Ask HN: critique my failed news site pitch - <AUTHOR>

The campaign ended last week only raising $980 in total. http://jkl.io/ is the early prototype, the pitch on Indiegogo is under the 'about' link. Basically I want to head in the direction of a largely image free and largely static served site on high level policy and politics. The low cost overhead of those factors is therefore supposed to free it of advertisers and make it possible to pursue as a donation driven site (with me working on it part-time).<p>So my question is, is the model wrong and if so is there a better model to pursue this kind of site? Was the pitch off and besides obvious things for the second run, like making a video, what can be improved? I also suspect the prototype, as it doesn't have comments and full story ranking etc, undermined the pitch in that people thought they were funding just that rather than the more comprehensive site I want to build. <comment><USER2> Agree with the point on prototype. A video would have been a better choice overall.</comment>


Democratic establishment unmasked: prime defenders of NSA bulk spying - <AUTHOR> http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2013/jul/25/democratic-establishment-nsa <comment><USER2> I almost didn't vote this up. I hate calling out political leaders or parties in HN articles.

However, the title was a bit of linkbait. The real point is that no, it's not true that the parties in Washington do not agree on anything. The hardcore partisans all are very happy to work with each other to secure and increase the security state. For that reason, for pointing out the traditional wisdom is wrong in this area and that the problem here is not political but systemic, it was worth a vote.

I called my Representative, a Republican, to support the Amash amendment. Like a jackass, he didn't do it. I imagine Repbulican leadership did a lot of leaning on members to vote the amendment down. Looking at the Democrats (the other major US political party), I imagine Democratic leadership did a lot of leaning on members to vote the amendment down. While the consitutional system seems broken in the US - the state is conducting blanket surveillance and then deciding later what to review -- the _political_ system, whereby parties gain and maintain power, seems to be working very well.

The good news is that the wheels almost came off the wagon: the amendment was almost passed. That means next time we'll all need just to lobby twice as hard to get our rep's attention. The other good news is that members of both parties came out to support the amendment, which means that the issue of the security state cuts both ways. Both parties could easily flip on this given enough pressure. It's just our job to make sure the pressure is there (while acknowledging that there is a vital need for national security and SIGINT)

<comment><USER3> 66% of the Judiciary Committee who voted, voted for the Amash amendment. I find that very encouraging.

And Sensenbrenner, a principal author of the Patriot Act, is outraged by the secret interpretation being used to justify these programs:

[http://sensenbrenner.house.gov/news/documentsingle.aspx?Docu...](http://sensenbrenner.house.gov/news/documentsingle.aspx?DocumentID=343546)

<comment><USER2> Logic is on our side here. Of course, that never counts for much in politics :)

The key problem is that there is no system of checks and balances, no matter what your personal congress-critter might say. Terms that are interpreted one way when the law is created get interpreted another way in secret. Going after certain people becomes checking up on everybody. Checking up on everybody becomes store-now, search-later. The government's natural oversight and regulatory authority over commercial businesses is being used as leverage to collect data on the population against our will. It's just out of control.

I'm concerned that a Constitutional Amendment is really what it's going to take to put this genie back in the bottle. Sure, you stop NSA, but does that stop the FBI from picking up the keys? Stop any of a dozen other agencies from creating similar systems? I'm optimistic about this particular fight, but the overall war is looking like whack-a-mole out there to me.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> The clearest evidence: Pelosi voted against it.

Lots of HN readers are in SF.

If you want to make a difference on the NSA spying, find a credible candidate to run in the primary against her and put a little money behind it.

<comment><USER5> I admire your enthusiasm but just want to remind people that it is not a done deal. People across the country tried to come together to get a replacement for Lamar Smith[1] but he still won with 63% of all votes. Change is not easy.

[1]: Smith faced five challengers in the 2012 general election on November 6, 2012: Candace Duval (Dem), John-Henry Liberty (Lib), Fidel Castillo (Grn), Bill Stout (Grn), and Carlos Pena (Ind).[14] He won the race with 63% of the vote.

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_House_of_Represe...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_House_of_Representatives_elections_in_Texas,_2012)

[http://www.ksat.com/news/politics/Joaquin-Castro-Lamar- Smith...](http://www.ksat.com/news/politics/Joaquin-Castro-Lamar-Smith-Lloyd- Doggett-win-U-S-Rep-races/-/2567674/17294152/-/owkg0w/-/index.html)

<comment><USER6> In Texas the Democrats are working with pretty heavily gerrymandered districts. It's not really a fair fight.

Also the challenge to Smith was obviously not well organized. You don't have to be Karl Rove to understand that flinging five candidates against Lamar Smith isn't a great tactic for anyone but Lamar Smith.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> I think this is a good fodder for some really inquisitive investigative journalism as I doubt very much that defenders do not receive perks and kickbacks from establishment that disperses 550BILLION dollars to private contractors from taxpayers coffers to break laws, destroy constitution and make to orwellian state.

Being more paranoid than less I have a inkling that this system is being installed and police is being armed because it is known that if economy collapses, these will be instruments to quell dissent and literally destroy (imprison and/or execute) opposition - of those who might well lead the revolution.

Economy is doing good, but the external debt is mindboggling those who are in the place of power might know what we don't.

<comment><USER8> Yes, because you can't have anything but a staunchly civil-libertarian point of view without being a sell-out who is receiving kickbacks from private contractors...

Has it maybe occurred to you that e.g. Pelosi and Hoyer, whose lives were defined by the Cold War, have maybe a different view on life than the HN readership, who were mostly children when the Soviet Union collapsed?

<comment><USER9> My family arrived here as refugees after the war, and I grew up acutely aware of the threat of the Soviet Union. Maybe that's why I am also aware that no threat that's within three orders of magnitude of that exists today.

<comment><USER10> "The price of freedom is eternal vigilance."

The folks looking to increase their power at the expense of the citizenry are relentless. They spend their nights and weekends thinking up new ways to be more dominant. As citizens, we can't expect to combat their never-ending efforts with luke-warm responses or apologetics for our favorite political leaders.

When it comes to privacy/liberty/freedom, the only reasonable response to government incursion is a strong and unequivocal one.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment> brown9-2 The fact that someone is using an argument that was also used at one point in time by someone who has a loose relationship with the truth (like Cheney) doesn't make that person today into an automatic liar.

If the argument was wrong when used 7-8 years ago in a somewhat different context, it's not automatically also wrong in today's context.

Peter King and Michelle Bachmann might be bozos, but on the rare occasions where they agree with you it doesn't mean you are also a bozo by some sort of associative property. This seems like the most illogical of smears, to say that because person A and B have the same opinion on a single topic they are similar in all natures (reminding me of the billboards touting the fact that the Unabomber believed in global warming).

<comment><USER11> I agree it's not a logically consistent argument, but I read it as slightly different from the Unabomber-believed-in-global-warming arguments, which try to tarnish a position with a universally unpopular figure (the smoking-bans- were-first-proposed-by-Hitler argument is similar). This argument is more along the lines of alleging that "our" side sold us out by taking up the other side's positions. Among Republicans, "the GOP establishment has sold us out by taking up traditionally liberal positions" is an argument that comes up now and then, and among Democrats, you see its opposite, "the Democratic establishment has sold us out by taking up traditionally conservative positions". Greenwald is basically taking the 2nd view, writing an op-ed for Democrats arguing that their leadership is in cahoots with tough-on-national- security conservatives, rather than fighting for liberal values.

<comment><USER8> What liberal values? The democrats strongly supported the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, supported the passing and continuation of the Patriot Act, etc. They embraced their status as the "party of the guy that killed Osama" in the 2012 election.

And this isn't a new phenomenon. The Democrats moved hard to the right with Clinton, and have ever since become a solidly center-right party with a social-liberal streak. As a practical matter, that was the only thing that could win elections with a voting population that was solidly center-right.

<comment><USER12> > What liberal values? The democrats strongly supported...

Democrats are moderate conservatives, not liberals. There are no liberal parties - and certainly no left-wing parties - anywhere in the American mainstream.

<comment><USER13> I happen to agree with this, and I have a question about it if you wouldn't mind answering.

Can you elaborate on some policies that a truly liberal party would promote (that we don't see in the US)? Numerous countries in Europe have what are often defined as highly liberal parties by American standards. What do they do, what policies do they champion, that the liberal wing of the Democrat Party in the US doesn't? And so on.

(and by liberal here, I'm speaking of what's considered a modern left wing party by European standards (or "socialist" in some circles); versus classic liberalism that would have defined the near laissez-faire capitalism of the 19th century)

<comment><USER8> You don't even need to look to Europe. Just look to American politics in the 1970's. I'll give a very concrete example of an issue I happen to care about: environmentalism. In the 1960's and 1970's, the environmental movement was about protecting nature for the value of nature itself. The Wilderness Act of 1964 uses the language:

"A wilderness, in contrast with those areas where man and his own works dominate the landscape, is hereby recognized as an area where the earth and community of life are untrammeled by man, where man himself is a visitor who does not remain."

Today, the intellectual mainstream of the movement has shifted to neoclassical economic justifications: the value of environmental services provided by e.g. wetlands and mountain ranges, the potential economic costs of climate change, market failures resulting from the externalities of pollution. The progressivism and idealism is gone, replaced with detailed analysis of how pro-environment policies fit into our existing economic and value structure.

<comment><USER10> _The progressivism and idealism is gone_

Well yeah, because like most political movements they're subverted as vehicles for power and the original motivation for their existence is just a loose excuse to gain more power. The result ends up being enormous amounts of money going in to feed thousands of regulations and government employees that really only pay lip service to the original intent of the movement or organization.

It's the reason why my default position with any government proposal is: scale it back, refactor what you already have, make due with less money, less laws, and less bureaucrats.

<comment><USER8> > ell yeah, because like most political movements they're subverted as > vehicles for power and the original motivation for their existence is just a > loose excuse to gain more power.

Ah yes, the environmental movement is just an excuse to increase government power, not to protect innocent people from vicious, ruthless, remorseless businessmen who have no compunction about dumping dangerous waste into lakes that people drink out of and swim in, as long as doing so saves them a buck.

<comment><USER10> Meh, your emotional rants are just silly.

It's not about the environmentalists who care and actually make the world a better place by stopping toxic dumping. It's the people who come along later and take over positions of power who torment ordinary citizens for filling a ditch on their own property, claiming that the ditch was "wetlands". It's the California coastal douchebags who aren't protecting jack shit on the coast but won't let you replace LITERALLY rotten boards in your own house because of a morass of idiotic rules, regulations, and and endless stream of power-happy "environmentalists".

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> Can we label these defenders of spying "Statists"? Surely all of their political beliefs fall flat when you consider that they will happily sacrifice any and all values for the advancement of the State.

Fascists would also be appropriate.

<comment><USER15> USA is already a fascist state by Mussolini's definition. In the future , there will be no need for conspiracy, corporation will run the show directly , when all states are bankrupts.

That's the only likely future for mankind.

<comment><USER16> > USA is already a fascist state by Mussolini's definition.

Orwell (1944): "the word 'Fascism' is almost entirely meaningless ... almost any English person would accept 'bully' as a synonym for 'Fascist'"

The fascist state was very much totalitarian, and the relationship with corporations wasn't conspirational, they were co-opted into the state for the benefit of the state's goals. Individuals were enabled and allowed to attain wealth through this scheme, but that doesn't mean they ran the show, at all.

<comment><USER17> Chomsky: "The government has a defect: it's potentially democratic. Corporations have no defect: they're pure tyrannies."

The corporate state is very much totalitarian, and the relationship with politicians isn't conspirational, they are co-opted into the "holistic system of systems" for the benefit of corporate goals. Individuals are enabled and allowed to attain wealth and fame through this scheme, and are allowed to choose drape colors, but that doesn't mean they run the show, at all.

<comment><USER16> What nonsense. The United States, for all it's faults, is not a totalitarian state. Read a book, FFS.

Edit: Terms like "Totalitarian", "Fascist" and "Communism" have real, historical backgrounds. When they are casually applied where they don't belong, they derail the discussion (much like "Nazism", hence Godwin's Law) and prevent a real debate about real issues.

<comment><USER17> _The United States, for all it 's faults, is not a totalitarian state. Read a book, FFS._

How about we start small, and read the posts we're replying to, hmm?

 _" Totalitarian", "Fascist" and "Communism" have real, historical backgrounds._

Yes, and? Where did I mention any of these? Books may be too heavy to me, but I can parse single sentences from Wikipedia, such as this one from the page about totalitarianism:

 _The term 'an authoritarian regime' denotes a state in which the single power holder - an individual 'dictator', a committee or a junta or an otherwise small group of political elite - monopolizes political power. However, a totalitarian regime attempts to control virtually all aspects of the social life including economy, education, art, science, private life and morals of citizens_

You see, the difference is basically that you put down slave uprisings, but don't care what color their underpants are, or wether they like you, or what they think - only in so far as that affects performance. Not sure where "making people wear flair", nodding to buzzwords or Japan fit in there, but at any rate totalitarianism, in comparison with simply controling the jugulars and assholes of golden gooses, is a silly and ineffective thing. It even sucks as strawman.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER18> Key point:

 _" To say that there is a major sea change underway - not just in terms of surveillance policy but broader issues of secrecy, trust in national security institutions, and civil liberties - is to state the obvious. But perhaps the most significant and enduring change will be the erosion of the trite, tired prism of partisan simplicity through which American politics has been understood over the last decade. What one sees in this debate is not Democrat v. Republican or left v. right. One sees authoritarianism v. individualism, fealty to The National Security State v. a belief in the need to constrain and check it, insider Washington loyalty v. outsider independence.

That's why the only defenders of the NSA at this point are the decaying establishment leadership of both political parties whose allegiance is to the sprawling permanent power faction in Washington and the private industry that owns and controls it. They're aligned against long-time liberals, the new breed of small government conservatives, the ACLU and other civil liberties groups, many of their own members, and increasingly the American people, who have grown tired of, and immune to, the relentless fear-mongering."_

</comment><comment><USER8> Old people (Nancy Pelosi is 73, Stenny Hoyer is 74) don't see the big deal about internet privacy. News at 11.

</comment><comment><USER4> I hope Snowden/Greenwald has evidence of the NSA spying on Congress.

That would change the tone of the debate overnight.

Remember how pissy the mainstream journalist got over the DOJ monitoring its phone lines.

It's easy to justify spying when it is on those terrorists. Not so easy when the lens is pointed at you.

</comment><comment><USER19> Interesting as always but I do wish Greenwald would write shorter more targeted articles.

<comment><USER20> He probably leaves this job to the Business Insider, Medium and Quartz "journalists".

</comment></comment><comment><USER21> Even the leftist Guardian is noticing this? Wow.

I just don't know if truth and politics are compatible. We may need a solution outside of politics.</comment>


Hackers are targeting hospitals crippled by coronavirus - <AUTHOR> https://www.wired.co.uk/article/coronavirus-hackers-cybercrime-phishing <comment><USER2> If there ever was a reason for drone strikes...</comment>


The sorry state of OpenSSL usability - <AUTHOR> https://jameshfisher.com/2017/12/02/the-sorry-state-of-openssl-usability <comment><USER2> > there literally isn't any documentation of LibreSSL.

This is plain wrong, it's particularly annoying as a great deal of effort has been put into updating the documentation [1].

> Instead, you just have to read the OpenSSL docs, and just hope the behavior > is roughly the same.

I'll give the author the benefit of the doubt and assume they refer the "OpenSSL docs" as naming hasn't been changed, as opposed to looking at actual OpenSSL documentation. Indeed it doesn't make a great sense rename everything in the documents because as the LibreSSL website states.

        libssl: a TLS library, backwards-compatible with OpenSSL
        libtls: a new TLS library, designed to make it easier to write foolproof applications

[1] [https://undeadly.org/cgi?action=article&sid=20161215221715](https://undeadly.org/cgi?action=article&sid=20161215221715)

<comment><AUTHOR> Maybe I'm missing something - could you link me to the docs on [http://www.libressl.org/](http://www.libressl.org/)? I expected a big link saying "Docs", but I don't see one. I've also tried a Google search for the docs[1], without success.

[1]: [https://www.google.co.uk/search?q=site%3Alibressl.org+docume...](https://www.google.co.uk/search?q=site%3Alibressl.org+documentation)

<comment><USER3> The section on [http://www.libressl.org/](http://www.libressl.org/) that starts with: "LibreSSL releases contain several parts" lists said parts, with links to manpages for those parts. For example: [https://man.openbsd.org/openssl](https://man.openbsd.org/openssl)

<comment><USER4> That page claims to be docs for OpenSSL. Is that incorrect? If it actually is docs for OpenSSL and not for LibreSSL, where's the LibreSSL-specific docs gbrown_ was talking about?

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> Unfortunately, from my perspective, the same situation is actually common with a lot of security libraries/tools. Usability and documentation often seem to be sub-standard. The API themselves are mostly not build around the "common" use cases.

I was always asuming that's caused by the orginal programmers being more interested into the crypto algorithmics than building an actual useful tool. But what do I know.

My solution so far is to wrap crypto code into own modules and expose only the most simple interface for the job.

For the cli, especially openssl, I am relying on (customized) scripts to make common tasks easier, with my ultimate goal to not have to call openssl directly anymore.

</comment><comment><USER6> It's funny to me when people complain about something they get for free. There are at least two solutions to this problem and neither of them are writing a blog to complain about the work that someone else has done and given a way for free.

You could write some documentation and give it to them. Or you could pay someone to write it for the project.

The author seems to know quite a bit about OpenSSL/LibreSSL. I'd think writing up a bit of documentation for it would be a win for everyone. Writing a blog complaining that the authors haven't done it and given it away for free is not.

<comment><USER7> But _there_ is documentation for LibreSSL. As an OpenBSD project they take documentation just as seriously as code. I just don't get how the article makes that claim when there are links to any man page you need here: [http://www.libressl.org/](http://www.libressl.org/)

<comment><USER8> There are links to the documentation, but they're not labeled as such. They're labeled as though they're links to download the components.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> The usability points in this post are very well taken, but I'd push back on "we're told not to roll our own crypto but instead to use OpenSSL", since the first part of that claim is true but the second is emphatically not.

<comment><USER10> The second part is a direct consequence of how malleable and easy to misinterpret the first part is. It's a 'usability' problem of its own.

<comment><USER9> I see where you're coming from and there's obviously some truth to it, but even an exceptionally well-documented OpenSSL with carefully thought-out command line UX would still be dangerous just by dint of what OpenSSL (as in, the "openssl" CLI) sets out to do, which is to provide an interface to low- level cryptography.

<comment><USER10> _would still be dangerous just by dint of what OpenSSL (as in, the "openssl" CLI) sets out to do_

Of course. What I'm getting at is "don't roll your own crypto" is one of the things that gives people a false sense of confidence in using the low-level crypto facilities. It might as well not be true for all the good it does the people it's supposed to help. I guess 'emphatically' is what I'm responding to, the 'don't roll' thing is, effectively, not that great either.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> This is a macOS problem. OpenSSL on Linux has extensive man pages and a --help switch.

<comment><USER12> On Linux Mint 18:

> (bso) larrik@local:~/bso$ openssl --help > openssl:Error: '\--help' is an > invalid command.

It lists a bunch of valid commands, though. Of course, you can't do `openssl help genrsa` or anything sensible like that.

<comment><USER13> Funny that is what you get in Linux Mint, given that it is based on Debian and on Debian (stretch) you get...

        $ openssl --help
        Invalid command '--help'; type "help" for a list.

Maybe Linux Mint 18 is based on an older version.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> _Unfortunately,[http://www.libressl.org/](http://www.libressl.org/) won't help you either, because there literally isn't any documentation of LibreSSL._

Going to that website and clicking on openssl reveals a manual page. So, I guess the "literally isn't any documentation" is wrong. OpenBSD likes their man pages.

<comment><USER15> Clicking on OpenSSL takes you to OpenSSL wiki, and he talks about the wiki vs. man pages at the very beginning of his article.

Other links take you elsewhere. Like OpenBSD man pages for libs. He didn't need a lib.

Yes, the LibreSSL pages contains in total 0 man/docs/wiki pages. Instead it points to external websites.

<comment><USER8> No, it takes you to the OpenBSD man page wiki, not the Open SSL wiki. But the tool is still named OpenSSL for interoperability.

<comment><USER15> Original quote:

> Going to that website and clicking on openssl reveals a manual page

Please tell me where the very first OpenSSL link takes you. That's the one I clicked just to check.

Oh, right, it has to be the openssl(1), helpfully hidden away in the list of various utilities.

<comment><USER2> > Please tell me where the very first OpenSSL link takes you. That's the one I > clicked just to check.

Are you referring to the line informing the reader that LibreSSL is a fork and provides a link the the OpenSSL project?

<comment><USER15> Yes. That's the most prominent OpenSSL link on that page. And as someone pointed out elsewhere, "There are links to the documentation, but they're not labeled as such. They're labeled as though they're links to download the components."

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> > And stop forking OpenSSL; you're just making things worse.

I strongly disagree that forks are making things worse. The solution to a project that is too difficult to fix due to baggage or a bad community or bad maintainers _is_ to fork.

<comment><USER17> Exactly, the fork is done for the sake of maintaining the code, not the communities. Saying a fork without docs is evidence no forks should exist is throwing the baby out with the bathwater - by comparison, you would never consider a base project without docs to need shutting down just on that alone.

</comment></comment><comment><USER18> Inspired by your blog post, I've written a small tutorial on how to use OpenSSL for creating SSL certificates: [https://www.thenativeweb.io/blog/2017-12-29-11-51-the- openss...](https://www.thenativeweb.io/blog/2017-12-29-11-51-the-openssl- beginners-guide-to-creating-ssl-certificates/)

</comment><comment><USER19> On my Ubuntu 16.04 system, `man openssl` works just fine for me.

</comment><comment><USER20> One could export the man pages from another *nix and import them into OSX perhaps?

</comment><comment><USER21> If your OS is "shit", don't blame others for this. "man openssl" perfectly works on correct OS and you can ask "\--help" for all commands.

<comment><USER7> While I wouldn't call macOS "shit" you're not wrong. On a Slackware 14.2 box and an OpenBSD 6.2 box I just tried both man openssl and openssl --help work fine.

edit: Actually --help does start by saying _\--help is an invalid command_ but that's easy to miss because you then get a standard usage command with a basic summary to get you started.

</comment></comment><comment><USER22> wtf.. donate/contribute</comment>


Obituary: Stanislav Petrov (2017) - <AUTHOR> https://www.economist.com/obituary/2017/09/30/obituary-stanislav-petrov-was-declared-to-have-died-on-september-18th <comment><USER2> [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=15273228](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=15273228)

</comment><comment><USER3> Petrov died last year, this article is from September 2017.

Also the article headline is "Obituary: Stanislav Petrov was declared to have died on September 18th"</comment>


Paul Graham – "How to Make Wealth" - <AUTHOR> https://www.mckaywrigley.com/post/paul-graham-how-to-make-wealth <comment><USER2> It would be better to link to the original article: [http://www.paulgraham.com/wealth.html](http://www.paulgraham.com/wealth.html)

</comment><comment><USER3> Unfortunately doesn't render in Firefox mobile.

<comment><USER4> Do I need to download Chrome to make wealth? /s

<comment><USER5> this but unironically</comment></comment></comment>


Decentralised cam porn site on Ethereum - <AUTHOR> https://hack.ether.camp/#/idea/decentralised-cam-porn-shows-on-the-ethereum-network <comment><USER2> >>> Porn is a billion dollar industry and sooner or later some one will probably make a decentralised cam site. >>>

<comment><AUTHOR> I think there's a new Bitcoin based site that does just what the proposal stand for..</comment></comment>


Diabetes drug has unexpected, broad implications for healthy aging - <AUTHOR> https://www.salk.edu/news-release/diabetes-drug-has-unexpected-broad-implications-for-healthy-aging/ <comment><USER2> I wish these stories would discuss implications on dosing. Are higher dosages beneficial and safe? Doctors seem to max out at 2g/day.</comment>


Pentagon Now Sees Big Data as 'National Security Threat' - <AUTHOR> http://killerapps.foreignpolicy.com/posts/2013/08/12/irony_alert_pentagon_now_fears_a_big_data_national_security_threat <comment><USER3> " _The doomsday thinkers over at DARPA are looking for researchers to "investigate the national security threat posed by public data available either for purchase or through open sources." The question is, could a determined data miner use only publicly available information -- culled from Web pages and social media or from a consumer data broker -- to cause "nation- state type effects." Forget identify theft. DARPA appears to be talking about outing undercover intelligence officers; revealing military war plans; giving hackers a playbook for taking down a bank; or creating maps of sensitive government facilities._

I'll save them some time and say its possible, and if they are just inquiring into this, they are already behind the game… Using wikipedia, one can get a list most of the oil refineries in the united states (for the world for that matter), and from some api queries using either popular or open-source map/geocoding services, obtain gps coordinates within 100's of feet of those locations, within a matter of seconds.

If you scrape cryptome/other places every so often of the lists uncovered (often with contact info[numbers|emails|names|addresses]) of people, map them against other lists to find connections (this takes a matter of seconds as well), it is not unheard of that one could automate emails/calls/send mail to people to uncover attack surfaces to exploit.

And even until more recently, one could access public all posts on facebook via [https://graph.facebook.com/search](https://graph.facebook.com/search) without authentication, and with some well crafted queries, one was able to get specific information about people that one wouldn't think would be possible to obtain.

The list goes on.

</comment><comment><USER4> Here is the source document outlining the scope of the study:

[http://www.zyn.com/sbir/sbres/sbir/dod/darpa/darpasb133-002....](http://www.zyn.com/sbir/sbres/sbir/dod/darpa/darpasb133-002.htm)

They are right to be worried about the attack surface presented by the mobile & display ad ecosystem.

The key to any attack, of course, is de-anonymizing the data, in the sense of being able to identify corresponding entities across disparate sources of data. This is the technical challenge that a large chunk of the ad-tech industry has been working on.

This is difficult to do reliably --- but the reliability (or otherwise) of a particular technique may be moot if you have a population of several thousands of individuals that you can target -- sooner or later somebody will carry out the actions that your attack assumes, and you will be able to make the connections that you need. The attacker needs only think of the problem in terms of "matched filters" to make headway -- just discard anything that does not match.

Of course, characterising the target is only part of the story -- exploiting the information advantage comes next.

Funnily enough, the proliferation of open communications channels also offers a potential attack vector - the use of individually crafted messages and disinformation to direct attention and manipulate behaviour of the target -- similar in concept to the social engineering techniques that are used in spear phishing attacks.

<comment><USER5> If your goal was to cause mayhem/reveal war plans/take down a bank, wouldn't just hacking it be easier than advertising an AQ Data Scientist job posting? This attack vector is the obfuscated c contest of skullduggery.

<comment><USER4> Yeah, perhaps I am over thinking it. Mind you -- the study is purposefully looking for vulnerabilities that arise from open source data, so my brain did not head off in that direction entirely of it's own accord.

<comment><USER5> Oh of course. It should be investigated (if only to see what crazy red team shit one could come up with). I may be wrong, there may be a brilliant Rube Goldberg of big data terror hammering out some kickass python number that will rain misinformation and chaos down on the world. This would in fact be a better Bond villain than the Quantum of Solace bad guy. However given the way the Pentagon overreacts to shit they don't understand I really hope that they don't start REALLY worrying about this.

<comment><USER4> Just like everybody else, it is all about job security.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> There's no publicly accessible article at this link -- it's a paywall.

<comment><USER7> [http://pastebin.com/raw.php?i=0yBtLNS8](http://pastebin.com/raw.php?i=0yBtLNS8)

Paste of text.

<comment><USER6> 1\. Technically, a copyright violation.

2\. Hey, thanks!

:)

<comment><USER7> I certainly didn't paste it.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> This, like PRISM, is governments having to adjust to the loss of privacy as well. The 16 year old girl whom Wal-Mart knows is pregnant because of her loyalty card purchases thought she could keep it "secret". But secret is not what you don't tell people, it's what you don't reveal.

Governments the world over are finding out that their secret airbases, their secret flights, their buildings and purchases are just "private".

You really have to work at keeping secrets. So instead of pretending you can keep everything secret, try being open by default. You will find it a lot easier to concentrate on the things you want to keep secret then. Oh - <USER2> never ever let your secret near anything digital

</comment><comment><USER9> Ok, enough with the foreignpolicy.com links. That is now a blacklisted domain for me.

</comment><comment><USER10> Am I the only who get a greyed-out overlay layer because I'm guessing some anti-spam-security-and-whatnot plugin interferes with their page? In any case -> inspect -> delete node!

</comment><comment><USER11> Two frontpage articles from foreignpolicy.com? Seems a little strange...

<comment><USER12> 1\. Someone goes to the first link that was posted

2\. They see links to other articles from that site (e.g. "Most Popular on FP")

3\. They decide to post that article to HN</comment></comment>


Mark Zuckerberg's Design Skills, Circa 2001  - <AUTHOR> http://techcrunch.com/2010/04/17/mark-zuckerbergs-coding-skills-circa-2001/

<comment><USER2> Doing is how people learn in this field. I'm sure there are some real doosies in the way-back machine by me.

<comment><USER3> That's for sure. It reminds me when I did my first website on Angelfire (which coincidentally was also at age 16). At the time I thought it was the best thing I've ever made, now I look back and realize how hideous it is. I'm feeling nostalgic. :(

<comment><USER4> 'Hideous' is a rather relative in the context of the geocities/angelfire web era. I don't even think things like 'good web design' really crossed my mind. At least not in the way that you see those "top n ways how to code a modern website" type of articles. The web in general was a giant novelty, so all my friends and I really cared about was how cool something looked on the screen.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> Somebody's confusing design ability with coding ability.

<comment><USER6> Still, that's a really terrible user interface. Engineers at least can create something of the quality of GNU's site or the Linux Kernel site. And the markup on those early Zuckerman pages has mix-matched casing. Looks like a copy paste job.

<comment><USER7> Dude, he was 16.

We live in an age of record. Thanks in no small part to Zuckerberg himself, the next great wave of software engineers and entrepreneurs who we admire, respect, and study will have surely done something stupid on the internet. Or maybe they made an ugly website. People learning make mistakes. They produce shoddy work. But doing work is how you learn.

We should encourage aspiring hackers to launch their careers early, collect feedback, and iterate on themselves... even if that means someone is going to mock them for trying.

<comment><USER6> Right, I wasn't trying to take anything away from the guy. He's obviously a very successful individual. I know I've created some terrible stuff.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> "Let he who is without sin cast the first stone"

Granted FB's first homepage was ugly, but as other have commented solid engineering != good design skills. We've all been there. ;)

</comment><comment><USER9> Seriously, how is it possible that anyone finds interesting a page written by Zuckerberg when he was 16? What possible interest could this have to anyone?

<comment><USER10> People are interested in the past of famous or otherwise notable people. This is a little part of his; a little creation before his big creation. Why is that surprising?</comment></comment>


Ask HN: Who here has started a book (and launched?) with no list/etc - <AUTHOR> I am thinking about and starting the early stages of a book/course to build a SaaS app in the latest version of Ruby on Rails. Specifically, I have battle tested an approach and skeleton for the various parts of a SaaS application in RoR.
With that being said, I don't have a deep list of subscribers and was wondering if anyone here had experience building that from scratch, what tools they used to collect signup or presales and tools they used to build their assets.
PS - Let me know if you are interested and I can post some links to my (for the time being) GumRoad pre-sale pages. <comment><USER2> Pls read this before using GumRoad [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13139000](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13139000) and decide. All the best.</comment>


Bitbucket Down - Major Outage - <AUTHOR> https://status.bitbucket.org/ <comment><USER2> I've said it before and I'll say it again... It makes zero sense to centralize something that was meant to be decentralized.

We need issues, pull requests, comments, milestones, wiki, etc... all to be decentralized. No reason this stuff cannot be modeled using existing Git objects.

GitHub, GitLab and BitBucket are extremely similar. Almost 100% overlap, you could use the lowest common denominator between the 3 and you'd still have 95% of the features.

<comment><USER3> > We need issues, pull requests, comments, milestones, wiki, etc... all to be > decentralized. No reason this stuff cannot be modeled using existing Git > objects.

[https://www.fossil-scm.org/](https://www.fossil-scm.org/) pretty much does this.

<comment><USER4> That is pretty interesting and does model those things in the same data store. But the data store isn't git objects, as far as I can tell...

 _" Fossil stores its objects in a relational (SQLite) database file"_

<comment><USER3> Yeah, it fully replaces the whole version control tool.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> Now that sysadmin guy who told me: "what happens when bitbucket goes down?" when I asked him to move our repos to the cloud, he is smiling. Sometimes it's best to keep stuff in your own servers, if you have any...

<comment><USER6> We have Bitbucket on our own servers, and we're moving it back to either Atlassian's hosting or to Github. The reason being that we spend far too much time per month hand holding the server when it goes mental and takes all of the RAM and then decides not to server any pages. And it's not for a lack of resources on the server either, 16Gb RAM and 4 core virtual machine, running Linux. So we have more downtime than either Github and Bitbucket combined.

<comment><USER5> Any guesses why that happens? It's weird that a git server goes mental just to serve a repo. We had gitlab on my previous job and git server on my preprevious job and never ever had server down problems. This period is like 5 years total.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> Oh boy, any git down on a Monday is bad. Imagine being in their office right now.

<comment><USER8> Its holiday today in Ukraine. Yet I am at work... Trying to push some code...

</comment></comment><comment><USER9> Great. I need to push some stuff real soon now. In the last 12 months Bitbucket had an uncomfortably high number of issues. But whenever I think about moving our company code to GitLab or GitHub I envision going into a world of pain with my eng. team.

Has anyone got some advice for pain-free migration to GitLab or GitHub?

<comment><USER10> GitLab is way better than Bitbucket IMO but also has way too much downtime.

<comment><USER11> Why not both?

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> Often there's no preservation of past failure states so people can see (for whatever reason) what the failure looked like. Here's what [https://bitbucket.org/chromiumembedded/cef/](https://bitbucket.org/chromiumembedded/cef/) (a totally random repository that was in my history) looks right now: [http://archive.is/g0I6O](http://archive.is/g0I6O)

</comment><comment><USER13> First, my HDMI port blows up and have to work on a small laptop screen.

And now I can't access my repositories..

Not happy.

<comment><USER14> This is why it is important to keep backups of backups ^.^

EDIT: I upvoted you twice, HN just loves to downvote anything ;)

<comment><USER15> When you have to painstakingly earn the right to downvote, you just can't feel bad about using it once in a while.

<comment><USER12> Hi, I've always been curious what the quota/threshold is. My last account (i336_) got to 1000+ (before I accidentally locked it...) and I never saw the downvote button. Is it like 10,000 or something?

<comment><USER16> Your user page shows you how much karma you need to hit the next level. In your case, you need 172 to downvote comments. [https://news.ycombinator.com/user?id=exikyut](https://news.ycombinator.com/user?id=exikyut)

<comment><USER17> I had no idea! Thanks for the pointer. There are more levels?

<comment><USER16> I don't know. Maybe at 1,000,000,000 you become CEO of ycombinator.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><AUTHOR> Investigating - Following reports from customers starting at 12:45 UTC, Bitbucket Cloud became unavailable. Our engineering team is currently investigating this issue. We will provide an update as soon as we have further information. Oct 16, 12:56 UTC

</comment><comment><USER4> _" Our engineering team has identified the root cause of the issue and a fix has been applied. We are currently verifying that the incident is fully resolved. Oct 16, 13:48 UTC"_

</comment><comment><USER18> The page shows that git over https is still up, so hopefully it's just a peripheral problem rather than a fundamental one.

</comment><comment><USER19> If you have one of these services you should probably invest in a backup system. Either a self hosted Gitlab or even just a clone of your repositories on a server or like AWS CodeConnect .

</comment><comment><USER20> It's back for me.

<comment><USER12> Wow, that was FAST. It's back for me too!

<comment><USER20> Spoke too soon, it's down again.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER21> "Minor*"

<comment><USER12> I can't access bitbucket.org, so...

Edit: / works, repos don't

<comment><USER22> What does work is

        git clone https://email@example.com/organization/repo.git

so you can probably still get by. Just the website is down.

<comment><USER15> This doesn't work for me. (Edit: and, it's moot now, because it seems to be coming back up!)

I also have 2fa enabled (it's a private team) and my repo is private... I do seem to reach the repo, and it tells me I'll need an app-specific password to proceed.

Too bad the interface to create one is down.</comment></comment></comment></comment>


Divvy raises a $35M Series B led by Insight Venture Partners - <AUTHOR> https://www.forbes.com/sites/alexkonrad/2018/07/24/divvy-raises-twice-in-three-months/#547c1feb73fb <comment><AUTHOR> I'm curious what percentage of the interchange rate they could get from the bank that issues the card - anyone have any insight or experience in this?</comment>


Show HN: my weekend project workplac.es - <AUTHOR> http://workplac.es A few days ago with a few of my mates I launched a new project called workplac.es
There has been many times in the past where I would start working at a new company to find out that the person recruiting me deliberately misled me
during the interviewing process and that the job or workplace was not as expected.
With that in mind we have created http://workplac.es that let you you rate and review companies anonymously. You sign up using your Linkedin account to prove that you worked at and can genuinley review a given company. We don't post anything on the behalf of the user. Would love to get some feedback
What do you guys think of the idea and the website? <comment><USER2> I doubt it this was a weekend project...since the app already has a team of 6. Don't lie HN just because it would be a good marketing strategy for your app.

<comment><USER3> It is definitely a weekend project which we started a year ago with my brother and then some friends joined us over time to from a great team of 6, right! I don't see any marketing strategy possible about this!

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> Nice. I like the clean and simple interface, hope it goes well for you guys.

</comment><comment><USER5> Looks pretty nice. Do you edit the reviews?

<comment><USER3> Thanks a lot. No we don't

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> awesome- I have already posted my reviews. This could grow really quickly!

<comment><USER7> It sounds like you don't have a hand in the pot at

workplac.es by the tone of your comment.

I am not sure if you intended to sound like you just

discovered workplac.es but really you are the marketing

person Melissa right? It always irks me when people leave

positive reviews or comments on their own products. It feels so cheap...

I am sure that is not what you are meaning to do though.

I hope that you guys do well. It is best to be transparent on HN.

Just letting you know. workplac.es looks better than Glassdoor already.

I hate Glassdoor.

Please crush them.

<comment><USER6> Hey Jdubya, you got me - first time using this site and I was just sounded excited because I am! But you're right, I don't actually have a hand in the pot yet, I am close friends with the guys that created it though and will be helping them out with marketing as it grows. Glad you like the look of it so far, they are a talented bunch and good guys all round.</comment></comment></comment>


Google's search monopoly complicates a mental health crisis - <AUTHOR> https://www.bloombergquint.com/businessweek/google-s-search-monopoly-complicates-a-mental-health-crisis <comment><USER2> It looks like the main reason the ads price for therapy went up is the extra competition - that COVID making the therapy market from in-person to virtual creates the supply to be not constrained by distance, which means suppliers have to compete across greater pool of suppliers, including therapists from cheaper cost of living areas. This naturally creates a downward pressure for the average price, and of course firms like BetterHelp show up to take advantage of this price differential - i.e. they are doing an arbitrage.

So this comes down to therapists living in expensive areas complaining about competition from therapists from cheaper areas. Given there are still people who need/want local therapy, there will be a new price equilibrium but most likely it will be lower than before. No amount of complaining about Google or ads or arbitrage like BetterHelp will make the price stay as before. Nothing much to see here - this looks mostly like a market adapting to a new changed market condition.

<comment><USER3> Also VC backed online therapy providers are mentioned. Are these sustainable businesses (no one knows) and, crucially, if they fail will they do so before they wipe out independent therapists having used their purchasing power to raise ad prices beyond reach?

In the 90s part of the promise of the web was that it would disintermediate service provision, these economics would seem to act against that possibility. With large aggregator middle men best positioned to profit with large scale small margin offerings.

<comment><USER4> It is not Google's job to ensure private practice of shrinks is sustainable. Large scale small margin offerings clearly better serve the patients and if Google does not help them they will be in a better position to seek other alternatives like national TV. I do not think small shrinks can even enter those spaces today.

One possibility I see is for many shrinks to come together form a co-operative and compete with vc backed alternatives.

<comment><USER5> > Large scale small margin offerings clearly better serve the patients

This isn't clear to me at all. I actually associate low-margin business with worse outcomes for traditionally high-touch services.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> As I understand it, the problem here has little to do with Google. The problem is that the transition to telehealth means that therapists are now competing directly with large national mental healthare providers like BetterHealth and Talkspace mentioned in the article. Those big companies have deeper advertising pockets.

If you want to break up companies to make it easier for independent therapists, those are the ones to break up. Google is just the marketplace.

This is like blaming the sidewalk or the interstate highway system when Wal- Mart causes your local mom and pop store to shut down. Google isn't driving her prices up, _competition_ is.

<comment><USER7> It is _a little bit_ like that.

It would probably be considered a problem if Wal-Mart paid the state/highway department to ensure that major town roads "flow naturally" to Wal-Mart and are better maintained than roads that lead elsewhere.

This is definitely similar to major companies in a specific domain buying the top search result from google for any query within that domain.

<comment><USER8> you analogy seems questionable to me.

The major telehealth bying google ads is Wal-Mart bying 10 large highway billboards. The indie therapist not being able to afford the auction is the mom-and-pop shop not being able to afford those buidboards.

now if the major telehealth would get a dedicated bandwidth and the indie therapist's video calls were getting throttled we would be talking roads etc.

For now it's the 'walmart moving into a small town' scenario but the bloomberg article blames the company that operates the billboards.

<comment><USER7> No, your analogy is inaccurate.

A billboard ad is not an explicit and direct "physical" connection to the product the way that a search result is.

Dedicated bandwidth and throttling, to extend my original analogy, would be like the roads going _only_ to Wal-Mart or being difficult in some significant way to take anywhere other than Wal-Mart. It is the same problem only more pronounced.

The first search result you encounter when executing some search is much more similar to the first store you encounter when searching for some store (by taking the easiest or "most natural" path into the shopping district) than it is to viewing a billboard.

Edit -- To clarify what I mean about billboard ads: A billboard ad is something you see that is unrelated to whatever else you are doing. Yes, a digital "billboard" ad is still a direct connection to the product being advertised but it is also distinctly separate from whatever content or activity it displays alongside.

A search result _is_ the content/activity you have sought out by searching. There could definitely be a grey area if google's design made sponsored search results stand out more or be distinct in some way that causes them to read as some content other than a search result (either by position, border, size, color, etc) but that is very clearly _not_ the case of their current design.

Sponsored search results look _exactly_ the same as non-sponsored search results apart from the "Ad" text displayed with the URL. They are clearly intended to look and function the same as the "normal" content of the page and not intended to be an incidental "secondary" experience alongside your search.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> The article is so wrong. This is part of the reason why I do not take main stream journalists very seriously. I wish same issue was taken up by some hard core economist.

What is wrong with the article :

\- So one small Psychiatrist is losing business to other Psychiatrists.

It is perfectly possible that Ross is an inefficient Psychiatrist here and patients are better served by other Psychiatrists. This is a loss for Ross but barely a "complication". Also it is not clear to me if the market was divided 50-50 between say Google and Bing why would it be any difference. From over 10 years of experience in ad industry I have realized that it is a ruthlessly free market system where the inefficient player will get punished very quickly.

What Google has done here is that opened up a lager pool of customers for the suppliers and that has resulted into fierce competition among suppliers. The customers invariably will benefit here as they have more options.

\- The rant about smart campaigns

This is one of the real bad arguments. A couple's councilor is upset that Google is unable to differentiate between a PTSD councilor and couple's Councillor. Will the world be better served if a couple's councilor has to compete with a florist or a nanny ? [That it what yellow pages were].

The article laments that customers have more choice and it is not easy for the suppliers to rely on information asymmetry to make profit. They take some fictional futuristic scenario and compare google against it and blame those problems on Google. But in reality it is a good problem to have.

PS. This is by no means to claim that Google's ad algorithms are perfect, but it is without dispute that they are better than all available alternatives.

<comment><USER9> _\- So one small Psychiatrist is losing business to other Psychiatrists._

Perhaps you're approaching this from a technical standpoint because you're a computer person. He's not supposed to represent the entirety of the problem. He's there to illustrate the problem. Journalists do this to "humanize" the story, to make it more understandable by the audience. This is done all the time. If there's space available, several people are added. Or there may have been several examples in the reporter's original writing, but they were cut for various reasons like lack of space.

As an HN reader, you're probably not the audience.

</comment></comment><comment><USER10> In France, they fixed this by not allowing doctors or drugs to advertise. One of the best decisions ever, for a lot of reasons: you cut care cost, and you avoid that kind of third party profiteering.

<comment><USER11> Advertising is how a free-market economy disseminates information about new products and services. How does France solve this?

<comment><USER12> I presume the information is disseminated to medical professionals (presumably by official means and not from advertisements) and then the medical professionals determine if the new products or services are appropriate for you.

It's like my non-technical boss coming into the office and telling me that we should start using technology X that he saw in an advertisement. Typically, with my boss, he sees something at a trade show or a trade magazine or in an email, and becomes convinced that it is the best thing ever for us and will solve all of our problems. Then we have to put forth a lot of effort convincing him that he is wrong (he has never brought us anything remotely useful) without making him feel dumb.

How about he lets us technical people recommend to him the appropriate technologies instead of the other way around?

<comment> kube-system Awareness can also be an issue -- the experts can't help you if you don't tell them about your problem. And a layperson can't get help from an expert unless they know they have a problem. This can especially be a concern with medical issues that carry social stigma.

<comment><USER13> Then maybe the government should put up ads that say "Talk to your doctor every once and a while."

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> > he didn't even check to see how they did. "I mean, it's Bing, right?" he > says.

Bing and Yahoo are still about 20% of the American market. It is not inconsequential.

I suspect that prices have soared there as well though, simply because the pandemic severely disrupts therapists. In a world of video calls, there is no local market.

There are as many places seeking to sell you therapy as sell you gasoline now.

<comment><USER15> > pandemic severely disrupts therapists. In a world of video calls, there is > no local market.

This is absolutely not true in the United States. Therapists are licensed in each state and it can cause severe professional problems and ethics situation. A counselor cannot technically even see a client telehealth if they are on vacation out of state that week unless the counselor is also licensed in the State the client is vacationing in.

Source: My wife is a licensed practical counselor and regularly studies for her mandatory continuing education credits in the evening. I hear her watching the lectures and answering questions on those exams.

<comment><USER16> Covid has lead to a changing of guidelines around telehealth both at a state and a federal level. And even if it's not technically allowed it's unlikely that any state will prosecute medical professionals due to the ongoing crisis as it's really bad PR.

<comment><USER15> Yes, that change came down pretty quick with Georgia Department of Behavioral Health and Developmental Disabilities after the Federal requirements changed. My wife was working from home telehealth for the first time ever for months. Her agency has since shifted back into the clinical environment. But telehealth in this setting went from not allowed for counselors to done for safety of clients and staff.

Private practice may be somewhat different in that State and Federal insurance rules are not at play for private pay, but most sensible counselors will not want to risk their license. You don't have to be prosecuted criminally to lose your ability to practice.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER17> Not clear to me how breaking up the google search monopoly would lead to a lower cost per click for valuable keywords.

<comment><USER18> Yes, this just seems to be more providers bidding on "online therapy" keywords, since the in-person kind isn't so practical right now.

<comment><USER19> And if I'm not mistaken, the audience is now also a lot bigger, right? Would this not imply that this evens each other out? The therapist of the article could just maintain her bid price, not?

<comment><USER18> It's a weird market since there's only so many room for ads. Normally, you would add shelf space, Google doesn't do that.

<comment><USER20> Yeah but clearly the ads being bid up are worth it to someone, no? Is the issue that the limited supply is now being taken up by therapists charging more than her, i.e. those who can bear higher costs of advertising?

And if so ... what exactly is the workable alternative? This is all just market forces. The cost of advertising and acquiring new business has been around for much longer than Google.

<comment><USER21> They aren't even being taken up by therapists charging more than her. They are being taken up by corporations providing online access to therapists for substantially less than she charges. The consumer is actually benefiting.

She charges $250 a session. Lets say she sees 6 patients per day generating $1500 gross revenue a day. She spends $20 a day in ads which works out to around 1.3% of gross revenues spent on advertising. That is an extremely low amount spent on advertising. The US Small Business Administration recommendation for businesses with revenues less than $5 million per year is to spend 7-8% of gross revenues on marketing.

<comment><USER20> That's a good point and thanks for doing the numbers. Maybe she just has unrealistic expectations of how much is normal to spend on advertising? It sounds like it. She should definitely be able to afford to spend more than a platform like BetterHelp, which is making a lot less per consultation than she is.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER22> I don't see the direct connection to out mental health crisis in this issue. None of this addresses the mental health care crisis in terms of patient outcomes and patient well being.

Instead, the article talks about how individual therapists are losing out as ad prices rise and newer tech-mediated therapy platforms are gaining attention & market share. (and working for those platforms doesn't pay nearly as well) Also google has a near-monopoly for online advertising, so these therapists have few options if they aren't born natural marketers, and Google customer support is bad. In short, it's bad for therapists.

Nothing much said about this being bad for patients though. It's possible patients have greater access to care with these new platforms.

</comment><comment><USER23> The article completely failed to convince me on it's main point.

No regulation will fix the fact that people have limited attention, besides banning ads altogether.

Google does a lot of bad stuff, but auctioning ads is not one of them.

Also somebody dares to bill people ONLY 50$ per hour! How dare they to not bill 250$?! ...

<comment><USER24> Paying a skilled therapist with a master's degree $15 an hour is robbery. And they're probably taking folks on as contractors, which means no insurance. That $30 - $50 for a session is a race to the bottom.

<comment><USER25> How is the market failing to set the appropriate price? A therapist should be able to charge whatever they want, up to the point they can't find anyone willing to pay it.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER26> A question from the millions of folks who don't have $50-250/hr (x hr/mo) - could this possibly lead to a genuine chance at therapy?

[a] Five therapists offering 2/hrs per week to the community isn't nothing - it is a drop in an ocean of need, however.

[b] No. Trying to launch an insurance debate won't help answer this question in a helpful way. Thanks for asking tho.

</comment><comment><USER27> Isn't Google Maps search free for users and providers?

Doesn't high ad pricing mean there is a glut of supply for the service in question?

The article subject seems upset that someone else gets the customers, but that's not a problem for anyone. If the subject got the customers, that wouldn't be "fair" to their competitors.

<comment><USER28> A higher priced ad means that the provider is charging extra for the service. Those charges are passed directly to the consumer. If you have a business that is small niche of larger area you will be priced out of ads by larger, higher charging competitors. This squeezes out small and creative organizations and leaves the overall market with a few cookie cutter services that charge much more than the value of the product or service. Consumers without a lot of discretionary income can't find a service to use. Small businesses cease to exist.

<comment><USER29> Competition for a limited resource (ad space, land, wireless spectrum) selects for companies with higher margin. In one understanding, higher profits mean the business is providing higher value. In another, it means the business is sucking up excess value that could be had by upstream consumers.

Ad space can be seen as land rented out a user request at a time.

Having more competitors to Google will help only a little bit. There's only so many user request x ad space x keyword units to be split among the companies. So the total amount of "land" advertisers bid for remains constant, so prices will be roughly similar. The only difference will be that Google will command a smaller cut of the auctioned price. I doubt that will make as much of a difference as an influx of entrants to the bidding market. Some Google keywords are 10s or 100s of dollars; the Google cut isn't driving hat, but the value of a new customer acquisition.

Disclaimer: I work at Google but not on ads.

<comment><USER28> When there was more competition for Google, and when ads and links for other Google products didn't take up half the page of search results, there was much, much more eye ball space, even though there were many fewer eyeballs. I'm not going to make the case for causation vs. correlation here, but this is part of the often mentioned general deterioration of the Internet.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER30> Anytime I see a service that pays for ranking then I intentionally avoid them.</comment>


CrushingCo.de – Brogrammer Motivation - <AUTHOR> http://www.crushingco.de

<comment><USER2> That is just disgusting.... I wish I code down vote this and get it off of here :(

<comment><USER3> Click "flag" under the link</comment></comment>


Tinyland - <AUTHOR> https://emmasmith.me/tinyland/ <comment><USER3> Ok, so back in the 90s I knew someone who was working in a research department. They had a big project that reminds me of this known informally as "desktop computing" (you'll appreciate this is cutting edge early 90s tech, not a patch on what we have now).

Lots of work on dynamic image capture, lots of work on interpolating what's going on due to the low (by our standards) capabilities of the camera. Except...

...the camera was, to say the least, badly documented. A research student going through the documentation (looking for something else) finally noticed the thing had been misconfigured the entire time. In fact, the camera was significantly more capable.

The camera got reconfigured, people continued to produce research papers and no-one died. It was, however, extremely funny.

<comment><USER4> Tactile Manipulation on a Digital Desk by Xerox

[https://youtu.be/laApNiNpnvI](https://youtu.be/laApNiNpnvI)

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> Super great, super interesting to cheaper components for the i/o. And bonus for me, I discovered the Recurse Center while reading and clicking. [https://www.recurse.com/manual](https://www.recurse.com/manual)

<comment><USER6> RC was an amazing experience, and there are definitely a few Recursers lurking. Happy to share my experience!

</comment></comment><comment><USER7> Interesting I had not heard of Dynamicland previously. The posted project though reminds me a bit of reacTable [1] although the latter is targetted to music media creation. It's a 'product' now, I guess, but it started off as a research project published in early 2000s. I gather that Dynamicland goes back quite a bit further which is interesting.

In our group we wanted to see how dead easy it would be to build an interactive projection system, so we did it.. just mounted a projector and a camera above a table [2] -- can't believe it's already been 10 years since then. It was surprisingly simple -- we didn't bother with AR tags, just used silhouettes via simple video processing as inputs to vector field operations to generate movement and influence physics simulations and audio-generating algorithms. The advantage being that you literally just stick your hand in there and something happens, it was great for kids. But building the whole system was quite easy too, it would make a great "science project" for the right age.

Oh, another fun "tangible computing" project from the same era was "BeatBearing", dug up the video here... [3]

There's a lot you can do with a simple camera!

[1] [https://reactable.com/](https://reactable.com/)

[2] [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lrqG_kMg4AY](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lrqG_kMg4AY)

[3] [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wreP8FMupyM](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wreP8FMupyM)

<comment><USER8> I came across Reactable a couple weeks ago, and have been playing with ReacTIVision, which is their computer vision engine. It seems pretty promising for quickly bootstrapping a table-based interface. (Although I do wish their calibration docs had a bit more detail.)

</comment></comment><comment><USER9> Looks like a fun project! Lots of pragmatic implementation choices to keep things simple.

I'd be very interested to see what the author comes up as a substitute for RealTalk.

<comment><USER8> Thank you! Keeping things simple, even naive, has made it easy to tear it down and start over, which I've done a few times now.

As for RealTalk, the author is also interested to see what she comes up with! In the past week I've been playing with the notion of "claims" and "wishes", inspired by a description of RealTalk by Tabitha Yong, seen in this fantastic post by Omar Rizwan: [https://rsnous.com/posts/notes-from-dynamicland- geokit/](https://rsnous.com/posts/notes-from-dynamicland-geokit/)

The "Programming with Spaces" project has also been a very helpful reference, especially this guideline for implementing a Linda-like tuplespace: [https://github.com/pSpaces/Programming-with- Spaces/blob/mast...](https://github.com/pSpaces/Programming-with- Spaces/blob/master/guide.md)

<comment><USER10> You might also want to look at natural language datalog ([https://github.com/harc/nl-datalog](https://github.com/harc/nl-datalog)), which is a prototype of the query language used in Dynamicland.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> I am excited to have been one of the pals who helped with this! It's an awesome project.

</comment><comment><USER12> Glad she actually did it. After visiting I bought a webcam and started looking for an over table mount but lost momentum.

</comment><comment><USER13> I am so proud of you Emma! You are so god damned talented and always have been. Love you sister.

I want a Tinyland for our house. Atti, Meg and I would have so much fun with this!

</comment><comment><USER14> I want one.

</comment><comment><USER15> Kudos for the project, but I am afraid that if people keep calling random AR experiments "Dynamicland", it will quickly lose meaning - <USER2> [https://paperprograms.org](https://paperprograms.org), a project _much_ closer to Dynamicland, but at least still cognizant of the fact it's not a "small Dynamicland":

>Paper Programs recreates just a tiny part of what makes Dynamicland so interesting. To learn more about their system and vision, be sure to visit Dynamicland in Oakland -- and please consider donating, too! >Paper Programs is inspired by the projector and camera setup of the 2017 iteration of Dynamicland. I liked how you could physically hold a program in your hands, and then put on any surface in the building, where it would start executing, as if by magic. [...] >In contrast, Dynamicland is a community space designed around Realtalk. Realtalk is a research operating system (in development for several years) designed to bring computation into the physical world. It is more general than papers, projectors, and cameras. Dynamicland is intended as a new medium of human communication, and is designed to be learned and used by a community of people interacting face-to-face, not over the internet.

But also - I realize you know about the limitations, but being only able to interact with one static program at a time, and not being able to see the source code of the components is crucial, it's what makes it "not even a Dynamiclandish prototype" for me.

But I don't want to be a killjoy and kill your enthusiasm; I think it's great what you've done! But I'm just irked at namedropping Dynamicland like this.

<comment><USER16> Come on, don't do that! That's like if someone shows you their play compiler and you say:

> If people keep calling random programs 'a compiler', it will quickly lose > meaning... A compiler is intended as a new medium of human-machine > interaction, capable of transforming arbitrary source programs into machine > code...I realize you know about the limitations, but only supporting static > assignment, not being able to compile functions, it's what makes it "not > even a compiler" for me.

Dynamicland was always Dynamicland, even when it was starting out as a tiny implementation.

<comment><USER17> It depends on if you see "Dynamicland" as a generic word/phrase like compiler or video game, or as a proper noun, like Xcode or Nintendo Switch?</comment></comment></comment>


Functional style binary tree in Javascript - <AUTHOR> http://dhotson.tumblr.com/post/283257728/functional-style-binary-tree-in-javascript

<comment><AUTHOR> Just for kicks..</comment>


Connecting to Active Directory in Java: Still a Sorry State of Affairs - <AUTHOR> http://thewonggei.wordpress.com/2011/02/18/connecting-to-active-directory-in-java-still-a-sorry-state-of-affairs/

<comment><USER2> JNDI is ugly, but after some trying around it generally does what its supposed to. I tried the Apache LDAP API and it is by far easier, but the "experimental"-state was a turnoff for me.

The nicest solution is Spring LDAP, but it requires the spring jars, which can be a bit too heavy, if you dont have it on your CP already and just want to connect to an AD without adding Spring to your project.

<comment><AUTHOR> I agree on JNDI, which is why I believe few have pursued another option. Thanks for the reminder about the Spring LDAP library. I came across that as well and had to reject it for the reason you stated. We don't already use Spring and I didn't want to import all that extra code. I'll update my posting and mention the Spring option.

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> I believe Oracle dropped OpenDS. Forgerock took the opportunity and renamed it to OpenDJ: <http://www.forgerock.com/opendj.html>

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks for the tip jhawk28. I did a little digging around on ForgeRock's site and updated my blog post: <http://wp.me/paAae-3H>.</comment></comment>


Harvard's 1899 Entrance Exam [pdf] - <AUTHOR> http://graphics8.nytimes.com/packages/pdf/education/harvardexam.pdf <comment><USER2> Like all tests, it's not hard if you know the stuff that's asked. If you've studied ancient greek in school, that part of the test is probably as easy for you as the algebra part must seem to anyone who went to school in the past couple of decades (it looks about as hard as math homework from when I was 15 or so).

edit:

It's interesting. I do have a certain romantic attachment to this kind of classic humanist education, e.g. it irks me that the history and geography section has me floundered and I'm somewhat sorry that I didn't have the drive to do better in Latin in school.

But then I think, there's so much other interesting things to know and experience. At times when I wish I could read Cicero's _Orationes In Catilinam_ in its original form, I need to remind myself that I can read and understand, say, this little piece of genius:

      fib = 1 : 1 : [ a+b | (a,b) <- zip fib (tail fib) ]

<comment><USER3> But to become a fully erudite member of modern society, you might want to also study

      zipWith :: (a-> b -> c) -> [a] -> [b] -> [c]

:-)

<comment><USER4> Allowing one to simplify to:

      fibs = 1 : 1 : zipWith (+) fibs (tail fibs)

Involving zip`ap`tail, the Aztec god of consecutive numbers:

      fibs = 1 : 1 : (zipWith (+) `ap` tail) fibs

Or, pointlessly:

      fix $ (1:) . (1:) . (zipWith (+) `ap` tail)

<comment><USER5> Your second example does not typecheck.

<comment><USER4> It does.

let fibs = 1 : 1 : (zipWith (+) `ap` tail) fibs in fibs :: (Num a) => [a]

according to ghci 6.12.1

<comment><USER5> I get No instance for (Monad ((->) [a])) -am I missing some module include?

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> What is truly amazing is how easy it is to find those answers today. With Google, Wolframalpha, etc. retrieving information is cheap both time wise and money wise.

Perhaps a test could be made today that would test a person's ability to search for obscure knowledge and comprehend it. A person would have to determine which sources are trustworthy and what conclusion could be made from the information received. Is this what is really meant when we say someone is intelligent?

<comment><USER7> I think we're moving from single answer knowledge to multi-answer understanding of the matter. This involves being able to absorb large amounts of information, rather than being able to find obscure information. We probably need more knowledge than ever before, but it has more breadth and less specificity.

A historian might be asked to discuss why Spain and Portugal were the first of the European countries to build a colonial empire. You wouldn't directly find that on wikipedia and there is not one single answer that will suffice. To be able to answer it, you need to be aware of the Reconquista, abundant military resources, conquered wealth, etc. and be able to support any claim you make about them. You can search for the details, but you need to have a broad enough knowledge to know what to search for.

A mathematician might be asked about the importance of prime numbers in mathematics. Again, not something on wikipedia, Google, or wolfram alpha, or with a single answer.

<comment><USER6> This is the essence of what I was getting at. You've elaborated on what I was getting at.

It's somewhat pointless to ask on a test when the U.S. Civil War ended. A much better indication of intelligence and knowledge is to ask why it didn't end sooner.

Not too long ago people would spend hundreds of dollars (thousands in today's money) for a set of encyclopedias. Now, with Google, Wolframalpha etc. such a product has no use. The cost to find knowledge has dramatically decreased the past 15 years. Education has not caught up with this reality.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> I found some Cambridge exam papers from 1899 a while back. I don't have scans, but there's a few of the more interesting/mysterious questions at:

<http://beebo.org/lately/2001-07-10_cambridge.html>

I quite like the 2.5 hour "English Essay" for bizarreness:

Write an English Essay on one of the following subjects:

1\. English country life in the 18th century. 2\. The battle of Blenheim. 3\. The character of Rachel Lady Castlewood. 4\. Duelling.

<comment><USER9> I'm not sure what you find bizarre, having to write an essay or the choice of topics? This type of question is pretty much standard on (high school) English exams in many commonwealth countries, even today.

<comment><USER8> The choice of topics, really. This was for (I think) an entrance exam, and so the only topic I think even vaguely suitable to write about without forewarning is "English country life in the 18th century." The Battle of Blenheim and the character of Rachel Lady Castlewood can only be attempted if you already know about those (very specific) things, and duelling is broad, and odd.

<comment><USER10> I don't know whether this is an entrance exam and that would definitely change things.

But either way, according to Wikipedia, dueling was a part of British culture though the early 1800s, the last fatal duel was in 1856. Meaning a typical candidate from an elite family in 1899 will have a living relative who has probably at least read public discourse about dueling, and there's a good chance the subject has come up at least once during primary education.

<comment><USER11> Scotland's last-ever duel with swords was fought in the same year: 1899.

 _"Swords were drawn and blood was spilled over the election battle of the University Rector."_

It was in a semi-public place (the Glasgow University Union building) and may have been reported at the time. Thus, duelling may have been in the news at the time.

<http://www.theguu.com/about/history/>

<comment><USER11> In a bold attempt to prove myself wrong I offer this other link that suggests that the story (well-known to alumni of Glasgow University, such as myself) may have been a fictional, satirical sketch written for the student magazine.

 _"It found no other mention of the event in contemporary university records, newspapers or court summaries."_

[http://news.scotsman.com/education/Hit-and-myth-Was- Scotland...](http://news.scotsman.com/education/Hit-and-myth-Was- Scotlands.2505438.jp)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> This test shows what was valued - at least at Harvard - in the late 1800's. Greek and Latin were more important, as well as knowledge of geography of the known world and algebra and geometry.

Algebra and geometry, I feel, are still important today (see SAT). Greek and Latin are less important, although they are still in the background. The humanities have changed and we now learn about more modern authors / topics and the humanities classes in general have cooler names (i.e. Microcomputer Application in Kinesiology or Topics in African Society and Culture).

There's probably some bigger point I'm missing here like "those who don't learn from history are doomed to repeat it" or something similar.

Teaching kids about how to conjugate Latin verbs or some other rote activity always seemed pointless to me. Perhaps I'm preaching to the choir, but learning about entrepreneurship or practicing selling things would have been much more useful to me than many of the things I learned in high school or undergrad.

<comment><USER13> The point of Latin was that it is the root of many European languages, so by studying it early on in education, you would later more easily be able to pick up one of its descendents.

<comment><USER14> However it is much more efficient to take a course in etymology (word roots) focused on the subset of Greek and Latin used in word formation in the major European languages (Romance or not) than it is to learn a lot of Latin and Greek just for that side benefit. I by no means disparage learning languages-- I majored in Chinese and studied two forms of Greek in university, among several other languages--but if the goal is learning etymology, today there are royal roads for that purpose that can be traveled by people who never practice reading Latin or Greek texts.

The general observation is that learning ANY language eases learning the third and the fourth language, because the earliest experience in learning a non- native language reminds the speaker that each language has arbitrary features that must be distinguished from those of the learner's native language(s). Within the ambit of that general principle, learning cognate languages (for example, German for an English speaker) is easier that learning non-cognate languages (for example, Malay for a Chinese speaker).

<comment><USER13> That's probably true if you're an adult, but how do you motivate kids to learn etmology? At least with Latin there is stuff you can read.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> I've just applied to university, and it's interesting to see how the maths questions have changed. For example, there are a lot of questions on calculating fractions. Nowadays this would no time at all to work out (put it in a calculator), but back then you would be expected to be able to calculate it mentally, with written notes.

It's strange how as the technology used to solve mathematical problems changes, the ways in which mathematical ability is measured changes too.

</comment><comment><USER16> The Latin part (1st one) is very simple. The Latin high-school final exam here in Italy is way more difficult (you translate, analyze and discuss Latin authors from their original texts, eg. Cicero is tricky).

As schrototo said the greek part should be as easy.

</comment><comment><USER17> Am I just being an engineer, or is the math way easier than the rest of this test?

<comment><USER6> I teach mathematics at a community college and I can tell you that for most people the mathematics on the test is hard. Our course with the largest number of students is on arithmetic and the students just don't comprehend fractions. They can't even comprehend how to convert a decimal to a percent. Especially when given a problem like:

Conver 0.25% to a decimal. That really throws them off.

<comment><USER18> I've heard from folks in retail finance that large segments of American society do not understand the concept of an interest rate. Everything is just "what is my monthly payment?"

<comment><USER19> I talked to a fellow CS major Thursday evening and he said he hated all the math involved with the CS program, and that he' failed Pre-Calculus & Trigonometry I _three times_. This came out after he was complaining about his discrete computational structures class being "nothing but proofs".

If you don't like the math, why get a CS degree? Get a physical science degree and learn how to code on your own time.

<comment><USER20> Physical science probably won't be much better if you don't like math. Remember, "The book of nature is written in the language of mathematics". Heck, be a humanities major and learn to code, it's not like computers only work for people with technical degrees (though I suspect the training in rigorous thinking helps).

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER21> The stamp says 1899, but it says 1869 at the bottom of each page. Is it actually from 1869?

<comment><USER22> The test is from 1869, but the stamp indicates that it was placed in the archive in 1899.

<comment><USER23> It's fascinating to think that in 1869 there were Transatlantic telegraph links. One could have sat this entrance exam in London while it was being sat in MA simultaneously, with Questions/Answers transmitted digitally.

<comment><USER24> First contact was made in 1858, but the cable failed in mere days. The first reliable link happened in 1866. It ran about half "telegraph speed", which was pretty darn slow. I'd hate to connect to _that_ bbs.

It's a fascinating read.

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

<comment><USER25> Slow, but amazing at the same time. I love thinking about things like this.

I remember someone calling my old BBS, back in the early 90s, with a TDD to see what would happen. That explained why I had been seeing 300bps callers when I was used to seeing 1200bps-2400bps.

I recall one holiday starting the download of a picture of a bear. I then went and had Thanksgiving dinner with my family for about two hours. I arrived home just in time for the picture to finish downloading. :P

<comment><USER24> I completely remember those gifs coming in one agonizing line after the other, except mine were... uuh.. Also bears.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER26> They give almost all the words. I've had harder Latin tests.

The history stuff is weirdly worded. Probably the hardest part of the test.

</comment><comment><USER27> Hurray for algebra! Still as relevant today as it was a hundred years ago.

Are programming languages going to be equally durable?

<comment><USER28> That's the goal of Arc. :)

<comment><USER29> It would have to become relevant first though. I conjecture that no programming language alive now is going to be relevant in 100 years. If you look at the history of programming languages, this is not at all a bold conjecture.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER29> The font reminds me of TeX.

<comment><USER30> Knuth's fonts were meant to model <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hot_metal_typesetting> .

</comment></comment><comment><USER31> This is really interesting especially given that Harvard now offers "Counting People" and "Magic of Numbers" as classes that satisfy the math (quantitative reasoning) requirement. That's not to say the requirements are better or worse than 100 years ago, it's just interesting how much broader the course offerings are now. You could avoid math, and I know people who did, if you didn't want to take it. And of course, almost no one knows Latin or Greek.

</comment><comment><USER32> Why does it say "July, 1869" at the bottom?

Were they using the same set of questions for 30 years, or was it put in the library 30 years after it was used?

<comment><USER33> Good question. I would hazard a guess that they revised the test every year, but didn't want to put the more recent copies of it in the library as they'd be similar, and could poison the results. And therefore they held back old versions as "secret" for, say, 30 years. (Thus your later case, that the test was placed in the library 30 years after it was used.)

Or perhaps this was lost under someone's desk for 30 years in the admissions department, and when they moved into new offices they said "we should put this in the library for posterity's sake."

</comment></comment><comment><USER34> This doesn't look too bad. But, like any test, it would depend on the time limit and one's expectations going in.

</comment><comment><USER35> Makes the SAT look like a joke...

<comment><USER36> And it is, to many Harvard grads.

</comment></comment><comment><USER37> Maybe I'm out of line but none of that looks too difficult. I studied a (spoken) language at school and was tested on that. Learning Latin isn't too different. The mathematical elements of the test looked straightforward.

</comment><comment><USER38> Interesting. The Math section with today's GRE exam makes the latter seem like a kindergarten exam.

<comment><USER14> Graduate students from China (in such humanities subjects as philosophy) derided the GRE main test mathematics section (used as one element of admission decisions for graduate schools in the United States) as a test of "junior high math," which it literally is in terms of the standard curriculum of urban schools in China. The GRE subject test in mathematics, used largely but not exclusively for admission into graduate programs in mathematics, actually has some undergraduate mathematics content, but the mathematics section of the general GRE includes only mathematics that any well educated person who completed secondary schooling ought to know.

<comment><USER39> FYI, most graduate students I know here in the US also consider the math section in the GRE to be a joke. But as a grad student in an engineering school I guess that's to be expected.

When I took the GRE, the hardest thing about the math test was having to remember long division, since we couldn't use calculators.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER40> Tuition was probably also around $100 back then. My how we've 'progressed'.

<comment><USER41> According to [1] tuition was $150 in 1900. According to [2] average annual wage was $450. Assuming women in the work place was a lot less common I will bump it to $500. So about 30% of household income? Harvard costs $34,976 in 2010. According to [3] median household income in 2009? is $49,777. So 70% of median income.

Prices as a percentage of average income has certainly gotten steeper but you cannot argue that things now are less open than they used to be. There are more women and minorities and scholarship opportunities for different groups. Certainly things could be a lot better but progress has surely been made. You can't throw a number like $100 without context.

[1] [http://kwharbaugh.blogspot.com/2005/02/educational- costs.htm...](http://kwharbaugh.blogspot.com/2005/02/educational- costs.html#harvard-tuition-history)

[2] <http://usa.usembassy.de/etexts/his/e_prices1.htm>

[3] <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Median_household_income>

<comment><USER42> It is under-appreciated how open Harvard, Yale, etc, have gotten in modern times. While tuition at Harvard might be 70% of the median annual income today, someone whose family makes $50k/year pays nothing in tuition. At Yale between $60k-$120k, tuition is held at about 10% of family income. Full tuition doesn't phase in until well over $200k.

My brother is at Yale, and his classmates are by and large the children of upper middle class professionals. Certainly kids who've gotten a good shake in life, but mostly people who got in because of good SAT scores and extracurriculars, not donations or political connections.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER43> Original article here is worth reading: [http://thechoice.blogs.nytimes.com/2011/03/31/remembering- wh...](http://thechoice.blogs.nytimes.com/2011/03/31/remembering-when-college- was-a-buyers-bazaar/)

Notes that... "of the 210 candidates who took its 1870 test the June before, 185 were admitted."

Also, according to the NYT, this is the 1869 exam, not the 1899 exam (maybe it was added to the library in 1899, hence the stamp?)

<comment><USER44> It also says 1969 on the bottom of the last page

<comment><USER45> Erm - 1869 :)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER46> Anyone know what the time limit on the test is?

</comment><comment><USER47> The maths is so easy I want a vintage 1900 Harvard diploma.</comment>


Singapore paper breaks story on "Death in Singapore" - <AUTHOR> http://pastebin.ca/2314637

<comment><AUTHOR> This article is on page 2 of today's Sunday Times, so it's been given Top News treatment. The headlining graphic appears at <http://www.straitstimes.com/> (today only). The site is paywalled.

The core of the response from the police seems to be:

> _The family can also question witnesses and the relevant reports during the > coroner's inquiry, he said. The inquiry will take place next month, said the > FT._

> _The police spokesman said yesterday that during the coroner's inquiry, the > family would be able to question all witnesses called and also raise any > issues about the reports submitted, such as the pathologist's report._

We'll hear more then, I guess.

<comment><USER2> I think it would help to cite a bit more of the reported detail here; for me, it provided relevance to the HN context and a reason for some albeit unconfirmed suspicion:

 _His parents said they believed their son had been murdered over his work at the Institute of Microelectronics (IME), which is part of [A-STAR].

IME carries out research on microelectronics to help develop the industry in Singapore. Some areas of focus include miniaturised medical devices, sensors and circuits.

Dr Todd, who was trained as an engineer, worked for the institute between December 2010 and May last year and, according to the FT, led a team specialising in a next-generation semiconductor material called gallium nitride (GaN).

The material can withstand extreme heat and power levels well beyond the more traditionally used silicon.

An external hard drive discovered by Dr Todd's parents in his home after his death contained apparent plans between the institute and Huawei, a Chinese telecoms giant, to develop a device known as a GaN amplifier, which has many commercial uses, the FT said.

But the GaN amplifier could also be used in electronic warfare to jam signals and weapons, and to create high-powered radar systems to boost military capabilities, said experts consulted by FT.

The involvement of Huawei would be problematic because the firm has been deemed a security risk by governments, the FT said.

Last year, a United States government intelligence committee said, after an 11-month investigation, that it suspected communications equipment made by Huawei could be used for spying.

The committee's report cited analysts' concerns that Huawei has links to and is influenced by the Chinese government, despite it claiming to be a private company. Huawei has denied these suspicions, although it admitted in a US government report that an internal Communist Party committee does exist within the company, as required by law...

According to FT, Dr Todd's parents said that their son had seemed increasingly stressed in the months before his death.

"I am being asked to do things with a Chinese company that make me uncomfortable," Mrs Todd recalled her son saying. "He said he felt he was being asked to compromise American security," she added._</comment></comment>