Pyxis : Arduino OS - <AUTHOR> http://www.skewworks.com/pyxis/

<comment><USER2> Wow, after two years of WinAVR and the Arduino IDE people get something like this! I wonder how the compile and run time is on board? I do have a feeling that this also might make it easy to write bad programs as quickly as good ones!

</comment><comment><USER3> ok, sorry for what may be a retarded question: I looked at the site but can't really understand what this does for me. I have an Arduino. Why and for what would I use Pyxis?

<comment><USER4> I was hoping for multitasking, but I didn't see anything like that in a cursory scan of the docs.

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> Wow, this is pretty neat. I was surprised to see that you need to pay for the code, but the prices seem pretty reasonable considering what you're getting. This really seems like it could be a way to bridge the gap between little "toy" Arduino projects and more advanced projects.

<comment><USER6> That is interesting, from where did you get the notion that site asks you to pay. That would be a serious miscommunication which the author will surely like to remove.

<comment><USER7> I think the "buy" menu item on the home page suggests commerce.</comment></comment></comment>


SpaceX Launch Targeting 6:03pm ET, Extreme Weather Preventing First Stage Recovery - <AUTHOR> http://www.spacex.com/press/2015/02/11/dscovr-launch-update <comment><USER2> Map of significant wave height in feet for the Atlantic:

[https://www.fnmoc.navy.mil/wxmap_cgi/cgi- bin/wxmap_single.cg...](https://www.fnmoc.navy.mil/wxmap_cgi/cgi- bin/wxmap_single.cgi?area=ww3_atlantic&dtg=2015021112&prod=sgwvht&tau=000)

tldr: Not a good day for boating

</comment><comment><USER3> That sucks, I really was looking forward to the first stage recovery attempt. Does this mean in the future(if they ever manage to do it) that they'll scrap first stage recoveries in terrible weather?

<comment><USER4> They want to return the first stage to land in the future (at least when possible, depends on the launch trajectory etc iirc). So high waves won't be an issue when they start returning the rocket to the launch site.

Also, I guess if reuse becomes routine and they need to land in the sea (because there aren't enough fuel to return to land) they could build a huge vessel capable of handling high waves.

<comment><USER5> If reuse becomes routine and the necessary authorities approve, they'll land on solid ground near the launch site. The floating rig was just for the initial tests.

<comment><USER6> Near the launch site? That seems a little ambitious, and expensive. Are they planning on doing a u-turn in high atmo? The energy required would be massive. Or are they planning on doing an orbit of some sort?

Doesn't the falcon heavy animation show the stages all landing at a different facility?

Given that most every launch will point in a different direction from the launch site (different inclinations), boats would seem the best option. They could then haul the stage back to base by sea.

<comment><USER7> Yes, it's called a boostback burn, and it's been a part of every landing attempt thus far. The first stage has burned so much fuel at the stage separation that it takes much less to return it home than it did to accelerate it. You are correct though that it limits the payload capacity of the platform.

I believe the Falcon Heavy animation shows the rockets returning to the launch site.

<comment><USER8> Also, aren't they planning to launch from California and/or Texas in the future?

<comment><USER9> They've already launched from California, at Vandenberg AFB. They've begun constructing a drone ship for landing future rockets launched from Vandenberg, named Of Course I Still Love You (the one currently in use for KSC launches is called Just Read the Instructions).

And yes, they are currently constructing a new spaceport in Texas near Brownsville at the far southeastern corner of the state. Completion and first launches are anticipated in 2016. I'd guess they might use the current drone ship for landings from that one as well, but a lot can change in 2+ years so we'll have to see.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> > _The rocket will still attempt a soft landing in the water through the storm > (producing valuable landing data),_

The waves only prevent attempt at landing on the barge. They can still test the stabilization (under very adverse conditions!).

So while this may not be as exciting for us observers, it'll still be very useful for SpaceX.

</comment><comment><USER11> They're not kidding, significant wave height in that area is 20 feet at the moment. Yikes.

[http://www.ndbc.noaa.gov/station_page.php?station=41047](http://www.ndbc.noaa.gov/station_page.php?station=41047)

</comment><comment><USER12> I was really looking forward to watching the landing attempt. At this point, I'm hoping for another launch delay pushing the attempt back to the 20th.

</comment><comment><USER13> I don't understand the reasoning here; how could launching today with a guaranteed failure to recover possibly be more valuable than delaying another day or two with a shot at recovery? The only way it makes sense to me is if sea heights are predicted to remain unmanageably high for unacceptably long, or the chance of recovery was very low to begin with.

<comment><USER14> Probably because someone is paying them to launch a satellite into orbit?

Not trying to be snarky - I have no idea! But that could be reason?

<comment><USER13> Someone who's already been delayed twice. Clearly they are willing to accept some margin of delay. The question I was posing is, how could delaying one more day be worth more (ie cost to SpaceX) than the value of the recovered rocket times the probability of recovery. And the correct answer is in the top response, which is that due to the moon's position, it would be a delay of over a week, not just another day.

<comment><USER15> > Someone who's already been delayed twice.

Yeah, due to weather and technical problems. Obviously there's no way of getting around those. It would be a much bigger deal to the customer to delay just because "SpaceX wants to".

> how could delaying one more day be worth more (ie cost to SpaceX) than the > value of the recovered rocket times the probability of recovery. And the > correct answer is ... it would be a delay of over a week, not just another > day

No, even if they had a launch window tomorrow, they would not have delayed another day. The correct answer is that the _price_ of delaying just to conduct an optional test is _decreased confidence_ from potential launch customers that their payloads will not be delayed due to SpaceX's whims, customers who already question SpaceX's ability to launch on time. When someone pays you tens of millions of dollars, you don't get to delay their flight just because you want to test something experimental - it doesn't work that way. SpaceX will have many more opportunities to test their landing procedures, it's not worth pissing off a customer just to be more aggressive on the recovery timeline.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> This is really disappointing. I've been psyching myself up for the landing for weeks now. :(

<comment><USER17> This will not be the last attempt. There's a dozen launches slated this year: [http://spacexstats.com/upcoming.php](http://spacexstats.com/upcoming.php)

I can't wait to see how the Heavy turns out.

</comment></comment><comment><USER18> Wonder when they plan their next attempt, I think they seek support from their customers before attempting recoveries, so maybe they couldn't turn around and try again next launch. Hopefully I'm wrong.

<comment><USER19> Given it's an instantaneous launch window, I think just proving that they can launch satellites right on the nose is a useful demonstration on its own. While it's a shame that the rocket won't be recovered, they'll still get telemetrics from the landing, they just won't get to try a refurbishment.

<comment><USER7> This isn't their first instantaneous launch window.

<comment><USER9> Specifically, ISS launches have an instantaneous window, and SpaceX has done five of those so far.</comment></comment></comment></comment>


Credit Suisse to Layoff 6500 - <AUTHOR> http://money.cnn.com/2017/02/14/investing/credit-suisse-loss-job-cuts/index.html <comment><AUTHOR> This article attempts to correlate the layoffs with the justice department fine against Credit Suisse. It's unclear to me from the reading how true that is, but I'd like to pose a hypothetical based on that presumption.

Credit Suisse was heavily penalized for their part and liability in the financial crisis. As part of their culpability, they were required to pay a large fine. That fine has some knock down effects in that some percentage of their workforce is now being laid off (and has been getting laid off for the past year). So, the fine is getting "paid" by those few thousand employees who are being shuffled off of the books to balance the cost of the fine.

Is there not a better or more effective way for us to fine and penalize businesses that perform badly? Maybe the answer is no, but this screams to me moral hazard.</comment>


Creative Ways to Boost Employee Morale - <AUTHOR> https://thenextweb.com/contributors/2017/09/24/creative-ways-boost-employee-morale <comment><USER2> Assuring a great employee experience is all about assuring employees that they are at a sweet spot where they have opportunities, challenges, and happiness.</comment>


Yahoo installed a backdoor for the NSA behind the back of the security team - <AUTHOR> https://diracdeltas.github.io/blog/surveillance/ <comment><USER2> I know this is from October, but it warrants re-reading now.

Today, Yahoo announced a hack of 1B accounts. They say they don't know who it is, but we can conclude it's not the US government because Yahoo is willing and legally able to publicly disclose it.

Previously, Yahoo willingly assisted an attacker in compromising 1B accounts. In this case, they did not disclose the attack publicly, _or even to their own chief information security officer_ , because in that instance the attacker was the US government itself.

US intelligence activities are actively harmful to American commercial interests because they destroy trust, particularly from customers elsewhere in the world.

[1] [http://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2016/10/report-fbi- andor-...](http://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2016/10/report-fbi-andor-nsa- ordered-yahoo-to-build-secret-e-mail-search-tool/)

<comment><USER3> Given its government's track record, I would think that data centers in the US should be walled off in much the same way as data centers in China. It is frankly surprising that American companies are blind to their own government's track record for indiscriminately spying on its citizens and people around the world.

<comment><USER4> You mean American companies like Apple? Whether you trust them or not they've certainly brought it up. Though they might not label the spying indiscriminate; maybe still 'criminate.

Or are Chinese companies doing some interesting walling-off?

<comment><USER5> Google encrypting traffic flowing between data centers seems to reflect significant awareness of the issue too.

<comment><USER6> When I worked at Square we required mutual TLS for almost all service-to- service communication within a datacenter, so sniffing traffic within the datacenter wouldn't be fruitful either (assuming no weakness in the cipher or TLS stack). Is that not common elsewhere?

<comment><USER7> No.

I've had to explain to clients on numerous occasions why I enabled TLS between things in the same data center. Security requires layers and just because the data is on a network you own doesn't mean nobody can get in.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> I seriously think that to get a CS or EE degree (or similar) B.Sci degree, you should be required to take at least one full term length ethics course. Same idea as the ethics courses taught to junior law students.

The internet is already fucked up enough with governments and rogue corporations messing with its AS-adjacency topology in non-free ways at OSI layers 1-3 , before you even get into stuff like writing backdoors at layer 4+ to pass all email to the NSA.

<comment><USER9> When you get a legally-binding order from the government of the United States of America, and exhaust your legal appeals, you either comply or go to prison. An ethics course won't do you any good.

<comment><USER10> Options:

\- Refuse to take action. They want engineering done, they can bloody well do it themselves. Don't type a single keystroke in the direction of helping them.

\- Announce what is going on anonymously. Plenty of avenues for this.

\- Announce what is going on, publicly. See if they do indeed want to take you to court.

\- Quit.

\- Take down the service. Much easier if the service is only a part of your company. Helps a lot if you don't retain the information they're looking for.

\- Lie.

\- Destroy records (this is by far the riskiest action here, above a simple public announcement).

\- Delay. And delay more.

\- Keep information outside the jurisdiction, possibly controlled by a third party who will not comply with orders.

\- Misunderstand ("Is that a one, or an ell?")

Most of these will get you into trouble, a few won't. Most of these are really difficult roads.

I've given this some thought before. If I found a backdoor in a product, I would remove it with a tracking bug and a checkin, and send internal email about a really bad bug that I'd just fixed; the more internal people that know, the better. And if a VP showed up and berated me, I'd just tell them to fuck off, and quit if it came to that.

<comment><USER9> If you want to quit to refuse to help, fine, but I take serious issue with what you're suggesting beyond that.

These are the legal actions of the United States government, executing the authority given to them to the people's elected representatives, and overseen by a judiciary duly selected according the constitutional procedures. Their legal and democratic authority is unassailable.

Further, you don't know what motivated these actions. Is it intelligence about a specific threat? Has the government identified how a specific adversary operates? You could be impeding the investigation into a deadly plot. You have no way of knowing this.

This isn't a game. We have real enemies who would gladly kill all of us. We have processes as a society for deciding how we defend ourselves. If you don't like our current policies, then exercise your vote, exercise your right to speak and publish and assemble. But don't usurp the sovereignty of the people of this country.

<comment><USER11> Not an american, but the idea is that _passive aggressiveness / mild-sabotage from citizens_ is just another way of expression, just like voting. And _it works for the purpose and /or towards democracy!_

This is imho the _untold truth about why most communist / socialist regimes failed:_ people at all levels of society started doing their work gradually worse and worse, pissed off and stressed out by the lack of freedom and constant interference from state organs, until everything collapsed, and people now live in better economies and freer _because_ they've destroyed their previous systems. Yeah, most of the people who performed such "low level sabotage" will not even recognize to themselves that they did it. And yeah, bad governments were also helped to fail by external interference and external sabotage, but imho a "socialist regime where the people would truly believe in socialism/communism" could have worked out and had good economic performance, problem is that when "good economic performance" can only be had at too high of a cost of "individual personal freedom", people will start, even subcounsciously motivated, without admitting even to themselves what they are doing, and with insect-like non-communicative coordination, to slowly and methodically weaken the system they live in from within, until it crumbles, even at the cost of their own lives sometimes.

This was America's secret weapon that helped "win the cold war" \- people's inner "instinct for freedom or death" \- thank god we all have it and a race of subhumans lacking it has not yet been engineered! It might also be the reason why so many Americans "voted for Trump", though this was probably engineered by some really smart "puppet masters" \- the guy is clearly a "man of the establishment" despite it's clown persona...

Of course, there is no "monument to the lazy and drunk soviet worker that helped take down communism". And there will be no monument for the Google employee that writes a subtle bug in the "government reporting module XYZ" :) Of course, if the gov doesn't abuse its power and asks for too much, that poor programmer might not be so "overwhelmed" by it's duties so as to make stupid "mistakes" with dire consequences...

<comment><USER12> That's an extremely rose-tinted narrative.

<comment><USER13> Well, Stanislav Petrov won a Nobel Prize for refusing to follow orders ...

<comment> barry-cotter No he didn't. He won the Dresden prize, whatever that is.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> With the way the execs of Yahoo handled the 2015 back door, there is a likelihood that the 1 billion + 500 million compromised accounts were due to an exec decision that no one knew about. That individual or group of individuals may not be at Yahoo, and kept everything quiet. Or, the individuals may not even know that they did it!

</comment><comment> brian-armstrong Let's say you were on security on and found it on the network. Would you somehow be bound by a gag order about it, since you would never have seen said gag order?

<comment><USER15> I think it's irrelevant in practice. (In theory, that's an interesting question) You're not making the decision to make this public. If you're on the security team, you're going to notify the boss, and at that scale of the system compromise this goes all the way to the top. At that point someone who knows about the gag order is in the chain.

The only scenario where I think the question matters is if you do something really stupid that would get you fired if this was an actual exploited external access.

<comment><USER16> Let's say an unaffiliated third party (white-hat hacker) found the exploit and reported it to you under a Bug Bounty program. Let's also say that that third- party was someone who followed "responsible disclosure" rules, and said that they'd publicize the vulnerability if you didn't do so yourself within a short time-frame. You investigate (by asking your team, your boss, looking at the bug tracker, etc.) and figure out it's an NSA backdoor. Now what do you do? Are you allowed talk to the white-hat? Are you allowed to _not_ talk to the white-hat, knowing that this would result in the white-hat reporting the vulnerability and thus compromising the investigation?

<comment><USER17> Whether or not the company is doing everything they can to resist the order, I think that NSL's are always accompanied by a clear communication channel between a company's counsel and the agency.

So, after someone under the gag realizes the situation, they get the company's lawyers in contact with the agency to see what to do. The agency would then gag the white hat.

IMO, that's a huge part of why NSL's are scary. You are in an absolute strangle-hold and are at the mercy of the agency for your every move.

If I remember correctly, people even had to argue for the ability to talk to a lawyer about receiving an NSL. So, the feds are really not messing around here and will do absolutely everything to ruin you if you don't cooperate fully. Any perceived resistance is crushed.

<comment><USER18> > So, after someone under the gag realizes the situation, they get the > company's lawyers in contact with the agency to see what to do. The agency > would then gag the white hat.

He doenn't live in the US. Once he realizes this is going on, he'll disclose.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER19> This is an old story that was discussed extensively when it was new (in October):

[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12637126](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12637126)

<comment><USER20> First time I'm hearing about it. October is very recent so not old at all.

</comment></comment><comment><USER21> > [Update (12/14/16): Reuters has specified that the rootkit was implemented > as a Linux kernel module. Wow.]

Hm.. One more proof to avoid using non-free binary blobs in Linux kernel. Be safe. Use Debian GNU/Linux without non-free repo or any better[0] one.

[0] [https://www.gnu.org/distros/free- distros.html](https://www.gnu.org/distros/free-distros.html)

<comment><USER22> I don't think this has anything to do with non-free blobs. They knew exactly what it did and they installed it anyway. It wouldn't have mattered if they had the source or the rootkit was open.

</comment></comment><comment><USER23> What really upsets me about this is the idea that the security team was bypassed, effectively compromising security for Yahoo and every one of their customers. The idea that a company executive would knowingly bypass their own CSO, and take it upon themselves to understand the risks they are introducing, is mind-bogglingly stupid and egregious.

Marissa Meyer, if she approved this, should be deeply ashamed of herself.

<comment><USER24> >Marissa Meyer should be deeply ashamed of herself.

Fixed that for you.

</comment></comment><comment><USER25> But Yahoo definitely does not know how it got hacked, losing 1 billion accounts.

</comment><comment><USER2> Seriously, why the title change? Sometimes the title tells you nothing - wouldn't it be reasonable HN policy to allow the title if it's an accurate summary of the first paragraph?

"Yesterday morning, Reuters dropped a news story revealing that Yahoo installed a backdoor on their own infrastructure in 2015 in compliance with a secret order from either the FBI or the NSA"

Edit: Looks like it's changed back now - great. For a brief period the title was set to "Surveillance, whistleblowing, and security engineering".

</comment><comment><USER26> From a threat modeling POV, this is an interesting type of insider threat. A high-privileged faction of the company is hijacked (via extortion) by a malicious third party with legal leverage.

</comment><comment><USER27> If they are doing this at Yahoo, what proof do we have they are not doing this at Google...right at this moment?

<comment><USER28> One would have to be really naive to believe that Google, Apple and the other big ones aren't backdoored by the three letter agencies by now.

<comment><USER29> You'd be surprised that there are still (technically competent) HN users who _seem_ to be that naive. Or to promote gv't propaganda.

Our only solution is to go 100% open-source and 100% end-to-end encryption.

<comment><USER30> And the government has the power to ban open source and encrypted communications. It's not really all that difficult, if you eliminate any concern for the constitution. If all else fails, rubber hoses and bullets work well.

<comment><USER31> That won't work. People will just do it anyway. Just look at how well alcohol prohibition worked.

That's part of the beauty of open source - once the cat is out of the bag, there is no getting it back in.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER32> What is a "backdoor" exactly? Another euphemism used to disguise something much darker I imagine.

Usually a "backdoor" is something you would be aware of in your home. You know you have a door round the back. This is more like your landlord giving the keys to a stranger who comes and stares at you every night when you're sleeping and rifles through your draws and cabinets.

</comment><comment><USER33> I'm wondering what will happen? More users will start using decentralized and open source programs? They will run their own mail server? Or They will hate NSA, but still push personal data to few big corporations?

<comment><USER34> Nothing will happen. "Users" don't even know what the majority of these things are, and this concern certainly doesn't even fly on their radar.

I've spent 5 years now on this very topic and my conclusion is that the people just don't give a shit.

<comment><USER33> I feel it same. I've created new decentralized internet platform for 3years. But when I release it next month I will present different features than decentralization, because people who hate spying, but fear to change are really not the market.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER35> Whelp. Yahoo is officially over today. It was quite a fall.

<comment><USER25> Do you think?

Seems to me people are getting used to accounts being hacked, it's not such a big deal any more, in fact it may be even an expectation.

And as for government NSA hacking, well that's just old news and a given isn't it?

<comment><USER36> I'm not sure that people are getting 'used' to it. I was talking to a non- techie over the weekend, and although they were aware about Snowden's NSA revelations, they were quite perturbed to think someone could be reading their email.

I don't think people have stopped caring, they just feel helpless. This means that normal people may be willing to adopt new protocols (end-to-end encryption), something they wouldn't do if they were accepting of NSA spying.

<comment><USER37> Nothing in Snowden's leaks suggests that the government has access to your friend's email, let alone is reading it. Stop exaggerating to your non-techie friends.

<comment><USER38> You must have been folowing a different leak than me.

<comment><USER37> I read the documents released by Snowden. Which leaks are you referring to? Can you point me to any document that suggests the NSA has his friend's emails?

<comment><USER39> I'll cite a single program not even leaked by Snowden which would allow any unencrypted email sent to by intercepted [https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Room_641A?wprov=sfla1](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Room_641A?wprov=sfla1)

Snowden leaks showed that they get billions of hits each month from the various submarine cables as well as direct access from telco backbone fiber stations in the US, Europe, Middle East, and elsewhere.

> As this map shows that almost 3 billion data elements from inside the United > States were captured by the NSA over a 30-day period ending in March 2013, > Snowden stated that this tool was collecting more information on Americans > located within the United States than on Russians in Russia

[https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Boundless_Informant?wprov=sf...](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Boundless_Informant?wprov=sfla1)

In addition, the MUSCULAR program involved tapping the data links between data centers of Google and Yahoo.

[https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/MUSCULAR_%28surveillance_pro...](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/MUSCULAR_%28surveillance_program%29?wprov=sfla1)

So I'd say there is an 80-90% chance the NSA has a good chunk of his friends email. Closer to 95% if he was located outside of the US.

The only thing stopping them from getting the full content of each Americans (plus 3 hops) passive data collection (besides 100% of metadata they get legally) is a FISA warrant. They have no restriction for foreigners.

Maybe you need to reread some of those slides because you clearly missed the big picture.

<comment><USER37> Your single source does not actually collect his friend's data. According to Snowdon's leaks, it was used to find a court-ordered monitored target's traffic leaving or entering the country. It does not actually siphon all data, including emails, to the NSA.

MUSCULAR provides similar filtering capability within Google's and Yahoo's networks, though not anymore because they encrypt all traffic. Again, only metadata. And again, the email envelope collection had already been shut down prior to the leaks according to the leaked documents. According to Snowden's leaks, the NSA is not allowed to keep communications from a US citizen or anybody even living inside the US without a court order, so no, his friend's emails don't reside with the US government.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER29> Does anybody _still_ doubt that all major _closed-source_ software companies in the US (but probably elsewhere too) will put backdoors in their software products and therefor on your hardware?

</comment><comment><USER40> Ever since I started using email I though law enforcement has continuous, uninterrupted access to my communication.

News like this are no news to me :)

<comment><USER41> I browse assuming that I always have someone over my shoulder.

</comment></comment><comment><USER42> Face it, the US government is not operating like it has the best interests of the people as its core motivation.

<comment><USER43> `"That's not the way the world really works anymore." He continued "We're an empire now, and when we act, we create our own reality. And while you're studying that reality—judiciously, as you will—we'll act again, creating other new realities, which you can study too, and that's how things will sort out. We're history's actors … and you, all of you, will be left to just study what we do."`

[https://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Karl_Rove](https://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Karl_Rove)

</comment></comment><comment><USER44> I think we need to find ways to hurt big companies in the pocket book who do this. Stage (IT) employee walkouts, boycot the products they sell, etc.

Somehow, _we_ need to get the upper hand over the surveillance monster the US is becoming.

<comment><USER24> It's a nice notion but are we going to see an exodus from Google? Facebook? Apple?

I left Google and Facebook but me and the other 3000 people don't actually matter. You'll never get a non-negligible number of people to forsake their comfort zone for anything so trivial as rights, privacy, etc.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> Taking the headline literally "Yahoo installed a backdoor for the NSA behind the back of the security team" is as much an indictment of then-Yahoo's security team as a reminder that's it's a possibility for other companies to consider.

<comment><USER45> The OP does specify that Yahoo's Security Team caught the backdoor within a few weeks, so they can't be wholly incompetent.

</comment></comment><comment><USER46> Yahoo stock hasn't moved very much recently over these issues. I guess the market still thinks that the Verizon acquisition will still go through. For context, the price was ~$43 after the acquisition and closed at ~$41 today.

<comment><USER47> Most of the value from yhoo is from its holdings in alibaba. So this actually is fairly irrelevant for the stock.

<comment><USER46> There was a big jump in the stock when the acquisition was announced, so it would follow that the acquistion premium is priced in.

</comment></comment></comment><comment> norea-armozel Ouch. And I have at least one active account on there for Flickr. Nice to know they basically screwed over the security of the entire site. I guess I'll have to delete that account now.

</comment><comment><USER48> What I wonder is how this slipped past the security team? I had an internship with a defense contractor my junior year of college and they would have been all over that.

</comment><comment><USER49> 2 of my friends had their Yahoo accounts compromised and then their credit card off the back of it - I want to say its a coincidence but....

</comment><comment><USER50> Yahoo has completely lost my trust forever... looking forward to the day they don't exist anymore.

</comment><comment><USER51> Great Yahoo - way to sink the ship.

Yahoo won't be the one and only lucky receiver, hello Google, Apple...

</comment><comment><USER52> So who built the backdoor? Do we know if it was existing software or privately contracted?

</comment><comment><USER53> if you're forced to installed a backdoor do you have to maintain it?

</comment><comment><USER54> Does Yahoo violate its Terms and Conditions?

<comment><USER55> No, they allow themselves to do [whatever] to provide you with The Service, what ever that happens to be from NSL to NSL.

</comment></comment><comment><USER56> and they wonder why i use yahoo for my marketing spam newsletters.

</comment><comment><USER57> Wow, that was stupid.

</comment><comment><USER58> Fuck Yahoo, AOL and Verizon.

<comment><USER59> Please comment civilly and substantively on Hacker News or not at all.

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

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

</comment></comment><comment> hash-set So sad what tech people in this country have become. I prefer the anarcho- capitalists. Statism is ugly, ugly, ugly.

</comment><comment><USER60> I would be surprised if anyone was using Yahoo for anything but a spam account when this occurred.

I guess a really good indicator that things were not right was when the CSO left the company with no real reason. He was like I want no part of this shit.

<comment><USER61> yahoo groups is still very big. it was big before yahoo acquired it (egroups), remained almost unchanged throughout the years, and is now in maintenance mode, but there are still millions of users who continue to sign up.

<comment><USER62> I regularly dream about being involved in the creation of a project that lasts this long. News groups, IRC, etc. I would love to look back on my career and think that I contributed to something that user's would simply not let die. The feels to be a creator of something of that magnitude has to change a person.</comment></comment></comment>


The Steely, Headless King of Texas Hold 'Em - <AUTHOR> http://www.nytimes.com/2013/09/08/magazine/poker-computer.html?hp&_r=0&pagewanted=all <comment><USER2> The article says the machine can't be beaten. And then points out that a pro has consistently won against it.

This article is filled with bold claims by people that want to sell the idea IMHO. I'm not buying it because even limit texas Hold'Em has never been _solved_ mathematically by super computers, let alone a single machine. Limit Hold'Em is close to being solved but if you check out the last match of pros against a supercomputer you'll find that it's close, but the computer is not a clear winner: [http://poker.cs.ualberta.ca/man- machine/Competitors/](http://poker.cs.ualberta.ca/man-machine/Competitors/)

I'm just not buying it. Can it beat the average player? Probably. Pros do it everyday. But can it beat a pro consistently and claim a clear victory over humans? _To be determined_.

Edit: I found a take from High Stakes Limit Pro Anthony Rivera on 2p2: [http://forumserver.twoplustwo.com/showpost.php?p=29762774&po...](http://forumserver.twoplustwo.com/showpost.php?p=29762774&postcount=28)

His stance is that it's probably a break-even situation where you are basically playing another pro, and that he'd rather be playing craps. I guess they really have made a great machine. :D

<comment><USER3> Is it actually possible to mathematically solve those games? Suppose player Alice bets $100; how does player Bob judge that bet? As a strong hand or as a bluff? Any software program will have to model what's inside the head of its opponent, and we know way too little of that to do that.

Moreover, if we could, the opponent may choose a different strategy. It may be like a game with nontransitive dice: if you figure out which dice I use, you can beat me, but if I figure out that you figured that out, I can pick different dice and beat you ([http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nontransitive_dice](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nontransitive_dice))

I think it is possible to write software that statistically beats any opponent, but proving that it does is way harder.

<comment><USER4> Yes it is possible to mathematically solve limit poker (as well as no-limit poker, but no-limit poker is orders of magnitude more difficult - they are effectively different games).

The definition of solvable is "Does there exist a strategy that, regardless of opponents play, is not a losing strategy" though (because the game is symmetrical). It is not possible to solve for "Does there exist a strategy that, regardless of opponents play, guarantees maximum profits". You can solve it for not losing money, but you cant solve it for making the max amount of money.

Trivially it's not possible to write software that beats any opponent (because what would it do playing against itself?) . Less trivially, any game that has a finite amount of decisions (and limit hold-em does) has at least one Nash equilibrium, so there exists a strategy that will at least have you break even.

The way to solve the game is to calculate your odds of winning based on previous actions and ensure that you take actions that make any future decision of the opponent have the same outcome (to reach a Nash equilibrium).

That strategy hasnt been calculated yet, but the best limit players are most likely playing very close to it, at least if you compare to the best no-limit players playing no-limit (the variable amounts possible to bid in no-limit multiplies the possible strategies massively).

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> In his book Super System, Doyle Brunson wrote that a computer would never be able to play elite poker because you played the man, not the cards or the game. He greatly underestimated the power of modern computing it appears.

Personally, I'd rather see resources go into a robot that can cook for me but development follows the money I suppose.

<comment><USER6> ..or, he greatly underestimated the fact that the computer knows what cards it has dealt to you.

Isn't this obvious?

<comment><USER7> Well, exactly! I have three aces, and the computer has double pairs. We are in the turn. I go all in!!!

The computer calls ... and deals itself a full house. I am bankrupt :( How do I know? How can I ever trust playing poker with a machine, when it is doing the dealing?

Or, let me put it this way: I will play any machine, no limit, if I can do the dealing (secretly, that is, as the machine is doing).

Another issue entirely is chess: no secret dealing going on. All are playing with the same in-game information.

<comment><USER8> This is easily remedied by retaining a human dealer. It's fairly trivial to create a computer that can identify dealt cards on the table.

<comment><USER7> That would be fair, to be sure - or, to be precise, as fair as playing any other table in the casino. The dealer can still be cheating, but doing that in the open does not raise any further suspicions as any other table in the casino would raise.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> 1\. Is there anything Phil Hellmuth won't shill for?

2\. When this machine showed up ~2? years ago, there was a thread on 2+2 about it, and it would sometimes do some weird things like not value bet in obvious situations. They explain it in this article by saying it's, "playing dumb" but that seems like it would be a huge leak against Limit Hold'em HU specialists. I am guessing that they assume that they can make up for it in the weaker players losing consistently against this machine.

3\. It is kind of annoying that the guy is proud that he "broke" a 24 year old player.

</comment><comment><USER10> It's probably carefully tuned to calculate the raw probabilities and it also forces the player to reveal his cards to run statistics on his style. That's why it's the limit version. This machine has no chance in a classic no-limit texas where the opponent may be only profiting from large bets unjustifiable in expected value most of the time with very little style statistics.

<comment><USER11> The game can't run statistics on the player's style.

>Casino commissions, however, mandate that a gaming machine cannot change its playing style in response to particular opponents.

The algorithm is encoded in a neural net; there is no calculation of raw probabilities involved, at least in the sense programmers are used to.

<comment><USER10> Interesting. I doubt they would design a neural net without the probability as direct input though. I don't think the machine can be this good especially with such limitations. It may be exploiting some average-gambler trait and ultimately will be beaten once the pro players figure it out.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> Quite fun to see neural networks in the news. A million years ago I took a class on neural networks, using backpropagation to train networks to do image classification.

I will never forget the feeling of "you've got to be kidding me" when the code I had written was able to successfully classify a huge percentage of the validation image set. I really should head back in that direction and get with the machine learning.

Re: poker software. Before the feds crushed online poker, I had already given up on low-limit limit hold-em. It had clearly become a bot and augmented- player race. I would assume given game theory and Bill Chen's book that some enterprising hackers would encode pretty decent no-limit bots as well. If any hackers know anything about successful no-limit bots, I'd enjoy reading about it.

</comment><comment><USER13> I wrote a break-even no limit cash poker bot when I was in University. So I've spent a lot of time researching and writing code in this are. Limit poker is fairly well solved by bots at this stage. This is because the risk is limited on each hand and the grinding nature of the computer (i.e. it's ability to do the best thing for the longest amount of time) makes it a winner. Playing no- limit poker, it's a totally different scenario and a real challenge which is why I enjoyed it so much. Any slip up can cost you your entire stack. By slip up I don't mean a bug or clicking the wrong button, I mean a flaw in your strategy. Maybe something as simple as betting 4 big blinds instead of 3 big blinds pre-flop against a raise from a player will end up after a couple of rounds of betting of being played for your entire stack, instead of being something you could fold on the turn. Anyway, long story short. Limit poker is very solvable just by enumerating the various possible outcomes. No-limit cash poker is a different beast, it's exponentially harder than limit poker. It'll be a long time before somebody solves no-limit cash games.

</comment><comment><USER14> Assuming the machine is stateless, why can't the space of hole cards be mapped out and and strategies/responses enumerated?

But ultimately, the whole enterprise just seems distasteful: "Look, there was a 24-year-old who had beaten it for a while. Now he's broke. And I think this machine had something to do with his demise."

<comment><USER15> There's 1352 card combinations, many more flops, many more turns, many more rivers and also 1352 combinations for your opponent too and 3 actions per round of betting

There's more poker situations than amount of atoms in the universe

</comment></comment><comment><USER16> I don't understand how the machine can change the style of its play if: "Casino commissions, however, mandate that a gaming machine cannot change its playing style in response to particular opponents."

Yet the article states that the machine has multiple personalities (passive, aggressive, etc) and will sometimes throw hands.

<comment><USER17> Changing strategies randomly or in response to opponent play is probably not what's being referred to here. What would be banned would be the machine noticing that John Doe hasn't won in a while and his play has slowed down, so lets throw a few hands to keep him interested.

In other words, machines are allowed to shark $player, but not allowed to target John Doe specifically.

</comment></comment><comment><USER18> So I know a little about neural networks and ML in the (simpler?) context of image classification etc. Anyone have a good reference/introduction to using it for this sort of work?

</comment><comment><USER19> Very interesting tech, but personally I think I would struggle with the moral ramifications of working on a project that makes money by turning people into suckers

<comment><USER20> But the applications of this technology reach beyond gambling, into finance security and even foreign policy.

</comment></comment><comment> adam-a Is there any guarantee that the machine isn't simply reading your hand and then occasionally letting you win to keep the payout at ~80%?

<comment><USER21> An opponent who knows what's in your hand and bets based on that knowledge is not terribly hard to detect. The way to make it hard to detect is to have it not make bets based on knowledge of your hand.

</comment></comment><comment><USER22> The illustrations accompanying this article remind me of the ones in David Ahl's _BASIC Computer Games_.

</comment><comment><USER23> Illegal poker bots grind constantly on low level online poker games and take the money from low level players by just value betting them.

Computers can easily calculate probabilities and expected values for every hand. So why they are not beating professionals?

Poker has no optimal strategy that wins against all other strategies. To play poker in higher level you must model the strategies of others, including them trying to model your strategy.

1\. In the lowest level it's just maximizing expected value based on hand probabilities.

2\. In the second level you try to learn the strategy of your opponents and maximize value against those strategies.

3\. In third level you try to figure out how much your opponents have figured out your strategy and you change the strategy so that you maximize value when your opponents play against what they have learned from your strategy so far.

4\. ... and so on. It' goes meta.

If you want to create ultimate pokerbot, it has to be able to model the minds of it's opponents. it hast to be able to detect leaks in it's own game and close them down. It must go meta all the time. It must learn how to understand how others think and how they think about it and change it's behaviour constantly.

<comment><USER24> Head's Up Hold'em has a nash equilibrium. Therefore there is at least one mixed strategy (I do X with probability P in Y situation) which cannot be negative expected value to any other strategy. In this sense, there is an optimal strategy. It doesn't mean that it is the maximum expected value against a particular opponent, but no opponent can win by playing (which is largely the goal of a casino).

Opponent modeling is purely advantageous, but not necessary

<comment><USER2> I found this artile by Bryce Paradis that elaborates on using a Nash equilibrium for optimal play. He is known for bringing advanced mathematics to the game of limit poker and winning a small fortune because of it. Here is his take:

* Q: What's a Nash Equilibrium or "game theory optimal" strategy? – Failed Math, Port Perry, Ontario A: An equilibrium strategy is one that wins the most money possible against a perfect opponent (this does not mean an opponent who can see your cards, but one who always knows your range whenever you take an action and makes the best choice against that range). In the game "rock, paper, scissors," the equilibrium strategy is to randomly choose between the three options, choosing each one a third of the time in the long run. Finding equilibriums in poker is much more complicated, but the concept can be useful when you're playing lots of hands against tough opponents. For example, if your opponent bets half the pot on the river after a particular series of actions, the pot is offering him 2-1 on his bluff. If he were a perfect player, the right thing to do would be to call his bet a third of the time, since if you called more he'd exploit you by never bluffing and if you called less he'd exploit you by always bluffing. In reality, of course, our opponents are never perfect, and so the idea of playing an equilibrium strategy at the table is usually pretty academic. *

[http://pokerpromagazine.com/proscorner/bryce- paradis/](http://pokerpromagazine.com/proscorner/bryce-paradis/)

<comment><USER23> I can see the possibility for confusion here.

You can certainly use Nash equilibrium when you have figured out the strategies your opponents are using. This is what Bryce Paradis is talking about. It can have practical value when playing Heads Up.

But If we are talking game theory and "solving poker", there is no single winning strategy that works against all other strategies and you can't calculate single Nash equilibrium that would be optimal in actual game against specific strategies.

<comment><USER15> Yes, you can.

Your opponent has 1352 different hand combinations. Assume he is playing the Nash equilibrium strategy. Make the perfect plays based on this. If he plays worse than the Nash equilibrium strategy, you beat him. If he plays perfectly, you tie.

Assuming your opponent plays perfectly works in chess. Chess programs are stronger than the best humans now.

<comment><USER23> >Assume he is playing the Nash equilibrium strategy.

You you can't do that assumption because you don't know what the strategy is. You can calculate Nash equilibrium only if you know the strategy your opponent is using. In full no limit hold em there is no single strategy winning strategy, so you don't know the strategy your opponents are using.

<comment><USER4> No you don't need to know what the opponents strategy is. You calculate based on worst case (ie op playing perfect) and worst case is you break even. There is no way to maximize profit but you can play unexploitable, ie at a minimum not lose and possibly win assuming op doesn't play perfect.

<comment><USER23> In poker optimal strategy is not winning strategy.

An optimal strategy's goal is to loose the least against any arbitrary strategy. It is a strategy that is impossible to exploit in poker because poker has antes.

Poker players must seek maximal strategy. A maximal strategy's goal is to win as much as possible against a specific strategy.

<comment><USER15> That's just not accurate. An optimal strategy beats everything but itself, against which it ties. Are you talking about rake? Because antes are included into the poker strategy.

For example, you would raise more often when the antes are higher, regardless of the other player's strategy.

<comment><USER4> I think the point he is trying to make is that if your goal is to maximise your profits then it is not always optimal to play the nash equilibrium strategy. That is true.

The optimal strategy beats everything but an equally good strategy, and ties against itself, but it doesnt necessarily maximise profits against other bad strategies.

If you are able to identify flaws in your opponents strategy then you can play non-game theory optimal to increase your profits against that perceived strategy. Doing so comes at the cost of you yourself no longer playing the best strategy though.

There exists strategies that gives higher yields vs certain unbalanced strategies than the game theory optimal strategy (or strategies - for all we know there are several optimal strategies in limit hold'em).

For instance - in limit poker if your opponent will never raise, call every street, but not call the river with anything less than a pair, regardless of what you do, then bluffing every river is a more winning strategy than the game theory optimal strategy. The game theory optimal strategy would include times when you do not bet the river, for balance, but knowledge of your opponent's flawed strategy would tell you that betting 100% of the time has a higher yield.

<comment><USER15> This is true, but the program can't adapt due to the regulations, so it tries to play a Nash equilibrium strategy.</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment>


Fungus in humans identified for first time as key factor in Crohn's disease - <AUTHOR> https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2016/09/160920151435.htm <comment><USER2> "Furthermore, we found strong similarities in what may be called the 'gut profiles' of the Crohn's-affected families, which were strikingly different from the Crohn's-free families."

It seems that fecal transplant (or pills based on them) can alter/fix gut profiles[1]. I wonder if someone tried fecal transplant to cure Cron's disease.

[1] [https://youtu.be/e_dF1N-Ckbw?t=1m44s](https://youtu.be/e_dF1N-Ckbw?t=1m44s)

Edit: It seems this has been tried and pretty successful[2].

"A recent publication in the journal Inflammatory Bowel Diseases titled, "Fecal Microbial Transplant Effect on Clinical Outcomes and Fecal Microbiome in Active Crohn's Disease," reports seven of nine patients with Crohn's disease were effectively treated using FMT in a Seattle Children's research study."

[2] [http://pulse.seattlechildrens.org/study-suggests-fecal- trans...](http://pulse.seattlechildrens.org/study-suggests-fecal-transplant- could-be-effective-treatment-for-crohns-disease/)

<comment><USER3> If I remember correctly there was another study a few years back in europe (by Prof Raedler?) which was not as effective. Will try to dig it up tomorrow, I'm too sleepy right now.

<comment><USER3> My memory has failed me.

[http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4209544/](http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4209544/)

[http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3974513/](http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3974513/)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> In my experience Crohn's bacteria, and now apparently fungi, _love_ to feed on processed sugars and dairy products.

To stay in remission, I focus on diet and exercise, and deny the bacteria the fuel they require (at least, that's my theory).

Big pharma has largely focused on alleviating the inflammatory symptoms of auto-immune response. Treating the symptoms and not the cause unfortunately allows the vicious cycle to continue.

I hope discoveries like this will encourage more Medical Professionals to pursue preemptive dietary, naturopathic, and lifestyle remedies for managing Crohn's.

However, these remedies are not profitable, so I'm not optimistic :-(

<comment><USER5> would love to hear more about your experiences and how your diet influences 'good' and 'bad' choices to stay in remission or go into in the first place.

<comment><USER4> I wish there were more "absolute" rules. There are so many dietary exceptions. Here are a few I live by to manage Crohn's.

Water: Probably the #1 most important thing for Crohn's patients to manage is water consumption. Bottled water whenever possible. More specifically, the more alkaline the better. Tap water, unless you live in the mountains, is commonly bad on the digestive tract.

Fried food: Generally "bad", but food fried with certain oils seems to be okay. The oil needs to be fresh. Fried food from fast food chains is always "bad".

Sugars: Complex sugars are "bad". Monosaccharide sugars, found in fruits or honey, are okay.

Vegetables: "Good" when steamed. But undigested raw veggies increases risk of triggering an auto-immune response. I eat small salads... ideally chef salads with some protein (ham/bacon/turkey).

Fruits: Similar to veggies, only small portions. Don't let roughage linger in digestive system too long.

Dark Chocolate: 80%+ cocoa in moderation tends to be okay. The endorphin rush is a plus and a good substitute for coffee.

Popcorn: Definitely off limits. Auto-immune response triggers when the body detects undigested kernels.

Dairy: Odd mix. Milk is _extremely_ "bad". Won't even touch it. So is milk chocolate. Eggs are okay if used in cooking, but I avoid eating plain eggs for breakfast. Butter and many gourmet cheeses are fine (processed cheese is "bad").

Coffee: I drink a _lot_ of coffee. Probably too much. The water, beans, and preparation process all contribute to coffee being "good" for Crohn's. Coffee becomes "bad" if there are any additives, such as dairy or sugar. Not even dairy substitutes, like soy, can be added.

Meats: Okay in moderation, but lately I've been cutting back on red meats after learning more about increased risk of colon cancer in Crohn's patients. High quality beef burgers and fish are common staples.

Alcohol: I abstained from drinking for many years when first diagnosed with Crohn's, but was pleasantly surprised to discover that I could introduce many "top shelf" brands in moderation without any real symptoms. I've learned a lot about the distillation process of wines and spirits as a result. There are such things as "good" and "bad" alcohol.

Craft Beer: Similar to above, there are "good" and "bad" beer yeasts and fermentation processes. It's very hit or miss, but when I discover a craft beer that "works" with my digestive system, I stick with it. Lagunitas is an example of a beer that happens to be "good" with my gut bacteria.

<comment><USER5> Thanks for sharing, I have UC and am always looking to see what others are doing. I know There are differences but I suspect the root cause is similar.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> _test-tube research by the Ghannoum-led team found that the three work together (with the E. coli cells fusing to the [Candida tropicalis] cells and S. marcescens forming a bridge connecting the microbes) to produce a biofilm -- a thin, slimy layer of microorganisms found in the body that adheres to, among other sites, a portion of the intestines -- which can prompt inflammation that results in the symptoms of Crohn 's disease._

That seems like a huge find. Biofilms can be very hardy and difficult to break down. I wonder what a treatment for something like this would be.

<comment><USER7> A traditional mixture could consist of pau d'arco, wormwood, black walnut bark, clove, and garlic. This is used often in Native-American/Indian/Chinese- Medicine.

<comment><USER8> BS, these plants are not from the same area, so there is nothings traditional about combining them.

Black walnut is from North America. Wormwood is from Eurasia and Africa.

<comment><USER9> Be kind. Consider that they meant "what people have been trying since the 1970s when health food stores popped up everywhere" when they say "traditional". There is nothing despicable about trying to experiment on your own to cure an ailment. It's a type of hacking

<comment><USER10> Funny, I can't recall any hacks of mine where the public ended up footing a $150,000 ER bill to save my kidneys or my liver.

<comment><USER9> Oh, please. Too much acetaminophen and alcohol does the same thing when the general public tries to hack happiness and pain. The public covers that all the time

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> Gut bacteria is in the news a lot lately. As an interesting side note, during one of Joe Rogan's podcasts someone mentioned that if you think of our digestive system as a tube connecting two holes in the body then everything inside of our stomach is external. I've never thought of it that way. Fascinating.

For anyone interested Joe's podcast is actually incredibly informative and dense with good information.

<comment><USER12> There are so many good podcasts I can never get into, because they are often multiple hours per episode. Joe Rogan often on the 3 hour mark. How do people find time to listen/watch all the good content out there?

TL;DR is the zeitgeist, and I want to fight it. I want to read long form articles, books and listen to these great podcasts, but the number of hours in my day don't seem to allow it.

Do people set aside time? Am I just inherently bad at managing my time?

<comment><USER13> I listen to podcasts for at least 10 hours per week and I probably manage to listen to 20 hours of podcasts in that time. Most podcasts I listen to can be sped up to about 1.3x speed with no obvious loss in quality. Additionally I use a podcast app [1] that "removes audio gaps" which basically chops out "pauses" and "no sound" areas of the podcast.

[1] [https://overcast.fm/](https://overcast.fm/)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> Perhaps a (key?) factor in Alzheimer's too.

[https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/24614898](https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/24614898)

[http://www.nytimes.com/2016/05/26/health/alzheimers- disease-...](http://www.nytimes.com/2016/05/26/health/alzheimers-disease- infection.html)

</comment><comment><USER15> My college roommate had Crohn's and it was... brutal just to see what it did to him. I remember spending some time in our dorm room helping him get some Ensure down one time, and he told me how scared he was of ending up in a wheelchair with a colostomy and so on.

<comment><USER16> I worked with a young guy that suddenly found out he had it. He started feeling ill, then pain, and wound up in the hospital for some time. He didn't know he had it: I know for a while he wound up with a colostomy bag as his colon healed, and was looking at a lifetime of restricted eating and other such things.

To make matters worse, his long-term girlfriend/fiance left him while he was in the hospital.

I wish I knew what happened to him. He wound up moving out of state to stay with his parents as he got better, and basically cut most folks out of his life at that time.

<comment><USER15> A somewhat similar end result with my college roommate... he move home to be with family and his world seemed to shrink. We lost touch as well.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER17> I read in another article that Fungus has been neglected in medical pathology research:

> As of November 2015, only 269 of more than 6,000 Web of Science search > results for the term "microbiome" even mention "fungus," and the scientific > search engine returns only 55 papers pertaining to the "mycobiome."

> Despite this lack of attention, a handful of recent studies point to the > importance of our commensal fungal inhabitants as critical players in human > health and disease.

[http://www.the- scientist.com/?articles.view/articleNo/45153/...](http://www.the- scientist.com/?articles.view/articleNo/45153/title/The-Mycobiome/)

Hopefully this type of research will help with a large variety of illnesses.

</comment><comment><USER18> Gut microbiome seems to be linked to many diseases. My knowledge in biology and medicine is next to zero, but I was wondering if the following would be a feasible strategy:

* collect many samples from people with various symptoms

* do metagenomic sequencing on these samples to find what species are present in which samples

* machine learn the s--t out of this to find associations/correlations

* ...um, profit?

What would be the main problem on this way? Cost? Reliability of sequencing? Correlation not implying causation? Me talking nonsense?

This finding, from what I understand, connected Crohn to the presense of three species working together to form a microfilm. Would not that be something to be found with the method like this?

<comment><USER19> You'd also want to analyze the genomes of each individual from which the samples were taken, particularly for immune factors. While no one has figured out exactly why specific gene variants such as HLA-b27 seem to be implicated in a number of autoimmune diseases, the associations are clearly there.

</comment></comment><comment><USER20> Reading the overview of this study - am I incorrect in thinking "correlation" not "causation" wrt the particular species of fungi (Candida tropicalis) and the biofilm produced being a _key_ factor?

<comment><USER21> I don't know, but "lockstep" is a pretty darn strong correlation, with a solid hypothesis for a causative mechanism. I'll wait to see if the treatments actually work, but as someone with a friend who suffered from this, I'm excited.

</comment></comment><comment><USER22> This is good news. I like how they identified a precise mechanism that might contribute to it. Maybe eliminating at least one of these three in the body might knock out or reduce the condition. Depends on if other stuff is involved.

<comment><USER23> Biofilms are nasty stuff. I did part of my master's thesis on them. They group together and communicate with each other (with electrical grids, according to Dr. Costerton, one of the forefront researchers of biofilms before he passed away). Some species use the film to coordinate a certain percentage of bugs stay in a "dormant" state, so they won't intake an antibiotic and die.

For artificial joints like a hip and a knee joint, you have a lot of exposed materials like titanium, stainless steel, or medical polymer, so it doesn't have an immune system. Getting a biofilm infection forming on an artificial joint sometimes means taking the implant out, even if it's working fine.

So biofilms are a tough problem. They're far more sinister than conventional bacterial colonies. Since this is in the digestive tract, I wonder if some type of detergent can be found that simply dissolves the film matrix, washing away the bacteria and fungi.

<comment><USER24> I had one form in my mouth after overexposure to an antifungal. It has resisted several rounds of antibiotics including Cipro. Nasty stuff. As far as I know it's unique to me, so if you know any grad students who want a mouth swab let me know.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER25> I'm so happy to see the increase in gut microbiome research lately, as someone suffering from an immune-related colitis. There's very clearly a correlation with anti-microbial and microbe-influecing things (pepto bismol, herbal antimicrobial supplements, and probiotics) and my general well being, but let's just say it's very difficult to get specialists to focus on anything other than treating symptoms.

The microbiome matters a whole lot, and it's starting to become clear how. These are great developments and I hope to see the trend continue.

</comment><comment><USER26> I wonder if this finding could help with ulcerative colitis as well

<comment><USER17> Wondering the same thing, from my understanding UC is a variation of Chrons. Although I've personally found it pretty easy to manage after my initially attack in my early 20s. But I've heard Chrons is different and treatment is much more diet-based. Whereas with Colitis there doesn't seem to be a connection to nutrition (yet).

<comment><USER27> Crohn's is best understood as a collection of symptoms than an actual diagnosis, because -- this article being a case in point -- the underlying etiology isn't understood. For example, treatments that work on Crohn's patients in Japan don't work on US patients, indicating that the diagnosis is covering multiple disorders.

<comment><USER28> Interesting note about treatment working in Japan but not US. Do you have any more details about that? Thanks.

<comment><USER27> The gold standard protocol in Japan has traditionally been exclusive enteral nutrition, but Crohn's in western countries has generally been refractory in studies. Japanese remission rates are reported in the 70-90% range, so it's a pretty significant finding.

The _Royston Vasey Journal of Culinary Medicine_ also had some intriguing results from a meat-based therapeutic diet, but the control population disappeared before conclusive results could be drawn.

<comment><USER28> Ah. Yes. I'm familiar with that RVJCM "study." Supplied the raw ingredient you know.

I told them: don't blend this with anything else. My special stuff isn't hamburger helper is it now? Bloody doctors. They should have listened when they had the chance.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER29> Reminds me of this article: [http://www.theatlantic.com/science/archive/2016/07/how-a- guy...](http://www.theatlantic.com/science/archive/2016/07/how-a-guy-from-a- montana-trailer-park-upturned-150-years-of-biology/491702/)

Fungi play an interesting role in these systems.

</comment><comment><USER30> Maybe we can finally begin to take a closer look at naturopathic remedies. The key to killing fungus in humans is to a) deny their fuel source through diet and b) strengthen the human system by proper carb/fat/protein ratio, essential oils, and healthy fats (omega 3/6/9, medium-chain saturated fats, etc).

<comment><USER31> That might be an approach, though it would be helpful to see citations (not that improving diet is a bad idea in general). There are also drugs like Lufenuron [1] which is a chitin synthase inhibitor (fungi make their cell walls from chitin, while mammals don't synthesize chitin at all).

1: [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lufenuron](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lufenuron)</comment></comment>


Ask HN: Best place to find creative talent? - <AUTHOR>

I've gotten pretty good at finding awesome developers on Stack Overflow, Github, and even oDesk, among other places. I'm a developer myself so this hasn't been too hard. But I'm now looking for a creative person who can take our mobile ad campaign in a fresh direction. In the past I've used craigslist with mixed success but that was a few years ago. Is there anything better out there for creative talent that fellow HNers have used? Thanks. <comment><USER2> Dribbble?

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks, this is great! Haven't heard of this one before.</comment></comment>


Fixing the unfairness of TCP congestion control - <AUTHOR> http://blogs.zdnet.com/Ou/?p=1078

<comment><USER2> What a bunch of FUD. Granted there are lots of products that abuse TCP/IP, even Cloudant, the Y Combinator funded home router startup <http://www.crunchbase.com/company/cloudant>

But P2P technologies like BitTorrent don't use multiple connections to maximize bandwidth to a single server, they use multiple connections to distribute the load across many other hosts.

 _They continue to espouse the virtues of P2P applications as "efficient" but what they don't tell us is that "efficient" means efficiency in bandwidth hogging._

If I want to download a 500MB movie, I _NEED_ to use 500MB of bandwidth one way or another. The demand is there, the only question is how will it be met.

P2P networks _are_ incredibly efficient in that they distribute the load across many many hosts and networks. Just because they use lots of bandwidth doesn't mean they're inefficient. Try distributing a popular torrent from a single server and watch it melt before your eyes.

 _They also don't tell us that P2P is efficient at offloading the costs of video distribution to someone else._

Yeah, that someone else is me and all the other BitTorrent peers who are _paying_ our ISPs for access to the internet.

 _The diagram below shows what happens when an application like BitTorrent uses the network continuously._

That has much more to do with the BitTorrent protocol than the TCP/IP protocols. It takes time for a host to discover other peers and ramp up, etc. Additionally, comparing BitTorrent to email, and even Skype, is a ridiculous comparison.

If it's really such a big problem, ISPs should shape traffic across the board, fairly. AND disclose to their customers what they're really paying for. But they certainly shouldn't filter or limit specific types of traffic.

<comment><USER3> It's not fud. People who share a single line (i.e. homes, small offices, wireless coffee shops) in the presence of _other people's_ torrent clients often report diminished responsiveness if there isn't some traffic shaping set up.

<comment><USER2> I believe that, but it's the internet as a whole that we should be concerned with, not individual connections.</comment></comment></comment>


Learning to Program: Why Python? - <AUTHOR> http://www.udacity.blogspot.ca/2012/05/learning-to-program-why-python.html <comment><USER2> _> The similarities between these languages are as complete as the similarities between driving in Europe and America: In the same way an experienced driver from one continent can improvise with a reasonable degree of safety on the other, an experienced Python programmer can be up-and-running with C# in a day or two._

Absolutely love the analogy. It's a great display of leveraging the English language to convey complex concepts in a down-to-earth fashion. Even as engineers (or perhaps _because we are engineers_ ), getting our ideas across in understandable, layman terms is a potent weapon.

(though admittedly, the latter part of the excerpt could perhaps be simplified)

<comment><USER3> But that doesn't explain why Python and not C#. Can't a C# programmer be up- and-running with Python in a day or two too?

<comment><USER4> Probably because not everyone is learning to program on Windows.

<comment><USER5> You can use Mono to program C# on Linux or Mac.

<comment><USER6> Yeah, but chances are your Linux or Mac users will already have python installed via their OS.

The biggest challenge for Windows users is remembering to go to python. __org __and not python.com to obtain their version.

<comment><USER7> And if you look at any of the udacity office-hours videos, when you see laptops, they're almost always Macs :-)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> Thought the article was going to be a question as to why. But I wholeheartedly agree as to why Python is a great forst language.

The simple fact that it's syntax light will always be the #1 reason it's a great introduction. Worry about the syntactical hangups once you have the core concepts of programming down.

I never understood those CS courses that have you diving in blind with C++

<comment><USER9> >I never understood those CS courses that have you diving in blind with C++

C++ made more sense to me than all the CS programs that were switching to Java for their intro to CS courses when I was coming up a decade ago.

C/C++ may have overhead that's confusing to a beginner out of the gate, but Java just amplifies that.

<comment><USER8> Everyone learns differently, so hey to each their own. I dabbled for years throught my HS life in php, but when it came time to actually learn I was completely put off by my first intro to CS course that used the aforementioned 'Dive head first w/ C++!' method and left the course, and was one of 18 to do so.

Started learning python on my own around age 19 and everything just skyroketed from there. I'm much more comfortable using( saying that lightly ) C++ these days but I can't imagine ever recommending it to even an enemy as their first language.

An aquaintenance on a board somewhere put it best, " C++ is like a hurricane. Gorgeous but incredibly destructive". Personally I think it all looks hideous but I get the point now.

<comment><USER9> Oh, I agree that C++ doesn't make much sense as a first language in 2012. I was just pointing out that a few years ago, the trend was toward teaching Java which is, in my opinion, even _worse_ as a first language because you're forcing people to immediately dive into dealing with classes before they even understand what a class is.

Today, I'd agree that Python -- and possibly Ruby -- is a better first language, but when this was happening they weren't particularly mature. You just didn't have the kind of mature, syntactically-clean, object-oriented languages available that you do now. Even so, I never understood why you'd choose Java with all its excess syntax to teach a beginner.

<comment><USER8> Prob the age old reason because it's what most programmers end up using throughout their buisness life. Always been my guess anyway

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> I never quite understood why people think that teaching beginners programming through languages like Python and C# is a good idea. It's really hard. Think about it.

It may seem easy to start writing programs in those languages, but understanding what is actually going on is sort of difficult for someone who has no idea how things work. When you're implementing a linked list or a binary search tree for the first time, it's important to understand how your data structure is laid out in memory, otherwise it's a pointless exercise. Higher-level languages are convenient, but they hide a lot of what is going on, and that, in my opinion, is bad, if you are learning.

I think the best language to start with is C (and not C++, of course). One must understand pointers and bytes and bits and memory management and all that shit that leads to segfaults and many hours of debugging to be a programmer. I would even go as far as to say that one should start with an assembler and not C, but given the immense complexity of contemporary hardware, I understand that such approach is infeasible. However, teaching kids programming with a physical (not emulated), really simple, toy CPU is probably a good idea. Too bad I don't know any such CPUs.

<comment><USER11> IMHO, this is bad advice. It is like saying if you want to teach how to change oil in the car, teach the entire automotive engineering curriculum.

Introducing extreme complexity so early in the process turns off people; they give up easily and (falsely, in many cases) start believing that programming is not for them.

The first introduction should have enough fundamental programming concepts to enable the students to make something useful and tangible, by themselves. As the interests and the objectives grow, they can delve deeper into the domain.

I think with Khan Academy, Udacity and others, we are entering a new paradigm of "Just in time learning". Schools should focus on teaching smart learning techniques, critical thinking etc instead of cramming more and more topics in their curriculums.

<comment><USER12> Is it true? It's easy to spout platitudes about what learners should and should not have to learn and why, but have they been tested? A lot of people who went to my school would have preferred a curriculum based on Python and writing games, but the ones that graduated seem pretty glad they instead endured a curriculum based on C and culminating in compiler writing.

I'm happy to live in a post-Alan Kay world, but I think maybe it's time to dust off that sculpture of Dijkstra we keep in storage and move it out into the foyer. Programming is hard; glossing over what makes it hard in the name of doing stuff sooner may or may not help, but as long as we debate it without testing it empirically we're sure to get nowhere.

<comment><USER11> That is indeed a good question. One of the key challenge in reforming education field is the feedback cycle is big. Very time consuming to track experiments. So I have add that what I stated was my hypothesis reinforced with a small dataset of my experience teaching 'Computing & Internet' to middle school kids.

I have to clarify that my comment was targeted towards current Udacity (other MOOC) participants who wants to learn programming as a value added skill or hobby.

If you want to graduate with CS major and/or want to pick CS as a profession; I do believe you need to have a good understanding on the entire stack. There are no shortcuts to being a good professional and achieving mastery in any field requires committed hard work.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> I've been playing with Codea on the iPad for a few days. I'm a big Python fan, but having never used Lua before I have to say it's a great little language and Codea is a lovely learning environment.

My daughter (8) was watching me play with it on the couch at the weekend and I let her change some of the variable values, pick colours, etc and see the difference it made when we ran the program.

</comment><comment><USER14> Here's one reason why not: no anonymous functions longer than one line. Which is a pretty lame limitation for a modern high-level language, all due to the dumb whitespace-as-scope design.

<comment><USER15> Honest question: If you are making an anonymous function longer than one line, shouldn't you just make a normal function? What are the use cases for large anonymous functions?

<comment><USER16> I wrote a nonblocking library (for pipes/processes/signals) in Python like node.js. So many of the callbacks end up being inner functions (they don't when you decide you can make all the necessary state object-level, and thus make the callback a method).

The anonymous syntax actually reads better than defining an inner function and then calling it.

I think the real reason why they were never added is syntax, and honestly I can't think of a good syntax myself.

<comment><USER15> That makes sense. Callback methods. Thanks.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER17> It's too bad Javascript's faults are so grievous. The sane subset of JS + a web browser makes a pretty good beginners environment.

But when you have to blow so much time on screwy things like "this" scoping and unwanted implicit conversions it kind of tips the balance.

<comment><USER18> You can always do something like this: <http://www.skulpt.org/>

None of the disadvantages of such an approach matter in a learning context. Sure, it's slow relative to a real implementation... but so what?

(I'm also not saying that particular link is a drop-in solution, as I've never heard of it until I went googling on the theory that something like it must exist. But if you were building a business on this, it looks far enough along that you could adapt it as needed.)

</comment></comment><comment><USER19> I can't help thinking that almost everything he lists applies _more_ to Scheme than Python. Scheme also has the advantage of being much simpler, smaller, more concise, more flexible and more elegant than Python. It actually does functional programming _well_ rather than half-heartedly, and is rather nice for OOP as well.

Additionally, Scheme has one very important property that Python lacks--there is almost no magic. Even definitions and assignments (define and set! respectively) look like normal function calls. It also makes it clear that very little is fundamental to a language--with Java and Python things like classes and control structures are special and built into the language; with Scheme they do not differ superficially from normal functions. With Java I thought classes and objects were somehow the only way to do it; Scheme clearly showed me that they do not even have to be part of the core language.

Now, Scheme does have some complicated ideas like macros and continuations, but there is no reason to teach those to beginners--it's an eminently useful language as is, and _extremely_ simple. The very first CS course I took in college used Scheme; we spent something like just _two_ lectures on the language itself. Now that the professor retired they've changed the course over to Python; I think they're still learning the language half-way through the semester.

Scheme is also great because, being very simple, it is much easier to implement than Python. And once you have a basic Scheme implementation, you can modify it to see other potential languages. For example, in our intro CS course, we talked about writing a memoizing interpreter and even a lazy interpreter. It's hard to imagine a lazy Python! We even reused Scheme syntax (but not really semantics) to cover logic programming à la Prolog.

That course was one of the most enlightening semesters I have ever spent. I really think that Scheme is the perfect introductory didactic language.

<comment><USER20> I never really accepted the argument that Scheme/Lisp is simpler than a language like Python, simply because everything in the language is reduced to constants/terminals (what's the right terminology here?) and functions.

Many language differantiate between statement and expression, and compile-time and runtime and lots of other stuff.

Saying that we can express C-structs in a language by reducing them to functions is not a simplification, instead I would argue it's worse when trying to grok C. While coming from Python it would be easier since we already have classes, and C-structs are simply compile-time final classes without inheritance.

I agree though that learning Scheme can teach a lot, just not necessarily how to grok every other language well.

</comment></comment><comment><USER21> >Python's type system is more flexible than C#'s (for better and worse). It is important to keep in mind a few concepts from Python that are not directly translated to C#:...

>Dynamic typing, a.k.a "duck-typing" (this, too, can be accomplished using libraries built around Delegate.DynamicInvoke).

I'm not super familiar with the keyword, but I'm fairly sure this is built right into C# 4.0 via the "dynamic" keyword, is it not?

<comment><USER22> From what I understand, yes. I believe the point the author is trying to make however, is that Python allows you to think more about the structure/function of your code rather than worrying if a variable should be an integer, a float, or a double making it easier for new programmers to "jump in".

</comment></comment><comment><USER23> The author mentions that C# has a nice IDE (Visual Studio). I'd like to mention that a couple of OSS & Python enthusiasts at msft have produced one for Python as well (free/apache 2.0).

It supports both CPython and IronPython, along with intellisense, debugging, profiling, etc. : <http://pytools.codeplex.com>

</comment><comment><USER24> Liked the fair simplicity of the post but I am disappointed by the Wikipedia links. Like many design pattern they look like Java special idioms used to overcome its limitations. So dependency injection is just "if x import y"? Like any other conditional, it must be used only if necessary but does it need be a Design Pattern?

<comment><USER25> Design patterns tend to arise due to linguistic limitations, but not always. They're mainly a shared vocabulary for talking about software architecture and design, regardless of paradigm.

As for dependency injection: DI ⊆ inversion of control ⊆ decoupling ⊆ factoring, where ⊆ = "is a kind of". Roughly, DI means externalising dependencies and giving them as parameters in order to reduce coupling. Which, when you put it that way, is obvious, and something we (should) do often in any language.

</comment></comment><comment><USER26> Title is misleading. The article discusses why learn Python instead of C# as a first language.

Missing: Python being cross platform (arguably more so than C#.)

</comment><comment><USER27> I just want to say that I've been learning Python as my first language. I've found it to be fairly intuitive and a lot of fun. Of course, learning any language, especially your first, is going to be difficult, though.

One of the drawbacks I've heard is that Python subscribes to the idea of doing something 'the right way,' although i've found a few times where i did something the 'not right way' and it was still functional (although maybe a little longer or not as clean as it could have been).

Edit: I've also been involved a little bit with Ruby lately, and it seems thre are a few similarities between the two. Though that could just be that there are many similarities between any two langauges, and I'm just not familiar enough with multiple languages to realize that :P

Still, it's an excellent first language, IMO

<comment><USER12> A lack of freedom can be a good thing in a first language. Of course, Python doesn't _always_ have a "right way" or they wouldn't be on their fourth command line argument parsing library. ;)

Ruby and Python will seem more similar after knowing a lot of languages. But they are different enough too. If it's not intimidating you it's probably a good second language.

<comment><USER28> Why do I keep reading about this? I don't see how any command line argument parsing library is relevant other than argparse. Do you have some concrete complaint about argparse? I am seriously wondering what I am missing, it seems so simple to me yet this seems to be a burning perennial complaint.

<comment><USER29> Why shouldn't they be relevant? Getopt is still very useful for short scripts and optparse does everything it was meant to do, even if it's not as full of features as argparse. Maybe argparse really should be the canonical choice, but I certainly wouldn't want to see the others gone.

As for a minor complaint about argparse - setting up a custom help formatter [1] is not straightforward, not in the slightest in comparison to optparse [2] (which is much simpler, implementation wise).

[1] [http://hg.python.org/cpython/file/default/Lib/argparse.py#l1...](http://hg.python.org/cpython/file/default/Lib/argparse.py#l144)

[2] <http://hg.python.org/cpython/file/2.7/Lib/optparse.py#l155>

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER30> Right idea, but bad execution. This could have been a great post had the OA had expanded on his examples instead of just linking to wikipedia.

Here is where he failed. We need to ask, who is this article for? Programmers who already understands some of the patterns and paradigms OA touched upon, or newbies.

Given he seem to be responding to a new programmer, it would have been more effective if OA had displayed the C# implementation vs. python, at least for a few of the more interesting examples.

On a personal perspective, the first language I thought myself was BASIC. Remember line numbers and goto? I later learned enough C to understand how things work behind the scene. So I personally like the high-level first approach, especially python. It's like a swiss army knife.</comment>