Checklist of Rationality Habits - <AUTHOR> http://rationality.org/checklist/ <comment><USER2> I used to think this checklist was misguided. My mental model of improving my rationality was something like acquiring lots and lots of impressive and clever tools and then training myself to apply them in context appropriate places. I've come around to a model much more in line with this checklist though. Something like:

1\. Noticing behavioral patterns

2\. Thinking hard and doing research on the pattern, whether it leads to good or bad outcomes and whether modifying it is cost effective

3\. Using habit formation techniques to modify things

4\. Reviewing and reflecting on what is and isn't working for things I have modified using the above steps

Old me would have considered this very laborious. You only get to make small changes this way and you aren't guaranteed they work. However, it doesn't take that many _real_ improvements in fundamental counter-productive patterns before the benefits start stacking on top of each other. A few weeks of intense focus on one particular pattern is actually fairly high leverage considering that you can instill habits that will last a lifetime.

<comment><USER3> Your comment reminded me of the Meyers-Briggs model's concepts of introverted thinking and extraverted thinking. The extraverted thinker ( _NTJ) seeks out common, objective methodologies, while the introverted thinker (_ NTP) finds it easier to become comfortable with a more subjective, philosophical approach. You might then expect an INTJ to learn and hold to rules that seem to have authority or at least some critical thinking behind them, and an INTP could be expected to back off and start poking holes in those rules.

An important part of INTJ maturity is accepting that their own approach may fall short and examining the basis of other beliefs regarding the system or framework they instinctively favor. Or just learning why the lack of adherence to such a framework might be acceptable. INTJs, for example, are urged to learn about different personality preferences so they don't grow impatient with just about every other type. It's easy for INTJs to wonder why their ENFP friend just won't act logically.

In the case of the INTJ, the role of extraverted thinking, commonly called systems thinking, is crucial: It can replace their instinctive (and at times compulsive or otherwise destructive) emotional response to circumstances that make them feel anxiety. So when a more mature INTJ is feeling anxious about a situation or circumstance, they usually fall back on their extraverted thinking to help them examine rationally and build a model around it. Otherwise they might find themselves falling into compulsive behaviors, losing their grip on the situation.

<comment><USER4> You do realize the Meyer-Briggs typology has been abandoned in favor of more meaningful tests? At this point it's basically a scientific-ish version of astrology.

<comment><USER5> Apologies for being off topic, but I, for one, was not aware. Which tests are considered more meaningful?

<comment><USER6> [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Big_Five_personality_traits](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Big_Five_personality_traits)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> I'm distressed by how unscientific a lot of this stuff is. It's all good advice, but some of it seems to come from some pretty naive perceptions of how consciousness and the brain work. The example in 3.1, for example:

> _Recent example from Anna: Jumping off the Stratosphere Hotel in Las Vegas > in a wire-guided fall. I knew it was safe based on 40,000 data points of > people doing it without significant injury, but to persuade my brain I had > to visualize 2 times the population of my college jumping off and surviving. > Also, my brain sometimes seems much more pessimistic, especially about > social things, than I am, and is almost always wrong._

Fear of heights is a very primal, very understandable and even reasonably well understood response. Our brains have specific hardware for this kind of circumstance, and it exists for good (even "rational") reasons. Sweeping it into the same generic bucket with all other "irrationality" is just silly.

<comment><USER8> I think you missed the point. It's not that the fear is itself intrinsically wrong, it's that the fear is leading to an irrational belief: that I will likely die if I do this wire-guided fall. That's just not a belief that comports with reality.

<comment><USER7> I, uh, rather think that you missed the point. "Rationality", when expressed in this kind of technicolor paint brush way, is a poorly-defined, fundamentally unscientific concept. Belief in it _is itself_ irrational.

Basically: this is just self-help hippie nonsense to me. My irony detector is off the charts, and I was expecting to be more impressed.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> What's the book that most influenced you on critical/rational thinking?

The website promotes a list ([http://rationality.org/reading/](http://rationality.org/reading/)). I have only read "Thinking, Fast and Slow" and I am looking for HN users favorites.

<comment><USER10> There's a book called Seeking Wisdom be Peter Bevelin that I really enjoyed. He also has useful lists of checklists in the back.

<comment><USER9> Thanks. Seems out of print on Amazon [1]. Adding it to my wishlist anyway, maybe I buy a used one.

[1] www.amazon.com/Seeking-Wisdom-Darwin-Munger-3rd/dp/1578644283/

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> I tend to think of myself as rational, but the degree of introspection suggested by this checklist seems bizarre to me.

<comment><USER12> Just remember that the human brain is basically not set up for objectivity. Plenty of people who consider themselves rational are capable of making decisions that you would call unrational. Doesn't mean you need to live your life through a checklist, but it helps to be critical of thoughts like "I am a very rational person"

<comment><USER13> Sometimes I rationally realize that I am making an irrational decision, but I still prefer the "wrong" decision. For example, I may pick up a dirty penny in a street. The risk/reward is negative because the very slight possibility or disease or accident outweighs the very slight financial reward, but I prefer to pick up the penny anyway. Am I rational because of the analysis, or irrational because I make the wrong choice?

<comment><USER12> I think the key thing is that being a perfectly rational actor is a strange and twisting pursuit. Measuring your actions against another scale is more useful IMO. Being humane/considerate/farsighted (or any set of subjective values that you believe are important) make a better measuring stick than rationality

<comment><USER14> This is a good point--I would phrase it as whatever over-arching organizing value set or decision-making framework you choose to use (whether it be "go with your gut", Rationality Uber Alles, WWJD?, "don't be a dick", or whatever) does not absolve you of responsibility for the actions you take according to that framework. Using rationality or moral values or whatever as a means to develop self-awareness and maturity is a valid and useful exercise IMO, but I know too many people who feel like "I'm just doing what XXXXX says I should do" excuses their actions even though it was still their choice in the first place to do what XXXXX says.

Also, Antonio Damasio's work is an interesting complement/counterpoint to the overemphasis of cognitive rational thinking, and I'd highly recommend it. Descarte's Error is a good place to start, and makes the strong case that rationality is part of an embodied (literally) process upon which it depends.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> As a mathematician, rationality is very important to me. (It is sufficiently important that I believe in determining my own criteria for rationality, rather than using someone else's list.)

In this spirit, I have an infuriating (to others) habit of reflexively arguing against someone else's position. (It was originally born out of the "search for counterexamples" mindset of a mathematician, but now it's an unconscious behaviour.) This habit is so comically ingrained that, if the person to whom I make this argument switches his or her position, then I will in turn switch to arguing _for_ the original position.

I don't know whether this counts as highly rational, highly contrarian, or just annoying.

<comment><USER16> Read the list...

> I notice when my mind is arguing for a side (instead of evaluating which > side to choose), and flag this as an error mode. (Recent example from Anna: > Noticed myself explaining to myself why outsourcing my clothes shopping does > make sense, rather than evaluating whether to do it.)

<comment><USER15> > Read the list...

I did (although, as I noted, I think that part of being rational is critically creating your own criteria for rationality, rather than using someone else's). I also was not claiming that this was not on the list—but:

> I notice when my mind is arguing for a side (instead of evaluating which > side to choose), and flag this as an error mode.

Although logically—well, in classical logic, anyway—every argument _against_ something is an argument _for_ its opposite, I think that there is nonetheless a meaningful difference between making a contrarian argument (as I do; it is an essentially negative process) and arguing for the opposite position (an essentially positive process).

<comment><USER17> Careful there, your constructivism is showing.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER3> I'd be very interested to see the results of their ongoing research. And I'd like to know how the debiasing process compares to e.g. CBT.

<comment><USER18> They're selling seminars; there doesn't appear to be actual research going on.

</comment></comment><comment><USER19> Now I know this is not going to sound "rational", but...

I saw the example early on the page about evaluating whether or not to outsource their clothes shopping, and just stopped. Anyone for whom this is even a valid concept is so far removed from who I am that I just am not going to value their advice.

<comment><USER20> That comment was an example provided by someone noticing a described behavior, not a recommendation by the author.

</comment></comment><comment><USER21> Who told them that we have any kind of "parallel threads of consciousness" to run "chekers" for these "rational heuristics" or "pattern matchers" on an input stream? Another variety of "multitasking" nonsense.

On paper it is all logical and "rational". Now try to run this in your mind in so-called state of "flow". Don't have a flow? That means you don't have your attention focused.

All the classic attention experiments, like that one with gorilla, reveal limitations and "single-threadness" of our minds.

It seems that the only kind of parallel tasks a human mind could run is one "conscious" with many "subconscious" \- 1:N threads, or 0:N ;)

Btw, pthreads (and, perhaps, lock-based sharing in general) is a flawed concept in the first place. Imagine a deadlock with breathing or race- condition with heart rate.

<comment><USER22> Certainly all of this would be completely impractical if it required a "parallel thread of consciousness" (where did you get that phrase). Thankfully recognizing situations isn't something that has to take conscious attention. If I'm walking down the street and someone I pass is wearing a gorilla costume that fact will be promoted to my conscious attention by other parts of my brain without me having to consciously think to myself "is this a gorilla" whenever I see someone. The idea here is to train yourself to notice when, say, you're confused the same way you'd notice a gorilla costume and only then deal with the issue consciously.

Of course automatic recognition isn't perfect as the video you're referring to shows. But recognizing something most of the time is far superior to never recognizing it.

And I think a better model for the human brain is a hard core with a single thread embedded in a much larger FPGA fabric that can issue it interrupts. Only a tiny fraction of the sense data that enters our brain actually impinged on our conscious awareness and the directives that our consciousness issues such as "pick up that cup" are multiplied hugely in complexity as they are translated into precisely calibrated exertion rates for dozens of separate muscles over time.

<comment><USER21> > Thankfully recognizing situations isn't something that has to take conscious > attention.

Should I explain how all these rush or "pressure" based sales techniques work and how they are trying exploit and manipulate "too narrow window of attention" of a customer?</comment></comment></comment>


Ask HN: How do you find customers to validate your business idea - <AUTHOR> I am currently working on a new product for business customers. I have fairly good idea what the target market is but do not know how to reach out to them. Cold call on LinkedIn or company website? I don't mind doing that but if there is no response, I do not know if I should consider as lack of demand for my product or not!<p>Look for advice or ideas. <comment><USER2> I would just suggest you read _The Four Steps to the Epiphany_.</comment>


Ask HN: Favorite startup demo videos - <AUTHOR>

I am searching for examples of really great demo videos that explain a product or service. In your opinion what are some of the most clear and/or creative videos from startups out there? <comment><USER2> Square, without a doubt.

[http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QSzsFAJAKHI&feature=relat...](http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QSzsFAJAKHI&feature=related)

<comment><USER3> For more Adam Lisagor, try the video for the Birdhouse iPhone app, which is _even more_ charming than the Square video: <http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=S8yRaWY1xV8>

<comment><USER4> He's one of the developers of Birdhouse, which he started as a side project from doing Hollywood VFX work. Now he's working on making these kinds of promotional videos full time — he's mentioned that he's done internal stuff for companies, and he just published a new one for an iPad app: <http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=v2vpvEDS00o>

Y'all should hire him, he's the new Stan Freberg.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> I thought this one was genuinely funny and well executed:

<http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8FC_eMDnCRg>

Thumbtack; saw this because they just got funded through Venture hack's Angel list.

</comment><comment><USER6> Straight up, Shopify made my favourite promo video:

[http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MVVui4oXL4Q&hd=1](http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MVVui4oXL4Q&hd=1)

Aside from high production values, the reason this is a great clip is that they start with "Why?". If you're not familiar with Simon Sinek's awesome TED talk, I highly recommend it:

[http://www.ted.com/talks/simon_sinek_how_great_leaders_inspi...](http://www.ted.com/talks/simon_sinek_how_great_leaders_inspire_action.html)

<comment><USER7> +1 for the Simon Sinek link, that was great!

</comment></comment><comment><USER8> I'd just like to add that spending the time to put together a good-quality demo video for your startup can be a rewarding experience, and very worthwhile too. I think many still treat it like an after-thought when getting ready to launch their app, though. I was almost more proud of my demo video than when I launched LeadNuke in the first place (realizing that I lack any considerable experience making screencasts). I also took the opportunity to slip in a plug for my other startup, RateMyStudentRental.

That being said, it's just a simple screencast, so I wouldn't say it's inherently creative or out of the ordinary. But it does go to show that you can make a decent quality demo video on the cheap in under a few hours if you take it seriously.

EDIT: Oh, and just in case you'd like to see it: [http://s3.amazonaws.com/leadnuke-com-cdn- streaming/introduct...](http://s3.amazonaws.com/leadnuke-com-cdn- streaming/introduction-demo.mp4)

</comment><comment><USER9> I'm a big fan of the SoundCloud demo: <http://vimeo.com/1857085> just feels slick & tells you exactly what the service does.

<comment><USER10> The woman's accent helps too.

<comment><USER11> LOL yeah. I digg her accent. and the BGM is pretty sweet

<comment><AUTHOR> Funny how you say digg instead of dig.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> Flipboard. Very clearly explains the point: <http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=v2vpvEDS00o>

<comment><USER13> Slightly OT, but I got distracted by the strange Aphex Twin cover they used as background music. Followed the link, and now that group (The Bad Plus) has at least one new fan. I like seeing new business models like that in practise.

</comment></comment><comment><USER14> Related: [http://www.quora.com/What-are-some-good-examples-of- startup-...](http://www.quora.com/What-are-some-good-examples-of-startup- product-demo-videos)

</comment><comment><USER7> The Google TV introduction is fantastic, note the use of simple graphics and the clear, simple language:

<http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=diTpeYoqAhc>

In a similar vein, the famous "Twitter in Plain English":

<http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ddO9idmax0o>

</comment><comment><USER15> YC plug, but I really always thought DropBox did a great job - one of the things I most appreciated was the key example - they put it in terms of an item that everyone recognizes and a problem most people (if not all) have probably dealt with. I think the present version is even extended a bit from the original (now includes some computer files info)

</comment><comment><USER16> I collected some startup pitches/demo and did a blog post a while back. There are some good ones here including Loopt, AdMob, Dropbox, etc.

[http://jonbischke.com/2009/11/13/a-dozen-of-the-best- start-u...](http://jonbischke.com/2009/11/13/a-dozen-of-the-best-start-up- pitches-on-the-web/)

</comment><comment><USER17> I find this introduction to Cloud Computing very nice - <http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ae_DKNwK_ms>

Though not a product demo, but the way of explaining it in simple words and illustration makes it stick to my mind.

</comment><comment><USER18> Back when DabbleDB was new, hot and for testers, they posted some videos on what DabbleDB is. Those videos were so good. This application was everything you wanted spreadsheets to be.

Take a look: <http://dabbledb.com/demo/>

</comment><comment><USER19> One of the best I've seen recently is by blippy, <http://blippy.com/> Just very simple animations that make it easy to quickly grasp the concept and answer potential questions about the product (security, privacy etc.)

</comment><comment><USER20> Video that explains putpat, a german music video service:

<http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9EAkuKwS1JM>

<comment><AUTHOR> This has to be the most entertaining of all the videos so far.

</comment></comment><comment><USER21> The one by rule.fm that was shown a few days ago is quite good, even if I will disagree with the way it was messages.

Link: <http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=onDwiw2rfJE>

<comment><USER22> That one is boring, left me with no idea what rule.fm is/does (I stopped watching after about 45 seconds), and looked lovely doing it. F+ (a + for looking good while being completely and utterly pointless).

<comment><USER23> Agree. Crappiest demo in a while. It's very decieving in that you know these guys know how to use a video editing tool. But if there was a well-edited demo with the CRAPPIEST content, rule.fm demo wins it hands down.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER24> So these are all really well done videos -- very professional, and probably cost a ton. anyone know of a web service that lets you easily create your own demo vid?

<comment><AUTHOR> I know of a studio in Costa Rica that makes these really well really fast and do not cost a ton.

</comment></comment><comment><USER25> I love: <http://culturedcode.com/things/ipad/> the one for the iPhone app is pretty good too</comment>


Processing a long list efficiently in Python - <AUTHOR> http://peak5390.wordpress.com/2014/04/12/processing-a-long-list-efficiently-in-python/

<comment><USER2> Or, you know, just use a `collections.deque`, which is designed for fast ("approximately O(1)") pops from either end of the list.</comment>


Show HN: Buttercal – Sunrise Calendar Meet, Back from the Dead - <AUTHOR> https://buttercal.com/ <comment><USER2> My first thought - I don't get it. I send 1-5 emails for scheduling? Of what?

Then later I got it. Do you differ from doodle in any way?</comment>


Video: How to break 15 laws in 33 seconds - <AUTHOR> http://hotair.com/archives/2013/03/11/video-how-to-break-15-laws-in-33-seconds/ <comment><USER2> I expected to see an uncut video, not stuff filmed over a day cut together.</comment>


Neural Networks, Manifolds, and Topology (2014) - <AUTHOR> http://colah.github.io/posts/2014-03-NN-Manifolds-Topology/ <comment><USER2> Posted last year at [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7557964](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7557964). (Reposts after about a year are ok.)

<comment><USER3> Because this usually turns in to some kind of meta debate, I hope I'm not sidetracking by too much.. but:

I, for one, am glad that sometimes good things get reposted, because I've been reading a lot about neural nets lately following Google's various recent posts (and studied topology in school), but I had missed this article the previous year (when I was probably distracted by some other fascination).

Reposting interesting articles about topics that are currently in the media attention (and thus the public attention) is a form of sharing meta-data about the field: reposts on a topic on particular interest probably have some sort of underlying metadata link. (After all, someone thought it was worth bringing up in the context of the current discussion.)

Today, I learned how to integrate something I studied long ago at school and something that's my current hobby. Fucking awesome!

Thanks reposter.

<comment><USER4> I'm glad it got reposted because I bookmarked it the first time but never went back to actually read it. A reminder was useful!

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> > (Apparently determining if knots are trivial is NP. This doesn't bode well > for neural networks.)

Yes it doesn't, but what do I know (not much). Another annoying property of NN is knowing when they are fully baked.

Edit: Yet they have clearly grown in popularity over the past year. Does that imply anything about the "determining if knots are trivial is NP" criticism? Or does it just mean they are popular for other reasons such as their appeal to people who love black boxes?

<comment><USER6> I don't really see the relevance. As the article itself says, you can just add more dimensions and separating the clusters becomes trivial. And empirically underfitting and local optima do not seem to be big issues for large neural networks.

</comment></comment><comment><USER7> Thanks for the post, I found it very intuitive explanation of how neural networks work !

</comment><comment><USER8> This is excellent both to help understand how neural networks classify inputs, and to understand a bit more about topology in general.</comment>


Young People Need Another Gold Rush - <AUTHOR> https://www.bloomberg.com/view/articles/2017-08-30/america-s-young-strivers-could-use-another-gold-rush <comment><USER2> > _This lack of opportunities could create more pessimism and disaffection > than economic conditions warrant. An increasing body of economic research > shows that people tend to form extrapolative expectations -- they expect > recent trends to continue forever. Overoptimism is also a common > psychological bias. Booms make a lot of young, energetic Americans believe > that they're going to get rich. On the one hand, this causes inevitable > disappointment when the froth dissipates. But as long as there's a gold rush > somewhere in the economy, big dreamers can dream big._

So America needs another slot machine we can present to our youth to appease their cognitive biases?

<comment><USER3> Perhaps we should find ways of making them feel good about living in tent cities?

<comment><USER4> There has to be some middle ground between these ideas, surely.

<comment><USER3> It seems to me a crime to tell a young, vibrant person "don't get too excited" and manage their expectations for life way down.

Same as you'll never get me to give up delicious food by handing me a bottle of Soylent.

<comment><USER4> No, I totally agree with that sentiment. Things have changed for our younger generation and sadly in most cases, not for the best. It blows my mind sometimes to think of my grandfather working a factory job with my grandmother not working while raising 8 children. Oh, and they owned their own home which was a nice middle-class abode and also drove decent (but not luxury) cars. Grandfather retired at 58. Grandmother died at 86, some money still in the bank.

So yes, things have changed for many reasons. Our middle class, outside of those in a few booming sectors is struggling, if not outright choking. College is becoming a no-win proposition for some and at 33, I certainly am not expecting a life like that of my grandparents or great-grandparents, for better or worse. So I get it. I was just pointing out that there is a middle ground between those two viewpoints on either end, and perhaps, just perhaps a solution is somewhere in that terrain.

I'm not holding out hope though, as there are so many forces at work right now and...yeah our leadership is making me a bit nervous.

^These observations is all America-centric, I know that. I don't pretend to know how things are for every young person globally and don't want to act like I do.

<comment><USER5> You can still get close to that today, even outside of tech. Tradespeople make plenty of dough.

The problem though is survivorship bias: plenty of people in the '50s and '60s were poor, or didn't buy their own house, or etc... and likewise plenty of "kids today" are doing well.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> This article should be titled 'almost all remaining economic opportunity has been systematically monopolized by large corporations'

<comment><USER7> Which is completely false, and have been said for ever from people not seeing opportunities or unwilling to pay the price for them.

I get a new business opportunity every month. The fact that I'm not a millionaire is not because of the lack of it, but because I failed in some way I could clearly see after the fact.

<comment><USER8> This is where the money went: [http://www.epi.org/productivity-pay- gap/](http://www.epi.org/productivity-pay-gap/)

Without addressing this, millennials are right to think capitalism screwed them. Safe bet: someone here will say it's the fault of heavy handed government regulation.

<comment><USER9> That chart is interesting, but I'm not sure how to interpret it.

I think the authors are suggesting, "people are not being paid in line with what they produce."

I think the chart may show something else, which is "an increasing amount of work is being automated (and goods are produced by no one in particular), and this benefits owners rather than workers."

If I make widgets and you build a robotic cog factory, why should my wages go up?

<comment><USER9> Another issue: If you want to argue "we all deserve a share of productivity increases", then who is "we"?

Does the local community deserve to benefit from the automated cog factory? Does the state? Do all Americans? All humans? Those with coercive power?

It bugs me sometimes that you can argue "let's all share the wealth" but do it in a self-interested way by making a choice about who deserves what.

<comment><USER8> In a democracy it depends on what the people prefer.

This article claims that without some kind of vivid lottery capitalism that makes people think "I'm not being screwed, I'm a temporarily embarrassed millionaire" people might become jaded regarding a US-style economy and choose a more socialized system that produces, for example, Germany-like income distribution rather than US-like income distribution.

Economies produce what they are designed to produce. The design and implementation of the US economy has been captured by capital, and produces results optimized toward the advantage of capital. That's a brittle situation, and a "gold rush" is a cynical response.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> I don't know about others, but growing up during the recession made me extremely defensive in terms of my risk taking and spending. I view risk as a luxury that is bought, buying the ability to mitigate the personal downsides. A gold rush is a bandaid, a lottery winners dream, to create the freedom to take risk.

I know, risk is something that is most easily taken by the young, the uninhibited, the unindentured, but many of us are indentured to loans, inhibited by our memories, and too busy trying to get old safely to act young.

</comment><comment><USER11> Reads a little like "we need people to sell shovels and gold pans to, while simultanously keeping the young distracted enough to stay out of our politics".

<comment><USER12> When has that NOT been the case? :)

Until WW1, war was seen as a part of life, and for serving in the military was seen as brave, noble thing for young men to do. Even now, we expect most young people to start at the bottom and move up "through hard work" while the scions of the rich start at great positions and build a career without ever having to do minimum wage (exception is certain careers that require skills and are booming, such as technology).

And while the young people are struggling to meet ends meet, they have even less time for politics, participation etc.

</comment></comment><comment><USER13> If we're talking about America's youth, they need three things.

1) A functional healthcare system like any of the other half a dozen good alternative approaches in other developed nations.

2) For the government to stop inflating the cost of education by enabling universities to raise their prices outside of market forces (eg income growth) via perpetually greater government loan backing. Compare the median income vs median tuition costs, just from the late 1990s vs today, the government made that imbalance possible. For a century the US had very reasonably priced universities (40 years ago you could pay for an Ivy League education with a part-time job), that ended in the very early 2000s when the government inflation run took off (exactly in tandem with healthcare inflation and dollar debasement under the Bush Administration, which you can see represented in the commodity bubbles, housing, gold and the dollar GDP of every other nation soaring simultaneously from the year 2001 to 2008).

3) Significantly improved cities. More people from rural America need to be encouraged to move into urban centers, to resolve the opportunity & quality of life gap (such as falling life expectancy in rural US) that is widening between the two. That includes improving infrastructure, transportation, and available housing supply (entailing, among other things, pushing back against overly aggressive zoning laws used to restrict housing). Urban improvement / renewal, would benefit basically every demographic, including poor black communities that are being persistently hammered by extreme violence.

A possible #4 candidate, would be to continue ending the war on drugs, shifting to treating addiction as a health matter and decriminalizing or legalizing all drugs. Sentencing reform and police reform would also go with that item.

Doing these things would radically improve the circumstances for America's youth as a whole.

<comment><USER14> So bigger government is the solution? All of those are manifestations of a communist/socialist society.

<comment><USER15> When americans are discussing politics they are always missing the point. At least from the outside perspective.

It's like two parties arguing about football. One side is saying, we need to abolish referees, the players should sort problems out themselves. The other party is saying the referees need more power and instruments in order to better control the game.

The simple truth is, people need to make sure that the referees work for __them __and not for the individual players who hand them the most money.

<comment><USER16> That assumes the referee should be in control of private resources and decisions, instead of simply ensuring all parties are abiding by the rule of not violating each other's property rights and of fulfilling their contractual obligations. That _IS_ a normative position that not everyone accepts.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER17> I'll be honest the only time I've heard the word "Strivers" it was being used to mock just the kind of patronizing mindset found in this article. I'm sure it _would_ be lovely to rest on an economic boom created by a risky new venture filled with young "expendables'" in the same way that some people pine for a world war to stiffen up the economy; it borders on evil.

</comment><comment><USER18> As a millennial, I have observed a few perceived 'gold rushes' for individuals in my age group (25) and younger. I am defining 'gold rush' as an exponential growth of capital:

-Creating a technology startup / business

-Becoming YouTube famous and selling 'your own brand'

-Bitcoin, Ethereum, Cryptocurrencies

<comment><USER19> Yeah, I remember talking about the Ethereum boom that happened recently with my significant other and without even mentioning anything about it, she was interested in investing in it.

I personally didn't feel like it was a good idea so we didn't but it was like the Gold Rush. She was ready to rush into it.

</comment></comment><comment><USER20> The fledgling Marijuana industry might be one candidate.

I know a few different people who quit jobs in finance to go do a marijuana- related startup.

</comment><comment><USER21> What a load of garbage. The world is awash in opportunity - biotech, genetics, AI, fledging nanotechnology, robotics/drones and other things that will transform us into posthumans in 50-100 years. The greatest fortunes in history will be created in this period.

Whiny idiots will complain though. As they always had.

<comment><USER22> How many people can realistically grasp those? Or even be worker drones in those industries? ~30% of people are unable to grasp material beyond Gr 8 math. There is a huge problem looming on the horizon - human obsolescence.

<comment><USER23> Are those people really unable to grasp math or did they just have bad teachers and a lack of parental help?

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER24> > _But as long as there's a gold rush somewhere in the economy, big dreamers > can dream big._

As long as there's a gold rush somewhere in the economy, people will focus on getting rich without thinking if they are doing is sustainable and long term positive for the economy, without thinking if structural changes are needed to secure their well-being, which is correlated to the general well-being.

</comment><comment><USER25> There was a plastics gold rush in the '60s because of the massive investment in R&D and basic research made in the first part of the 20th century, due in no small part to the world wars. There was an internet gold rush in the 90s and the aughts because of the investment made by the US in programs at DARPA and Bell Labs, a public monopoly. You can't have these kinds of non-zero sum "gold rushes" without laying the groundwork through new understandings of the universe, or how to better organize society. Yet as a culture we glorify the Steve Jobses of the world that do the equivelant of carrying the letter from the mailbox to the house, forgetting that it was flown halfway around the world to be there in the first place.

Entrepreneurs don't create gold rushes. Scientists create gold rushes. Forward-looking politicians create gold rushes. Strange devils sitting alone in their rooms create gold rushes. But these rushes happen 20, 30, or 40 years after the initial investment is made.

So we're not going to see many gold rushes in the next few years. Sorry. Hope you have some rents to draw.

</comment><comment><USER26> cryptocurrency is not enough like another gold rush already?

<comment><USER27> My perception is probably wrong but I see the cryptocurrency gold rush as already over. To mine bitcoins now is to already have lots of money on machinery or a botnet to steal the machinery to mine the bitcoins.

Do you feel that cryptocurrency is still available to the individual as a gold rush?

<comment><USER26> I might be the wrong person to ask, my personal opinion of cryptocurrency isn't a popular one. I have issues with the whole idea when I think about the power consumption to keep this 'alive'. And not to forget the 'early adopter' advantage.

But the trade, and the price fluctuations aren't over by long, new cryptocurrencies launched daily by respectable instances and companies. So in this way, I still see a lot of 'rush' potential, even today.

And like the goldrush, it was the people selling the shovels and things making the good steady profits. And there are also a lot of hardware things to change/improve on the cryptocurrency market.

<comment><USER28> There was an article I can't find now, but it breaks down the cost of bitcoin's energy use relative to the whole world. The conclusion was something like, if bitcoin reaches a trillion dollar GDP, the energy usage would only be around ~1.5% of our total. I think I'm getting that number wrong, but the point was that we spend way more energy for trivial purposes compared to a trillion dollar GDP.

<comment><USER29> Maybe this site?

[https://digiconomist.net/bitcoin-energy- consumption](https://digiconomist.net/bitcoin-energy-consumption)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER30> Said a journalist working a 9-to-5 job by choice.

</comment><comment><USER31> "Everything that can be invented already has been so soon the patent office can shut down"

The quote is apocryphal but sums up the article.

</comment><comment><USER23> My high school physics teacher told me that during the first Internet bubble more students signed up for STEM electives and actually paid attention in class. Technical fields were exciting and lucrative. But when the crash hit students became disillusioned and lost interest in STEM again.

</comment><comment><USER32> 1\. Launch adventurous Millennials into spaaaaaace!

2\. ???

3\. PROFIT!!!*

*For the companies that build rockets and launch them...

</comment><comment><USER33> The young need something big to transfer relative wealth from the old. It is getting crazy. With rich people living into thier 90s those who inherit are generally already in thier 60s or even 70s. The family money is moving between retirement funds. Something like a gold rush would move that value into the hands of the 30 or 40-somethings where it might do something more.

<comment><USER34> It's called socialism, but it's anathema to American culture (by design). We're so bathed in delusions of our inherent affluence and power that we'll watch the wealthy suck actual blood from young people as we're surrounded by tent cities. And many still think they're "winning" because they can pay another rich person $3000 to live in a closet.

[https://www.theguardian.com/society/shortcuts/2017/aug/21/am...](https://www.theguardian.com/society/shortcuts/2017/aug/21/ambrosia- the-startup-harvesting-the-blood-of-the-young)

</comment></comment><comment><USER35> To have another gold rush we have to slow down the flow of information. No longer can a man search for a better life, based on simple writings. Now, everything is validated or rejected before he can pack his bags and head west.

We are currently living in a gold rush.. Make something and sell it online. Or support those that do.

</comment><comment><USER36> I was astounded to see that there is a perceived shorted of gold rushes.

"Filecoin Suspends ICO After Raising $186M in One Hour" [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14988132](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14988132)

</comment><comment><USER37> It may be a ways away, but I'm excited for the space rush.. once medium and small size companies can afford space ships to explore the solar system, finding asteroids made of gold. That will be glorious.

</comment><comment> d--b > The economy does best when talented risk-takers are driven by the chance to > strike it rich.

Wha<comment>t? Who says so?

</comment></comment><comment><USER38> There are interesting studies on young adults growing up in the boom vs recession time lines.

</comment><comment><USER39> Young kids are busy at games, used to be the PC, game console, now adding cell phones and tablets.

Let's deal with this new mental-drug-war first before any Gold Rush suggestions, as the kids then young people ignore anything else, even traffic lights...their eyes are too busy on the screen these days.

<comment><USER17> That sounds like bad parenting and foolishness becoming more visible, rather than a new threat.

<comment><USER3> I don't know how much of this is really new. I spent my youth watching TV and playing Sega and computer games. By age 12 I had seen every episode of "All In The Family" at least twice. I stayed up watching TV on school nights until 1AM.

I also do believe I received bad parenting, but eventually I turned out OK.

<comment><USER17> I agree completely, and honestly I did something very similar with books. It doesn't really matter if you're staying up until 1 AM imagining things, watching TV, reading a book, or any other activity… The issue is that you're not asleep getting ready for school, perhaps not having done your homework.

The difference though is that somebody looking at a smart phone is seen as antisocial, where is someone buried in a book is not, although of course the person in the phone could be reading a book! Most of this is with the politicians call "optics" you know?

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER22> Bread and circuses

</comment><comment><USER40> Legal Cannabis.

</comment><comment><USER41> Don't we already have *coin ?

</comment><comment><USER42> Onto Mars!

</comment><comment><USER43> ... legal marijuana??!?!</comment>


There's No Such Thing as a Compulsory License for a Photo - <AUTHOR> http://fredbenenson.com/blog/2011/06/28/theres-no-such-thing-as-compulsory-license-for-a-photo/

<comment><USER2> 1\. Just because there is no license available doesn't mean you can just use it anyways.

2\. He never asked for the license before using it. Only after he was sued did he ask if he could have gotten a license.

3\. It was a commercial product.

4\. The "compulsory license" does not give rights to do whatever the person wants with it. From the wikipedia page, it gives the right to rearrange the work but not to change the melody or fundamental character of the work. I know that the remix artists 2 Many DJs were not given permissions to create versions of certain songs. So it is most definitely not cut and dry as this claims it to be.

At the end of the day, he created a derivative work to be used in a commercial product without, as a minimum, even asking for permission.

<comment><USER3> _At the end of the day, he created a derivative work to be used in a commercial product without, as a minimum, even asking for permission._

Asking for permission is absolutely not a minimum for fair use.

Of course, we'll never know if it constituted fair use because, at the end of the day, he who wielded the larger stick forced the result that he wanted.

<comment><USER2> Read: <http://www.law.cornell.edu/uscode/17/107.html>

This was neither criticism, comment, news reporting, teaching, scholarship, or research.

Furthermore, it _was_ commercial use (regardless of whether the work created from the photo was itself sold, it was part of a product that was sold).

Whether it is fair use or not, we don't know, but I'm not a lawyer, I'm going to venture to say you're not a lawyer, he's not a lawyer, and he didn't contact a lawyer before using it.

He had entirely what came to him ... even if it was a bit harsh.

<comment><USER4> You could argue that CAMPBELL, AKA SKYYWALKER, ET AL. V. ACUFFROSE MUSIC, INC. [1] wasn't a criticism, comment, news reporting, teaching, scholarship, or research (the court ruled that it was a parody). In CAMPBELL V. ACUFFROSE, the court also ruled that it being a commercial recording didn't stop it from being covered under fair use. There was another case which slips my mind at the moment that found similarly (that commercial use doesn't stop it from being fair use).

IANAL, and I am not familiar with all of the little details that go into determining whether something is fair use. From the reading of the applicable laws and precedents and having an actual lawyer go through those with me (I took a class last semester on IP law), however, I don't see anything that would outright bar this from being fair use.

[1]: [http://caselaw.lp.findlaw.com/scripts/getcase.pl?navby=searc...](http://caselaw.lp.findlaw.com/scripts/getcase.pl?navby=search&court=US&case=/us/510/569.html)

<comment><USER5> Parody comments on and criticizes the work that it parodies.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> This is the money quote (at the end of the article, quoting Andy Baio): _"Nobody should need a law degree to understand whether art is legal or not."_

</comment><comment><USER7> From the article: "I doubt anyone would argue that song composition is a lesser art or any less deserving of full royalties than other arts."

Note that this viewpoint isn't historical: <http://law.bepress.com/villanovalwps/papers/art31/> Copyright wasn't originally granted even to sheet music, if I read the paper correctly. In the USA, musical recordings weren't covered by Federal copyright until 1972, but rather were covered under _state_ copyright. Older music still is.

Copyright on music is indeed debateable, and has been as long as copyright has existed as a legal concept.

<comment><AUTHOR> Good catch. I definitely meant it in the sense that I doubt anyone would _currently_ argue such a thing.

But the same historical twist applies to photography, albeit a century earlier -- whether copyright should be extened to photographs was a hotly debated issue in the courts.

It wasn't until 1865 that copyright was extended to photos, almost 100 years after copyright itself was instantiated.

More details: [http://www.copyrighthistory.org/cgi- bin/kleioc/0010/exec/aus...](http://www.copyrighthistory.org/cgi- bin/kleioc/0010/exec/ausgabe/%22f_1862%22)

</comment></comment><comment><USER8> The commentary I have read this last week on this case seems to all take one side or the other and makes absolutist claims for either. There are certainly many such cases in copyright law where things are obvious and the result of a court case clear in advance to those knowledgable of copyright law. This is not one of those cases, it is more subtle.

The work is derivative, but he claims it is not a copy that has been filtered with an algorithm, he hired an artist to recreate it pixel by pixel by hand. Thus it's like an impressionist painting of a realistic photo. A substantial difference. Is it fair use? Fair use looks at many things not just one. Given that it's transformative to comment on what is being done to the music as well, and it's a non-commercial project (income went to pay costs and remaining profit went to charitable something or another), it might be fair use. Or it might not. This would have to be resolved in court because it's an edge case. It's not cut and dried who would win this case.</comment>


Bit Twiddling Hacks - <AUTHOR> http://graphics.stanford.edu/~seander/bithacks.html

<comment><USER2> "Hacker's Delight" ([http://www.amazon.com/Hackers-Delight-Henry-S- Warren/dp/0201...](http://www.amazon.com/Hackers-Delight-Henry-S- Warren/dp/0201914654/)) is also a good source for these, as well as other techniques.

</comment><comment><USER3> Anyone else always spend a huge amount of time understanding someone elses code when their doing bit twiddling? It's just not intuitive to me, and I always abstract it away as much as possible.

</comment><comment><USER4> How many people use this stuff in their daily job coding? Does this really matters and matters what?

<comment><USER5> I think this should be regarded as "recreational computer science". It's intriguing to see how much is possible with some bit twiddling. It also gives insight into how things are handled internally.

But it's not for use in actual code, unless you're writing a video codec or other embedded system in which you want to shave off every cycle.</comment></comment>


What Happens When an Ex-Google Executive Creates a School System? - <AUTHOR> http://www.bloomberg.com/news/features/2015-06-10/what-happens-when-an-ex-google-executive-creates-a-school-system-

<comment><USER2> I thought this was extremely interesting but can't upvote this. Was it flagged for some reason?</comment>


Facebook will do much better than you think - <AUTHOR> http://venturebeat.com/2012/05/16/hey-doomsayers-facebook-will-do-much-better-than-you-think/ <comment><USER2> Maybe it will, maybe it won't. I think one important question _to ask oneself_ is this: would I - in any way - like to be a part of making Facebook a real force to be reckoned with?

I don't mind Google, Amazon, Apple or Twitter (much). I do mind Facebook.

I suspect I'm not alone having these feelings. If you feel the same way, please re-consider your contribution to making Facebook a success.

Apologizes in advance if this came across as "political" or libel or something akin to that, but I do believe these (last few and) coming years will have a very lasting impact on the way we use internet. Personally targeted ads, cyber espionage and Facebook connect aren't exactly "nice things" in my book, and probably won't be in the history books either.

<comment><USER3> For me there is a wide spectrum between good and evil. Where a particular company falls onto this spectrum is based on how much I feel it has contributed to pushing humanity forward. This is definitely subjective stuff. Among the major players, I also put Google, Amazon, Apple and Twitter on the good side. There are concerns on many fronts with each of them, but up until now their net contributions have pushed humanity forward.

Facebook too has pushed things, enabling a new level of connectivity across the planet. The costs we have paid for this outweigh the benefits. I do not believe the net contributions of Facebook have made the world a better place for humans - thus, they fall on the evil side of the spectrum. Similarly, Microsoft did help bring forth the era of a computer in every home among other things, but their methods also held back progress enough to place them on the evil side of the spectrum. And then there are companies like Zynga - no need to even guess which side they fall on. I cannot in good conscience support a company that harms our future, and in fact feel an obligation to fight them.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> If FB launches Adsense like product then that would be massive. Lot of websites have FB connect integrated into them and given the amount of data users have on FB you can do some solid targeting.

Edit: Grammar

<comment><USER5> they won't launch Adsense killer. Don't have stats with me, but seen it yesterday that CPM clickthrough Google vs Fb is 2:1. AdSense is very well positioned since ever. I don't think you could convince an average website owner to switch to FB Ads for 50% less in profits.

<comment><USER6> That's not really a fair assessment. When people are on facebook they are there to be on facebook. When people are on google they are specifically looking to go somewhere else. Of course they are going to have a higher click- through.

When you are talking about another website, we get to a middle ground that might be looking for something specific and might just be browsing. Having all of facebooks data about someone and giving them targeted ads could very well work better than google at that point on the spectrum.

I'm not saying it will be better, but it's certainly possible, and comparing google's clicks to facebook is comparing apples to oranges. As someone who has several websites using adsense I would certainly be willing to give facebook a trial run and do some A/B testing.

<comment><USER5> OK, I see your point. But still the question remains if FB could convince popular websites to try Ads with them. It would definitely be an interesting to see the results.

<comment><USER6> Yeah keep in mind that the really popular websites don't use adsense. They sell their own advertising space for more than they can make using adsense. Most website owners like to a/b test all kinds of things though. I've tried lots of different ways of monetizing mine and have ended up back at adsense because it's been the best for me. Given that, I would definitely test facebook to see how it did and if it did better i'd keep it, if not I'd go back to adsense.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> "Facebook can now use data on users to serve them ads when they are not on the Facebook website."

"This could generate billions."

Or it could prime even more users for a privacy-respecting alternative.

<comment><USER8> Google does the same thing. So what? If I'm going to have to look at ads, I'd rather they be relevant. I've actually found Facebook ads genuinely useful on a few occasions. I even applied for a job that I heard about on a Facebook ad once. What I hate is when my friend uses my computer to search for tents, then all I see is tent ads all over the internet for the next month.

<comment><USER7> lol. I hear ya. (But I think Google and Facebook's data are qualitatively a bit different.)

It's anyone's guess whether this online privacy stuff really means anything to most people. Obviously Google, Facebook, et al. are hedging their bets that it's not a big deal.

As users we can only speak for ourselves. This is because we generally don't watch others, looking over their shoulder as they use a computer to see exactly what they do... which raises an interesting question: Does that imply that we are recognising some sort of right to privacy? A lot of effort goes into trying to figure out how others use a computer. But unless it's study of volunteers it's not done by just standing behind them and watching.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> The biggest wild card from my perspective is that the premise and promise of facebook is that it remains cool. People didn't use google to be cool. Twitter, to my friends and I, was actually pretty uncool initially and now has become my primary news feed. If today's tweens and teeny boppers don't jump ship in the next five years, then facebook may have really become the infrastructure company it claims/desires to be, until then, the doubts will linger.

<comment><USER10> The half-life of "cool" is very short. Facebook started out as a hangout for college kids, and then it became the cool alternative to MySpace. But now, when parents and grandparents are using Facebook, is it really cool anymore? If boring corporations like enterprise software companies have a presence on Facebook, that would also seem to detract from its coolness. At some point, when everyone is on Facebook, not being on Facebook will become the cool new thing.

</comment></comment><comment><USER11> There are a lot of 'ifs' in this article. This is the shortcomming with Facebook. Where are the results? Facebook's filings to the SEC have not been that impressive. At the end of the day, it's all about the revenue! If the revenue does not match the wild expectations that have been placed on this stock, it will dive!

<comment><USER5> Just as much as they are predicting the biggest IPO of the history, I am predicting the biggest downslide in the shortest possible time, given what you said and all the good publicity will wash away and someone will ask: "show me the money".

edit: I am not saying it will happen the same day or this month. I am rather saying that sooner or later just like lots of people were buying on hype, lots of people will be selling on hype as well.

</comment></comment><comment><USER12> What about search? If Facebook could ship a search product somewhere between the quaility of Bing and Google wouldn't that change the search and social space tremendously? It would increase the amount of time each user spends on FB/day, Facebook would deliver far more ads and build much more extensive user profiles, increasing the value/user metric.

Building a big search product requires a massive infrastructure and engineering effort, two things Facebook has a solid history around.

</comment><comment><USER13> I don't need facebook.

</comment><comment><USER14> Facebook is going to do great for the first 2-3 years - until the big investors convince everyone that facebook is here to stay. Then, the bloodbath will begin.

</comment><comment><USER15> good intent but the op must not be familiar with online advertising. It is very hard to command $20 CPM (or the equivalent in CPC) on no search traffic (where people are not actively looking for a solution). Even big brands that do 'image' advertising and do not care about immediate ROI would balk at such a figure. Case in point: GM just pulled out of FB

<comment><AUTHOR> A $20 CPM would be a stretch for larger target segments, but a more reasonable $4 CPM would be quite realistic.</comment></comment>


What is an astronauts life worth? - <AUTHOR> http://spaceindustrynews.com/what-is-an-astronauts-life-worth/624/

<comment><USER2> I don't know but I'm going to observe a moment of silence for the apostrophe that is no longer with us.</comment>


Wine 1.0 released - <AUTHOR> http://www.winehq.org/site?news=archive <comment><USER2> Well, and not a decade too soon!

And now that virtualization is the word of the day, I'm wondering if it matters now?

It may run faster, but is it simpler to just fire up a VM manager and bring up Windows?

<comment><USER3> I've been itching for a decent VM manager for my Ubuntu Feisty. Any good recommendations?

<comment><USER4> Is there anything in particular about VMware that doesn't suit your needs?

<comment><USER3> Well ease of installation is a big plus for me.</comment></comment></comment></comment>


Flight-Simulator Enthusiasts Confident of Real-World Skills - <AUTHOR> https://www.wsj.com/articles/flight-simulator-enthusiasts-confident-of-real-world-skills-1534446556 <comment><USER2> I spent a couple thousand hours over several years flying the MS flight simulator for a small plane. I signed up for flying lessons. On my first-ever real flight I started the plane, got tower clearance, taxied to the proper runway. took off, and flew to the practice area. I did all of this without comment or discussion with the flight instructor.

After a few minutes he said "my plane" and asked me to "put on the hood" (for those who don't know, you wear a hood so you can't see anything but the instruments). He whipped and flipped the plane around for a minute. Then he said "your plane"... so I looked at the instruments, found that I was in a vertical dive. I cut the throttle, centered the stick, and kicked opposite rudder. The plane leveled out.

He commented "that was an ok performance but you could be better". I asked him if this was standard testing for a first-time VFR pilot (aka newbie). He was upset. He thought I was an instrument pilot and already had my VFR license.

The hardest part about flying the actual plane was steering the plane on the ground. You do this with your feet and I had no practice at that.

Besides the simulator I also have a bookcase full of flying books and videos, from mountain flying to flight engineer. I HIGHLY recommend [https://www.amazon.com/Stick-Rudder-Explanation-Art- Flying/d...](https://www.amazon.com/Stick-Rudder-Explanation-Art- Flying/dp/0070362408)

For a real education read [https://www.flyingmag.com/tags/i-learned-about- flying-from-t...](https://www.flyingmag.com/tags/i-learned-about-flying-from- that)

Also, I don't know if the FAA program still exists but they used to encourage pilots to visit the tower so you could see the kind of pressure they are under. I spent many hours trying to sequence planes and clearing them for landing (talking to myself, not the actual planes). Those guys are AMAZING. You can't imagine how hard it is to keep track of a dozen planes you can't see, keep them in order, talk on the radio, and do it flawlessly for hours at a time.

Later I flew a CAP-10B ([https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mudry_CAP_10](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mudry_CAP_10))... Flying a Cessna 152 is like riding a bicycle while drunk. It "responds" with a LOT of lag. Landing the Cessna is like wrestling a soft mattress down a flight of stairs. Flying a CAP-10B is like driving a Formula-1 racing car. It responds to your heartbeat in a heartbeat. I landed the CAP-10B "on the numbers" on the first try. There is no comparison.</comment>


Prominent scientist sues critic of his work for $10M - <AUTHOR> http://mashable.com/2017/11/01/prominent-stanford-climate-scientist-sues-nas-over-critical-study/#7wjxpsWvHPqP <comment><USER2> The beginning of the end?</comment>


Lime Scooter Accounts Are Being Sold on the Dark Web - <AUTHOR> https://www.vice.com/en_us/article/n7jjmw/lime-scooter-accounts-for-sale-dark-web <comment><USER2> > although activists have privacy concerns around the sharing of this data

They should have concerns about the collection itself.</comment>


How Do I submit Reddit in keybase? - <AUTHOR> I have submitted reddit account info in keybase more than three times but everytime after a day it shows unreachable... Anyone have any idea???? <comment><USER2> Are you deleting the proof? Keybase proofs have to stay up permanently.

<comment><AUTHOR> No. I haven't deleted or edited the proof. It is still on my Reddit profile.

<comment><USER3> please submit here link to your proof in reddit

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER3> Can you please upvote me.. i dont have enough karma in Hacker News.. thanks. Trying to add proof to keybase from Hacker News</comment>


Cellular Automata in the Browser - <AUTHOR> https://javascript.christmas/2019/22 <comment><USER2> I used WebGL 2.0 Compute to make a supercharged CA engine:

[https://github.com/churchofthought/Grautamaton](https://github.com/churchofthought/Grautamaton)

</comment><comment><USER3> I also made an example of this years ago in clojurescript. Porting this from a java desktop app to the browser took less than 5 minutes

[http://bestinclass.dk/da/posts/brians-brain-optimized- clojur...](http://bestinclass.dk/da/posts/brians-brain-optimized- clojurescript-html5)

</comment><comment><USER4> Here's a similar literate program I wrote some years back in (then very new language) ClojureScript.

[http://git.slothrop.net/automata/](http://git.slothrop.net/automata/)

</comment><comment><USER5> After high school I spent a year in rural Zambia as a volunteer, and one of my tasks was setting up a computer lab with donated computers at the local high school. There was no internet of any kind, but the computers had Internet Explorer installed, so I was able to program JavaScript. One of the things I programmed for fun was exactly this, an implementation of Conway's game of life.

</comment><comment><USER6> Seems like the bold moves made by the EvoCell guys may prove fruitful soon ..

[http://evocell.net/](http://evocell.net/)

<comment><USER7> Thats a nifty game!

</comment></comment><comment><USER8> [http://maximecb.github.io/Turing-Drawings/](http://maximecb.github.io/Turing- Drawings/)

> Turing Drawings uses randomly generated Turing machines to produce drawings > on a canvas, as a form of generative art.

</comment><comment><USER9> Cellular automata are a very interesting device to recognize languages. It is still unknown whether there is a language in NP that cannot be accepted by a Cellular Automata in n steps.

<comment><USER10> > Cellular automata are a very interesting device to recognize languages.

I'm going to require one hell of a source for this...

</comment></comment><comment><USER11> nice write up and lots of nice details, but is this not just fractals ?

Nature itself is very much represented through fractals, at least in some part of my amateur understanding, which would suggest a lot of really interesting research in to this area.

<comment><USER10> > nice write up and lots of nice details, but is this not just fractals ?

Nope. Cellular automata are another beast.

> Nature itself is very much represented through fractals,

Not really. There are some fractal-ish processes, but they're not as common as some media assert they are.

<comment><USER12> I like the smbc-comics "translation" (or explanation): [https://www.smbc- comics.com/index.php?id=3777](https://www.smbc-comics.com/index.php?id=3777)

<comment><USER11> Ahaha well I feel pretty silly now!

<comment><USER12> Hah! Don't, it's a very common trope and you can't know what you didn't learn, right? I believed the media claims too for a long time

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> Deep within a simple cellular automaton, patterns begin to emerge.

Almost all patterns are fleeting and whisk away as quickly as they arose.

Others are more sticky, whirlpool-like, and tend to survive.

Of these, some consistently emit patterns.

Some compute-aeons later, one will emit a pattern that leads to self- replication.

Soon, these surviving, self-replicating patterns infest the grid like bacteria.

Life must evolve and exist in the chasmic depths of some of these defined cellular automata.

Some must evolve to the point of intelligence.

Does it wonder about its place in the universe?

What is the most minimal cellular automata that creates intelligent life earliest in its evolution?

<comment><USER10> I'd like some of what you're on.

EDIT: I love how this is the top post on this article, despite being basically a word salad.

<comment><USER14> I found it cute and quite meaningful.

If you spend a good deal of time on Cellular Automata, Dissipative Structures and genetics these things really start to jump out at you.

Here's a starter pack: Cellular Automata and Computation: [https://www.edge.org/conversation/stephen_wolfram-ai-the- fut...](https://www.edge.org/conversation/stephen_wolfram-ai-the-future-of- civilization)

Origin of Life: [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PqPGOhXoprU](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PqPGOhXoprU)

Dissipative Structures: [https://www.amazon.ca/Order-Out-Chaos-Dialogue- Nature/dp/055...](https://www.amazon.ca/Order-Out-Chaos-Dialogue- Nature/dp/0553340824)

<comment><USER15> Wouldn't we be watching AL here, and not AI? Of course its evolution should proceed at a faster pace than terrestrial life has, but I wouldn't expect it to ask us why it exists for a little while yet...</comment></comment></comment></comment>


Ask HN: Why No Smart Phone Esque IoT Device? - <AUTHOR> I've been playing around with hardware, IOT, and microcontrollers for the past year, and always wondered why there isn't the equivalent of a smart phone IOT device or microcontroller in the space. Even the cheapest phone has a host of sensors already integrated which would make getting up and started with projects so much easier. (I still haven't managed to get a consistent working GSM connection.)<p>What am I missing? <comment><USER3> What's your actual requirements?

Platforms are a fraught industry; Apple has done amazingly at making a closed platform that nonetheless manages to take a cut of third party apps. Generally either a platform is totally closed to extract all the value or totally commoditized so nobody makes much profit from it.

I would say that ESP32 is the "smartphone" for Wifi platforms; the SimCom and Sierra Wireless devices are the equivalent for GSM.

> I still haven't managed to get a consistent working GSM connection.

Pay very close attention to the power supply specs and antenna routing.

<comment><AUTHOR> Will do re GSM.

I guess my requirements is a microcontroller that just works. Let me elaborate.

I have a Galaxy S8. It has a:

* Accelerometer * Barometer * Gyroscope * Hall sensor * Proximity sensor * Fingerprint scanner, Iris scanner, Magnetometer

Ignore the last bullet. It also has WiFi, Bluetooth, and GSM. I don't have access to any of this data without putting in some work, eg. I can't get pressure readings from the barometer, or my location from the GSM. I'm expected to just use them as is.

Now take the ESP-32 which comes from the other end of the spectrum. I can cobble together a setup with all the sensors and communication protocols (recognizing that the ESP-32 comes with a few built in), but I have to write/copy a mountain of code to get them all working and integrated. The same goes for something like a RPi.

What I would like is a board that has these capabilities built-in with an API on top of it. So I could say something like:

``` import easy_api as ea

my_location = ea.get_location()

if my_location == (1,2): wifi_con = ea.connect_to_wifi("SSID", "PASSWORD")

message = ea.get_new_sms()

if sender(message) == "000-000-0000" and content(message) == 1: ea.buzz_piezo(duration = 5) ```

It's ease of use for prototyping that I'm looking for.

<comment><USER4> I mentioned it in my other comment but I think what you're after is TinkerForge [0].

It's expensive but you can for example toggle mains electricity on and off with some super basic electronics skills and about 5 lines of Python [1] (or many other languages). You can add GSM functionality with a regular USB modem, though the API isn't quite as nice [2]. WiFi is much nicer [3].

[0]: [https://www.tinkerforge.com/en/](https://www.tinkerforge.com/en/)

[1]: [https://www.tinkerforge.com/en/doc/Kits/HardwareHacking/Remo...](https://www.tinkerforge.com/en/doc/Kits/HardwareHacking/RemoteSwitch_Python.html#starter- kit-hardware-hacking-remote-switch-python)

[2]: [https://github.com/Tinkerforge/red- brick/blob/master/program...](https://github.com/Tinkerforge/red- brick/blob/master/programs/sms_location/sms_location.py)

[3]: [https://www.tinkerforge.com/en/doc/Hardware/Master_Extension...](https://www.tinkerforge.com/en/doc/Hardware/Master_Extensions/WIFI_V2_Extension.html)

<comment><AUTHOR> Cool. Thanks for the info.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> Not sure what you mean exactly but coming from the IoT end there are plenty of options to connect existing platforms to mobile networks (ArduinoGSMShield for example). Coming from the smartphone end there are several hackable projects too that enable you to build a smartphone like IoT device. Look at pine64.org for example they basically have all the parts to build a smartphone like device with sensors.

<comment><AUTHOR> Here's an elaboration of what I was going for: [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23114566](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23114566)

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> Buying a phone and replacing the software will be cheaper unless you're making truckloads of these? (There are a dozen brands of point-of-sale systems that are an iPod Touch or similar with a magnet attached to the headphone jack)

<comment><AUTHOR> Will look into it. Thanks.

</comment></comment><comment><USER7> They're called development boards

Unfortunately, even if the BOM costs them maybe £100 at volume for a chunky FPGA and some sensors and signal parts - much more for something specialized like an rfsoc board (like easily enough to buy a house), they're intended to be bought with people's bosses money so they're not really within budget for a hobbyist. That's also partly why the documentation can be quite poor - <USER2> bargain chips (think Chinese companies with funny names on LCSC and taobao) kind of assume you'll either reverse engineer it as a team, someone speaks chinese, or you'll ring them up and ask for support. The more mainstream parts in higher margin products have much better documentation, i.e. the big American silicon companies will usually document how their chips are programmed in depth rather than some obscure-ish Chinese parts I've seen where you either work it out yourself or use their slightly wonky freertos fork.

What kind of sensors do you have in mind? Phones do have sensors but the software isn't really optimized for high speed data acquisition (I think using camera interfaces is a hack used in industry for getting data into high level embedded systems)

<comment><AUTHOR> Here's an elaboration of what I was going for: [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23114566](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23114566).

Honestly, I'm really looking for a board with all the bells and whistles. Just a simpler interface and some stuff that just works out of the box. Especially communication protocols like GSM, Bluetooth, WiFi etc.

<comment><USER7> I'm not sure about GSM but try making your own board combining a PSoC and ESP32, or even just a board with the sensors and maybe and i2c interface over a header?

PSoC is basically a microcontroller with a small field programmable analog array bolted to it so you can get a but more bang for your buck on the board.

If you want high speed signal acquisition try the nxp lpc4370.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> Not quite sure what you mean by "Smartphone-esque". There is a bunch of devkits with multiple sensors integrated, systems with standard connectors and a range of matching sensors and outputs, ..., which make prototypes and one- offs quicker to make. Of course more expensive than starting with individual parts. And sometimes using a phone, possibly with a small custom board, can indeed work.

<comment><AUTHOR> Here's an elaboration of what I was going for: [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23114566](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23114566)

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> I think you're missing that most IoT products are designed to be put into products sold at scale. There are exceptions like devkits and hobbyist products but generally, the expectation is that everyone interested in IoT hardware is developing a hardware product and needs little more than a convenient interface to prototype and evaluate with before buying millions of chips to send to a PCB fab.

In cases like this, you want to pay only for what you need, monetarily but also thermally and in PCB real estate. You can't afford to have a bunch of random unnecessary sensors on board.

That's why you don't see some smartphone-esque everything-included devkit.

If you want a nice composable ecosystem to built things with, I'd look at Arduino and Raspberry Pi. They have a variety of "hats", which are extensions that you can use to interface with things, like a GSM modem or a sensor suite.

I'd also look at the TinkerForge ecosystem, which has a dizzying array of high-quality, well-integrated, pluggable blocks that you can use to construct various things. It is expensive however.

<comment><AUTHOR> I get that and I suppose there's isn't much incentive to build something like that purely for the hobbyist market. I should have included this in the original post but here's an elaboration of what I was thinking of: [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23114566](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23114566)

</comment></comment><comment><USER9> Phybox... it's basically just a programming workspace to use your phone as a sensor.

<comment><USER10> I assume you meant to type _Phyphox_?

<comment><USER9> You are correct.... Phyphox

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> I'm guessing the economy of scale isn't quite there, as there's much less demand for DIY IOT devices than phones. But there's some products out there that approach this idea. E.g., [https://www.seeedstudio.com/Sipeed-Maix- Cube-p-4553.html](https://www.seeedstudio.com/Sipeed-Maix-Cube-p-4553.html) (incredible value), or [https://www.seeedstudio.com/Wio- Terminal-p-4509.html](https://www.seeedstudio.com/Wio-Terminal-p-4509.html).

</comment><comment><USER12> You could check out the pine phone with ubuntu port or postmarket os. It has all the standard sensors, gsm, and runs mainline linux kernel. It's basically a phone for developers.

[https://www.pine64.org/pinephone/](https://www.pine64.org/pinephone/)

</comment><comment><USER13> ideally something like this [http://janos.io/](http://janos.io/) but failed!

Hope [https://postmarketos.org/](https://postmarketos.org/) will be more successful.

</comment><comment><USER14> Are you asking about a small tablet or ipod-like device, or a phone with cellular?

I haven't closely followed tablet/ipod type devices, but pinephone and purism librem 5 are (not-quite-out-yet) linux-based phones.

</comment><comment><USER15> There are dev devices like the M5StickC & M5Stack Fire that comes with a bunch of sensor bundled.

<comment><AUTHOR> Ordered a couple recently, so I'll play around with them once they arrive.

</comment></comment><comment><USER16> Cellular modules, they come in a lot of flavors.</comment>


An experiment on working exclusively in the cloud - <AUTHOR> http://blog.controlgroup.com/2012/04/16/google-chromebook-my-workstation-in-the-cloud/

<comment><USER2> I saw a talk about node.js by Mike Amundsen the other day - he did all his work using <http://c9.io/> etc The IDE seemed a bit flaky, but quite powerful - the concept certainly seems promising. <http://www.amundsen.com>

Having said that, for me personally I still prefer a very responsive UI, lots of keyboard shortcuts, and the kind of workspace / UI customization you can only get from desktops nowadays.

<comment><USER3> I used cloud9 for a bit. It is nice and in the future I think it may be the way to go. I'm not a node.js guy though, which seems to be what cloud9 is best at.

Besides, I'm too used to emacs. I SSH to an EC2 instance and run emacs when I need to write code on the Chromebook.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> Can anyone tell me if a Chromebook is a good gift for anyone non-technical? By non-technical, I mean someone who needs help using iTunes.

<comment><USER3> I'm the guy that wrote that post.

I would say yes, the Chromebook is great for non technical people. There's nothing to set up, nothing to back up, nothing to break.

The Chromebook is just Google Chrome. So if you think that a person can get by with just a browser, this is the way to go.</comment></comment>


How the Washington Post Rewrote Its Story on Russian Hacking of the Power Grid - <AUTHOR> http://www.forbes.com/sites/kalevleetaru/2017/01/01/fake-news-and-how-the-washington-post-rewrote-its-story-on-russian-hacking-of-the-power-grid/#74c570ee291e <comment><USER2> I think there is a huge opportunity space for delivering accurate and unbiased news, or something that can give the reader some degree of confidence that they are getting a bigger picture than what is being presented by a single source.

Unfortunately, I don't think it is an easy problem to solve.

After this last election cycle it really magnified for me how biased, misleading, and inaccurate many of the news source outlets are. Especially some of the self proclaimed fact checking sites.

I found myself getting in the habit of looking up news on several sources, just to confirm. Sadly, lots of news outlets get away with quoting the original source, (i.e. "CNN reported that...")

In my gut I feel that there has to be a better solution than Snopes, Factcheck.org, or Politifact which are all are prone to a lot of the same problems.

<comment><USER3> > Unfortunately, I don't think it is an easy problem to solve.

Here's my back-of-napkin 5-second attempt: a site called something like news- shuffle, which will have all the prominent news sites (Important that there are news sites from each side of the spectrum, e.g. all the way from beitbart(sp?) to cnn. Things are listed like hckrnews.com style interface, but similar items are grouped on one link. Click the link and it gives you a random version of the story (i.e. could be breitbart, could be cnn, could be comments on ycombinatory / reddit / etc (maybe some nsfw filtering though)). That way at least you are sometimes forced to consider the story from other peoples perspective.

<comment><USER4> > Important that there are news sites from each side of the spectrum, e.g. all > the way from beitbart(sp?) to cnn

So, the whole insane far right to moderate corporate right spectrum?

<comment><USER3> Lol- maybe news orgs can pay a small fee to be listed to support the site - which could then be ad free, or just whoever covers the story gets pushed onto the stack (maybe bad ones can be flagged and moderator removed), or just run it like a typical aggregator with a ranking, but sticking all the same story in the shuffle stack. I just picked these CNN and Breitbart as examples because it seemed like they got lots of complaints during the election from the opposite party, to illustrate the point of being faced with the opposing viewpoint.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> repost of [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13311376](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13311376)</comment>


Some Notes About How I Write Haskell - <AUTHOR> https://blog.infinitenegativeutility.com/2017/12/some-notes-about-how-i-write-haskell <comment><USER2> This is a good and well-written article, but it's worth noting that I think many of the ideas here cut slightly against the grain of current Haskell best practices. Which is not to say any specific part is right, but for example the entire discussion on QuickCheck is hard to really make sense of and arbitrary is a famously good use of type classes.

Probably the most countercultural paragraph is the paragraph on recommending you make a fresh type rather than reuse an existing type. I think that you lose so many useful operations eschewing maybe for your uniquely named Maybe [1] that a type alias is probably a much better call there, and also captures what you meant more generically. Further, stuff like Maybe over a more specific instance works much better with valuable tools like Compose.

Similarly, the redundant constraint on Empty is the sort of thing that will only trip you up in the real world.

All in all, great article tho.

[1]: People underestimate the compiler cost of deriving instances. It adds up very fast if you derive lots of functors and foldables in your quest for unique names everywhere.

<comment><USER3> Thanks for your commentary too. I'm starting to learn Haskell, and the nature of the language seems to lead to less "best practices" articles out there.

Seeing knowledgeable people comment on things written by other knowledgeable people seems to be the best way to learn how Haskell is done in the wild (i.e. anything outside the text I'm learning Haskell from at the moment)!

<comment><USER2> Full disclosure, I _like_ ConstraintKinds and constraint oriented programming in many cases, and you can find evidence of that in my comment history.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> From the earliest days, amateurs instruct computers, while professionals write executable stories. I loved reading the projection of this quip into Haskell.

<comment><USER5> What is that supposed to mean?

<comment><USER6> it's pretentious nonsense about how programming should be declarative rather than imperative and the implication that Haskell (the one true God) is. this point of view of course forgets that Turing tape machines came first and lambda calculus second and that most theory is still done using TMs rather than categories.

<comment><USER7> easy there, you might want to get your facts straight before you drop vitriol like that. LC actually came first, via Alonzo Church in Annals of Mathematics. Turing didn't publish his definition for another year and also, he did his PhD thesis under Church in LC notation.

<comment><USER8> > _LC actually came first, via Alonzo Church in Annals of Mathematics._

That's irrelevant, as early computers weren't programmed in LC, not build on such an architecture. And of course algorithms and even programs (e.g for Babbage's computer) existed before LC.

<comment><USER9> No computers have ever been programmed via Turing Machines, or built on an architecture resembling TMs(Von Neumann architecture can be described as a register machine). TMs are simply a mathematical formalisation of the notion of computation, equivalent in power to the lambda calculus.

However, most programming languages(including C, Java, etc.) look much more similar to lambda calculus than a description of a Turing Machine - and for very good reason. Have you ever tried describing a TM that encodes even the simplest logic? It is a pain in the ass.

Indeed, most courses on the theory of computation that discuss Turing Machines etc. don't ever expect students to fully describe a Turing Machine. Many times they use a language reminiscent of the lambda calculus to describe Turing Machines.

Just take a look at the definition of Turing Machines on wikipedia and examples of TMs: [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Turing_machine#Formal_definiti...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Turing_machine#Formal_definition)

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

That resembles no description of programs that are written by humans to run on computer systems, unlike the lambda calculus.

<comment><USER10> Random-access, multi-tape Turing machines are actually very good descriptions of computer hardware. The description of Turing machines in practice (using unary or binary notation on a single tape) is generally done because they're simpler and no less powerful, but modern computers hew much closer to a state- transition model embodied by Turing machines than a symbol rewriting process embodied by Lambda calculus.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> I found the paragraph about iterating with list comprehensions very illuminating. As someone who is just starting to learn Haskell, deciding when not to use map / filter is something where my intuitions regularly seem to be off.

<comment><USER12> I like the fact (that I didn't know before) that you can use refutable patterns in the way shown here, as filters in a list comprehension. That feels almost like logic programming.

<comment><USER13> As somebody who works with Scala, List comprehensions (and associated filters) were indeed a surprise to me as well when I started hacking in Haskell. Their resemblance to logic programming makes it so much more elegant, and so much easier to reason about.

<comment><USER14> How do you feel about Scala currently? I'm a Scala dev as well who's kind of been moving away from it over the past few months.

I'm not really sure of the future of the language. Most of the super committed community members are fans of the Haskell inspired style, which is great (its how I write Scala, personally) but I'm not sure why you'd then choose Scala over Haskell, or if you need the JVM, Eta or even Frege. The majority of 'casual' Scala people seem to use it as Kotlin with implicits more or less, and as more and more libraries and features come up for Kotlin I'm not even sure that it makes sense to use Scala for those people, given the larger backing, better tooling, easier on boarding, etc for Kotlin.

<comment><USER15> There are plenty of people who use scala as an ML on the JVM, not as a worse Haskell. They just aren't as loud about it.

If you're looking for an ML kind of experience, Kotlin is a joke, it doesn't even have pattern matching.

<comment><USER13> _> If you're looking for an ML kind of experience, Kotlin is a joke, it doesn't even have pattern matching._

Can't agree with this more. I just cannot figure the raison d'être of Kotlin.

<comment><USER14> To me it seems sorta like reasonable Java. Tons of QoL upgrades that Java hasn't (or won't, due to compatibility issues) implemented over the years make it so that you can write Kotlin without absolutely having to rely on a massive IDE or something like project Lombok. They've got great tooling and a lot of support, and they've been adding in tons of great features (e.g inline classes/value classes coming soon).

If I had to build a company today Kotlin would definitely be at the top of my list; I may love other languages much more, but Kotlin and C# are easily at the top of the developer experience imo, since they've got great tooling/ecosystem/support and both are very approachable/average languages that won't really scare anyone away like how Haskell might (despite it being one of the most underrated/most scare monegered/most misunderstood languages out there imo)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> This is very weird Haskell. The fizz buzz example concatenating strings where an alternative would fit and the pointful point free example for instance.

<comment><AUTHOR> I liked the fizzbuzz example very much _because_ it was so unorthodox.

</comment></comment><comment><USER17> Title would be more clear if it didn't start with the title of the blog.</comment>


Show HN: A slackbot to anonymously report your coworkers' bad behavior - <AUTHOR> https://www.nilats.io/ <comment><USER2> So you want people to start having to worry about what other people think of their work habits? And you'll reward people for tattling on their peers by giving them internet points that can be traded for your marketing materials (swag).

This is wrong on so many levels.

<comment><AUTHOR> Part of this is seeing if people understand jokes.

We thought about the companies where we hated working and the bad things about their cultures- our snitch/informant bot symbolizes the worst of it.

<comment><USER3> I spotted this as a joke, but it really does come very close to being a Poe.

I can see how people could miss it, as it wouldn't be shocking to see something like this put forth as a serious proposal.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> The testimonials section is a complete fake. Just do a reverse search on the profile photo of the customer.

For sure he would be removing them as soon as he/she reads this comment. So I did the work and saved it in the web archive.

[https://web.archive.org/web/20200214182503/https://www.nilat...](https://web.archive.org/web/20200214182503/https://www.nilats.io/)

<comment><AUTHOR> Thank you for pointing out that our clearly joke app with clearly fake testimonials are fake.

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> lol :)

I'd much rather see a bot to encourage employees to thank, show gratitude, and encourage team members. But good joke :)

<comment><USER6> Agree. Encouraging good things > Creating a surveillance culture.

<comment><AUTHOR> We agree as well

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> Snitchbot

</comment><comment><USER8> lol at least it's a nice test to find out where not to work

</comment><comment><USER9> stop snitching</comment>


Gameboy.live:  A basic gameboy emulator with terminal "Cloud Gaming" support - <AUTHOR> https://github.com/HFO4/gameboy.live <comment><USER2> Can it load the rom remotely from a url?</comment>


Search: State of the Union Address 1790 to 2013 - <AUTHOR> http://filip.journet.sdu.dk/union/

<comment><USER2> This is a great project, thanks for making this!

<http://filip.journet.sdu.dk/union/index.php?search=soviet>

<comment><AUTHOR> This is isn't mine. I'm sorry if I gave that impression (First submission to HN :P ) It was featured on dr.dk without any reference to source, so i dug out the embedded HTML, and thought it was really cool, and fitting for HN. <http://filip.journet.sdu.dk> is the author (Lecturer at a Danish University)</comment></comment>


Show HN: MyConferenceIsOnFire – Simple Twilio conference call system - <AUTHOR> http://conference.ashleyhindle.com/ <comment><USER2> Nicely done! I love Twilio's documentation. I'm working on an app with Twilio's conferencing API as well, will share soon!

</comment><comment><USER3> Very cool! Thank you for sharing.</comment>


Public DNS in Taiwan the Latest Victim of BGP Hijack - <AUTHOR> https://blog.apnic.net/2019/05/30/public-dns-in-taiwan-the-latest-victim-of-bgp-hijack/ <comment><USER2> Operators, where are your MANRS?

[https://www.manrs.org/](https://www.manrs.org/)

</comment><comment><USER3> Interesting that this is going to Brazil again. So someone should check if there have been letsencrypt certificate created using DNS verification during those 3 minutes, like in 2016 [https://www.thesslstore.com/blog/ssl- certificates-used-in-ma...](https://www.thesslstore.com/blog/ssl-certificates- used-in-major-bank-hack/)

<comment><USER4> also interesting for the timing. lots of political pressure from US and others on Taiwan "independence" on internal policies happening these last weeks.

e.g. [http://m.focustaiwan.tw/news/aipl/201905280016.aspx](http://m.focustaiwan.tw/news/aipl/201905280016.aspx)

<comment><USER5> Independence from whom? Taiwan writes its own laws, the only influence other countries have on that process is via pressure. Nobody else can legislate for them.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> interesting how little info we have from companies that can do that.

[https://ipinfo.io/AS268869](https://ipinfo.io/AS268869)

One would think there would be a little more trust and transparency. But I guess you only need to buy 1k ips and you are in the same league

</comment><comment><USER6> I have heard that rpki helps prevent this type of BGP misdirection i.e. signed BGP routes. However does anyone know about its deployment?

<comment><USER7> [https://rpki-monitor.antd.nist.gov/](https://rpki-monitor.antd.nist.gov/)

</comment></comment><comment><USER8> Does dns over https do anything to mitigate this?

<comment><USER2> No. Routing attacks divert traffic on the IP address level to another destination. It does not matter if you protect the DNS so it resolves to the correct IP address.

<comment><USER9> If I understand this correctly, does this mean that this is not a weakness in Quad101, but the internet infrastructure itself?

<comment><USER2> Yes. On the routing level. The attacker literally announces 'This IP address network is mine now' via BGP and gets the traffic. Most such incidents are not real attacks though, but misconfigurations. And there are the MANRS recommendations, which can prevent a lot of problems, including the one described in the article.</comment></comment></comment></comment>