The forgotten ruthlessness of Canada's Great War soldiers (2018) - <AUTHOR> https://nationalpost.com/news/canada/the-forgotten-ferocity-of-canadas-soldiers-in-the-great-war <comment><USER2> A bit off topic, but I recommend that anyone interested in this watch _They Shall Not Grow Old_ ([https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IrabKK9Bhds](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IrabKK9Bhds)) - it's an excellent documentary, a bit of a passion project by Peter Jackson to polish up a lot of old WW1 footage (normalized the frame rate, since it was hand cranked, colorize, and add sound - he hired lip readers and voice actors from the same regions as the filmed soldiers). It makes it seem much more relatable and real, in a way that comically-fast black and white footage really doesn't.

<comment><USER3> An interesting look at the film and Jackson's selectivity:

[https://kottke.org/18/12/against-peter-jacksons-they- shall-n...](https://kottke.org/18/12/against-peter-jacksons-they-shall-not- grow-old)

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> In the "War and Peace" there is a passage reading "having quickly finished off the injured, soldiers cleared out the gate so the [transport] could pass unimpeded".

Read this a few times, and then return to the rest my comment...

... execution of wounded prisoners did not even warrant a whole sentence. That's literally all Tolstoy wrote about it.

I don't think he was callous, I think at the time it was the norm and didn't warrant a mention except in this case the unpleasant task was delaying the transport.

^ citing from memory

^^ this is the Napoleonic war of 1812. At least 100 years later the brutality deserved mention.

<comment><USER5> When Henry ordered all the prisoners killed because he needed every man to fight and could spare none to watch it warranted a mention [http://www.shakespeare- online.com/plays/henryv_4_7.html](http://www.shakespeare- online.com/plays/henryv_4_7.html)

<comment><USER6> At Agincourt the prisoners that were executed were all noblemen or landed knights. The custom was for these prisoners to be taken, because they could be ransomed back to their wealthy families. It was a shocking event because it broke the conventions of the times.

It would have been very unlikely that common men would have ever been taken prisoner. They'd have just been slaughtered on the battlefield, if they did not run away.

<comment><USER5> operative term being if they did not run away I think.

At any rate the breaking the conventions of the times is the thing that draws a mention, in the same way that a man biting a dog does.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> In _Goodbye Darkness_ , William Manchester tells similar stories of Southerners:

> _The Marine Corps had always recruited a disproportionate number of men from > the South, where the military traditions of the early 1860s had never died. > Later I met many Raiders like that, and Coffey was typical: tall, lanky, and > fair haired, with a mad grin and dancing, rain-colored eyes full of > shattered light. They were born killers; in the Raider battalions, in > violation of orders, they would penetrate deep behind Japanese lines at > night, looking for two Nips sacked out together. Then they would cut the > throat of one and leave the other to find the corpse in the morning. This > was brilliant psychological warfare, but it was also, of course, extremely > dangerous. In combat these Southerners would charge fearlessly with the > shrill rebel yell of their great-grandfathers, and they loved the bayonet. > How my father 's side defeated my mother's side in the Civil War will always > mystify me._

<comment><USER8> > How my father's side defeated my mother's side in the Civil War will always > mystify me.

Strategy, logistics, own warriors who were not actually cowardly either and did actually fought and killed too. Also, military discipline is an advantage overall I heard. Soldiers eager to break it in order to get to few kills are oftentimes less of an advantage.

</comment></comment><comment><USER9> WW1 just boggles the mind. The sheer slaughter that came from armies trying to adapt to the new reality of mass warfare and new weaponry seems incomprehensible, maybe because of how coldly logical it was. You read these accounts of charges on fortified machine gun positions across flat fields, the only cover being the mounds of bodies that eventually piled up, and you wonder how anyone could go into that.

I've been wondering how the story of Sleeping Beauty would play out if she'd gone to sleep in, say, 1846 or so, waking up just after the end of WW2. Imagine a royal family held in a time capsule emerging to demand their kingdom back from people who've just gone through the absolute hell raised by the collapse of the old monarchies, twice. What would that fairy tale look like?

<comment><USER10> > _you wonder how anyone could go into that_

 _They Shall Not Grow Old_ sheds some visceral light on this — soldiers are very intentionally funneled through a process taking them from normal life to the front line in a way that makes the next step the natural, logical thing to do in that situation, and by the time the full gore of the front line fighting is realized, they are partially acclimated to it, and partially pushed from behind into the melee. It's a calculated psychological trip.

<comment><USER11> The podcast Blueprint for Armageddon by Dan Carlin is fantastic too. I thought I had a general idea of what happened in WW1, I was very wrong.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> > At the Canadian War Museum in Ottawa, visitors can see a case filled with > the fearsome homemade weapons that Canadians trench raiders plunged into the > faces and chests of their enemy: Meat cleavers, push daggers and spiked > clubs.

I saw similar items at the RCR museum in London, Ontario years ago. Definitely worth a visit.

[http://www.thercrmuseum.ca/en-ca/](http://www.thercrmuseum.ca/en-ca/)

</comment><comment><USER13> Didn't learn about this in school. Pretty pissed at how sanitized war history was.

I think Canada was in a "littlest brother of the commonwealth with a lot to prove" position. Confederation was in 1867 but we weren't _really_ a country until much later. We couldn't even declare war on our own. Just went wherever England went.

<comment><USER14> They did teach it, they just weren't callous enough to teach the moral judgement you've just made about the conduct of your anscestors while entire nations were trying to kill them.

<comment><USER3> > ...entire nations were trying to kill them.

That's not what the article says.

> Throughout the war, stretches of the Western Front observed an unofficial > "live and let live" policy between Germans and their French or British > enemies. By mutual agreement, both sides agreed not to attack the other > unless ordered — and would even schedule truces for meals and bathroom > breaks.

<comment><USER14> That's not what my great-great-grandfathers service record says, or the extremely long list of Canadians killed or injured in WW1.

The German that shot him was probably just messing around, you're right.

<comment><USER3> There are no simple situations in war. The soldiers on all sides of this one were, by and large, eager to be anywhere else. It was a stupid war that accomplished little besides the pointless bloodshed.

It's likely your grandfather was a good man with no desire to kill Germans. It's likely whoever shot him felt the same.

<comment><USER15> > _The soldiers on all sides of this one were, by and large, eager to be > anywhere else_

No doubt they were. But we do tend to forget that large swathes of them had originally volunteered, often with enthusiasm.

<comment><USER16> Back than that was normal thing. Just watch, or read, All Quite in the West. Especially the scene right before the boys graduate highschool. Also, the war was supposed to be over by Christmas. And once reality hit it was too late.

<comment><USER15> I am well aware of that, and have read _Im Westen Nichts Neues_ a number of times. This doesn't affect my point: Huge numbers volunteered for slaughtering and being slaughtered, many with gusto and in great haste.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER17> Canadian here, I never learnt this in class. What a shame.

<comment><USER18> They also don't teach where Can soldiers fought Croatia during the Balkans mess of the 1990s because both sides denied it happened [https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Operation_Medak_Pocket](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Operation_Medak_Pocket)

<comment><USER19> Other downplayed and denied stuff happened in the Balkans during these times. I know of for instance Swedish officers having "telecommunications problems" when ordered by home command to stand down and let a hospital be taken. They "never received" that order and stood their ground.

<comment><USER20> For those who don't know what a mess it was in the Balkans in the 90s, this should give you some idea:

\- at times non-American Generals were in charge of the UN forces. So what did they do? They moved their country forces to the rear, and sent "coalition" forces into battle. The reason was that any casualties (even 2 or 3 dead) would be a political crisis at home (true across most European nations.)

\- the Albanian underground had to import a 50 cal AA gun from the US. What for? To shoot at UN helicopters attacking their citizens. And guess what ... it worked - the UN stopped flying helicopters after their ground search for it failed. (Think about it for a second - who else had helicopters to shoot down besides the UN?)

\- the US did an airstrike on the Chinese Embassy ... because they were relaying radio signal traffic to local forces fighting the UN. This caused a major international incident, but nobody seriously denies ... that the Chinese were involved in radio signal intercepts for locals.

\- The UN agreed to cease-fires with enemy forces and allowed them to enter refugee camps and hospitals. Guess what happened next. Good on the Swedes ... there wasn't much courage going around at the time.

<comment><USER21> "the Albanian underground had to import a 50 cal AA gun from the US. What for? To shoot at UN helicopters attacking their citizens"

I'm trying to parse this.

Did the US knowingly export this AA gun? Why were the UN attacking the citizens.

Are you referring to this? It doesn't seem to bear much resemblance to what you're describing. [https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Operation_Alba](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Operation_Alba)

<comment><USER22> Kosovar Albanian rebel representatives living in the US at the time legally purchased a small number of .50 BMG rifles on the civilian market. Those were bolt-action or semi-automatic, not actual anti-aircraft guns. Then they illegally smuggled those rifles to Kosovo.

<comment><USER21> Ok, not Albania then.

Still can't find a reference to ethnic Albanians shooting down a UN helicopter, or UN helicopters attacking ethnic Albanians.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER23> I wonder why this came to be. At first my theory was that they were upset at being dragged across the ocean to fight a war they had nothing to do with, leading to a kind of personal vendetta against Germany for starting it. But that doesn't make much sense, because evidently the Australians didn't have the same reaction, and as I understand it the average German soldier was not much invested in their cause.

I know that American soldiers only showed up at the end of the war, but did they have a similar reaction to the Canadians?

<comment><USER24> From what I've read America went through a compressed repeat of all the mistakes and what the other allies had learnt 1914-1916. Were it not for the brief excursion into Mexico in the years preceding, they'd have opened with cavalry. Even so they still formed a cavalry division in 1917. Learning to deal with the arrival of machine guns, gas and the stagnancy of trench warfare before proper mechanisation was challenging to the generals and tactics of the day.

I imagine their soldiers had just as tough a time of it as others. Life was cheap, WW1 was brutal in the extreme.

<comment><USER25> Cavalry actually was used very effectively in WWI, for example the Battle of Mons. It was still quite devastating outside of trench warfare, which was why there where still some cavalry units at the start of WWII.

Consider a man lugging around a 35lb anti tank rifle, ammunition, and gear would have loved to have a horse. That can apply to just about any heavy but still man portable weapon.

PS: Horses where still useful outside of battle in WWII. Hell, America was occasionally using donkey's in Afghanistan.

<comment><USER26> > Consider a man lugging around a 35lb anti tank rifle, ammunition, and gear > would have loved to have a horse.

man + 30 kg of gear (standard for US) is already approaching the upper limit of what a horse can carry. Horses are easy to spook and hurt. Donkeys are total badasses in comparison.

<comment><USER27> Are they badasses or just immovably tame?

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER28> It's a little odd to characterize these volunteers as 'Canadians,' and Cook should know it. The majority of the recruits were first-generation immigrants from the British Isles. Few native-born Canadians volunteered. So whatever was going on over there was the product of that recent immigrant experience. That's interesting in itself, but puts a different gloss on this than we might get from those who would like to say something about Canadians, the Canadian mentality, and Canadian nationality from this.

Most Canadians stayed home during WWI. Most recently-arrived Brits went to Europe to fight for their country.

</comment><comment><USER29> It's a classic piece written by a Vietnam War veteran: Why Men Love War (1984) By William Broyles, Jr. [https://www.esquire.com/news- politics/news/a28718/why-men-lo...](https://www.esquire.com/news- politics/news/a28718/why-men-love-war/)

Boyles is a screenwriter who was involved in writing in the movies like Apollo 13, Cast Away, Jarhead, and Saving Private Ryan.

</comment><comment><USER30> My German grandfather was born in an internment camp on Vancouver Island, not unlike what the Americans did to the Japanese in WWII.

<comment><USER31> IIRC Canada also had Japanese internment camps on the west coast

<comment><USER32> There was some interment of Germans during WWI, and of Japanese during WWII.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER33> > Tim Cook, the First World War historian at the Canadian War Museum.

In an alternate universe...

</comment><comment><USER34> Is the 'polite Canadian' ("Sorry!") trope perhaps an overcompensation for this? Or am I creating an urban legend?

<comment><USER20> > Is the 'polite Canadian' ("Sorry!") trope

Canadians are polite. But they're not apologetic. Your comment misses the mark.

> a country big on marketing itself but ironic in its realities

Add up all the clubbed seals and exported asbestos, and a single ICE automobile is worse.

It seems like anybody can have an extreme opinion with no supporting logic.

<comment><USER35> I think the "sorry" thing comes from the the fact that many Canadians pronounce the first vowel of "sorry" differently from the rest of North America. So it becomes a default "quaint Canadianism" joke.</comment></comment></comment>


Gagging on Google - <AUTHOR> http://blogs.ft.com/maverecon/2009/04/gagging-on-google/

<comment><USER2> This is about the transparent society versus the surveillance society.

Google represents the transparent society. Tons of information that used to be public but impractical to collect is now available to ordinary citizens, who can use it for good or evil as they please. There are plenty of examples of both.

Financial Times is located in what is likely the most extreme example of a surveillance country in existence today. There are cameras everywhere, and the government collect detailed information about all citizens. Strict regulations exist to ensure that this information can only be used by the government, and there is an outrage only when these regulations are broken.

It is not surprising that these two views on the role of information in society clash. Information is power, and the question if this power should be centralized in the government, or spread out to the people. The risk of abuse is far greater for the later, but the consequences of abuse is far greater for the former.

Some may prefer a third way, an opaque society where public information won´t be collected, even though the technical means for doing so exists. I doubt that is feasible, it will probably result in another society where the collected information is only available to the few.

</comment><comment><USER3> I kept hoping this was satire.

<comment><USER4> You have to understand something to satire it. This guy obviously didn't understand.

<comment><USER5> What did he not understand?

<comment><USER6> Copyright law, the DMCA's Safe Harbor Provision (and its European analogues), whether people should have an expectation of privacy on public streets, and what the solution to the tracking cookie problem should be. I'll assume the first three misunderstandings are self-evident. The last one I'll explain.

Cookies are sent by your computer, which is under your control, to Google and other advertising companies. The solution isn't regulation. The solution is browsers that make it easy to control the information that you're providing. Every existing major browser is produced by an internet advertising company or is paid by an internet advertising company, so there's a bit of a conflict of interest at the moment. If governments want to solve this problem, it would be cheaper to create a browser extension that achieves their goals, or publicize an existing one.

What expectation of privacy should one have on the internet in the first place? If I patronize some establishment in the real world, there's no guarantee that they won't tell anyone else that I went there. Safeway probably shares my purchasing history with all sorts of companies. The assumption that your web site visits are private isn't based on any analogue in the physical world.

If the government thinks it's a good idea to inform people of the supposed dangers of letting internet advertisers accumulate information amount them and ways to prevent it, that's fine with me. Making it illegal or imposing onerous regulations on tracking cookies is silly and unnecessary.

If this guy gets his way, every website is going to have some annoying interstitial that asks you to opt in to their tracking cookies, and you'll get them every time your cookies get cleared or expire. That would be extremely annoying.

It would also likely be the end of free, advertising supported services on the internet.

<comment><USER5> I have read the article again, but I must have missed the parts where he recommends the actions you say he recommends (ie regulation, outlawing of cookies). I only saw the bit about stopping Microsoft (personally I thought it was wrong to call Microsoft a monopoly and attempt to smash it by law, but obviously people have different opinions on that).

He seems to be right in pointing out the problem. Whether we have a right or even a hope to privacy is another matter.

<comment><USER6> _"Clearly, Google, Yahoo and Microsoft should opt you out [of tracking cookies] by default."_

 _"They must be regulated and restrained by law so we can sleep at ease even though we know we cannot trust them."_

Tracking cookies don't strike me as much of a problem. All the author says is that Google tracks us on the internet. So what?

 _"Search engines like those of Google, Yahoo and Microsoft can provide the companies that own and manage them with detailed information about many aspects of our lives, including our intimate, personal lives."_

He doesn't elaborate on this point. What data about my personal life do tracking cookies give those companies? Oh no, Google knows how much I futilely try to disprove Rule 34.

Google does have my email and calendar, which could be a problem, but I'm more afraid of the government subpoenaing or PATRIOT Act-ing my data than Google misusing it, and the government can get it no matter who has it. In fact, Google's sheer size increases the financial incentive they have to not misuse my data. Their reputation is incredibly valuable.

<comment><USER5> He does not elaborate on the regulations that should be in place in his opinion. Your way of quoting him makes it sound as if he wants to outlaw cookies, but I don't think that is what he is saying. I am not sure what kinds of regulations could be useful, but I am also not sure that there are no useful regulations at all.

As for privacy, and the data tracking cookies provide: it would depend on the web sites you visit, wouldn't it? I think in the average case, it would provide pretty much every bit of information about you imaginable (for example illnesses in your family).

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> I am concerned about privacy issues with google and I'm trying to defend against them as good as I can, including not using google for everything.

But I'm scared outright by the people who might regulate them. Governments are pushing for much more far reaching and much more consequential invasion of privacy than would ever be in google's interest.

Buiter makes it appear as if evil commercial interests were the worst that could happen to us. Being spammed with dog food adverts is not nearly as bad as being charged with crimes you didn't commit by incompetent morally confused totalitarian law makers.

European governments are currently building a system of censorship and questionable evidence collection, partly to enforce laws against the very "crimes" that google allegedly commits. We're being subjected to grotesque disproportionate surveillance techniques by our governments in the interest of Mr. Buiter's own commercial interests as an author.

It's amazing how incredibly clueless even the most esteemed academics can be.

</comment><comment><USER8> _Google is to privacy and respect for intellectual property rights what the Taliban are to women's rights and civil liberties_

I suspect I'm more "anti-Google" than most people here, but when the article starts out like that, even I have to just say "flamebait" and move on.

</comment><comment><USER9> I hope this guy never gets into politics...

/reads his bio on the right..

</comment><comment><USER10> How amusing. A Briton thinks that a corporation is a danger to privacy, instead of his own government.</comment>


Ask HN: How would your ideal AI programming language be? - skate-bear I'm interested in PLT and language design and a great way to learn these subjects could be creating my own programming language.
I think there is an niche in the AI field. Yes, you have Python, C++, Go and so on. But none of them has been designed with common IA problems in mind and often have issues in performance, facility of use and debug or lack of features.
So I wonder, what would you love to have in your language when you are writting an AI algorithm or system? <comment><AUTHOR> I applaud you for inventing a programming language that doesn't have issues with performance.</comment>


Will Dominic Cummings turn No 10 into a NASA-style control centre? - <AUTHOR> https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2019/jul/25/dominic-cummings-no-10-nasa-control-centre-adviser-civil-service <comment><AUTHOR> The blog post on which the article is based - which is very long! (I'm still reading through it) - can be found at the top of Dominic Cummins's blog (On the Referendum #33, 26 June 2019) - [https://dominiccummings.com/](https://dominiccummings.com/)

Given that DC has now been appointed as one of Boris Johnson's key advisors, with a desk (I assume) in 10 Downing Street, it will be interesting to see how far - and how quickly - he can put his ideas into action. If only for the potential car crashes it may cause.

Whatever my views on Brexit (hard against leaving the EU) or the new PM and his Government (definitely not a fan), I do agree (in principle) with Dominic Cummings about the need for major reform of the UK Civil Service and the decision-making processes used there. Whether the tools and processes that he advocates in his blog post are the right ones? I don't know.</comment>


The American Family's Financial Turmoil  - <AUTHOR> http://www.visualeconomics.com/the-american-familys-financial-turmoil_2010-04-29/

<comment><USER2> _They have $3,800 in the bank...but can't manage to pay off a $2,200 credit card balance_

I have a wacky idea...</comment>


Ask HN: What do you use as Log management tool? - <AUTHOR> I see many solution out there, Sumo Logic, Graylog, Loggly, PaperTrail, Logentries, Stackify. Which one would you recommend and why? <comment><USER2> For on premesis installs, enterprise production systems seem to be converging on the ELK stack - Elasticsearch, Logstash, and Kibana. However managing this at scale requires quite a bit or resources and know-how. It's frequently overkill for what you need.

For modern brand new production systems I always suggest to start with oklog until you outgrow it (if ever). Most of the time you just want to send your logs to some central location and archive them in files. Occasionally you want to tail them or search them. Oklog gets you all that in a distributed fashion and with minimal fuss.

[https://github.com/oklog/oklog](https://github.com/oklog/oklog)

<comment><AUTHOR> Usually if I see a project archived on github, I move along and look for something else. I learnt the hard way that there is a high cost in those cases, we would definitely want to use something actively support and we won't mind paying for the right tool.

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> I would suggest Scalyr if you are looking for paid product. Their product is amazing. We also use our own hosted version of graylog which is opensource. But with Scalyr you can customize a lot of stuff, set up custom alerts etc.

<comment><USER4> We also use Scalyr, it's great.</comment></comment>


AT&T Says Loss Of iPhone Exclusivity Will Not Materially Impact Earnings - <AUTHOR> http://techcrunch.com/2010/08/06/att-iphone-apple-exclusivity-earnings/

<comment><USER2> AT&T will be affected.

Beyond AT&T, ending the exclusive arrangement will also hurt Android marketshare (and that of the future Windows Phone 7)</comment>


Firefox versions change faster than my kids clothes - <AUTHOR>

Az a CTO of a product company, I am faced with the never ending challenge of Firefox.  But the time you get through a short test cycle, the next release of Firefox is out.  The worst part, the rendering changes causing the application to need tweaks for every version.  Thus, changing faster than my kids clothes.
In honesty, I love Firefox land use it personally.  From a commercial standpoint, it is killing me.
I like continuous improvement, and the community behind Firefox. Imagine Firefox was an electrical standard that people needed to use.  Every (insert short time period) that electrical standard changes, jut a little bit.
Love you FireFox, but this making me think of dropping support for the browser. <comment><USER2> I suggest you check the Extended Support Release, tailored for your usecase: <http://www.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/organizations/>

For some context:

[https://blog.mozilla.com/blog/2012/01/10/delivering-a- mozill...](https://blog.mozilla.com/blog/2012/01/10/delivering-a-mozilla- firefox-extended-support-release/)

<https://wiki.mozilla.org/Enterprise>

</comment><comment><AUTHOR> Unfortunately I do not control the desktops of clients connecting to my products. I like the ESR though, thanks for the links.</comment>


Ever get a weird/sentamental feeling when getting rid of old computers? - <AUTHOR>

A few months ago, I bought my first Apple computer, which is a MacBook Pro, and it is awesome. It cost about $2000, which is a lot for me, and I figured I'd offset some of the costs by selling my previous computer, which is an old Dell laptop that I had for about 2 years (I was way overdue for an upgrade). However, when it came time to selling it, I decided against it. It was the first computer I used to install Apache on. I learned PHP, CSS, HTML, JavaScript on it. Not to mention all the SERIOUS web browsing. The keys on the home row have considerably more wear than the rest of the keys, which is evidence of how much I've had my fingers on the keyboard. I figure that the memories I have on this machine are worth more than the $200 or so I would get from selling it. As a result, I chose not to sell it, and now it sits in my closet. Anybody else have similar sentimental bonds to their previous computers?
I recall my very first computer - it was an old Packard Bell machine with a top of the line Pentium processor, and it had Windows 95 on it, and although I was very young and did not do much tech related stuff on it, I still used the hell out of it. Lots of educational games that my parents bought me, and lots of playing Sierra's "3D Ultra Pinball" and "The Incredible Toon Machine". Haha. I also remember my second computer which I used in a similar way which was a Pentium II and had Windows 98 on it. I used the HELL out of these machines.
When I was in high school, I thought it would be fun to take these 2 computers apart and destroy them in the process. I recall opening the hard drives with a screwdriver and throwing all the parts all over the yard. When I was done I threw them in the trash. Boy what a fucktard I was. Now that I just graduated college, I wish I had these machines :-/ I kept this regret in mind when making my decision NOT to sell my old laptop. :-) <comment><USER2> I used to feel this way about my old computers, I used to name my boxes and always re-purposed them instead of selling/throwing them away when they were replaced.

But things changed and I really didn't feel anything for getting rid of my last computer (which I bought ~2004). Nowadays I guess I'm not that interested in the specific hardware anymore. It's all exchangable and tends to work OK these days. If it works reliably in Linux, it's fine with me.

On the other hand I can get sentimental when looking at my old software and programs.

</comment><comment><USER3> I have a growing stack of machines I refuse to throw out. My wife hates me, but when we have to re-boot after the Info-Apocalypse, this stack is going to be worth its weight in homegrown rice and subsistence farmed guinea pig flesh ..

</comment><comment><USER4> I used to. But I've gotten into the habit of selling on my current computer (a Macintosh) every six months and upgrading. But selling my first NeXT Cube was a real blow, I admit.

<comment><USER5> I agree with this. The really old and crusty ones are a bit sentimental, but if you get rid of them before they get old and crusty there's no nostalgia.

For instance, I got rid of my Dell laptop that I used for 4 years in college, but it was pretty difficult getting rid of my old Tandy that I had when I was growing up. I'll kindly get off your lawn now :)

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> Yea, I still sleep next to an old 113mHz PC that is lying around on which i run Linux. it is funny my Android phone runs much faster

</comment><comment><USER7> Definitely! I buy new computers very rarely, coz I prefer upgrading old ones - getting used to them :)</comment>


We have built a site that may help a lot of families in Crisis - <AUTHOR> http://1dollar1home.com

<comment><USER2> I really like the concept and vision. Could do very well with some fixes and enough visibility. Not very mobile friendly . The individual fundraising are quite simple. all the best on it.

Homepage has some coding issues. Work on mobile adaptability.</comment>


How do you generate release notes? - <AUTHOR> Are you using the git log or your agile board/task manager? Or both? Are you using a tool or making it by hand? If a tool, which ones are good? <comment><USER2> Bravo Notes is pretty incredible. [https://marketplace.visualstudio.com/items?itemName=agile- ex...](https://marketplace.visualstudio.com/items?itemName=agile- extensions.bravo-notes)

We also generate videos that are 2 mins or less for release notes (via a wordpress autoring tool that pulls from Jira\AzureDevOps): [https://blogs.autodesk.com/bim360-release- notes/](https://blogs.autodesk.com/bim360-release-notes/)</comment>


Adeona: A Free, Open Source System for Helping Track and Recover Lost and Stolen Laptops - <AUTHOR> http://adeona.cs.washington.edu/

<comment><USER2> Although I like the idea of this type of service I do wonder just how useful they are. Does anyone know what the recovery rate is?

There are certainly some testimonials for the paid services but most of the problems solved are recovering lost data rather than the laptop itself. It makes me think that decent encryption and regular backups might be just as good.

</comment><comment><USER3> It's cool that somebody has created a program like this. If someone tests it, I'd be interested in knowing how well it works.

</comment><comment><USER4> I love the idea. Is anyone here using it?

<comment><USER5> I installed it today. I see a 512k Adeona app in my processes list. I assume it's running ok. Other than that, it's pretty invisible.0

I hope to never be able to say I've really used it...</comment></comment>


With HealBe, Indiegogo Fails The Crowd - <AUTHOR> http://www.crowdfundinsider.com/2014/04/35611-media-missing-point-crowdfunding-indiegogo-healbe-scampaign/

<comment><USER2> I think this just goes to show you the power that some well put together info graphics, attractive photography, and interesting content can get you. Even though it's a scam, they know how to package it correctly.

<comment><AUTHOR> It's up to the individual to determine whether or not it is a scam. It's up to the platform to make sure the individual can act on what they find. That's where Indiegogo falls short.

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> HealBe isn't a misguided, ultimately doomed project that's making promises that it ultimately won't be able to fulfill on the finances that it has. It's a fraud that is making scientific and health claims that are a combination of "known to be impossible" and "likelihood that they've accomplished this is zero."

If you're saying that the essence of crowdfunding is advance fee scams for magic beans, then crowdfunding is garbage.</comment>


Ask HN: How to develop a core competency? - <AUTHOR> I have always been obsessed with being an alpha programmer (someone that can do everything). Its been five years and I have been able to do a few but have tried many. My new employer is telling me to develop a core competency (pick up an area in tech and become really good at it). How do you guys focus on one when there are so much new things coming up every day? <comment><USER2> the best way to do that is to choose the topic that you really love and you could potentially spend 48hours doing some experiments with it. Money will follow</comment>


Cryptographically Secure Bloom Filters [pdf] - <AUTHOR> http://www.tdp.cat/issues/tdp.a015a09.pdf

<comment><USER2> Background

A bloom filter is a bitmap which lets you test if an item is a member of a set, in constant time and constant space. It tells you with 100% certainty if the item is NOT in the set, and it tells you with variable certainty if the item MIGHT be in the set. In other words, it answers yes/no if an item is in the set, but there's a chance of false positives, but no chance of false negatives.

The probability of a false positive is based on the number of items in the set, and the number of bits in the bitmap. Here ([http://hur.st/bloomfilter](http://hur.st/bloomfilter)) is a calculator, for example, which lets you say how many items are in the set, and what probability you want for false positives, and it tells you how many bits should be in the bitmap, and how many bits you should set each time you are adding an element into the filter (they call this 'number of hashes').

So you can imagine there are a lot of really interesting applications for bloom filters when you want a really fast, compact way of knowing if something is LIKELY to be true. Like, 'is this request in my cache?'

Bloom filters can also be used to provide some interesting privacy-preserving properties. In Bitcoin, for example, you have a wallet with money stored at a bunch of addresses, and unused addresses where new money can come in. You don't want anyone to just be able to look into your wallet and know all your addresses, but you DO want to be notified when someone sends you money. So you load up a bloom filter with a bunch of addresses which you expect any new payments will come in on, and you can share that bitmap with other people on the network. When new payments come in, the server can check them against the bitmap and forward you any matching transactions. In this case, you would setup a high probability of false positives, because you don't want even the servers to know which transactions are yours, but you don't want the server to just send you EVERYTHING.

Problem Statement

So we have a set 'S' which has been encoded in a bloom filter a.k.a. bitmap on the server. And we have a client with an element 'x' they want to check if it's a member of the set. But we don't want to disclose 'x' to the server, and we don't want to disclose the bitmap to the client. As the paper says, 'x' and BF(s) are kept secret from each other.

On the face of it, this seems really easy just by the very nature of how bloom filters work. Client would give the server a list of bits to check are TRUE in the bitmap, but do all the hashing to calculate that checklist on the client- side. This appears to keep 'x' secret from the server, but obviously it's trivial for the client to come up with a bunch of requests to ultimately discover the full state of the bitmap. Also, if 'x' IS in the set, the server could compare the checklist it received from the client, to the checklist of each element in the set, and discover 'x'.

Method

What the paper says is, instead of hashing each element to build the checklist, we will hash a blind signature of each element. A blind signature is a cryptographic signature of 'x' where the signing key (sk) can be kept secret from 'x'.

To construct the bloom filter on the server, instead of just hashing 'x', we will hash the signature of 'x'. Note, at this point it's not a 'blind' signature, since it's all happening on the server.

Then when a client wants to check 'x' against BF, the server can actually give the BF to the client, because in order for the client to USE the bloom filter, it needs to get its 'x' signed by the server! Now, we can use a blind- signature protocol between the client and the server, to basically "unlock" the BF for a specific 'x', without ever seeing 'x' on the server.

It's like server-based access control to a client-side bloom filter.

BTW - I wish a prerequisite for publishing these papers was an open-source sample implementation! :-)

<comment><USER3> > BTW - I wish a prerequisite for publishing these papers was an open-source > sample implementation! :-)

I sometimes feel the same, but much interesting work in algorithms has been done by people who are unable to program in an executable language.

<comment><USER4> Yes, but they usually have access to grad students...

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> I'll put an example in techie-English:

Say the government has a giant No-Bus-list of suspected naughty people that shouldn't be allowed to ride busses. The complete list is highly secret, because we wouldn't want people improperly listed challenging it in court. Ahem I mean we wouldn't want terrorists to change their strategy to evade.

A Bus operator needs to query passengers against the list, but doesn't want to tell the government the names of all their passengers (Because they know the government will leak the data to their competition. What? You thought they cared about privacy? Give me a break).

So what the government does is computes a digital signature for each national ID number in the naughty list using a private key known only to the government and puts the digital signature instead of the name in a bloom filter. They send the whole bloom filter to the Bus operator. (The bloom filter is much smaller than the list— which is good because the list is gigantic) The bus operator learns nothing about the list except an approximate upper bound on its size.

Then when a passenger shows up the bus operator encrypts the passengers ID number and sends it to the government— imagine the encryption as a sealed envelope. The government can't read it because it's encrypted. The government performs a blind signing operation— sort of like signing a piece of carbon paper inside an envelope without opening it (this requires the encryption and signing methods be a kind that allows for this) and sends back the blind- signed passenger name.

The Bus operator decrypts to obtain the signature and checks it against the bloomfilter. If they get a hit on the filter they redirect the passenger to Guantanamo for enhanced interrogation.

(A bloom filter, of course, has no false negatives: exactly the property we need to keep America safe from Terrorism)

<comment><USER6> Thank you for the write up here.

I was going to post something similar, but instead use the example of a lawyer wanting to perform name searches on the list of people the NSA has information on.

One point I do want to make, though, for anyone that can't tell the last paragraph might be a bit of a joke: while a Bloom filter never has false negatives, it will always have a certain amount (controllable by adjusting the size of the filter) of false POSITIVES.

Think of it this way: a Bloom filter lets you determine with 100% accuracy if someone is a member of Group A (the set you build the filter with) but less than 100% accuracy if they're instead only a member of Group Not-A.

In the example above, if Group A is the Evil Terrorists (which you build the Bloom filter with), then there's a non-zero chance that a Good American member of Group Not-A may end up falsely identified as a terrorist.

If Group A is instead made up of every Good American, you flip the problem and now have the non-zero possibility of falsely identifying a Evil Terrorist (from group Not-A) as a benign Good American.

If you attempt to use them to solve a problem like this, you have to have a mechanism in place to deal with the very real case of a false positive (or decide which group to build the filter with - which one is less damaging to have show up as a false positive).

Bloom filters are cool, but they're a tradeoff of speed and memory for accuracy. They are not a perfect index if you're trying to determine A vs. Not-A-ness. The best concept is a cache lookup - if it's not a member of the Bloom filter, you DEINITELY don't have it cached, but if there's a hit then you very very very likely have it cached (and if you don't, then at least you're only redirecting a vanishingly small number of false positives back to the live server).

Google actually uses this for determining attack sites in Chrome without giving out an index of all the attack sites they know of. They give out a Bloom filter instead with the web client. When you visit a site, if it's a miss on the Bloom filter, it is currently not known by Google to be an attack site. However, if you get a hit, it first calls home to a Google server to re- verify that the site is not a false positive and confirm it is indeed an attack site. In this way, since the vast majority of the web is not malicious, they only impose a bandwidth cost when they think you may have stumbled upon a bad site (member of the Bloom filter) - but they get a chance to weed out the false positives before telling you.

<comment><USER5> Indeed, I wondered if the dark humor of the last comment might be a little too subtle. :)

One of the bummers about this scheme is that it doesn't have the property of making the bandwidth for all queries constant (get the bloom filter) instead of linear in the number of lookups that the regular non-private use of bloom filters has. But thats the tradeoff for the bi-directional privacy.

I could actually imagine a production system using this, which is something I can't say for most privacy preserving query techniques.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> If you think that's cool, you ain't seen nothin' yet. Check out Andrew Miller's PhD thesis: a compiler that can take the Agda description of _any_ data structure and produce a cryptographically authenticated "Merkelized" version of it:

[https://github.com/amiller/generic-ads](https://github.com/amiller/generic- ads)

Here's an implementation of a red-black tree:

[https://github.com/amiller/generic- ads/blob/master/RedBlack....](https://github.com/amiller/generic- ads/blob/master/RedBlack.hs)

<comment><USER8> Can you explain how say the red-black tree impl can be used in real life?

</comment></comment><comment><USER9> Basic protocol:

1) Put signatures of your elements into a bloom filter, rather than the elements themselves.

2) Send the client the entire bloom filter.

3) Allow clients to request blind signatures for the elements they'd like to query locally.

So unfortunately, like most solutions in the "private information retrieval" domain, step one is "send the client your entire data set." They've explained that cryptographically secure bloom filters are superior to secure set intersection protocols (which are also largely unusable, although for different reasons) for cases where the data set is so large that the server would like to avail itself of the space savings that a bloom filter provides.

So at set sizes that large (say, 7 billion elements), step one is unfortunately to send the client a 700MB file. Not to mention that step zero was for the server to have calculated 7 billion digital signatures. It's otherwise a pretty neat idea, though.

<comment><USER2> LOL, too true! And even 700MB may be a bit stingy for a 7b element bloom filter.

Are there any options out there for privately testing set membership on a central server where client-server message size is constant?

I can see how any type of private querying would necessarily involve putting the data somewhere the client can access it, where the server can't observe the access patterns. (EDIT) Or making the server look at all the data to service a single request.

So one option is handing the client an access-controlled data set, so you know WHO is accessing the data, but not WHAT they are accessing. I guess the other option is trying to hide who the client is, perhaps via onion routing, so you know WHAT data is being accessed, but not necessarily WHO is accessing it. Maybe a third way would be to use leaky selectors -- queries that return the desired data, plus a bunch more, so the server doesn't know exactly what piece of data was being targeted.

They reference a "Keyword Search and Oblivious Pseudorandom Functions" paper ([http://www.cs.princeton.edu/~mfreed/docs/FIPR05-ks.pdf](http://www.cs.princeton.edu/~mfreed/docs/FIPR05-ks.pdf)) which looks like their inspiration, which is a privacy maintaining Key-Value store "with a communication overhead of O(polylog n) and a computation overhead of O(log n) public-key operations for the client and O(n) for the server." I'll have to read some more about that one.

</comment></comment><comment><USER10> We are barreling towards an future where a Bitcoin/Bittorrent-like network provides cryptographically guaranteed trust-free hosting of data and data services. It could be distributed such that computation was spread across all of the users of data. Bittorrent for hosting.

In such a world, merely publishing code into the network would allow anyone to use it anywhere in the world, for the rest of time.

<comment><USER2> It's a beautiful vision of what "P2P" could really deliver to the world -- just as you say, "publishing code into the network" and then the users decide the resources they are willing to dedicate to your software. We are, as they say, so close, and yet so far away from achieving anything like this that's even remotely usable.

Maybe we can get private, secure, scalable, DDoS resistant DHT working, and go from there? :-)

</comment></comment><comment><USER11> Side question,

In the introduction the author mentions that if you don't care about privacy, you can solve the x ∈ S problem easily by sending the whole bloom filter to the client. Wouldn't it be simpler for the client to send x to the server instead, and then let the server send the answer back to the client? As I understood bloom filters can get quite large...

</comment><comment><USER12> There are many ways to use an encrypted bloomfilter. My thesis (shamelss plug) uses an encrypted bloomfilter to share an optical fibre channel securely among up to 128 users - [http://ieeexplore.ieee.org/xpl/articleDetails.jsp?arnumber=6...](http://ieeexplore.ieee.org/xpl/articleDetails.jsp?arnumber=6476559)</comment>


VertiGo – A Wall-Climbing Robot including Ground-Wall Transition - <AUTHOR> https://www.disneyresearch.com/publication/vertigo/ <comment><USER2> A month ago in Shenzhen I've seen better-looking RC cars that can drive up the walls. They're being sold on the market like any other toy. I really thought that product has already reached the US, so I'm surprised that a wall-climbing car is considered something new / original in this article.

EDIT: Chinese cars are similar to [0], only bigger. I thought they were a relatively new thing, given that I've first seen them suddenly appearing in late November, but if you believe the upload date of this video, the idea has been in the field for at least 5 years.

[0] - [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=A_nYNuoZteA](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=A_nYNuoZteA)

<comment><USER3> I think the new thing is that it can drive on the ground and then go up the wall, and probably can deal with uneven surfaces better. All I've seen before (and you are right, those haven been around for ages) really have to suck to a even surface.

<comment><USER2> I'll grant the uneven surfaces, but transitioning between the ground and the wall is something those Chinese toys do perfectly fine; I've seen it demonstrated in a badly maintained pedestrian underpass, so the walls weren't exactly even there. It passes the test for an urban toy (indoor and outdoor), though I doubt it would play well with e.g. rocky terrain.

<comment><USER3> Ok, then I have no idea either ;) I only know these tiny ones like in the video, and they are limited like that.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> Sudden insight: HN might be the world's best place to find prior art.

</comment><comment><USER5> That's cool, but I am waiting for one practical application: dusting Roomba.

</comment><comment><USER6> I love simple innovations like this where it seems like a pretty obvious evolution in hindsight, yet it so hard to see until somebody makes it. This is a combination of a quadcopter and RC car, can't wait to see where people take this.

<comment><USER7> [http://www.parrot.com/products/rolling- spider/](http://www.parrot.com/products/rolling-spider/) Not exactly the same thing but similar.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> New battery technologies have enabled them to build a small vehicle that can deal with both terra firma and that other stuff - air (which so easily can be mistaken for vacuum, when compared to firm ground)!

Is this the first small vehicle that deals with them both as a system?

<comment><USER8> I have a toy car I bought 5 years ago from some street vendor in Hong Kong that can go on land and up walls (it has fans too). It uses regular AA batteries.

The main innovation here, as far as I can see, is that it can automatically make the switch between horizontal and vertical.

<comment><USER4> Cool :) "The future is already here — it's just not very evenly distributed." (William Gibson)

Any photos or keywords to search for online?

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> What does upper bound on the mass of a vehicle like this depend upon? Target battery life? Air throughput? Any others?

</comment><comment><USER10> I love it! It's an interesting concept to build on. Battery is always a bummer...weight or run-time.

</comment><comment><USER11> Disney also built a tiny robot soccer ball that rolled into my heart. What can't they do!?

<comment><USER12> Take stuff out of the vault. /s

</comment></comment><comment><USER13> Url changed from [http://www.theverge.com/2015/12/29/10685710/disney- vertigo-r...](http://www.theverge.com/2015/12/29/10685710/disney-vertigo- robot-climbs-walls), which points to this.

</comment><comment><USER14> _Screw it - I provided an answer, I 'm being accused of being smug. Had enough. 2016 is my year of no longer contributing to HN._

[https://xkcd.com/386/](https://xkcd.com/386/)

<comment><USER15> That's not the question I'm asking. Assume perfect adherence on the wall. My question is : to remain stationary, do the propellers need to exert a force equal to the weight of the device?

In other words : if this machine can climb up a wall straight up, does that mean it could also climb up in the air?

<comment><USER16> > if this machine can climb up a wall straight up, does that mean it could > also climb up in the air?

Interesting question! I think the answer is "not necessarily", particularly if the coefficient of friction of the wheels is pretty high.

Think of it this way: the weight of the machine points down. This down force needs to be compensated by an upward force, otherwise we'd have acceleration downwards. This necessary upward force can consist of two components: The upward component of the thrust generated by the propellers, and the friction. Now, the force exerted by friction is the normal force (i.e. perpendicular against the wall) times the coefficient of friction, call it c_f. If I remember correctly, for (macroscopic) things, that coefficient of friction is less than one (i.e., a car cannot decelerate with a 1 g or more, unless there's a spoiler that pushes the car onto the road, thus increasing the normal force to something larger than the weight of the car). Now, the normal force is the component of thrust perpendicular to the wall. (See ASCII "art" below).

Now, suppose the coefficient of friction is very close to one, and thrust is angled 45 degrees down away from the wall. Then:

weight = 1g (down)

upward thrust = 1/2 g + a bit (up)

normal force = 1/2 g + a bit (towards wall)

friction = (1/2 g + a bit) * c_f (up)

total upwards force = Upward force + friction = 1g (up)

Now the system is in equilibrium, and the total thrust is sqrt(2) * (1/2 g + a bit) = 0.75 g, say.

Thus, my hunch is that the thing can go up the wall even if it can't fly by itself, if the friction is big enough.

| weight

| |

| |

| |

| |

| V

|O\

| X <\-- Normal = horizontal component of thrust

|O/

| ^ |\

| | . \

| | . . \

| | Thrust

| |

| upward component of thrust + friction

Dammit! Hard to do ASCII art here :-)

<comment><USER17> According to the paper the wheels are unpowered so wouldn't there only be the rolling friction of the wheel's bearings between the car and the wall? It'd be some but very little.

> The wheels are mounted with a double wishbone suspension based on model-car > oil dampers, but they are not propelled in any way.

<comment><USER16> > According to the paper the wheels are unpowered so wouldn't there only be > the rolling friction of the wheel's bearings between the car and the wall? > It'd be some but very little.

You're right. I've assumed that it drives horizontally along the wall. As it climbs up the wall, you're absolutely right - the thrust has to overcome the weight AND provide at least a bit of a normal force to keep it pressed to the wall.

Given that the video clearly shows it driving up the wall, this particular vehicle must indeed be able to develop enough thrust to overcome its own weight.</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment>


iCloud hacker would have warned apple had it provided a bug bounty - <AUTHOR> http://www.forbes.com/sites/thomasbrewster/2014/09/04/creator-of-icloud-hacker-tool-i-would-have-warned-apple-if-it-properly-rewarded-researchers/

<comment><USER2> > Yet ethical hackers looking to make a name for themselves would probably be > far more willing to responsibly disclose vulnerabilities if money was on the > table.

Here's a simple rule of thumb: if you only responsibly report vulnerabilities when they're going to pay you, and otherwise you just publish them to github for everyone to use, _you 're not an ethical hacker_.

Troshichev frames it like 'it's not my fault I posted this exploit to the internet, there was no bounty in place to prevent it!' He could well have reported it to their security teams and been happy with having contributed to the world, but instead he not only discussed the bug publicly, but _published a tool allowing people to easily exploit it_.

There is no point of view here where Troshichev is any sort of ethical 'good guy'. This is extortion, a thug saying 'Oh, that's really too bad about your windshield. If only there was some way you could pay someone to keep this from happening again. Who knows how bad it could be next time.'

</comment><comment><USER3> First of all, Forbes reporting on hacking needs to be taken with a grain of salt. Second, he 'would' have 'should' have is easy to say after the fact.

</comment><comment><USER4> In other news, burglars say they would invade homes and take stuff if they were paid not to.

</comment><comment><USER5> I thought apple discovered it was a social hack, not a technical one... Or is this just PR?

<comment><USER6> If that script was used then Apple had a security flaw which allowed a very simple attack.

The article mentions ethical hackers and researchers. This guy posted an unpatched vulnerability to github. Even without a bug bounty program he could have submitted a report, waited for patch, and then wrote it up for some PR. Instead forbes gives him credibility he doesn't deserve.</comment></comment>


Cindy Gallop's Online Effort to Promote 'Real,' Not Porn-Fed, Sex - <AUTHOR> http://www.nytimes.com/2012/09/09/fashion/cindy-gallops-online-effort-to-promote-real-not-porn-fed-sex.html <comment><USER2> No matter how experienced you are sexually: The moment you try to judge what "real" sex is, you have stopped being reasonable. Even if the kind of sex younger people have today is actually influenced by porn, it is still real sex. Sexuality has always been the topic of every medium available, and I would assume that the influence between porn/erotic media/romantic media/sex ed, culture and privately practiced sexuality has never been a one way street. However, people tend to have a bit of a blind spot towards the influence of their own culture on their life.

So what she is making is just porn geared towards an audience with certain tastes, which is, of course, perfectly okay. Equating that with "real sex", however, is nothing but condescending.

<comment><USER3> Let's say that most people learn about families only through watching 1950s live-action TV; Ozzie and Harriet, The Donna Reed Show, Leave It To Beaver, and even I Love Lucy. Can I not say that those portray an idealized version of family life, rather than a real one? And that they should not be use as a guide for how a real family should interact?

Yet your logic would be that "the moment you try to judge what 'real' families are, you have stopped being reasonable." I do no think I am being unreasonable to say that Ozzie and Harriet does not portray a real family. Yes it was very popular, and that show is still used as short-hand expressing a longing for an idyllic bygone American life, but the situations and reactions were only valid for a very small percentage of the US. It took another 15 years, with shows like All in the Family, for more realistic themes like miscarriage, impotence, and racism to be included as part of the issues that families might deal with. Roseanne would also fit into that category, as Barr included a lesbian main character because Barr sought "to portray various slices of real life, and homosexuals are a reality."

Why can't I also say that most pornography does as good a job of portraying real sex as Leave It To Beaver does at portraying a real family with husband, wife, and two sons?

Our disagreement could be a simple as a difference in what 'real' means. I use it as "more likely to be characteristic of the general culture practice." You seem to interpret it as "whatever can happen in the physical world."

In which case, sure, I Love Lucy could be a perfectly accurate portrayal of a real family - unlikely, but it could. And it misses the point. That being: "The issue I'm tackling is not porn," she said. "It's the complete lack of open, healthy dialogue around porn and sex."

<comment><USER4> But _is_ porn "not real" in that regard?

Okay, the stories definitely don't happen (pizza boy/girl etc.) but nobody knows why those are a part of porn anyway, everyone just skips over them.

And I'm guessing the logistic problems make three+somes less frequent than in porn, the tabooness of it all as well I guess.

But the sex itself, is it _that_ much different than "real" sex? Are there really that many people having boring sex to make the amount of people coming close to and/or surpassing porn a statistical anomaly?

If I recall the movie correctly (yes, I only watched the movie), Kinsey found out people are _a lot_ kinkier than they let others believe once you really get down to finding out their true behind-the-scenes actions.

With the shifting social mores, has _that_ changed? Do we now let others think we are far kinkier than we really are?

<comment><USER5> It's not just the pizza delivery story lines. Almost everything about porn is fake.

The settings are fake, the lighting is fake, the actors' physical appearance is fake (make-up, post-processing, etc.), the emotions are fake. Often the actors lie about their age, their sexual experience, etc.

<comment><USER6> Someone on 4chan, a forum with many devoted experts on porn, said that most of the big penises are fake (i.e., prosthetics), too. (No one further down the thread contested the assertion).

<comment><USER7> I've seen prosthetic pussies in porn too (most notably in a movie where a man purportedly inserts nearly his entire head in a woman; the plastic prosthetic female sex bits were glaringly obvious).

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> I've got to agree with most everything here. Porn messed up a large number of my relationships in university.

I'm just under 30. When I was a teen, almost everyone around me had broadband (well, DSL). My family had dialup. So no internet porn for me. My father/mother did not have a stash nor did any of my friends. So no VHS porn. Somehow I managed to never watch porn during my secondary school years. I did do a lot of reading though. Alt.sex.stories was nice back then.

At university I got real internet, but still did not watch porn. (Roommates.) I did however start dating. These girls had seen porn. Lots of it, compared to me. It was odd, because they'd ask me to do things I found completely disgusting. (Voyeurism, anal, simulated rape.) The same girls would refuse to do things I thought deeply compassionate. (Oral sex was more appealing to me than straight sex.)

It was not until after school when I got my own place that I finally watched some porn and finally made the connection. All mainstream porn is horrid. At a most basic level it is about one thing and one thing only - giving the viewer something to look at.

The fundamental issue here is that for flesh to be seen, it has to have an unblocked line to the camera. If it is unblocked, no one can be touching it. If no one is touching it, it is being neglected and someone is not having as good a time as they could be. Nothing happens in porn because it feels good, only because it looks "good". You end up with truly ridiculous sex in porn where there is no physical contact between the two parties except at the genitalia. And even that is kept at a minimum! (I could provide specific if requested, but given my literary upbringing they might be a little too detailed and graphic for this forum ;)

It is about as bad as hackers on TV where they are using two keyboards simultaneously while a projector plasters their face with scrolling text. Sure looks impressive, but it just can not work that way.

</comment><comment><USER9> I had a fascinating discussion one time with a friend who was active in the local Asian-American arts community. She told me she had a filmmaker friend who was having trouble screening an art movie he had produced about East Asian sexuality. He had been claiming establishment discrimination is working to suppress his expression of the sexuality of a key demographic.

Thinking it was an interesting topic our conversation went something like:

Me: East Asian sexuality? That's a pretty focused topic.

Her: Yeah, he had a hard time getting actors who would have sex with each other on film.

Me: So....it's a porno?

Her: No! It's an art film!

Me: But they _actually_ had to have sex on film?

Her: Yes! Of course for authenticity! It's about the ways in which East Asians feel their sexuality is repressed compared to the West!

Me: Compared to the West?

Her: Yeah! The West is so open about sexuality, L.A. is the home of porn, Playboy is from the U.S. etc. etc.

Me: You...are aware that something like 50% of all porn on the planet comes out of just Japan. A country with half the population of the U.S. and several countries in East Asia tend to be visited by foreigners almost entirely for sex tourism? There are several studies that indicate the ready availability of cheap pornography catering to just about any proclivity imaginable has been a major contributor to the declining birthrates in the more developed East Asian economies? If anything, much of East Asia is oversexed!

Her: ???

Me: It sounds to me like your friend just wanted an excuse to make a porno, but saying it was an art film kept it from being part of the seedy underbelly of society and gave his project an air of legitimacy. He didn't, by chance ask if you were interested in acting in it were you?

Her: Yes, he did. _sigh_

So, I think people who are interested in the titillating parts of porn, but who are turned off by the various associations it has, will jump through all kinds of mental hoops to pretend that various attempts at it, perhaps by coming through non-traditional channels, are in fact _not_ porn when they most certainly _are_.

<comment><USER10> _> [S]everal countries in East Asia tend to be visited by foreigners almost entirely for sex tourism_

This is a common, unfortunate misconception about SEA countries. They aren't visited "almost entirely" for sex tourism. Sex tourists form only a small minority of visitors, but loom larger in our minds when we discuss them.

<comment><USER9> Yeah, probably a poor choice of words. I think my conceptual space is unfairly colored by the exploits of the military type I know.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> So basically she's making an amateur porn site, charging bucks for it, and dressing it up as moral supremacism?

I think fantasti.cc has been doing a great job at this for more than a year now (when they started featuring user-submitted porn on the frontpage and became more of a social network for sexy vids) ... except it's free and without the moral baggage.

However I do agree with her that most mainstream porn of the freely found online for free variety has become completely ridiculous.

That said, I might be willing to pay $5 to watch amateur porn that's longer than 3min bits and pieces and recorded at more than one pixel per frame.

<comment><USER11> I just visited fantasti.cc and was greeted with an ad showing some girl streching her ass, the copy claiming something about the most extreme whatever. I can't comment on the vids on the site, but this ad shows precisely what's wrong with most of the modern porn (and disqualifies the site for me). If Gallop makes a decent site showing people having more real sex, then I think she does more than "just build another amateur porn site".

And I don't think it's appropriate to protest against "moral baggage". She's just offering an alternative, a different point of view, not pushing for new legislation against the forms of intercourse she doesn't like.

<comment><USER12> Ads are just ads, I don't think it's fair to judge the site by them.

That said, I think fantasti.cc is a mixed bag. As a community driven site, there are users with excellent submissions and a lot of mainstream porn.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> Her TED video: <http://blog.ted.com/2009/12/02/cindy_gallop_ma/>

</comment><comment><USER14> So she basically started a glorified amateur porn paysite? For what it's worth, the real/amateur/homemade genres have been around since well before she went on her quest.

<comment><USER15> This is a naive viewpoint - everyone knows that "amateur" at the moment is often completely fake, and just another genre that porn companies cater for with completely fake videos.

<comment><USER16> And what's to stop this site from becoming fake "amateur"?

<comment><USER17> All the #realworldsex videos submitted to mlnp.tv are curated before they go live on the site. What that means to me is that I watch all the content to make sure that the people in the video are engaging in #realworldsex that is consensual and that they aren't simply replicating porn cliches (certain angles, positions) simply for the sake of it. If I suspect that a creator is doing this - I won't just reject it outright - I'll contact them to get more of a backstory and go from there. #realworldsex is as varied as it possibly can be and we want to keep it that way. We just want to make sure that the content on our site is consensual, cliche free and contextualized. If it's creative and comical all the better.

-Sarah, Madam Curator, MLNP.tv

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER18> Realistic porn is an already existing subset of porn. A maybe counter- intuitive effect of filmmaking is that well-produced films in the likes of x-art.com appear more realistic and cute than what amateurs upload. A good director will make us forget that the camera is there and that it's all staged.

<comment><USER12> To me, X-Art and similar producers always felt like the other opposite of fake porn. It's not harsh and violent like plenty of mainstream porn, but the participants are still very much acting for the camera.

I think the only website I know where, even tough they never try to disguise it as non-porn, the participants actually seem to enjoy themselves consistently is Abbywinters.

</comment></comment><comment><USER19> Next up ... an online effort to promote `Real`, not Twilight/50 Shades of Grey, relationships ...

</comment><comment><USER20> She's found a real problem, but not necessarily a solution (or a business), sadly. Stuff like this has been around since porn's been around.

The reason porn addresses something of a human need is that it provides intense sexual stimulation to people without access to (or even the emotional maturity for) sexual relationships. I hate to say it, but the emotional needs of a beautiful woman are pretty academic to a 19 year old guy that hasn't figured out how to talk to girls or an overweight 45 year old guy whose options are limited. I doubt that disabusing them of porn's ridiculous conventions is going to substantively improve things for them. I mean, it's just hard to compete with intense sexual release.

The real opportunity is for authors/educators/leaders/academics that can help guys without access to sex understand sex and relationships in a truly useful way. We've seen this with things like the world of "seduction education" and things like "nofap" on reddit.

Actually, reddit is a real problem I see for her business - there are already active, technically astute and fairly well moderated forums for exactly these types of discussions.

<comment><USER21> Your view of the porn-consuming demographic is offensively myopic.

</comment></comment><comment><USER22> Porn as prescriptive propaganda. There's already, and has always been, a market for depictions of non-crazy sex between couples in a relationship. It's just a minor market amoungst many, and IMO, not any less perverse and odd.

Complaining about porn not being real is similar to claiming soccer isn't real. "Real people don't run that fast." "He's just trying to impress the cameras." "What he just did was super dangerous." But it is real, because those are human beings having sex, so if "real" as a word has any meaning, it's real. But the word is being used as a prescriptive code as in the phrase "real women," which simply means "women who are not thin."

Just because models being used in "real" campaigns are not thin does not make them representative of the general population - they are more attractive, their bodies in rarer proportions, they are still _thinner_ , and they lack the actually thin - because 'real'ness is simply a reaction to thiness. The usage of the word "real" in that industry is simply disguising that reaction as a call to authenticity, something that advertisers have done since the beginning of advertising.

If the models were as the general population, why would anyone pay to look at them? If professional footballers played the same game as wekend footballers, why would anyone pay to look at them? If people in porn looked like you and your girlfriend and had sex like you and your girlfriend, why would you pay to watch?

If "real" models become the standard, and you are a thin person, will you have to go underground to find representations of people like you in the media?

I'm just being silly, though. This clarion call for real porn is cyclical, and predictable in its failure - because that market is already being pandered to, and because most people would rather have real sex tham watch it. We have terms for people who want to watch averagely attractive people have average sex within a loving relationship. Peeping Toms.

<comment><USER23> I think you misunderstood. She doesn't mean "real sex" as in normal-looking people. She means real sex in terms of behavior. The article says the site is a reaction to young men who have sex in the manner of porn (which I assume means a certain amount of macho performance, posing, a manner of making sounds and talking during sex, etc.) as opposed to the manner in which real people tend to have sex.

There is a very BIG market for "amateur porn" which is filled with "normal- looking" people as opposed to porn stars. This is more about education and promoting a different vision of the behavioral side of sex.

<comment><USER22> I didn't. And I agree - the market for normal people having vanilla sex is well served. People who are looking for it, get it. Most people are looking for stunt people having stunt sex.

>This is more about education and promoting a different vision of the behavioral side of sex.

It's moral education, promoting a particular vision of how she thinks people should be having sex. My guess is that it's also going to be a bit puritan, with soft focus, obstructive camera angles and a lot of cuts. It will probably make people whose sex lives are pretty statistically normal feel perverted and judged.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER24> Gallop's not the first one to do this.

I don't know why I know this, but Tony Comstock made "real love, real sex" videos at while at <http://www.comstockfilms.com/> . They're intended to be "documentaries that simultaneously explore the vital role of sexual pleasure in committed relationships and the problematic place of explicit sexuality in cinema"

He also has a recent blog post about why he stopped making the films: [http://www.tonycomstock.com/2011/09/12/why-i-dont-make- movie...](http://www.tonycomstock.com/2011/09/12/why-i-dont-make-movies- anymore-and-what-i-do-instead/)

<comment><USER25> Absolutely. What I'm setting out to do is help my friends in porn break down the wall between society and the non-socially acceptable 'parallel universe' that porn exists in. This is a blog post & interview with me on how I want to help the porn industry as a whole:

[http://talkabout.makelovenotporn.tv/post/30727363965/the- bus...](http://talkabout.makelovenotporn.tv/post/30727363965/the-business-of- makelovenotporn)

</comment></comment><comment><USER26> I prefer this TEDX talk to Gallop's on a similar subject. <http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wSF82AwSDiU>

</comment><comment><USER27> So what exact porn moves is she talking about? I watch a fair amount of porn, and a lot of the positions are obviously uncomfortable and just for show. Even if it wasn't obvious at first, it would be as soon as you tried them.

However, I do think porn has introduced me to some new, valuable ideas. Maybe this lady has just had some bad lovers? Anyway, while I think the rationale is condescending, I'm all for some more "natural" looking porn on the market.

<comment><USER25> If you check out <http://makelovenotporn.com/> you'll see what I'm talking about. And no, the lovers that inspired MLNP to begin with were only a few vs a bunch of really great ones :) MLNP is not anti-porn: the issue I'm tackling, as I say in the NY Times piece, is the lack in our society of an open healthy discussion around sex and porn, that would enable more people to bring more of a real-world mindset when viewing what is essentially artificial entertainment. My entire message with MLNP boils down to simply 'talk about it'. If you go to the About page on MakeLoveNotPorn.com, you'll see why this is an issue.

<comment><USER28> I visited that site and was greeted with such valuable insight as "in porn, they love to do X, but in real world, some people like to do X and some do not, it's a personal choice". You don't say! Are we really got to the point that such things need to be spelled out? What next - obligatory warnings on movies saying "the movie is not real life, you do not have to copy characters in the movie, it is your choice how to live your life"? This just makes me sad.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER29> I always viewed porn actors as some kind of gladiatorial occupation. possessing bodies and skills practiced (and often designed)for a specific cause. the disclaimer to me, is implicit. In the same way that most action movies are not in any way a proper schooling on how to handle weapons, the viewer will find very quickly in a real life encounter that his actions are not working for him/her.

There is no doubt that the easy access to porn is shaping contemporary expressions of sexuality for all genders. But maybe focusing on just young 20 something men as a sexual partner can hold a problem in an of itself.

From my late thirties point of view... early twenties don't know much about anything.

As a sidenote:

So much of porn is free to access, i wonder about the paywall (what with the "educational" statement, why not make it free? and get Durex or Astroglide to foot the bill". Making a the site a paysite, just makes it yet another specialized porn site, albeit for specific tastes.

<comment><USER25> My launch post on our blog explains our business model and how I designed MLNPTV as a circular ecosystem. It's very easy to watch #realworldsex videos for free: all you have to do is contribute them yourself, and then use the money other members pay into your account to watch whatever you want :)

[http://talkabout.makelovenotporn.tv/post/29383253943/hellowo...](http://talkabout.makelovenotporn.tv/post/29383253943/helloworld)

</comment></comment><comment><USER30> Ah yes, "porn isn't real".

Neither are romantic comedies, princess stories, and the rest of the relationship-porn genre.

</comment><comment><USER25> Thanks so much everyone for this great discussion. For anyone interested, you can read more about what my team and I are building and our social mission, business model and circular ecosystem on our blog: <http://talkabout.makelovenotporn.tv/>

Do sign up for beta, and we would love your #realworldsex submissions :) - anyone contributing content gets fast-tracked into beta immediately. Just email firstname.lastname@example.com - many thanks.

</comment><comment><USER31> Fascinating discussion, lots of great points. Seems like much of the modern porn industry is scripted like the floor exercises in a gymnastics event, you have to have moves A, B, C, Etc., and a great dismount. Sort of the porn version of the hero's journey. The comments here suggest the OP might be more effective in her mission if she either illustrated effectively the scripted nature of porn or commissioned specific examples of better? healthier? more loving? sex.

<comment><USER25> That's precisely what I'm doing - commissioning from all of you: crowdsourced, user-generated #realworldsex :) You can read the details of what I and my team are building on our blog: <http://talkabout.makelovenotporn.tv/>

</comment></comment><comment><USER32> A bit off-topic:

Has anyone ever tried to correlate societies porn consumption with the decline of birthrate? I could imagine different countries would have different access to porn, maybe this has an effect?

Of course, Internet porn is only around for a decade and birthrate decline for much longer, but maybe even cheap color print and VHS had lasting effects, not just the pill and women education. Man might not be as horny anymore as the used to be.

<comment><USER33> I'm pretty sure you'd get a positive correlation - but a worthless one.

<comment><USER32> Likely. But maybe there is enough control groups? Societies with less or minimal porn consumption?

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER34> Easy, willing to sleep around, kind of trashy: all the hallmarks of girls many boys in high school secretly were okay fantasizing about. I fail to see the virtue she's advocating. This lady (anyone else thinking "blecch!"?) hasn't reigned in any vice or made this world a better place.

<comment><USER21> She's also succeeded in completely missing her stated demographic by charging for it. I do sense a charlatan.

<comment><USER25> This is a short video interview with me on the business of MakeLoveNotPorn:

[http://lynseyg.com/cindy-gallop-will-make-you-think-and- brin...](http://lynseyg.com/cindy-gallop-will-make-you-think-and-bring-you- hot-sex-videos-all-at-the-same-time/)

and my launch post on the details of our business model and why I designed it the way that I did:

[http://talkabout.makelovenotporn.tv/post/29383253943/hellowo...](http://talkabout.makelovenotporn.tv/post/29383253943/helloworld)

Yours, Charlatan :)

<comment><USER21> <blush>

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER28> I find it amazing that any kind of sex needs to be "promoted". I was always thinking that's one of the things people would do as much as they can get without any promoting required.

</comment><comment><USER35> The suit is back!</comment>


Ask HN: Is Windows 10 technically any good (& how does it compare to Linux)? - <AUTHOR> <comment><USER2> Windows 10 will never compare to linux, but it really depends on what you are needing out of your operating system. There is a reason win10 included an ubuntu bash shell into their os recently ;)

</comment><comment><USER3> I have 2 identical computers running windows 10 and Ubuntu 16.10 and I will say that the room gets a whole lot hotter when the Windows machine is on.</comment>


Ask HN: Because there is no "hacker news" in Spanish? - <AUTHOR> I was thinking. And I would like to know why there is no community in Spanish within "hacekr news". Only it. <comment><USER2> Native Spanish speaker from Paraguay, here.

Perhaps part of the reason is that many "hacker-geeks" who speak Spanish natively and are highly vocal as to being able to form an online community, tend to have viewpoints which are even more radical to the left than those from the U.S. At least, that was my experience with barrapunto, which is/was something like the Spanish version of Slashdot. Too left-wing for my stomach, and they can also be extreme in their communication. Suffice it to say, I was doxxed there and my sin was to be more conservative than other users. After that, I left, never to return there. Why would I lose my time with such people?

In English language sites such as HN, most people try to be civil and their views, statistically speaking, are more moderate in my experience.

</comment><comment><USER3> Hi from Argentina!

I'm not sure if you want:

1) A clone of HN in Spanish

2) Know if there are many users of HN that speak Spanish

There are many users here that speak other languages (in particular Spanish). Most of the time it is not visible. I only say that I'm from Argentina when it is relevant (a local new, some localization problem, some crazy idea for a new kind of money). But if you read the comment of some users you can see some patterns. For example if they post news from a particular country, errors in the usage of the English language, replies to post in another language.

</comment><comment><USER4> There's a lot of online apps and resources missing in Spanish. Seems odd since it's the second most common native language, and people tend to prefer using software in their native language.</comment>


Show HN: Task v3.0.0 Is Released - <AUTHOR> https://github.com/go-task/task/releases/tag/v3.0.0 <comment><AUTHOR> Hi everybody, author here!

Task is a build tool / task runner that can be used to automate stuff, like code generation and all kind of development tasks.

You can think of it as an alternative to Make (Makefile).

The offical website / documentation is here: [https://taskfile.dev/](https://taskfile.dev/)</comment>


Graphic of Michael Jackson's hits over time - <AUTHOR> http://www.quotesque.net/archives/2009/07/mj_datasphere.html

<comment><USER2> I'm pretty sure that this wasn't the point, but that's among the worst info- graphics I've ever seen.

\- unreadably small

\- no scale

\- completely gratuitous circular presentation

Seriously. It's awful.

<comment><USER3> I agree that it's small and I am not convinced by the circular projection either. I was posting that myself.

But what do you mean for "no scale"?

Each slice is scaled according to the number of listeners and the color gives another dimension (tracks 'loved' by the users).

<comment><USER4> I'm not sure exactly what the parents means, but In my opinion there should be a color bar that shows what the lightest color and darkest color on the board means, actually probably two color bars, one for each ring. This would be useful even if color is being used only as a relative measure not as an absolute "number of times loved".

Using color as an axis can be notoriously difficult to do properly/clearly (consider linear vs logarithmic mappings or using hue, saturation and/or value together to show one dimensional data) without even getting into aesthetic considerations.

Lest you think that I am being too critical, the fact that the graphic designer only modulated color value and not hue and saturation makes this chart better than some that I have seen.</comment></comment></comment>