Google Green - The Story of Send - <AUTHOR> http://www.google.com/green/storyofsend <comment><USER2> Beautiful animation, which almost perfectly reflects Google's transformation from a engineering-driven tech company with a flair for beautiful solutions to a advertising-driven "ideas" company with a penchant for meaningless marketspeak. Wow, their servers are 93% efficient!

I was sort of hoping it would be an explanation of why they thought it was a good idea to have the Send button in one spot for new messages and in another when you reply. Double tricky bonus points for putting the Spam button in the same place as the send button when it moves!

<comment><USER3> It's not at all marketspeak: [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Power_supply_unit_(computer)#Ef...](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Power_supply_unit_\(computer\)#Efficiency)

<comment><USER2> Upvoted because I appreciate pedantic responses, but I'm familiar with PSU efficiency standards. I still feel confident saying it is nonsense to say that "We also custom-build all of our servers so they are 93% efficient" and would bet that this was written by a non-technical marketing person.

My overclocked I7 downstairs is also using a power supply that claims to be 90%+ efficient, and blows out enough hot air to warm the room. But this is from the processor, not the PSU. It would not make any sense to say that the entire computer is 90% efficient unless we were rating it as a space heater, in which case I'd feel safe claiming 99%+.

I don't even know what it would mean to say that a given server is X% efficient. A percentage of what?

<comment><USER4> Actually, I think this is a case of an engineer saying something that is later taken out of context and used by a marketing person.

One of the videos has a person explaining about optimizing power distribution in data centers and she specifically mentions using AC/DC converters of 90%+ efficiency.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> Push your back and forward buttons on your browser in the middle of one of the animations. That is seriously cool.

<comment><USER6> And it even works correctly in Firefox 3.6 (actually Camino), including sounds.

I am impressed.

</comment></comment><comment><USER7> > the temperature on our server floors at a warm 80 degrees

and after ten seconds of open mouthed astonishment, my metric brain realizes they are probably talking about Fahrenheit

<comment><USER8> Also:

> That means we don't need as much energy-intensive air-conditioning, and our > employees get to wear shorts to work.

As someone who is in warm datacenters often, "get to" is a bit of a positive spin on it...

</comment></comment><comment><USER9> On the way to the last information spot, your Google Mail goes through an undisclosed rack. This rack symbolizes the new NSA data spy center in Utah.

<comment><USER10> That quick stop caught my attention too. I'm thinking the same as you as to what it symbolizes. If so, happy to see it was at least represented on the tour.

</comment></comment><comment><USER11> Insanely cool!

Any resident Googlers out here: Who works on such projects? Is it a 20% project? Or there is some dedicated team to do stuff like this?

Edit: Downvotes? Really?

<comment><USER12> It was done in part by an agency called B-Reel. They do quite a bit of work with Google.

<http://www.b-reel.com/>

</comment></comment><comment><USER13> After watching this video, can anyone still justify the existence of Adobe Flash in this world?

<comment><USER14> Yes - this demo pegged my 4 core cpu on Chrome/Windows 64.

<comment><USER15> That seems unlikely. For an accelerated tab you'll have the Tab process, the GPU process, and the Browser process. Even if you pegged all three (which is extremely unlikely considering the content), you'd still have a core to spare.

There's a point in there about the relative maturity of graphics code, but let's keep things honest (also, I think the Mac/Windows divide on Flash would be lessened if everyone had to use Flash on the other platform for a while. Imagine your CPU doing that on virtually every page that decides to embed a Flash ad and you'll get some idea of what it's like on a Mac).

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> How was this made? The browser scrollbar is even perfectly useable.

<comment><USER17> Very well, that's how. A quick look reveals that each scene is a section, the assets are linked with data attributes, and the rest is fancy combinations of TweenJS and Three.js animations, coordinated by /assets/js/main.min.js (which also handles the invisible history).

<comment><USER18> It also appears that Swiffy, the SWF-to-HTML converter (<http://www.google.com/doubleclick/studio/swiffy/>) was used for helping to generate some of those animations.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER19> I can't decide whether this is in explanation or apology for the fact that gmail is _crazy_ slow.

<comment><USER20> My GMail is consistently faster than my corporate Outlook, on the LAN, in a company with ~200 employees. This has been true of every company I've worked at.

<comment><USER19> I don't currently have Outlook/Exchange. I suppose if I did it's possible that gmail would seem much nicer to me than it currently does.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER21> Not too detailed, but a nice overview that I think succeeds in having some information while being engaging.

The only thing that particularly confused me was this line:

> We also custom-build all of our servers so they are 93% efficient.

How do you measure overall efficiency of a server as a percentage, rather than some kind of compute-per-watt metric? I assume it's not 93% of the theoretically optimal electron->computron conversion factor. ;-) The only thing I can guess is that it's the average efficiency of the power supplies?

<comment><USER22> > The only thing I can guess is that it's the average efficiency of the power > supplies?

Googling suggests the most efficient server power power supplies available do indeed have average efficiencies of around 93% (e.g. <http://goo.gl/R1HqV> ), so yup, that seems likely.

</comment></comment><comment><USER23> Can anyone explain the following in the code?

                  Title 2

                  Chupa chups caramels tart carrot cake gum bears bear claw. Topping powder chocolate
                  bar dragée. Tootsie roll tart lollipop pastry pi donut faworki danish. Jelly beans
                  pudding jujubes bear claw jello marshmallow marzipan. Icing powder jelly beans. Pie
                  sweetly rolling topping donut ice cream sweet roll cake a cheesecake. Candy chocolate
                  cake gummies powder pudding pie sweet.

Some sort of placeholder used to size elementS?

<comment><USER24> Probably a list of future Android version names :)

</comment></comment><comment><USER25> Oh wow, a blank white screen. Took me a while to figure out what's going on, but I disabled Javascript for google.com (makes their search result pages _so_ much less annoying).

Guess they forgot to put a "please enable JS to view this" message in.

But it looks nice! I haven't watched it entirely yet, though.

</comment><comment><USER26> The data you send through google spends very little time touching their own equipment, so the energy efficiency is of little , if any impact unless it can be spread to a majority of the providers whose equipment my data touches on its was to and from google.. A quick traceroute shows me that there ar 10 router hops in between my Laptop and www.gmail.com. If all the 10 devices are not 'green' , then what net impact does Google's data center being 'green' have?

<comment><USER27> Transmission is a small fraction of the work that goes into your email experience.

</comment></comment><comment><USER28> _100 Searches = 1 hour of a laptop_

Really? That seems like a heck of a lot for just 100 searches. I guess this must be including all the googlebot etc. consumption as well.

<comment><USER29> Yup, that caught my attention too. And i think it puts things in perspective - Google search is a really really complex system. The fact that 1 year of Gmail usage roughly translates to about only 6% power usage as 100 searches is insane.

</comment></comment><comment><USER30> My first thought was green washing, but I do not know enough about Google to judge. Are they really this environmentally aware?

<comment><USER31> As mentioned, they are relentlessly green because they're in a wonderful situation where it saves them a lot of money.

The green washing aspects would be carbon offsets and such because those are still up for debate as to whether they really have any positive net effect.

Edit: Got a downvote so I thought I'd clarify. Carbon offsets are the act of paying for carbon neutrality. No matter how efficient or environmentally friendly Google is, they can't possibly be carbon neutral with all their energy use unless they use primarily nuclear power with some hydro, solar and wind built in. Therefore they buy carbon offsets, <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Carbon_offset>, which allow them to advertise that they're carbon neutral. The controversy over them stems from the fact that they're very similar to indulgences from the catholic church in the time of Martin Luther; paying for greenness isn't actually being green.

<comment><USER32> Google picks offsetting projects that are more valuable than average; details are here: [http://static.googleusercontent.com/external_content/untrust...](http://static.googleusercontent.com/external_content/untrusted_dlcp/www.google.com/en/us/green/pdfs/google- carbon-offsets.pdf)

I saw a talk recently about how much solar and wind power Google buys, and it's not at all cost effective. Google does it because they think it's cool, not because it saves them money. (But, the rate of return on the investment into wind infrastructure tends to be pretty good; wind power can be sold at a higher price than regular power.)

As an example, look at the Googleplex in Maps some time; all the parking spaces are covered with solar cells to charge the specially-converted fleet of plug-in-hybrids available for employees to borrow during the day. Building solar cells and custom-modding cars to give to employees for free is not exactly "saving them a lot of money". But it sure is cool.

<comment><USER27> Google is one of the top few investors in solar/wind power generation projects in the US, not just buying watts, and it is for profit/savings, not a donation.

<comment><USER32> Could you explain your calculations on that? How is building new infrastructure with brand new technology cheaper than plugging into the existing infrastructure?

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER33> In Chromium on my netbook, I could not figure out how to view this awesome thing that everyone's talking about. It looks like the page is supposed to scroll down, but I could not do it for lack of a vertical scrollbar. The horizontal scrollbar doesn't reveal anything useful.

<comment><USER34> Click the "Start The Story" button (if you see it). It animates through a scene in a side-scrolling manner, but there's no manual scrolling.

<comment><USER33> Thanks. I saw that button after scaling the page down a couple of steps. Really amazing stuff.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER35> If google was truly sincere about going green then it wouldn't be so protective of it's data centre energy efficiency innovations. It's great that they're doing lots of work to benefit themselves - but don't try to spin it like it's done out of concern for the environment.

<comment><USER36> They did help start this: <http://www.climatesaverscomputing.org/about>

</comment></comment><comment><USER37> Although the page and everything on it are beautiful, I can't help but think that this kind of portrayal perpetuates the "series of tubes" myth about how the internet functions.

</comment><comment><USER38> Looks totally messed up in Safari for Windows. I just started using it, is that typical of WinSafari with newfangled HTML5 type stuff?

</comment><comment><USER39> This is absolutely delightful. Interacting with this graphic practically tickled.</comment>


Ask HN: Which startups are working on solving the housing crisis/urbanization? - <AUTHOR> <comment><USER2> Housing and other real-estate development projects require much more money than moves around the startup ecosystem and such projects don't offer the sort of returns that those investors typically seek. Throw a billion dollars at an active urban real-estate market and maybe it moves a little and maybe it provides a low teens internal rate of return. There aren't unicorns in real- estate. It's a place where pension funds and insurance companies park assets for the term of fifteen and thirty year mortgages by backing project types with track records, e.g. Class A office space.

To put it another way, adding a 1000 rental units in a place like San Francisco at an affordable $200,000 each (as if it were possible) requires two hundred million dollars in funding and would take four or five years for acquisition, entitlement, construction and occupancy under the best of circumstances. Rent them out at $3000 per month and the income is $36,000,000 a year. After ten years or so, assuming that the market doesn't go south, there's the potential for a pretty good return...but those just ain't startup numbers and venture capital timelines.

And that's just a few units in one local market. At scale the amount of capital required is vast.

<comment><USER3> I often lazily wonder who builds all the office space in large cities. I'd realised it was megacorps who are in it for the long haul, didn't think of it as backing pensions and similar assets.

I wonder if a property startup might be possible in countries where property is far, far cheaper. Micro-loans, divided and pooled investments, that sort of thing. Particularly if funders from comparatively wealthy nations want to invest in "business with a conscience" type startups. In the charity sector, even.

The returns might not be large, but that's not what all startups are about. For the more cynical, there may be off-shoring and tax benefits.

<comment><USER4> Yep, I've worked at a pension fund, and they find lots of ways to diversify their investments. In addition to the usual stocks and bonds, they invest in real estate all over the US, owning a number of commercial high rise buildings in cities around the country.

They have the money to finance these big building projects, and it the rent they generate usually provides them with steady returns over the long term.

I hadn't heard of them investing in residential properties, but it wouldn't surprise me if they owned some.</comment></comment></comment>


For Some, Scientists Aren't the Authority on Science - happy-go-lucky http://www.npr.org/sections/13.7/2016/11/28/503551431/for-some-scientists-aren-t-the-authority-on-science <comment><AUTHOR> People treat science like it's a religious text, or a set of unalterable truths, and it's not.

Science is a method; period.

Science is a method humans use in order to produce a reproducible experiment -or sets of experiments- in order to collect data. The collected data is only as good as the tools we utilize to do our measuring. As such, when our tools improve, so does accuracy of the data we collect.

There are a number of issues with this. The data can be incorrect, or incorrectly attributed as a causation instead of a correlation. The data can be manipulated in order to prove a bad theory. The tools can be flawed or not precise enough. The peers reviewing the data can be manipulated into consensus. The theory itself may be fundamentally flawed, but the inaccuracies of the tools used can seem to prove the theory (see: electron shells and superposition).

Science -at its most basic- is a checklist. That checklist ensures that an experiment is both reproducible and as accurate as our data gathering tools allow -at the time.

When our tools improve, change, or become obsolete our understanding must also. That's why to some people science always seems to have two heads and is double-tongued.

As with most other things, education is the key to solving this bad-perception of science, scientists, and the data collected from experimentation and observation.

<comment><USER2> By the definition of science you are using, wouldn't much of climate science, oceanography, geology, astronomy, cosmology, paleontology, and archaeology not be science? In all of those fields we have limited if any ability to conduct experiments.

<comment><USER3> It's a matter of degree, but to some extent, yes.

The conflation of experimentally verifiable science and observational science (and, even more so, social sciences) is the crux of the issue. This is not to say that observational or social sciences are useless, but that they are less authoritative and more open to confounding variables than experimental science. People use the results of the later as if they have the authority of the former.

It is quite useful rhetorically and, unfortunately, as is so often the case, good rhetoric wins.

What, do you hate science?

<comment><USER4> Whole fields have been devoted to defining science; I don't think experiment is necessary to the scientific endeavor. Experiments in many fields, for example, often suffer from problems related to generalizability or applicability to real-world scenarios. It's a major reason for observational science, although not the only one. Problems with replicability have also been shown to be just as endemic to fields dominated by experiments as those more influenced by observation, if not more so, across different scales of analysis from the molecular to the societal.

I think a better definition of what science is is broader, something like "logical argument based on empirical observations," although that too isn't right. I think the appeal of experiments is in line with that, to the extent that you accept that the experimental rationale involves a logical argument pertaining to randomization over potential confounds.

The underlying problem being discussed in the article, to me, is the denial by scientists that science is fundamentally a human endeavor, subject to all the problems of humans: things like greed, deceit, ideology, and so forth. Scientists like to pretend that they are somehow above all that, which means they pretend it doesn't exist, which makes the effects of human weaknesses in science all the more insidious. We see this play out with the problems in academics, financial conflicts of interest, and so forth.

What happens is that a certain cultural subgroup, already primed to be skeptical of science through their social context, recognizes the human weaknesses of science. They then make the mistake of rejecting science wholesale because of this. Scientists, in turn, often make the mistake of rejecting the notion of human influences on science, thereby placing undue confidence in their conclusions, leading to a lack of accountability or explanation when failures occur. Some degree of evolution in scientific theory is due to random variation, or lack of appropriate data, but some of it is due to human factors.

<comment><USER3> _I think a better definition of what science is is broader_

See how easy it is?

Why do you hate a broad, inclusive definition of science?

<comment><USER5> Why do you think that another point of view is "hate"? You used this word twice when faced with a different opinion.

<comment><USER3> Parody.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> If anyone on the left was paying attention they would know that it isn't science -v- anti-science as they demonize it but politicized science -v- independent science. It is amazing to me that the same people that dismiss "tobacco" or "soda industry" science/scientists have no problem accepting "government" science at face value. That govt now funds the vast majority of scientific research in the world it should come as no surprise that a lot of it such "science" is used to justify increasing govt power. This is not an explicit policy or devious strategy but implicit outcome of govt funded science performed by real human beings who respond to incentives. Read Ayn Rand's "The Establishing of an Establishment" in "Philosophy:Who Needs It" for a good explanation of the process. The politicization of science is destroying the credibility of science which should come as no surprise.

NB: Before anyone jumps to conclusions; not a Trump supporter and did not vote for him. Also, I think that global warming is probably true based on historical and temperature records (but I put almost zero confidence in "climate models") but it is not nearly as dire as the scaremongers suggest.

<comment><USER7> > I think that global warming is probably true based on historical and > temperature records (but I put almost zero confidence in "climate models") > but it is not nearly as dire as the scaremongers suggest.

Based on what? I'm asking seriously.

I assume you're not a climate scientist. So, 95%+ of climate scientists (and realistically, more than that) believe that the threat is dire and also believe that our current models are accurate within reasonable margins of error. Given this, isn't it hubris to think you know more about this topic than they?

Consider Dunning-Kruger. The people who've spent their lives studying the climate are the ones _most skeptical_ of their own understanding of the problem, and yet they're also the ones sounding the alarm as loud as they can.

What's the tipping point where you decide to accept the findings of essentially everyone in the field?

<comment><USER8> The IPCC says:

"It is extremely likely [95 percent confidence] more than half of the observed increase in global average surface temperature from 1951 to 2010 was caused by the anthropogenic increase in greenhouse gas concentrations and other anthropogenic forcings together."

That is very different from 95% of climate scientists think that the threat is dire.

The IPCC says that perhaps 51% of the increase in temperature is due to greenhouse gasses AND other anthropogenic forcings, you're saying something quite different.

That is the consensus.

<comment><USER9> "Multiple studies published in peer-reviewed scientific journals1 show that 97 percent or more of actively publishing climate scientists agree: Climate- warming trends over the past century are extremely likely due to human activities."

From [http://climate.nasa.gov/scientific- consensus/](http://climate.nasa.gov/scientific-consensus/)

<comment><USER6> " _Multiple studies published in peer-reviewed scientific journals show that 97 percent or more of actively publishing climate scientists funded by the government agree: The government should fund more climate research_ "

FTFY. I am joking but I think there is a serious credibility issue here. I forget who but some famous science researcher (not in climate research) once said that the conclusion of every research paper is, more funding is needed. How does that institutionalized mindset impact objectivity and who is paying for most of the research today? As I mentioned this is not an overt policy or strategy but just the way things work out once the government takes over funding science research. Read Rand on "The Establishing of the Establishment" for a clear discussion of how it works insidiously to corrupt even an honest man.

If you saw my reply to stouset then imagine that I tried to have a career in climate research. If you aren't "all in" on the validity of the models you don't get jobs, you don't get published and you don't have a career. And that's just questioning the validity of the models not even questioning that global warming is caused by man.

Moreover, the qualifier "peer-reviewed" is one of the standards being undercut by government funded science. If all your peers have to "go along to get along" then the independence of their review has to be questioned. There was the email leaks a few years back where it was revealed that climate researchers were publicly telling other researchers who disagreed with the methods or conclusions to publish in peer-reviewed journals if they wanted to be heard. But privately, through back channels and political pull, they got papers spiked and opponents blackballed and threatened boycotts of journals that published any "anti" papers. This is not science, it is politics.

<comment><USER7> > If you saw my reply to stouset then imagine that I tried to have a career in > climate research. If you aren't "all in" on the validity of the models you > don't get jobs, you don't get published and you don't have a career. And > that's just questioning the validity of the models not even questioning that > global warming is caused by man.

This sort of problem has historically corrected itself[1]. Unfortunately for us, with regard to the climate, the numbers keep "correcting" themself in the wrong direction.

[1]: [http://calteches.library.caltech.edu/51/2/CargoCult.htm](http://calteches.library.caltech.edu/51/2/CargoCult.htm)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> Well within in nonevangelicals, this article was popular for a while.

The Food Pyramid That Made Us Fat [http://www.dailykos.com/story/2011/1/29/934261/-](http://www.dailykos.com/story/2011/1/29/934261/-)

Not to mention the anti-vaccine people on all sides of the political and religious spectrum.

This article really suggests to me a long term trend in the establishments loosing their credibility across multiple groups of people or at least that is the real issue.

<comment><USER11> This comment remimded me of an article titled "The death of expertise" : [http://thefederalist.com/2014/01/17/the-death-of- expertise/](http://thefederalist.com/2014/01/17/the-death-of-expertise/)

I just re-submitted it to HN for another discussion: [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13058847](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13058847)

</comment></comment><comment><USER12> There are within science actually two types of "science". The one makes precise models and therefore predictions and treats failures of those models and predictions as a big deal, and takes verification so seriously that they would rather delay publication to make sure they results are absolutely correct and not a statistical anomaly. Examples of the first include the LHC and Higgs-Boson and LIGO and gravitional wave detection.

The other type of science practically believes that "science" exists as a purely social construct where you convince others that you have ideas that are true. This science gives p-hacking, and irreproducible studies, and models and predictions that are wrong but that's ok because the over-arching theory is just fine. Examples of this are social sciences.

Also, the second type of "science" seems to insert itself into media and be involved with telling people how they should live their lives. An example of this is the dietary industry with "science" backing.

It turns out, the news media gives heavy preference to the second type of "science", the one with crappy models and predictions, but which the media feel can more easily become clickbait. Which article would you think most people would click on - "An explanation of gravity waves", or "Scientists say eating <common food> is killing you". In addition, because there is less dependence on precise models, the inherent bias of the "scientist" comes into play.

Because of this, the science that most people see in popular media is not where precise models get refined, but one where outlandish predictions are made and then discarded for the opposite outlandish prediction.

After being exposed to this, people decide that science changes from day to day, and that "scientists" are just really influence hungry people just out to tell people how to live their lives and claiming they should be listened to because they have some special knowledge or qualification - just like the "clergy" in the Middle Ages.

PS: The left also has a low opinion of science. You can see this when you see people critiquing studies because they come from oil companies, tobacco companies, or sugar companies. If they really believed in science, they would know that science works regardless of the background of the people involved.

</comment><comment><USER13> For any interested: [http://sci-hub.cc/10.1177/0963662516661090](http://sci- hub.cc/10.1177/0963662516661090)

The actual paper, since this chain has been largely derailed for the confused to come in and conflate media/reporting with science.

</comment><comment><USER14> Let us not turn science into a religion. Common sense goes a long way. The more politically controversial the topic, the less likely it is that science on it will be unbiased or valid at all. Religious organisations I don't even comment on.

<comment><USER15> Actually, I'd prefer if science, the worship of knowledge and the quest for enlightenment, WERE a religion. That is, if it were recognized as a /belief system/ and had the same tax benefits that religious organizations have.

<comment><USER16> I'm sure that those above who feel like the climate science that suggests man is contributing to global warming somehow benefits the government, would still suggest that the religious funding science gets is still clouding it's judgement. Funny that this never comes up when discussing the political agenda of Evangelicals...

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER17> Are scientists the authority on behavioral genetics, hmm? How does the average NYT reader feel about the results of that field?

<comment><USER18> I feel like there are some specific results from behavioral genetics that you think would be controversial among Left-leaning people. Would you care to elaborate?

<comment><USER17> There are specific results that are especially unpalatable, but I'm thinking more of the general conclusion that all human behavioral traits are heritable.

[https://jaymans.wordpress.com/2012/12/31/all-human- behaviora...](https://jaymans.wordpress.com/2012/12/31/all-human-behavioral- traits-are-heritable/)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER19> It's also important to hold science accountable with a healthy level of skepticism.

There have only been a few reports on HN of bad science, journal bias, biased studies, and even potentially coverups (Theranos), but there are a lot more that occur that we don't notice. Science is not always real. Read past the headline, compare results, and follow the money.

<comment><USER20> If you say that, it pretty much shows you don't understand how science works.

Science is all about fine tuning that healthy level of skepticism. That's what science does.

<comment><USER21> > Science is all about fine tuning that healthy level of skepticism. That's > what science does.

Science is a method. It doesn't do anything. Good science is an answer to honest skepticism. It doesn't create planets, change minds, or fly airplanes. It's a way to determine what is true and communicate our findings convincingly.

<comment><USER22> So the findings should be convincing, but not change minds, because that's not what science does?

<comment><USER21> Science has no mass or energy. It doesn't do anything. Talking about science as doing things (like changing minds) just confuses what it's about. This phrasing is popular and poetic, but in this case, the poetry confuses people, even scientists and science enthusiasts.

Science doesn't save lives. Doctors do. We've used scientific methods to understand all sorts of things about the world. And we've used that understanding in all sorts of pursuits, good and bad, including curing diseases and transplanting organs.

Saying science changes minds is like saying understanding, wisdom, technique, or knowledge do.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment> happy-go-lucky This reminds me of an apt quote from Feynman: science is the organized skepticism in the reliability of expert opinion.</comment>


What matters in life (and what doesn't) - <AUTHOR> http://paraschopra.com/blog/personal/what-matters-in-life-and-what-doesnt.htm

<comment><USER2> I agree with everything except the point about material possessions - they're not bad, most of the times they can help you do things better and faster. It's just that you need to accept their imperfections and problems and stop spending time worrying about them. Radiator broke down? Whatta gonna do, repair it and keep going, don't think too much. USB drivers not installing? Find another way. Your equipment needs maintenance? Well of course it does, schedule some time and do it.

It's all about the mindset. I used to worry about stuff like this too much, until I realized that it doesn't really matter. Here's a quick way to test your mindset on this: if you have a scratch on your phone's screen and it bugs the hell out of you, you're too attached to your possessions :-).

<comment><USER3> Reminds me of the saying _"you don't own possessions they own you"_. This is only true if you let them own you and worry about them. When my TV breaks down I might get another one. But there are loads of people who buy another TV because they've seen a bigger/thinner/nicer one.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> Throwing away all your worldly possessions in the pursuit of happiness is not always possible.

For instance, having a car to drive your 5 year old kid to school can be a lot less stressful than taking a bus or train.

But, yes, seeking to own the best car money can buy is rather unnecessary.

Overall this article offers simple, good advice. It was a good read.

<comment><AUTHOR> Yes, I agree that throwing all possessions isn't the best of ideas. What I was trying to suggest was that just craving for more possessions just for its own sake is avoidable. For example, if you are happy with 5 year old car, why take a new one?

<comment><USER2> I agree with that, however you have to consider the returns on investment, too: the difference between a personal car and public transport is that you can get to wherever you want in 15 minutes instead of 1 hour, for example, but if you have a 5 year old car that works fine, there's no reason to buy a new one, indeed.

It's even more complicated in software - while a lot of tools are good enough as they are (like Windows 98 :-)), upgrading to a new version can make a huge difference.

I do agree that having a lot of possessions is harder on your mind, and it ties you down to one place - I found that out when I had to move and leave a lot of stuff behind - in the end, it turns out I could live perfectly fine without it.

<comment><AUTHOR> Of course it depends from person to person, but in many cases the advantages gained by upgrading are marginal. If you don't do serious photography, your 5MP phone camera may be more than enough for you. If you all you do is Microsoft Word and Internet, Windows 98 may be sufficient for you. Of course, if something you absolutely need (not desire) requires an upgrade, you have to do it.

Enjoy advantages of modern technology but don't get too obsessed for its own sake or because others are doing it -- there are far more important things to do in life.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> I always find those posts about what matters in life and what not a bit troublesome. I can't really shake the feeling that the author just seeks some confirmation from his peers for his newly found virtues in life. an important aspect of growing up is figuring out what actually matters to _you_.

<comment><AUTHOR> Of course, it is personal opinion but if it helps others discover what matters for them, what's wrong with that? They can always disagree with the author's points.

<comment><USER5> well of course my opinion isn't in any way less subjective than the author's and you should consider both with a grain of salt.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> I agree that some of the petty things we pin our ego on can lead to stress and unhappiness, but I'm not sure ego per se is a terrible thing.

The thrust of the article almost seems to be that you'll be happiest when you define yourself by your relationships with other people, your experiences of other things. These are good things, but I strongly believe that you need enough ego to feel like you're standing face-to-face with the world before you've lived a truly satisfying life. Perhaps I'm just misunderstanding the use of 'experiences' in the article, but I'd really rather build my own parthenon than spend my life staring at someone else's.

</comment><comment><USER7> He forgot "mitigating existential risk". Oh well :).

</comment><comment><USER8> You can take the human out of the jungle, but you can't take the jungle out of the human. We are social creatures, cultivate strong and loose relationships. Happiness shared with other people is happiness multiplied.</comment>


Ask HN: What are the best times to post on HN? - <AUTHOR> Pretty straight forward question. Wondering what location uses HN the most and when is the best time to post? <comment><USER2> Anecdotally, the number of votes and comments correlates well with work hours around the world, at least on weekdays.

I did some ballpark estimations by charting timezones on a UTC timeline.

Times when multiple large, English-speaking timezones overlap are the ones with the most activity. This works out so that 7:00 -> 17:00 UTC are fairly busy as Europe and either of India or US Eastern are at work; the contribution of US Pacific continues a good amount of activity until 0:00 UTC.

Between the hours of 1:00 UTC and 2:30 UTC, India hasn't woken up yet, and it's lunch hour for eastern Australia.

One day I hope to obtain some actual numbers to check this hypothesis.

</comment><comment><USER3> Hacker News is a global resource. So anytime you have something worthwhile to share, post it.

If you are asking a question, then you might find StackOverflow useful. Most forums seem to be hostile (to varying degrees) if you ask questions before doing some research. In my experience, it is rare to come up with a good question that hasn't already been asked. SO is good in this regards because it allows us to polish answers over a long period of time.

</comment><comment><USER4> My experience has been that finding (or creating) good intellectually interesting content is far more important than when it is posted.

</comment><comment><USER5> You can share post any time but i prefer usa base time.</comment>


Ex-Hacker Adrian Lamo Institutionalized for Asperger's - <AUTHOR> http://www.wired.com/threatlevel/2010/05/lamo/?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=feed&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+wired%2Findex+%28Wired%3A+Index+3+%28Top+Stories+2%29%29&utm_content=My+Yahoo <comment><USER2> You guys might like this autobiographical profile of Adrian's from 2001 when he went by the handle Magus: [http://www.mattmazur.com/archive/aol- files/downloads/people/...](http://www.mattmazur.com/archive/aol- files/downloads/people/magus.html)

Quote: _its amazing how many security guards will escort you up to the roof of a skyscraper if you only ask, or won't even stop you if you look like you know where you're going_

This is taken from an archive of an AOL hacking website called AOL-Files.com that I ran back in 2000/2001. We had a section called AOL People where the site's visitors could submit profiles on themselves. The full list of profiles is here: <http://www.mattmazur.com/archive/aol-files/downloads/people/>

Mine, which is hilarious now, is here: [http://www.mattmazur.com/archive/aol- files/downloads/people/...](http://www.mattmazur.com/archive/aol- files/downloads/people/tau.html). So much for being an astronaut and not sitting in front of a computer all day...

<comment><USER3> tau, go fix mine please

[http://www.mattmazur.com/archive/aol- files/downloads/people/...](http://www.mattmazur.com/archive/aol- files/downloads/people/xtac.html)

;(

<comment><USER2> Will do tonight.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> Interesting. I clicked through to a related article about this guy, and his last run-in with the law was because he refused to provide his DNA to the federal government. Because apparently hacking web pages leaves a lot of DNA evidence, and they want to get him for sure next time, or something. Frightening.

<comment><USER5> Sounds like he's pretty sane to me.

I'm considering not renewing my passport because they want my fingerprints too, apparently to stop terrorists from getting passports.

Maybe I've got Aspergers?

<comment><USER6> You should try being a foreigner ... I've had my fingerprints taken 5 times now entering the US.

<comment><USER4> FWIW, I would never visit the US. The immigration rules are insane, and I wouldn't want the legal liability of accidentally not crossing a T or dotting an I on an immigration form.

Fortunately, I suppose, I'm a citizen, and other countries aren't dumb enough to inflict such terror on their guests. If they did, I wouldn't visit those either. (It's really and interesting case study in what a great idea the Constitution is. It doesn't apply to immigration and customs, supposedly, so those agencies act like a mutant Hitler-Stalin lovechild. The rest of the government, though, does a pretty good job. They pass a retarded law, and the Supreme Court strikes it down.)

I apologize. I consider myself personally at fault for allowing my government to do this. It's a shame that non-citizens are not given the same "freedom from government" that citizens are. It's what makes America great, and it's unfortunate that we don't share it.

Oh well, when I overthrow the government one day...

<comment><USER6> It gets worse really... I'm from a first world, priviledged country and a member of the visa waiver program which means it's actually _easy_ for me to enter the US. I can't even imagine what it's like for citizens of many countries.

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

<comment><USER7> Agreed, I'm from the UK but have immigrated to Canada (I believe finger prints are only ever required by the police when performing a full criminal history check when applying for citizenship; there was no such mention of it during my PR application process) and the thought that a 5-hour drive can land me having to be finger printed _just to visit_ is very barbaric. I've walked past police with machine guns in airports and that doesn't cross me nearly as unnerving as having to give my finger prints.

It's not that I'm worried for anything I've done, I have had police checks performed (twice from the UK) and I come up clean because I've never had a problem with the police and I've never committed a crime. What worries me is that our governments have data sharing policies, as soon as I'm finger printed entering the US I have little doubt that they've been entered into a database back in the UK as well.

I dislike the thought that someone will be capable of checking up on me behind my back. I can understand why the US would want it, even if it seems exceptionally barbaric, but it's that the UK and possibly Canadian or other governments will be checking up on if my fingerprints have appeared anywhere. Precisely because after the Madrid bombings an Oregon based lawyer was arrested on an 'incontrovertible match' by the FBI based on prints lifted and arrested him, however completely ignored the fact (for two weeks!) that he hadn't left the country - he matched because he was an Islamic convert and his wife was Egyptian born, his fingerprint never matched at all.

My figuring is that the longer my fingerprints stay out of any national or international registry, the less chance I have of being hassled during my lifetime because of a government screw up with the data.

<comment><USER8> Why do so many feel this is _exceptionally barbaric_?

More like exceptionally emotional. Really, I'm not trying to start an argument, but this tangent seems both off-topic and unappreciative of the fact that no country (AFAIK) is obligated to permit foreign visitors. That said, to the extent the US can encourage well intentioned, law abiding foreigners to visit, I believe that it significantly adds to the culture, economy and general health of the society. Besides, isn't the information exposed by a fingerprint a far cry from that exposed by DNA?

<comment><USER6> It's barbaric because it's pointless and invasive. You're worried I _might_ commit a crime? I don't recall seeing tourism cited as the reason your prisons are overflowing.

But beyond that visas themselves are stupid. There is no humanity behind visas, just mindless and impersonal bureaucracy designed to protect us and our countries from nobody - they don't stop anyone with bad intentions, they don't stop anyone intending to stay illegally. All they do is artificially limit you whether it's in your exploration of a foreign culture or you're the founder of graphic.ly.

I travel a _lot_ , I love the world and I love seeing and being a part of as much of it as I can afford to. But I hate visas.

<comment><USER5> And visas are a total waste of time to apply for and get as well as of money.

<comment><USER7> Doing things the legal way left me unemployed for over a year and a half, however if I had done things the illegal way I could have been working that full year and still gotten in as a legal citizen without any consequences and it's that hypocritical bullshit of penalizing the _law abiding_ immigrants as to why there are so many illegal immigrants.

Someone from an economically poor background, from a country with a corrupt police system is never going to abide by an immigration law if it makes them poorer and looks more corrupt. It's asinine.

It's also worth pointing out that Citizenship and Immigration Canada is currently facing a class action lawsuit for profiteering off of issuing visas when _by law_ they can only serve them at cost.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> Did this not scare anybody else?:

 _Something about his halting, monotone speech, perhaps slowed by his medication, got the officers' attention.

An ambulance arrived. "After a few moments of conversation, they just kind of exchanged a look and told me to get on the stretcher," says Lamo._

We are going to see more of this. The more we label this kind of behaviour, the more people will be institutionalised.

He obviously has the support of his family, so who made this decision?

 _...where he was placed on a 72-hour involuntary psychiatric hold under a state law allowing the temporary forced hospitalization of those judged dangerous or unable to care for themselves._

<comment><USER10> It scares me. It reminds me very strongly of the way things worked back in the 50s and 60s. I thought we were past forced institutionalization for disorders that didn't cause serious danger.

</comment></comment><comment><USER11> I didn't know there was such a thing as medication for Asperger's. Does anyone know what it might be?

<comment><USER12> There isn't. There is medications that help tangentially only. Antidepressants, Anti-Anxiety & anti-psychotic medications are commonly prescribed to treat the symptoms.

<comment><USER11> I'm just very curious to know which medication is being referenced here:

 _Now, the new medication prescribed in Woodland has made a positive change in his interactions with other people.

"Talking to strangers was really hard for me," Lamo says. "I had to script it all in my head and act out normal behaviors in a very conscious way. Essentially, I had to learn how human beings act."

"Now I no longer feel there's a surface tension that I have to break through when I talk to somebody, like I'm a fish going after a particularly tasty bug and I have to break through the water to get it," he continues. "I just talk to somebody, like it's a natural function."_

Any guesses?

<comment><USER13> geez. this makes _me_ want to take some anti-anxiety meds. talking to strangers is very nerve-wracking.

<comment><USER12> Actually, you may do better with qEEG-guided neurofeedback.

The problem is that its hard to for a lot of people to be fully functional after taking a Valium. Social meetings are one thing, but business meetings are another.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> "I have always maintained that what I did isn't necessarily technical, it's about seeing things differently"

Him and Michael burry. Who else?

</comment><comment><USER15> Give them medicine so they conform. Wouldn't it be beneficial to society to find a way to productively harness the way the brains of those with this condition are differently wired and let them solve problems, rather than killing their natural instinct with drugs?

<comment><USER10> Drugs don't kill the analytical mind, they just make socializing easier. "Drugs" are not ipso facto bad.

<comment><USER16> akadien may have been confused by A Beautiful Mind

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER17> Is that a Commodore 65 or a 128 Lamo is sitting next to?

<comment><USER18> Looks like it may be a C64c. That later model was more attractive looking than the first.

<comment><USER17> You are probably right. I forgot completely the 64c existed.

An 8-bit Commodore is something that's missing from my collection.

edit (for the retro-curious):

the 64c <http://www.old-computers.com/museum/computer.asp?c=998>

the 128 [http://www.old- computers.com/museum/computer.asp?st=1&c=...](http://www.old- computers.com/museum/computer.asp?st=1&c=96)

and the 65 [http://www.old- computers.com/museum/computer.asp?st=1&c=...](http://www.old- computers.com/museum/computer.asp?st=1&c=273)</comment></comment></comment>


Ask HN: Which tech companies are full of do-gooders? - <AUTHOR>

Hi HN -
I'll be graduating in May with a Masters in CS, and I've been working to compile a list of potential employers to engage with. My goal is to use my tech chops and my workaholism to help people - either locally or globally. However, at present, my list is embarrassingly small:
Watsi, KhanAcademy, Mozilla… I need your help!
Google search is failing me: the word "benefits" returns company perks and benefits, "change the world," "helping people," and many other similar phrases have been overused by nearly every PR department in the world (especially in tech). Maybe I should try Bing…
So, who's out there that's impressed you with their impact and dedication? Big or small, it doesn't matter. I'd really appreciate your help on this! :)
Thanks, and happy Saturday, Mike <comment><USER2> To aide your Google search: look for corporations that have elected the "B Corp" designation. Here's a good list of them: [http://bestfortheworld.bcorporation.net/](http://bestfortheworld.bcorporation.net/)

More info about B corps: [https://www.bcorporation.net/what-are-b- corps](https://www.bcorporation.net/what-are-b-corps)

<comment><AUTHOR> wow - I had no idea something like this existed. (Nice design, too!) I think you just solved my problem :). Thanks.

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> We are building humanity's public library; access to information for those who cannot access the Internet. [http://Outernet.is](http://Outernet.is)

We aren't hiring until early next year, but feel free to drop a line if it's intriguing.

<comment><AUTHOR> wow - looks like a cool (big) idea. I've signed up for updates! Thanks.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> If you're interested in working in beautiful Cebu, Philippines, to build products that improve the lives of the poor worldwide, check out www.engageSPARK.com . :) We've got a talented international team and are looking for more passionate people who want to leverage their tech skills to do good. We're a not-for-profit business/startup building a challenging distributed platform that will enable NGOs and governments to improve the lives of millions of people in poverty around the world. We just finished a financial education program for a large international NGO using voice calls & sms soap operas with quizzes (to reinforce and test comprehension) for 25,000 people affected by a natural disaster. And Cebu is a great place to live!

<comment><AUTHOR> Thank you so much. I just read through your website and it looks like a really meaningful project.

I've bookmarked the engageSPARK page and will definitely be reaching out to your team in a few months.

I never would have heard of you if it were not for Hacker News. Thank goodness for the internet. :)

<comment><USER4> You're welcome! We hope to hear from you. :) And good luck with your search.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> From my experience interning at their San Francisco office, Mozilla has an ridiculously high concentration of nice, humble, yet world class people who want to change the world.

<comment><AUTHOR> That's what I've heard! I'll definitely be reaching out to them. :) Are there any others you've heard of that you'd recommend I explore?

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> I have heard some great things about Amicus: [http://amicushq.com/](http://amicushq.com/)

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks jkaykin! Hadn't yet heard of this team! I'll add them to my list. :)

</comment></comment><comment><USER7> What's your Masters focus?

<comment><AUTHOR> generalist. Did a mobile dev internship for 6 months before starting the program, and here I'm studying databases, AI, UI, and distributed systems. The stack/frameworks of the company doesn't concern me much - I can inhale OReilly books on the weekends. The mission matters though!

Education, community organizing/activism, human rights are all areas I've worked in before, and seeing tech's potential in these areas is why I started coding... so I really care about the big picture of what I'll be pouring all of my energy into next year.

Any companies (even if they're small) you can suggest I add to my list?

<comment><USER7> Shoot me an email. Our startup is helping the medical education field with our first product, and down the road would like to apply the tech to public schools as well.

taylor /at/ residency-scheduling.org</comment></comment></comment>


DNS Infrastructure at GitHub - <AUTHOR> https://githubengineering.com/dns-infrastructure-at-github/ <comment><USER2> I'm always interested to know how long these infrastructure changes took from project initiation to launch, and whether it was a dedicated project team or something completed alongside BAU tasks.

These details are almost never included in these write-ups. Anyone have any guesses?

<comment><AUTHOR> This was a roughly six month project for a single engineer working around 75% of the time on it, with help from other folks along the way for code reviews and etc. The first three months was research, planning, implementation, etc and the latter three months was a very careful roll out and migration from the old system to the new and finally decommissioning the old system.

<comment><USER3> Do queries to github.net stay internal or do you also sync github.net zones to Route53/Dynect ... just in case?

We have a similar setup with unbound and nsd (no need for powerdns for us). Even then it took a while to get it right because JVM apps especially love to hang for no reason doing NS lookups. You also need to specify -Dnetworkaddress.cache.ttl= etc since they don't listen to TTLs.

Running unbound on every single machine has saved us a lot of downtime.

<comment><AUTHOR> Nearly all of our internal zones are internal and not sync'd to an external provider. In a few cases we need to perform lookups of internal zones external to our network and those zones live both internal and external.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> I'm curious if they're using DNSSec at all. I notice they're using Dynect for this, and in my experience DNSSec and Dyn do not get along (unless you're not using any of their special features like geotargeting), so it I'm interested in hearing how they've managed to get all that working.

<comment><USER5> I'm curious why people ask about DNSSEC support. None of the major browsers support validating it.

Even to validate the DNSSEC records by yourself, there is only a single website available[1] (which doesn't even have TLS). I want DNSSEC to catch up, but adoption level is a joke.

[1]:[http://dnsviz.net](http://dnsviz.net)

<comment><USER6> You're not limited to just browsers, and a perfect use-case for dnssec would be in combination with sshfp records for ssh, incidentally something GitHub heavily relies on, and where support is much better.

Adoption is slow, nobody argues there, but when you've set it up and have routines for rolling keys it's more or less self-maintained.

Google public DNS will return servfail if validation fails, which is a step in the right direction.

There are plenty of tools to validate dnssec, even with TLS [0]. But I'm not sure why you would need a webpage to do it. You can easily grab the root keys and validate the whole chain using dig on your own computer.

[0] [https://dnssec-debugger.verisignlabs.com/](https://dnssec- debugger.verisignlabs.com/)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> I don't see any mention of HTTPS support for custom domains. I wonder if this helps move the needle on that. I had moved a lot of project hosting to my paid GitHub account but SSL has become a necessity (SEO and privacy) so I'm launching sites on Digital Ocean again. I'd love to have less server config to do though.

<comment><USER8> Not everyone loves this approach, but putting Cloudflare in front of Github pages works great for getting easy SSL.

</comment></comment><comment><USER9> >We configured zone stubs in the caching daemon to direct queries locally rather than recurse on the internet.

What does this mean?

<comment><USER10> It means that for those zones, they explicitly put the IPs of the edge servers in their resolver (Unbound) configuration, so that lookups of names in those zones don't have to go the root servers and then the TLD (like .com) servers, only to find out that the authority (the edge servers in their design) are in the next rack. Instead they will go directly to those edges. This gives them "Addtionally, public zones are completely resolvable within our network without needing to communicate with our external providers. This means any service that needs to look up api.github.com can do so without needing to rely on external network connectivity."</comment></comment>


The Contestant Who Outsmarted The Price Is Right - <AUTHOR> http://www.esquire.com/news-politics/a7922/price-is-right-perfect-bid-0810/ <comment><USER2> I don't really know how the game works so the article was confusing. But this jumped out:

> Linda's stone-cold on arithmetic.

So easy to say but from what I could understand, I believe it.

My grandfather attended school through the third grade. But the 1930s being what they were, with a head for numbers, he became an accountant for the South Australian Railways. On week ends, to make ends meet, he would go to the racetrack and compute odds for the bookies. That's right: if someone placed £20 on a horse, the bookie would ask him what hedge bets to place. And they all asked him to calculate the changing odds as betting proceeded.

Which he did in his head. In pounds, shillings and sixpences. I can't imagine this.

But when I read this article I could believe this couple was capable of it.</comment>


How Much More Can We Learn About the Universe? - <AUTHOR> http://nautil.us/issue/40/learning/how-much-more-can-we-learn-about-the-universe <comment><USER2> I'm curious how many people think about the Universe and how frequently. I think about it all the time and I'm not a physicist. Probably a solid 30 minutes a day usually before falling asleep. Almost religiously (ironic).

I have tried to talk about it with my family and friends but so many of them just don't seem to have the passion for it. Some times I feel even seriously guilty wasting so much energy thinking/reading about it. Sometimes even wondering if I'm even in right profession (even though I do love technology).

My current theory is that it just my personality type (INTP).

<comment><USER3> > Some times I feel even seriously guilty wasting so much energy > thinking/reading about it.

It's your energy, so if you find it worthwhile then that's all that matters.

I sometimes feel the same way regarding my passion for computer science, when there are so many immediate problems in the world (energy production, food/wealth/opportunity distribution, war, etc.).

The good news is that you're having such guilty thoughts at all; that makes you more conscientious than if you didn't! You're also devoting that energy to a meaningful topic, compared to cultural norms like sports, celebrities, fashion, etc.

If you feel like there's nothing to show for your efforts, maybe you could try writing down some of your thoughts. They wouldn't have to be "correct", as long as they're intellectually honest; that would provide a progression of ideas, offer insight into the learning process, etc. and maybe you can look back over them to either find inspiration in ideas you'd forgotten, or be able to look at your old questions and know that you've found answers to some of them.

<comment><USER4> How is someone thinking about the universe for half an hour before bed any more meaningful than someone thinking about the Denver Broncos?

<comment><USER5> Eh.. meaningful depends on the observer, but I doubt Einstein would have come up with relativity if he thought about the Denver Broncos instead of the universe.

<comment><USER6> It is interesting that you make this statement, because I have sometimes heard that Einstein was able to make so many profound contributions because he had a multitude of interests which was generally above average with respect to his peers. Unfortunately, I don't have a reference, but I think it was mentioned in his biography by Walter Isaacson.

And not just that, reading that book will give you the general sense of a man who was quite the eclectic, intentionally creating masterminds with people from a broad swath of occupations.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> Some of the great developments of th 20th century were proofs of limits, of what cannot be achieved even in principle: for example the incompleteness theorem and halting problem, and the uncertainty principle.

IMHO, there is an "abstraction boundary" that limits what humans can ever know even in principle. There are some phenomena that are inherently "unabstractable". We may know that a glass of water has a wave function, but we will never know the particular wave function of any glass of water ever.

The phenomena in our universe that we can "understand" are those that can be modeled, those for which abstractions can be created that will fit in our brains. There may well be phenomena in the universe (or elsewhere) that are not amenable to modeling in any way that is compatible with human cognitive machinery.

<comment><USER8> Not just an abstraction barrier, but also a working memory limit of maximum 7-8 objects at a time. We're limited in more than one way in how much we can understand.

If we ever discover AGI, I think we will begin a new discipline, called "AGI studies" where humans try to understand what it discovers, to keep up. But the hard part would be to develop the most efficient concepts in order to understand even what it has to teach us. How do you communicate with an intelligence vastly superior to yours? Maybe the AGI will also develop the concepts and language necessary to communicate its findings to us.

<comment><USER9> The question is whether the limits mentioned above are due to constraints in the processing power of the "human CPU", or are limits inherent to any approach based on logic. In other words, does reason itself, no matter how fast or large, have limits?

Results such as the incompleteness theorem, Godel's work, etc seem to suggest that logic itself has limits, along with everything derived from it and/or built on top of it. In other words, even an ASI, even if you converted the whole known universe to "computronium" \- it would not do better against those limits than evolution-shaped human brains. Reason itself seems to have an event horizon.

The fact that the human brain has very clear and obvious processing power limitations is a separate issue.

<comment><USER10> It is possible there is a form of understanding that goes over and above what we'll loosely call reason?

I don't mean woo-like supernatural or mysticism.

Let's use an analogy.

We have instincts and reason. Instincts are quick but flawed, reason is slow but surer. Reason is to X what Instincts are to reason.

What if there existed X metacognition and above reason itself?

Suppose, for example with the assistance of an AI (capable of seeing larger pattern a human cannot) in conjunction with brain altering drugs to, crudely, give you a hit of comprehension/meaning (as a reward) when you successfully pattern matched with the assistance of the AI. That to me seems like much more than thinking from 1st principals. It would be something closer to _seeing_ than thinking sequentially.

<comment><USER9> It's very hard to even verbalize your intuitions on this topic without veering into metaphysics. But let me give it a try.

Provided there's a 4th layer on top of the triad matter/energy/information - then yes, it would be doable.

Our bodies exist in the same way rocks do - just like dead matter.

On top of that, there's the "meta" level of life, which is just matter playing with energy. It can do things that dead matter alone cannot do.

On top of that, there's the "meta" level of mind, which is just matter/energy (i.e. life) playing with information. It can do things that the previous two levels cannot do.

We are organized on 3 successive layers (body / life / mind) because the universe could be thought of as structured on 3 layers: matter / energy / information (we have started to figure out the equivalences between these layers recently).

So mind is what evolution put forward to master the domain of information. Everything that could be done with information, the mind could probably do, it's just a question of how fast.

So if there are any limitations to logic (and therefore to reason), it's likely that these come from the way the information meta-layer of the universe works.

If you want to see these limitations removed, you better hope there's a 4th meta-layer (in philosophy I guess you could call it a 4th principle) of the universe that can do things that the currently known 3 layers cannot do. But then that 4th meta-layer would have to somehow become embodied, either naturally (evolution) or artificially (technology).

However, it's hard to figure out how 3-layer beings like us could even begin to approach building something like that. It would be like a worm trying to understand quantum electrodynamics.

All of the above is just one giant pile of assumptions floating on thin air.

> _It would be something closer to seeing than thinking sequentially._

Or closer to _being_ what is called _truth_ (that which is), rather than even "seeing".

Are we getting kicked out of here yet? :)

<comment><USER11> The concept of the Technium sounds similar to this 4th layer.

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

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> Maybe someone can chip in here but I was under the impression virtual particles didn't actually exist, they were just used to simplify our understanding of particle interactions.

 _The uncertainty principle hasn't gotten in the way of learning the rules of quantum mechanics, understanding the behavior of atoms, or discovering that so-called virtual particles, which we can never see directly, nevertheless exist._

After recently getting to grips with QFT it seems there aren't actually any particles, just fields which are excited at certain locations giving the impression of particles.

<comment><USER13> I believe the Casimir Effect is usually taken as proof that virtual particles physically exist.

<comment><USER14> No, it's generally taken as a proof of vacuum energy. However, it's arguably just the van der Waals force in disguise.

<comment><USER13> We don't disagree. The theory is that vacuum energy creates virtual particles, which are what interact with the plates in the Casimir experiment.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> There was a time (just over a hundred years ago) when people thought that there was nothing more to learn about the universe. There were just these two little problems that needed explained...

Now, that was because they thought they understood everything there was to know, not because they worried that there were limits beyond which they could not know. But, as the article says, trying to guess how much we will learn (or not learn) in the next, say, 100 years, is a very hazardous business.

</comment><comment><USER16> Glad to hear about testing for gravitational waves. That's really the first observation I have heard about that covers anything older than the cosmic microwave background radiation.

Otherwise, who is to say that the universe _didn 't_ start out as a somewhat lumpy (not too much, not tool little) blob of gas measured with a few K's (thousands of kilometers across and a few thousand/million degrees Kelvin -- k of Km x k of K)? You can run the numbers back to a geometric point, but what would that even mean without observations of some kind to prove or disprove it?

<comment><USER16> ... vs the idea that "inflation" is mentioned as the way to get a mostly, but not quite, smooth universe which (as an article of faith???) MUST have started as a geometric point.

How would you rule out "one day there was a blob"? (which is really a crummy hypothesis, but as something to throw out vs inflation -- "for a while, relativity didn't apply, but then it did, because space itself decided to grow, until it didn't, so there!")

</comment></comment><comment><USER17> Anyone know what galaxies are in the "Colliding Galaxies" image?

<comment><USER18> Here you go: [http://apod.nasa.gov/apod/ap041121.html](http://apod.nasa.gov/apod/ap041121.html)

> Billions of years from now, only one of these two galaxies will remain. > Until then, spiral galaxies NGC 2207 and IC 2163 will slowly pull each other > apart, creating tides of matter, sheets of shocked gas, lanes of dark dust, > bursts of star formation, and streams of cast-away stars. Astronomers > predict that NGC 2207, the larger galaxy on the left, will eventually > incorporate IC 2163, the smaller galaxy on the right. In the most recent > encounter that peaked 40 million years ago, the smaller galaxy is swinging > around counter-clockwise, and is now slightly behind the larger galaxy. The > space between stars is so vast that when galaxies collide, the stars in them > usually do not collide.

<comment><USER17> Awesome, thanks!

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER19> No. [0]

[0] [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Betteridge%27s_law_of_headline...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Betteridge%27s_law_of_headlines)</comment>


Ben Silbermann at Startup School [video] - <AUTHOR> http://themacro.com/articles/2016/11/ben-silbermann-at-startup-school/ <comment><USER2> Funny story about Ben; I ran into him at a low-key gathering in downtown SF (I think Silicon Prairie news put it on).

I knew he looked familiar, but thought it was because we had met previously at a Meetup or something. We started chatting and he said that he worked for Pinterest. I asked "so, what employee # are you?" And he looked at me and said.. "One."

Lol, it finally dawned on me that he was a founder of Pinterest and that he looked familiar because I had read several interviews from him in the past.

He was incredibly humble and kind and was an absolute pleasure to talk with.

<comment><USER3> I had a similar experience! It was 2012 and the site Airtime had just launched. It was similar to Chatroulette, i.e. random video conversations with people on the web. I had only spoken to a handful of people until I got paired with Ben. It took a few minutes before he shared that he was the founder of a website called Pinterest, which I was intimately familiar with. Pinterest wasn't quite as famous at the time but already had millions of users. Ben was incredibly friendly, humble and smart. A few months later he gave me a tour of Pinterest HQ. It was such a random and wonderful thing, I'll always remember it.</comment></comment>


Sawfish phishing campaign targets GitHub users - <AUTHOR> https://github.blog/2020-04-14-sawfish-phishing-campaign-targets-github-users/ <comment><USER2> This is why password managers are so important. They won't offer to autocomplete on a site mimicking the GitHub.

The fact that they don't offer to autocomplete should hint users that something is wrong here -- especially tech users.</comment>


Introducing the Dumb Startup Name Generator - <AUTHOR> http://www.startup-name-generator.com/ <comment><AUTHOR> "Cashfinder.ai" "Titmatch Technologies" "Quitter" "Poorest.io"

Sounds good!

</comment><comment><USER2> This would be a great party game. Generate a name, then have a pitch contest.</comment>


GOD MODE UNLOCKED – Hardware Backdoors in X86 CPUs [pdf] - <AUTHOR> https://i.blackhat.com/us-18/Thu-August-9/us-18-Domas-God-Mode-Unlocked-Hardware-Backdoors-In-x86-CPUs-wp.pdf <comment><AUTHOR> noteworthy: he discovered a lot of these backdoors by studying the patent filings (slide 10, 15 & 21): [https://i.blackhat.com/us-18/Thu- August-9/us-18-Domas-God-Mo...](https://i.blackhat.com/us-18/Thu- August-9/us-18-Domas-God-Mode-Unlocked-Hardware-Backdoors-In-x86-CPUs.pdf) ... this was some seriously great reconnaissance work :-D

</comment><comment><USER2> I was quite drowsy when I opened HN, but reading this headline drove my sleep away instantly.</comment>


Elm Records: Extensible with Row Types - <AUTHOR> http://elm-lang.org/docs/records <comment><USER2> Not much to contribute here as the page's very informative. Elm's record is the best typed record implementation I've encountered so far. It's what I've always wanted for JS object, but typed!</comment>


IBM Unfolds Power Chip Roadmap Out Past 2020 - <AUTHOR> http://www.nextplatform.com/2016/04/07/ibm-unfolds-power-chip-roadmap-past-2020/ <comment><USER2> IBM seems to be pushing on power chips but Intel seems to have the performance end of the market and ARM seems to have the low power end of the market. Does anyone think IBM can come back with the power chips?

</comment><comment><USER3> Pow, pow, powerchip, power makes it go!

:-)</comment>


A brief history of web development - <AUTHOR> https://medium.com/@jaequery/brief-history-of-the-web-4feabcfcecf6 <comment><USER2> I must have missed it when "Functional programming have become the latest craze due to a surge in Node.js"

</comment><comment><USER3> 10 years?

<comment><AUTHOR> Yes, been 10 years since the turning point of web development! Prior, I just call it the dark days. =p</comment></comment>


System Adminsitrators: Disregard "Reputation" When Fighting SPAM - <AUTHOR> https://tailpuff.net/system-administrators-disregard-reputation-when-fighting-spam/ <comment><USER2> Yeah, I've been dealing with this after setting up an email server on DigitalOcean. AOL blocked my IP for no reason and contacting them has done no good so far.

I'm sticking with it though. It's still way better than using a 3rd party option.</comment>


I Don't Git GitHub Yet, But I Hope I Will - <AUTHOR> http://rickross.developerblogs.com/2009/12/25/i-dont-git-github-yet-but-i-hope-i-will/

<comment><USER2> The point is that without Github, these independent streams wouldn't exist anywhere public. With Github, you _can_ integrate these changes.

Without Github, people would either not contribute, or "contribute" in private, and then one day maybe ask for a commit bit. With Github, people can click a button and instantly start working on your project publicly. You can review their changes whenever you want, and you can integrate them whenever you want. Or, you can ignore them.

The point is, you lower the barrier to public contribution, and get more information as a result. The author seems to see this as a bad thing. This is similar to calling the act of sweeping some dust under a rug "abstraction". "If you can't see it, it's organized."

<comment><USER3> I'm not convinced that Github itself is a net-win for the mainline projects -- without Github, your only options for long-term sustainability of a fork are to submit your patches to the project or to expend considerably more effort maintaining a local vendor branch.

If you need to add a feature to a project, that requirement isn't going to disappate just because Github does not exist -- you will almost certainly implement it regardless, and the path of least resistance will be submitting (and having it accepted) upstream.

With Github, it becomes much, much easier to create a fork, hack out what you need, and maintain that fork indefinitely in a form that can't be pulled back in without further polish/review that will likely never happen.

<comment><USER2> Uh, so? Have you ever worked anywhere that uses open source software? Often, these places have their own slightly-hacked version of everything. There is no chance the original project will ever see any of these changes; not because of legal restrictions to contributing or whatever, but because the fork-ers have no interest in publishing their changes. It would involve time and effort.

With Github, the path of least resistance is to publish your changes. If they are good, someone can clean them up and submit them properly. If they are not that good, then they can stay in the branch indefinitely.

Remember, all public contribution to open source is good. Wishing that volunteers trying to scratch their own itch would do it in a way more convenient for you is unrealistic.

(I watch my projects and pull in good branches from time to time. Sure, I have to change some stuff. But for 10 minutes of tweaking, I get days worth of work for free. So I _love_ Github.)

<comment><USER3> _Remember, all public contribution to open source is good. Wishing that volunteers trying to scratch their own itch would do it in a way more convenient for you is unrealistic._

Perhaps I have unduly high standards for contributors, but I find that cleaning up other people's incomplete or unpolished code is often difficult, time consuming, and often takes longer than just writing the feature myself.

Whereas, if the contributor opened a dialog with me, I could help guide them towards something acceptable upstream with much less effort.

<comment><USER4> Sure you can have high standards for contributors. But if said contributor can't be bothered to cleanup his patch for upstream submission, then the absence of Github won't encourage him to suddenly cleanup his patch. He'd most likely keep his changes private. Remember, people are lazy and not going through the whole cleanup/submission route is definitely easier.

With Github at the very least you can see that those people exist and what they've been up to. To me this is still better than the alternative.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> The author is making the mistake of looking to github to explain git, but that's backwards. First you need to understand what a sea change git is to your daily development (compared to subversion anyway). Offline or peer-to- peer development, painless merging, extremely fast, conceptually simple repository model, etc.

If that stuff doesn't blow you away in practice then it's silly to think that github will make any sense at all.

<comment><USER6> I agree, but it's also in our best interest to educate people about Git that show up to GitHub without any prior knowledge. Sounds like we need to do a better job of that.

<comment><USER7> That would actually be really good. Easy tutorials to do common and uncommon tasks in git for users that don't know it yet would be really useful.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> One could start by understanding CVS first, I guess. One of the most important sections of "The Cederqvist Document" is "What CVS is Not", in which he discusses how CVS is not a substitute for management, nor is it a substitute for developer communication.

[http://ftp.gnu.org/non- gnu/cvs/source/stable/1.11.21/cederqv...](http://ftp.gnu.org/non- gnu/cvs/source/stable/1.11.21/cederqvist-1.11.21.pdf)

This reality carries forward to SVN, certainly. I see no reason not to keep this same perspective in the Git/GitHub world, or to the Mercurial/Bitbucket world.

</comment><comment><USER9> I wonder how dumb posts like this end up on HN...</comment>


Microsoftonline.com is down - <AUTHOR> Our office is in full panic mode <comment><USER2> Duplicate: [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14311016](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14311016)

</comment><comment><USER3> Actually, I can login to my admin account but still having some issues even when I do.

</comment><comment><USER4> Ooo, indeed it is. Ironic naming then.

</comment><comment><USER3> Looks like it's back up</comment>


Pirate Bay founder: We've lost the internet, it's all about damage control now - <AUTHOR> https://thenextweb.com/eu/2017/06/09/pirate-bay-founder-weve-lost-the-internet-its-all-about-damage-control-now <comment><AUTHOR> _In Sunde 's opinion, people focus too much on what might happen, instead of what is happening. He often gets questions about how a digitally bleak future could look like, but the truth is that we're living it: "Everything has gone wrong. That's the thing, it's not about what will happen in the future it's about what's going on right now. We've centralized all of our data to a guy called Mark Zuckerberg, who's basically the biggest dictator in the world as he wasn't elected by anyone. Trump is basically in control over this data that Zuckerberg has, so I think we're already there. Everything that could go wrong has gone wrong and I don't think there's a way for us to stop it." One of the most important things to realize is that the problem isn't a technological one. "The internet was made to be decentralized," says Sunde, "but we keep centralizing everything on top of the internet."_

<comment><USER2> Things tend towards centralization in capitalist or communist societies. When need to rethink things to avoid that by leveraging technology to allow for diversity and evolution, with holism where it is needed.

I think in terms of the internet the answer is meshnets.

<comment><USER3> > I think in terms of the internet the answer is meshnets.

No it's not b/c that would assume the average person is willing to learn about meshnets.

<comment><USER4> Why? The average person doesn't need to know about TCP/IP to use current centralized networks

<comment><USER3> correct. Perhaps the word "learn" wasn't a good choice. What I meant is that people have to be willing to change their behavior because mesh nets are not something a powerful entity is going to force them to use.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> "companies will always have to put their financial gains first"

Though there is a ton of evidence for this, I've always disliked this type of statement. A company does not have a mind of it's own, and therefore has no concept of self-interest. It is the people at the company who are making the decisions. It's why there is a backlash when companies don't behave the way their customers expect them to.

In the end, it all does come down to people and the cultural influence. For the past 50 years, we've culturally been dragged into a big business, security, get rich mindset which has driven aspirations at the cost of our freedoms, environment, and general social good.

I personally don't believe the Zuckerberg is 'evil'. Though the news feed has issues, his overarching goal is admirable. I believe that Facebook now understands the political difficulties the news feed creates, but if Facebook were truly a dictatorship, they wouldn't be spreading multiple oposing propaganda, would they? Zuck would have picked the candidate he liked, and promoted that person. Facebook didn't do that, they let the people decide what they wanted to see.

<comment><USER6> if you lead a company, and dont do whats in the best interest of your shareholders, youre getting sued and then you go to prison.

unless you get the law changed, companies absolutely have to put their financial gains first.

<comment><USER7> Isn't the bar for criminal liability fairly high? Doesn't a CEO usually get fired and/or fined?

I'd be interested in learning about an case where a CEO goes to prison because he didn't pursue shareholders' interests aggressively enough.

<comment><USER8> Never has happened. You can be socially responsible even if it means "making less than absolutely possible."

It's idiotic to think that any C-level has to always be doing what will absolutely maximize profits. It's impossible for them to be doing that constantly, all the time.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> For one, we've lost these services to capitalism, because it's difficult for any alternative to operate in a capitalistic society. How many are going to work on the open source alternative and still make enough to live comfortably? Decentralized services are difficult to design to be usable and operate reliably. We can't underestimate the amount of resources that goes into software development.

Which is why I appreciate when a startup like WhatsApp spent so much effort on end-to-end encryption with little to no financial incentive..

</comment><comment><USER10> I think we can still have free internet, in the lagrange points between the giants, if we propell them against one another in fierce clashes - to try users to migrate from one walled in garde to another. There will always be little pockets of freedom for a short period in new markets emerging. There will always be open source where companys have no real interest to maintain near public infrastructure. I think one way to get open source to win, is to have it as a way for companys to discard liability. If the plattform you hosdt is open source, why should you be responsible if somebody else uses it to fling viruses into the world. But to win against companys in user space, that is near impossible.</comment>


A survey of BSD kernel vulnerabilities [pdf] - <AUTHOR> https://media.defcon.org/DEF%20CON%2025/DEF%20CON%2025%20presentations/DEFCON-25-Ilja-van-Sprundel-BSD-Kern-Vulns.pdf <comment><USER2> This was a great preso.

I think we need to fund regular audits of FreeBSD that use this type mindset.

<comment><USER3> You might find _How to find 56 potential vulnerabilities in FreeBSD code in one evening_ , _PVS-Studio delved into the FreeBSD kernel_ , and _Weaknesses in GCC, Clang and FreeBSD Code_ interesting reading as well:

* [https://www.viva64.com/en/b/0496/](https://www.viva64.com/en/b/0496/) ([https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14057568](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14057568))

* [https://www.viva64.com/en/b/0377/](https://www.viva64.com/en/b/0377/) ([https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11131532](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11131532))

* [https://www.viva64.com/en/b/0487/](https://www.viva64.com/en/b/0487/) ([https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13894115](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13894115))

<comment><USER4> Thanks for these!

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> Impressive that FBSD only had 20% more bugs over OBSD despite having 200% more lines of code.

<comment><USER6> Considering that this was apparently one person doing investigative research, and a very small fraction of each code base (freebsd apparently has about 9 million LOC, openbsd 2.9 million), I do not think it is reasonable to state that freeBSD "only had 20% more bugs", but rather only that the investigator found 20% more bugs in it in his research. He probably examined a similar number of LOC of each OS and spent a similar amount of time on each OS if I had to make a guess -- the slides do not say however.

If he had spent three times more time on freebsd than on openbsd I would agree with you.

<comment><USER7> This raises some interesting questions about sample selection when statistically or probabilistically analyzing a piece of software.

In statistical analysis you need to have a clear definition for your "unit of observation". Is it individual lines? Is it individual methods? Is there some way to break down code intofunctional units? Is it entire code paths?

Without having a well-defined unit of analaysis and a consistent sampling scheme, extrapolation is difficult or impossible using conventional statistical tools, without making some very big assumptions.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> Ilja is one of the baddest dudes out there. Excellent work once again, chapeau!

</comment><comment><USER9> OpenBSD stopped claiming "N years without a localhost hole in the default install!" in 2000. See [https://web.archive.org/web/20000815063126/http://openbsd.or...](https://web.archive.org/web/20000815063126/http://openbsd.org:80/) and [https://web.archive.org/web/20001110110500/http://www.openbs...](https://web.archive.org/web/20001110110500/http://www.openbsd.org:80/)

But Page 6 of this pdf has OpenBSD developers going on about Linux and its 20 localhost kernel security holes in 2005. Seems a bit dishonest.

<comment><USER10> There are numbers greater than zero and less than 20.

<comment><USER11> FYI, since you're here: visiting your site on FF in Windows 10 is throwing an insecure error, saying you're using an invalid certificate. 100% possible that's somehow an error on my end - but just in case it isn't, thought you'd want to know. Sample URL throwing it: [https://www.tedunangst.com/flak/post/books-chapter- three](https://www.tedunangst.com/flak/post/books-chapter-three)

Side note: I'm hugely grateful for all your work on OpenBSD.

<comment><USER12> Same in FF on Mac OS X:

 _www.tedunangst.com uses an invalid security certificate. The certificate is not trusted because the issuer certificate is unknown. The server might not be sending the appropriate intermediate certificates. An additional root certificate may need to be imported._

 _Error code: SEC_ERROR_UNKNOWN_ISSUER_

And in Chrome:

 _Attackers might be trying to steal your information from www.tedunangst.com (for example, passwords, messages, or credit cards). NET::ERR_CERT_AUTHORITY_INVALID_

<comment><USER6> Despite the browsers' dire warnings, you are still far more protected visiting a website with a self-signed certificate than visiting a plain http website.

<comment><USER12> more protected from what?

<comment><USER6> my point is that TLS can still be useful without the participation of a certificate authority. but you have to be careful.

<comment><USER12> Right. I've visited Ted's site in the past, and had no certificate warnings. Now, suddenly, I am getting warnings. So isn't that the exact scenario in which I should be very suspicious?

It's just a blog; I'm not submitting anything, but still it's an indicator that something fishy _might_ be going on.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> Are there any CVEs for these? Have they been fixed?

<comment><USER14> I only subscribe to OpenBSD but there have been 24 fixes, in the last weeks, for issues reported by Ilja van Sprundel.

[http://marc.info/?l=openbsd- cvs&w=2&r=1&s=Ilja+van+Sprundel&...](http://marc.info/?l=openbsd- cvs&w=2&r=1&s=Ilja+van+Sprundel&q=b)

</comment></comment><comment><USER15> Seems interesting. Is there a recorded talk to go with this?

<comment><USER16> Real soon now (not sure on the timeframe)

[https://www.youtube.com/user/DEFCONConference/videos](https://www.youtube.com/user/DEFCONConference/videos)

</comment></comment><comment><USER17>
      expired pointers, Double frees, Underflows, overflows, signedness,  NULL deref, Division by zero, Memory leaks

YIKES!

</comment><comment><USER18> Blasphemy!

</comment><comment><USER19> Have the BSD devs seen this? Have the required bugs been filed?

</comment><comment><USER20> What is the likelihood that we will see a major operating system written in a safe language such as Rust in the next 10 years?

<comment><USER21> That depends; do you mean that it has to be written in the next ten years and then later becomes widely used, or that it has to become widely used in the next ten years? If the former, I'd say _maybe_ if Redox becomes mature enough to be widely used maybe a decade or so down the line (with "widely used" meaning "used as much as at least one of the major BSDs", since those are what are being discussed in the PDF), and if the latter, I'd say almost definitely not (and this is coming from a huge Rust fanatic)

<comment><USER22> The best case scenario in that time frame would be to implement portions/new features of an existing kernel in a safe language. Maybe it could start with officially supported driver modules in rust?

<comment><USER23> Yeah I agree. It would be great if parts of the kernel could be written in a safer language. I think in 10 years that will be happening in at least some widely used OS, but most likely one that only supports a small range of architectures.</comment></comment></comment></comment>


Microsoft Adopts the Middle Finger - <AUTHOR> http://qz.com/397347/microsoft-is-the-only-tech-company-daring-enough-to-support-the-middle-finger-emoji/

<comment><USER2> This is legitimately good news. I hope Chrome starts working with these Emoji soon. As of today, Windows 8.1 with Chrome latest, still doesn't display them on web-pages but strangely DOES display them if you select the emoji, right click, and look in the "Search [Engine] for '😃'" line.

In general, dealing with American's puritanicalism is very tiresome at times. Glad they allowed through a bad hand gesture <insert roll eyes emoji here>.

<comment><USER3> This has nothing to do with "American's puritanicalism" and is just a matter of there are over 700 emoji and Unicode 7.0, which added the middle finger one, added another 250. It takes time to create 250 emoji. Google and Apple just haven't gotten to this one yet.

If this was a question of "American's puritanicalism" or Google & Apple refusing to add this one to "keep things polite" then it just never would have made it into Unicode 7.0 in the first place as both Apple & Google are full members of the unicode consortium.</comment></comment>


Ask HN: What offline encryption methods do you use? - <AUTHOR> If you need to communicate with someone offline, how do securely conduct a conversation?<p>Same place, same time? Easy (relatively speaking). How about when you're separated by distance and time? <comment><USER2> This is not offline, but offline seems silly given today's technological options:

> Both of you generate public/private key pairs

> Both of you spam your public keys to the world (including each other)

>> You might meet offline once, to make sure the public keys you gave each other were indeed yours (and not a MITM's sending theirs to both of you while suppressing your actual messages to each other)

>>> This is probably where your actual question's parameters would come into play, but it only needs to happen once

> You encrypt (using a good cipher) some message into a binary blob with your > friend's public key and send the encrypted message

>> Only your friend can decrypt this, using their private key which only they have

> Your friend encrypts their reply with your public key and sends the > encrypted message to you

>> Only you can decrypt this, using your private key which only you have

E2EE.

<comment><AUTHOR> > This is not offline, but offline seems silly given today's technological > options:

Agreed. There aren't many places where you'll be technically limited in today's world.

However, let's say your're in prison and wants to communicate privately to the outside world. Or, you're in a place where the government is actively/extensively monitoring all technology mediums (to the extent that they could even get your private keys). What are your best options?

<comment><USER3> The prison example is clearly the most difficult. Under oppressed governments, you may still be able to use digital help to create offline communication parcels. When you're in prison, you have your brain, a pen, paper and if you're lucky, a secure destruction mechanism that doesn't immediately raise suspicion.

<comment><USER2> >you have your brain, a pen, paper and if you're lucky, a secure destruction mechanism that doesn't immediately raise suspicion.

It would be absurdly difficult, but you could manually implement Diffie- Hellman key exchange to generate a secret with the other party without actually ever communicating it.

Just find a large prime, p (at least 600 digits to be safe).

Then pick an integer g between 1 and p and a random integer x.

Then compute g^x mod p.

Send p, g, and (g^x mod p) to your friend (you can even include these instructions for them -- it won't affect whether this works).

They take your p, g, and (g^x mod p) and choose a random integer y

They compute g^y mod p and send that back to you.

You take their (g^y mod p) and compute (g^y mod p)^x mod p. This equals g^xy mod p.

They take your (g^x mod p) and compute (g^x mod p)^y mod p. This also equals g^xy mod p.

You now share a secure secret key, (g^xy mod p), that you can use for encryption in a cipher. This is secure if you both chose a random x and y, which you never shared, and which any attacker would need in order to derive (g^xy mod p) from the four pieces of information they have: p, g, (g^x mod p), and (g^y mod p). The discrete log problem makes it computationally-infeasible to calculate x or y from those values.

Buuuuut then would come the even harder part: encrypting and decrypting messages (being a human cipher suite) with that secret key. :3 It's just rote math at that point, but... let's hope you have a lot of time and paper.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> 1\. Use PGP / GPG and encode the key as 2D-Barcode for easy key-sharing. 2\. AES or better block cipher for the payload.

</comment><comment><USER5> I haven't had a need to do this, but I suppose you could print out an ASCII- armored PGP message and snail-mail it to somebody. Of course this still requires each of you has a computer, just not necessarily an internet connection.

</comment><comment><USER6> Leaving messages at secret places [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dead_drop](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dead_drop)

</comment><comment><USER7> Just as a thought exercise, I would consider:

\- Mailing encrypted USB sticks or messages on paper

\- Some kind of steganography: hidden/encoded messages disguised in another form, like a painting..?</comment>