat - <AUTHOR> http://www.straitstimes.com/Breaking%2BNews/Singapore/Story/STIStory_436300.html

<comment><AUTHOR> Here is the detailed article <http://www.technologyreview.com/biomedicine/17523/>

<comment><USER2> Thank you for the link, this is great stuff.

 _The longest the AbioCor heart functioned in clinical trials was 18 months, while continuous flow devices are being designed to operate for 10 or more years.

Frazier also says continuous flow pumps are better able to respond to the body's changing needs for blood. "If you're walking, more blood is pumped back to the heart and the heart will automatically pump more," he says. If pressure on one side of the pump increases, flow through the device automatically increases, allowing the pump to respond like a native heart, Frazier says._

Here's hoping all of Frazier's predictions are true, including the one about the 2050 Olympics.

<comment><USER3> > But what about the long-term impact of living pulse-free? That question is a > matter of lively debate in the cardiac device community. Akif Undar, a > clinician and cardiac researcher at Penn State University, says pulse is > important to get blood to all the small capillaries feeding the organs. "I > think you would see organ damage in animals given a [non-pulsing] heart," he > says.

<comment><USER2> Well, since it's now in at least one human, we're finding out what the side effects are as we speak.</comment></comment></comment></comment>


AinD: Android in Docker - <AUTHOR> https://github.com/aind-containers/aind <comment><USER2> I really want to try this, but I'm a little hesitant with the --privileged flag. Sounds like this is pretty much giving root access to the container? ([https://stackoverflow.com/questions/36425230/privileged- cont...](https://stackoverflow.com/questions/36425230/privileged-containers- and-capabilities))

Could someone (or OP) enlighten me on what requires this flag? I thought the container would also get access to the anbox kernel modules that I have installed already.

<comment><USER3> But docker runs still with root privileges (or your user must be in the docker group, which is equivalent to root - so is also in the official documentation explained)

<comment><USER2> Right I get that, it's because the docker daemon needs root access to do its management stuff. But as far as running random "bad things" off docker hub, I always assume it's going to be fenced off. Like by default, the containers cannot read external files or open up host ports, etc. But with --privileged I guess it can do anything.

I'm a big fan of people supplying pre-built docker images because it lets me try out their software in what I assume to be a sandbox. I'm a little less wary when it comes to docker -- almost to the point of being nonchalant, running random images willy-nilly without digging into the source code even a _tiny_ bit. Granted, that behavior is probably gonna bite me in the ass one day. But it's definitely better than the `curl [http://example.com](http://example.com) | bash -` and `sudo make install` patterns.

Whenever I see someone's instructions telling me to use `docker --network=host` or `docker --privileged`, I can't help but panic a little... "Am I going to regret running this developer's code as root on my machine?" A little justification from the OP eases my mind, that's all. Which he did :)

<comment><USER4> I think you're putting too much faith in the security of docker... It is only superficially secure, and any real evil software can break out of it since the attack surface is huuuge (every loaded kernel driver).

<comment><USER5> Docker has a number of security layers that can make breakout more challenging, specifically dropped capabilities, a seccomp filter and (on debian/ubuntu) an AppArmor profile installed.

I wouldn't agree that it's trivially possible to breakout of a default configured Docker container, not every attacker is packing a Linux Privesc 0-day and the knowledge to use it.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> Could this be used to test android apps in CI? Where traditionally you run up against nested virt problems (in aws).

Not mentioned as a purpose..

<comment><USER7> That was my first thought. Very curious to find out how it would compare to Testlab virtual machines.

<comment><USER8> I haven't tested, but if UI automator stuff works with Anbox, it should work with aind as well.

I can add it to the scope of the project if it works.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> What's the advantage compared to just using Anbox?

<comment><USER8> Anbox is for desktop, aind is for cloud (and edge).

The biggest advantage of running Android on cloud/edge I think is anti-theft.

Also, it will be soon able to run multiple aind pods on Kubernetes with distinct UID mappings. (I need to submit patches to Anbox upstream)

<comment><USER10> > The biggest advantage of running Android on cloud/edge I think is anti- > theft.

what is this anti-theft? What's being stolen?

<comment><USER11> Maybe:

Someone steals your smartphone now -> they've got everything , and a smartphone

vs

Someone steals your _clouded_ smartphone -> they've got an empty smartphone and no data.

<comment><USER12> This is a very, very, very bad idea. Just encrypt your phone with a strong passcode and backup regularly. Making your phone entirely dependent on a strong internet connection is a recipe for a bad time.

<comment><USER8> I agree that the phone should be encrypted (in conjunction with aind), but people are likely to set weak passcode like "1234" (or finger pattern) because they want to open email/phone/twitter/maps/payment apps in a few seconds.

aind is expected to be used only for sensitive apps, with more strong passcode.</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment>


US teens often forced to trade sex work for food, study finds - <AUTHOR> https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2016/sep/12/teens-america-hunger-food-poverty <comment><USER2> This is anecdotal evidence, but in the UK while I was in university I estimated about 1/3 of female students worked as a variety of temporary sex workers. I imagine it is higher now since tuition tripled and rents have shot up.</comment>


Fooling surveillance cameras: adversarial patches to attack person detection - <AUTHOR> https://arxiv.org/abs/1904.08653 <comment><USER2> Example video from the pdf: [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MIbFvK2S9g8](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MIbFvK2S9g8) Looks like it would work well on a tshirt

</comment><comment><USER3> Looking at the photos in the paper, that's the first ML-camouflage pattern that actually seems _practical_. I could see someone wearing a shirt with this "adversarial patch" looking totally unremarkable in public.

Other types of ML-camouflage, like [https://cvdazzle.com/](https://cvdazzle.com/), make the wearer stand out far too much to actually be useful as anything but an art project.

<comment><USER4> I wonder though, seems like the fact that they chose a general purpose object classification implies that face detection still works.

<comment><USER5> The "average" surveillance camera often does not have sufficient pixels-on- target/pixels-per-foot to do face detection for the majority of persons in the scene. The trend towards higher resolution cameras (eg: from an average resolution of ~3MP today towards 4K resolution) will of course help with face detection somewhat, but you also have angle of view concerns, and the fact that people don't always walk towards the camera for a good face shot.

Various companies have been implementing appearance search functionality that lets you search for similar appearances across multiple cameras to find the scene/image where you got a facial shot of a person of interest. Preventing the majority of cameras from classifying someone as a "person" object would significantly disrupt that workflow.

<comment><USER6> Perhaps something like AdaBoost could find matches using a weak classifier on hundreds of low-resolution images (a few seconds of video) at different angles, assuming you can put together a similar data set for training... basically trading spatial information content for temporal.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> The fact that the patch has to be placed around the waist seems to indicate that the shirt/pants transition is important to the algorithm (makes sense considering that training data full of normally dressed people is almost certainly going to have a lot of pictures of people that are dressed in a shirt that contrasts their pants). I wonder how if denim + denim, a coverall or a dress makes person detection harder.

</comment><comment><USER8> The demonstrating video was hilarious.

You cannot stop the camera to be there or aiming at you, so realistically the best option is to rely on a timeless principle: modifying input information will lead to changes of its output result, since the second element will always depend on the first.

I can see this is going to be another cat and mouse game in the near future. People are going to constantly come up with new creative ideas to circumvent around machine learning since it can only accurately identify data which it has already seen.

</comment><comment><USER9> Colorful eyewear can be used too.

[https://www.cs.cmu.edu/~sbhagava/papers/face-rec- ccs16.pdf](https://www.cs.cmu.edu/~sbhagava/papers/face-rec-ccs16.pdf)

Looks realistic, plausible and can be 3D printed (authors of the paper even provide the design sample).

<comment><USER10> This triggered interest in the FR research community, and then died as algorithms were tweaked to defeat the attack. Now, this is used as a filter to identify FR systems not keeping up.

</comment></comment><comment><USER11> This is not the first attempt at this. Anti-camera makeup has been a thing for a while. Painting a square on your nose or a flesh-colored eyepatch is often enough to fool facial rec systems looking to measure distances between features. Standing on a skateboard or moonwalking can sometimes trick a system into calling you a non-person. Putting a box over your head darlek-style works too.

None of these defeat old fashioned motion detection + followup by human eyes. Security guards arent going away anytime soon.

<comment><USER12> Of course security guards aren't going anywhere anytime soon. Rather the new technology will make finding and acting on incidents quicker and more efficient.

I can't see it being too difficult to identify tactics being used and mark them as suspicious.

<comment><USER13> > I can't see it being too difficult to identify tactics being used and mark > them as suspicious.

I'm sure you're right. But remember what every security measure is trying to achieve -- it's not actually making you immune to attack (that's impossible), but rather to increase the cost of the attack.

This sort of thing would accomplish that by requiring human involvement.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> William Gibson had something like this in one of his later books. Spook Country maybe? As I recall it was simply called the Ugly Shirt.

</comment><comment><USER15> Hinton is on it: [https://heartbeat.fritz.ai/capsule-networks-a-new-and- attrac...](https://heartbeat.fritz.ai/capsule-networks-a-new-and-attractive- ai-architecture-bd1198cc8ad4)

</comment><comment><USER16> What about adversarial patches to make the camera ID a different targeted person? Could be used to frame someone.

</comment><comment><USER17> CV Dazzle, some earlier work in the same vein: [https://ahprojects.com/cvdazzle/](https://ahprojects.com/cvdazzle/)

</comment><comment><USER10> Eyeglass frames with eyes on them is a wonderful way to default FR.

</comment><comment><USER18> You can purchase a t-shirt from cloakwear.co

<comment><USER19> A Burqa[1] sounds like a safer bet (if you aren't carrying a cellphone).

1\. [https://duckduckgo.com/?q=burqa&t=ffab&iar=images&iax=images...](https://duckduckgo.com/?q=burqa&t=ffab&iar=images&iax=images&ia=images)

</comment></comment><comment><USER20> Half the IP cams out there are on a WiFi network that isn't a dedicated vlan so an attacker could just ddos them or do a broadcast feedback loop to take them offline

<comment><USER13> A method that doesn't put you in legal jeopardy seems more desirable.

<comment><USER20> I am merely stating a vulnerability not recommending an action</comment></comment></comment>


Reuter's investigates "shell" and "shelf" corporations. - <AUTHOR> http://www.reuters.com/article/2011/06/28/us-usa-shell-companies-idUSTRE75R20Z20110628

<comment><USER2> There are plenty of reasons to make a shell corporation. For instance, suppose company X and company Y are working on a joint venture. It makes a lot of sense to make a shell corporation, fully owned by X and Y, to actually do the work of developing the joint venture, owning any patents for it, and licensing or marketing it.

This keeps things nice and clean for X and y, and if one or both ever want to get out they can easily sell their interest in the joint venture by simply selling their shares of the shell.

Basically, doing something in a separate corporation you own instead of doing it directly under your main corporation turns it into a single thing (your shares of the separate corporation) instead of a bunch of things.

It's essentially the business organization equivalent of a library or module.

</comment><comment><USER3> These are useful and legal. I don't see what the problem is.</comment>


Reports say White House has drafted an order for FCC to monitor social media - <AUTHOR> https://techcrunch.com/2019/08/09/reports-say-white-house-has-drafted-an-order-putting-the-fcc-in-charge-of-monitoring-social-media/ <comment><USER2> Would be nice if they brought the Fairness Doctrine[0] back to the news.

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

<comment><USER3> The Fairness Doctrine was for broadcast media.

RF spectrum was a limited public resource and the government regulated who could use what frequencies.

In exchange for the use of that limited public resource, broadcasters had to give equal airtime to competing views and dedicate a portion of their time to public-service and community content.

None of that applies to the infinite number of "channels" available on the public internet.

Say whatever you want online, as long as you don't threaten, abuse, intimidate, swindle, incite violence, or recruit terrorists.

You're free to build your own platform if what you want to say is so horrible that even Twitter won't allow it.

<comment><USER2> Considering Twitter blocked McConnel's posting of the threats he is receiving I hardly believe Twitter is a moral arbiter as you imply.

Attention span is a finite resource. If you use your monopoly over it to algorithmically suppress reasonable, dissenting discourse you deserve the regulations you get. Businesses are not free to wreak havoc on society for a dollar.

<comment><USER3> The First Amendment protects Twitter's right to publish what it wants, free from government diktat.

The First Amendment _does not_ force Twitter to provide you or anybody else a free platform for whatever you want to say.

If you don't like the rules on platforms that exist, you're free to build your own platform with your own rules.</comment></comment></comment></comment>


Keynesian beauty contest - <AUTHOR> http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Keynesian_beauty_contest

<comment><USER2> This is the only way I can make sense of the XML frenzy of the late 90s/early 00s.

<comment><USER3> Did you drop your SOAP?

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> I like it overall but as any analogy, it must be used with caution as it fails to infer a fundamental principle of the stock market. In a Keynesian beauty contest, contestants cannot lose as long as they pick the most popular face. In the stock market, it is very possible to lose even if you pick the most popular stock, in the event of a bankruptcy for instance.

</comment><comment><USER5> That explains the recent LinkedIn IPO prices, people trying to guess how much the 'average' people value LinkedIn rather than how much you value it (or the value based on certain indicators)

</comment><comment><USER6> A key result of this analysis is that there's an element of feedback. If you're the only investor in the world who's using this strategy, it may work. But the larger the proportion of investors who do this, the more locally unstable the market will become. It's a far cry from the "perfect, self- correcting market", which we can think of as the zeroth order long-term behaviour. But feedback effects are not sufficiently local that they cannot have destructive effects over a multi-year timescale.

</comment><comment><USER7> > This would have people pricing shares not based on what they think their > fundamental value is, but rather on what they think everyone else thinks > their value is, or what everybody else would predict the average assessment > of value is.

This is true for people who are buying as speculative investors and focused on short term movements in stock price.

However, that's not everyone by a longshot. There are plenty of people who buy for underlying asset value and dividends.

See, for instance -

<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Intelligent_Investor>

Warren Buffet has said that The Intelligent Investor is the best book on investing ever written.

A fundamental tenet of value investing is that you're buying a small part of a business, not something separate from the business. Keynes is talking about buying stocks to speculative on short term price movements, which is risky and probably a bad strategy for the vast majority of people. But buying a share of a business that's fundamentally solid and priced attractively is rational, even if the business isn't currently popular.

<comment><USER8> It seems to me that for companies that pay no dividends (and assuming you would have not nearly enough stock to have a vote that matters) there is no value at all in the stock outside of the stock price. The only relevant metric is what other people are willing to pay to buy your stock. Through some mechanism that I can't undertand, the perception of the stock value is still tied to the performance of the company, so it seems like even people going long are still dealing with their predictions of other peoples valuations.

<comment><USER9> > for companies that pay no dividends ... there is no value at all in the > stock outside of the stock price [but] the perception of the stock value is > still tied to the performance of the company

Owning a stock is like owning a fraction of a company. The value of stock comes from the following:

(1) dividends (that is, a fraction of current profits)

(2) assets (that is, a fraction of stuff the company has that could be sold; one of Warren Buffett's strategies is to buy companies that have more assets than their total stock price, such that merely liquidating the company would turn a profit.)

(3) estimated future dividends (a company may not presently be paying dividends, but may be on a clear trajectory to profitability and therefore future dividends)

(4) estimated future assets ("growth" type stocks are in companies that are investing profits in assets rather than paying out dividends. This has certain tax advantages over dividend-paying stocks.)

(5) estimated future valuations (that is, guesses as to what others might pay for the stock later)

Notice that only one of these involves perceptions of others' valuations. The rest are a matter of company performance.

<comment><USER10> For assets (or future assets), you need to discount them by a probability that the investor could ever actually see that money, either via dividends, or via a 'liquidity event' of one sort or another, since an asset isn't really _your_ asset if you can never touch it. Warren Buffet sees to that by buying controlling stakes in companies, so not only do the companies have assets that could theoretically be liquidated for a profit, but he could actually liquidate the company if he wanted to (or at least, could force it to start selling off assets and returning their value as dividends).

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> (Something like) Those are actually real!

My mother taught me that basic strategy for betting on a "horse race" carnival game with the similar design (but the winner was chosen randomply via multiple rolls of a die that represented each "step" along a racetrack)

She taught me to watch the bettors and bet on whichever horse had the least number of shares purchased. If the bets were semi-secret, and we had to engage people ("analysts"?) in conversation about their supposed bets, it would be even more like the real equities marker.

</comment><comment><USER12> Where are the people that estimate how much of the population classify into level 1, 2, 3 ... and pick choice of the people in the level with the most people.

<comment><USER11> In Hollywood.

</comment></comment><comment><USER13> This applies directly to startups: [http://blog.rafaelcorrales.com/2010/10/entrepreneurs- keynesi...](http://blog.rafaelcorrales.com/2010/10/entrepreneurs-keynesian- beauty-contest.html)

</comment><comment><USER14> So, if the strategy can be extended indefinitely, what is the rational strategy?

</comment><comment><USER15> 1\. Post Wikipedia Link

2\. Collect Karma

Is it too much to ask for a semi-descriptive link title?</comment>


Show HN: Mailbox app like minimal status bar - <AUTHOR> http://www.quora.com/Kevin-Gibbon-1/Posts/Mailbox-Buffer-app-like-minimal-status-bar

<comment><USER2> Hey, this is great. I noticed that UI feature on Mailbox.app and thought it was a pretty interesting idea. Thanks!

</comment><comment><USER3> This is really great! Pleae make a podspec and turn it into a CocoaPod.</comment>


Moo.do turns Gmail into a task management system - <AUTHOR> https://techcrunch.com/2016/08/30/moo-do-turns-gmail-into-a-task-management-system/ <comment><USER2> This looks pretty cool, but I have a philosophical hangup about my task list being in email. The problem is that ones email inbox is a place where _other people_ decide what shows up there.

I realize that people have a lot of responsibilities in email, and for some people email may even be a majority of their job. I've definitely been in that position. But even if I am spending the majority of my time in Gmail, I still take a hard stance that my personal todos need to live outside of email lest I lose agency over my own priorities.

<comment><USER3> This sounds amazingly similar to the beginning of our post on Medium [1]. As you point out, email is only part of the whole picture. We're aiming to add the tools to organize email along with your personal/business todos without giving up that agency.

Snippet: "Would you use a todo list where all your tasks are created by someone else, and you can't prioritize or rearrange them? Of course not — they're your tasks, so you should be in control. Using a todo list sorted only by creation time would be incredibly frustrating. But that's exactly what email is."

[1] [https://medium.com/moo-do/were-making-email-a-powerful- todo-...](https://medium.com/moo-do/were-making-email-a-powerful-todo- list-a418d6ef0580#.ez6txkd3p)

<comment><USER4> It really sounds like pg's suggestion to "replace email"[0].

I've never had (so far) any problem with managing my inbox, but since many can see the clear correlation between email <-> todo list, I'd say you're on to something.

[0]: [http://paulgraham.com/ambitious.html](http://paulgraham.com/ambitious.html)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> Active Inbox [1] is also another great one I've used for years.

[1] [https://www.activeinboxhq.com/](https://www.activeinboxhq.com/)

</comment><comment><USER6> > This system is not for the faint-hearted or casual user, but rather for > someone with an overwhelming inbox, a nearly unmanageable amount of tasks > hidden in email messages, and the willingness to learn a new way of > interacting with your productivity applications.

Hey, that's me!

Very interested in this, but only if access to my email stays on my local machine. If there are any cloud servers involved... nope.

<comment><USER7> If your email is already on Gmail isn't it already on cloud servers...?

<comment><USER8> The issue is that I trust Google more than I trust "random startup XYZ" with all of my email, which contains personal information, medical documents, financial statements, etc.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> Two techniques I use.

Batch Process by Elimination. Google labels/tags + rotating stars + quicklinks is a powerful combination. Quicklinks can search for tag and star combinations. Tags represent substance, and stars represent state. So these lists can be batch processed based on tag + star, with the initial combination automatically set with filters. It helps when you can control email aliases to filter by recipient also.

Minimizing Moving Parts. No threads + a preview pane eliminates back and forth, and when starring or unstarring, the list doesn't remove the message or change it's position, so your frame of reference stays constant. After a bunch of items have been processed, the list updates/shrinks by clicking on refresh or the same quicklink.

It took a while to arrive at this setup, but afterwards it's been impossible to move back to any classic email program. Just visually digesting a constantly changing long list of emails and folders is a lot of work. And that's before you've even gotten started.

</comment><comment><USER10> Todoist always let you put gmails as todo items. What does Moo.do have over Todoist (or at least different).

</comment><comment><USER11> Intriguing, but....

Without Calendar integration, it's not even worth my trying, and 14 days is not enough of a trial to learn a new system.

Contact sync as a free feature? Yeah, OK, that's what it's worth to me.

Right now, I use GTD-style tags in my business account and rely almost entirely on my business calendar for scheduling.

Without Calendar integration, I ain't movin'!

What might interest me:

* In the Free plan, offer Calendar and one of either GTD or Kanban (I'll start with GTD), and sync with one email account.

* In a step-up plan, offer either the "other style" or multiple accounts.

* In another step-up, offer everything, including Contact integration.

Then I might be willing to try it. But as it is, while I am unhappy with my ToDo management and really want something that works across multiple systems, without Calendar I won't move.

<comment><USER12> I also agree with the extension of trial time to at least a month because the abuse potential is very very low. Also, when signing up for workflow related services, I sometimes take awhile to integrate its use, or I just forget about it -- making 30 days into 20 days.

<comment><AUTHOR> That's a great point. We'll look into changing it to 30 days. Also, if you email us when your trial is running out we'll be happy to extend it for you.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> Any ETA for office 365 compatibility?

This looks like exactly the email workflow I've dreamed of (and thought about starting to write countless times, so thank you for actually doing so)

<comment><AUTHOR> We don't have an ETA for Office 365 support yet because we're focusing on getting the experience right first. But we get a lot of requests for that so it's definitely a high priority.

<comment><USER13> Great answer (not the one I wanted, but one I can respect). That said, can you offer a "notify me when office 365 is ready" link for those of us who'd love to use it but have no way to today?

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> What does this offer over and above inbox by gmail + google reminders?

<comment><USER15> I've used Inbox from Google since it launched and am now playing around with Moo.do.

Inbox sort of plays with the idea of building an organization tool on top of email. It focuses on emails being "done" or "not done", it lets you snooze emails to get to inbox zero, it lets you save links from the web as items in your inbox, and it lets you create reminders in your inbox that look like emails but aren't (streamlining the common action of emailing yourself some quick note).

Moo.do seems to take all of this further. Instead of just snoozing an email or letting it sit in your inbox, you can do several other things with it. You can create an outline and move the email into the outline as an action item, optionally assigning a due date as well. Or you can setup a kanban board like Trello and move the email to different columns. Moo.do will automatically derive an agenda from dates on your outline as well.

</comment></comment><comment><USER16> I've been using moo.do as my task management (and note taking) tool for about a year. It's fantastically stable and reliable, I would really recommend it to anyone.

</comment><comment><USER17> I hear this product was built while the founder traveled to 20+ countries. Pretty cool.

</comment><comment><USER18> This is awesome.</comment>


Chinese warship stole US underwater drone - <AUTHOR> http://edition.cnn.com/2016/12/16/politics/chinese-warship-underwater-drone-stolen/index.html <comment><USER2> Background: I used to work on these UUVs.

When CNN says "oceanographic research", what they actually mean is building a sonar ray caustics model of the environment, because sound bends just like light does when the medium transmission speed changes, and the speed of sound in water changes noticably with depth,salinity,temperature.

When CNN says "unclear motivation", what they mean is that the motivation is actually pretty clear. China doesn't like that the US is building underwater surveillance infrastructure in their backyard.

<comment><USER3> The fact that this has military applications as well as scientific/commercial ones doesn't bother me. They were firmly in international rather than disputed waters, I'm pretty sure other countries eyeball our ocean shelf too and it doesn't bother me either.

To be honest I don't think China cares all that much either because they're used to the US Navy sailing about as a reminder of our treaties with various other SE Asian countries. They're veen assertive about their territorial claims with the nine-dash line, the building of artificial islands (reportedly now weaponized), and rejecting the decision of the international maritime court recently. Overall I'd characterize relations between the Chinese government and the Obama administration as cool but respectful.

I don't know what's happening with the incoming administration and don't want to make a political argument here, but I do think that _publicizing_ the fact of the conversation between Trump and the Taiwanese President, along with the public questioning of the One China policy, probably seems like a huge loss of face for Beijing. China doesn't mind the US having relations, even friendship, with Taiwan - through private channels. Public recognition of the Taiwanese government as a sovereign entity by the US is insulting though - much as if Premier Xi in China started having friendly chats with the governor of Hawai'i or Alaska while publicly pouring scorn on DC.

Edit: great username btw

<comment><USER4> _China doesn 't mind the US having relations, even friendship, with Taiwan - through private channels. Public recognition of the Taiwanese government as a sovereign entity by the US is insulting though - much as if Premier Xi in China started having friendly chats with the governor of Hawai'i or Alaska while publicly pouring scorn on DC._

Except that is not analogous at all.

Taiwan is de facto Independent. It has its own currency, internationally recognised passports, military, airspace and democratically elects its own representatives. It has been de facto independent from China for almost 70 years. It never fell to maoism and as a result was spared the both the great famine (Which killed more people than the Chinese civil war and Japanese invasion combined) and the cultural revolution. It peacefully transitioned to democracy over 20 years ago, around the time Chinese troops were killing hundreds of civillians in Tian Nan Men square.

It is independent for all intents and purposes. Even PRC nationalists know this, but they need to keep face by not admitting the truth.

<comment><USER5> I have several close friends from Taiwan, and visit Taipei every couple years. When I go, just for kicks I always ask people how they feel about being part of China. The answer has, invariably, been not just No, but an irritated hell no. As you say, for all practical purposes Taiwan is independent- not just in their government institutions but in the psychology of the populace: they _feel_ like a separate country, and nothing the PRC does can change that any more than Americans could be convinced to "reunify" with the United Kingdom.

China is kidding themselves if they think reunification is going to happen. It's certainly not going to happen voluntarily. And yeah, maybe they could take the island by force, but even if they managed it and it didn't trigger an international conflict, they'd just end up being another US-in- Vietnam/Soviets-in-Afghanistan situation: a forced occupation of an angry, resentful local population, which has no possible outcome other than eventual costly withdrawal.

<comment><USER3> That hasn't stopped them in Tibet. The fact that Taiwan is a smallish island simplifies matters considerably, since China can easily impose a naval blockade and wait for rebels to run out of munitions. Agreed it would work out badly over the long term but strategically it's not hard.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> Reminds me of _Operation Barmaid_ where a UK nuclear submarine used cutters to steal a towed array from a Warsaw-pact vessel:

[http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/uknews/defence/9602103/HMS-C...](http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/uknews/defence/9602103/HMS- Conquerors-biggest-secret-a-raid-on-Russia.html)

<comment><USER7> Excellent article. And similarly in this case - what was the 'drone' doing so close to their ship? What spying were they hoping to achieve?

</comment></comment><comment><USER8> "[USNS] Bowditch had stopped in the water to pick up two underwater drones. At that point a Chinese naval ship that had been shadowing the Bowditch put a small boat into the water. That small boat came up alongside and the Chinese crew took one of the drones."

It's pretty likely this is a shove-back for Trump aggravating China over Taiwan.

The mechanics of international one-upmanship are fascinating, it's like watching two big guys doing everything short of actually getting into a bar fight (hopefully), mixed with a prank war.

<comment><USER9> They're also dumping hundreds of billions of usa bonds

<comment><USER10> > _They 're also dumping hundreds of billions of usa bonds_

First off, no, they aren't:

[http://ticdata.treasury.gov/Publish/mfh.txt](http://ticdata.treasury.gov/Publish/mfh.txt)

Second: how, exactly, would that work? For the millionth time _you cannot sell without a buyer_. So if China is "dumping", someone else is buying. Or do you think they're just lighting these bonds on fire? Guess who wins in that scenario. Hint: not China.

You know, there's so much controversy about "fake news" lately, but the reality is that people will seek out the stories that fit their narrative, rather than looking at the data. Nobody to blame but ourselves.

<comment><USER11> If you owe the bank $1000 dollars, the bank owns you.

If you owe the bank $1 billion dollars, you own the bank.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> Reminds of that time when the US sent a sub to tap a Soviet underwater communication cable off the cost of the then Soviet Union. That was brazen, and bad. It was the kind of stuff that leads to war.

What the Chinese just did is just as bad, and could lead to war.

</comment><comment><USER13> We should expect little games like this, as it reveals China's technical inferiority - otherwise, why steal something if you already have something better?

I'm more interested in their clain on Taiwan -- is it the island (Formosa) or its inhabitants (the descendants of Kai-shek) that they claim? Claiming the island at least has a logic that one can support or deny. Claiming the inhabitants, well then every country with an ethnic Chinese population - e.g. Indochina, San Francisco -- might well be at risk.

</comment><comment><USER14> Curious nautical legal question: How does recovery (salvage / claims) work for an unmanned drone in international waters -- couldn't you draw analogies to any 'ole piece of salvageable junk? In which case, couldn't anyone lay claim to it...?

</comment><comment><USER15> Going forward this will be a critical test of US status in the region and set a precedent for the incoming administration on dealing with China.

So far, the US has been unwilling to engage China directly, only using proxy countries to apply pressure, ex. THAAD. It has been highly effective and unless China takes direct action that harms American naval & airforce assets, it's unwilling to engage in a downright skirmish that results in economic loss.

Following that previous logic, China is very careful about not kicking the honet's nest because it would be it's end. The Chinese leadership must know fully well that they cannot match the US militarily. Also given Xi's failing grades on foreign diplomacy, it's suffice to conclude that these grandiose rhetorics are entirely aimed at it's own population, who are reaching a boiling point that will ultimately put into uncertainty the survivability of Xi's powerbase and the entire party itself. Xi made too many enemies so he's looking for ways to survive by fighting fire with fire and creating more enemies from within. An internal dialogue fueling crisis with the US is a perfect propaganda tool and the fear of war, the fear of losing your properties, belongings, material possessions you've spent time on...history has shown is highly effective in controlling the populace.

<comment><USER16> > Following that previous logic, China is very careful about not kicking the > honet's nest because it would be it's end

The US would win a conventional war but it would be bloody and expensive in both life and material.

Neither side wants that, China wants to get to a point where it's strong enough that fighting the US would be incredibly expensive and the US wants to maintain a position where it's strong enough to deter China from doing whatever China wants to do, it's a strange world when the US's largest trading partner is in a cold war style stand off.

<comment><USER15> It's tough to say who will win. After all, the Soviet Union pretty much won WW2 with an enormous human sacrifice as much as the US likes to downplay it.

I agree two sides will do everything possible to avoid direct conflict just like the Cold War.

<comment><USER17> The US has an ocean between them and China. US power projection would be tested and probably ultimately fail due to unbelievable expense of such a war but China would not win unless you call not losing a win. Soviet Union could take their land army straight to Germany but China has no way to project power to US.

<comment><USER18> > US power projection would be tested and probably ultimately fail due to > unbelievable expense

I think you're wrong here. The US has been investing in power projection for 80 some odd years now, and is leaps and bounds ahead of any other nation. Yes it would be expensive...but we've been paying a premium for quite a long time to have this capability. Additionally, the supply chain is drastically shortened because of the sheer number of US or allied bases in the area - Japan, South Korea, the Philippines (though that one has become a bit questionable).

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER19> Lol

</comment><comment><USER20> Could this be an instance of "fake news"?

<comment><USER3> Perhaps, but you should identify what you consider to be false or propagandistic about it, otherwise you are just trying to cause confusion rather than get at the truth, and that's rude to the other people here.

As they say on examination papers: give reasons for your answer.

</comment></comment><comment><USER21> The lines between 'took', 'let go' and 'gave' are blurred. I wouldn't take and story abour the loss of an intelegence asset at face value.

<comment><USER22> _The lines between 'took', 'let go' and 'gave' are blurred._

Is this less blurry:

[http://www.foxnews.com/world/2016/12/16/china-steals-us- unde...](http://www.foxnews.com/world/2016/12/16/china-steals-us-underwater- drone-in-south-china-sea.html)

 _" We call upon China to return our [unmanned underwater vehicle] immediately, and to comply with all of its obligations under international law," Pentagon Press Secretary Peter Cook responded._</comment></comment>