Another person that discovered evolution besides Darwin - happy-go-lucky http://www.bbc.com/earth/story/20161104-the-other-person-that-discovered-evolution-besides-darwin <comment><AUTHOR> I didn't know this part - Darwin is a mensch!

"Wallace sent his ideas to the English naturalist Charles Darwin, with whom he often exchanged letters. As it happened, Darwin had been working for 20 years on his own theory of natural selection, partly inspired by his 1835 visit to the Galápagos Islands.

Darwin had not published his ideas, because he was afraid of a backlash. He quickly realised that Wallace's discoveries matched up with his own, and resolved to take the plunge. He decided to present both their papers at the same time, so that both men would get credit for having independently discovered evolution.

In the immediate aftermath, they both became famous. But after Darwin published his book On the origin of species by means of natural selection in 1859, he became known as the man who discovered evolution. Most people forgot about Wallace."

<comment><USER2> > Darwin had not published his ideas, because he was afraid of a backlash.

And he had good cause to be worried. Many initial responses were very negative. And although consensus shifted to firm agreement with him, a small but strong opposition exists to this day in multiple forms.

<comment><USER3> Well, mostly one form. The religious one.

<comment><USER2> The secular opposition is significant as well (as summarized in e.g. Pinker's The Blank Slate [1]). I don't think we can say either the religious or secular one is clearly larger than the other.

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

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> Darwin worked out a theory for how evolution works with supporting evidence. The idea of evolution had been around for a while due to similarities between animals and due to paleontology. But many scientists ridiculed it until Darwin had his convincing theory and evidence.

One of the biggest opponents pre-Darwin was Cuvier: [https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Georges_Cuvier](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Georges_Cuvier)

<comment><USER5> Any idea where it might be going? Is is possible the evolution pretty much stopped with humans? Someone told me that AI/technology implanted into humans will be next movement for evolution but looking back that's not how evolution evolved no?

<comment><USER6> Evolution, by definition, will never stop, so long as there is life. It is the way life works. It doesn't mean progress towards some arbitrary goal, such as intelligence or strength. It means fitness for the current environment. You might argue that the cockroach is one of the most successful products of evolution.

<comment><USER2> Evolution in the sense that Darwin meant it - natural selection - does depend on some specific details of life. Namely, there must be variation in the species, the variation must be heritable, and there must be something that causes some of the species to produce more offspring.

Without one of those, natural selection stops. In theory, life might exist without one of them - if we live forever and stop having children, or if we all have the same amount of children, or if we design our children's genes artificially, etc.

<comment><USER7> Who is "we"? All life on earth? Even "we" as humanity is a colony organism; we have more non-human cells in our bodies than human ones.

<comment><USER8> Could you please elaborate on this part:

> we have more non-human cells in our bodies than human ones.

I'm not the most educated in biology, but I thought if a cell is created in our body by our body, it is a human cell. Is this wrong to think?

<comment><USER2> Depends what you mean by "created in our body by our body."

Your body begins with a single human cell, then divides and grows. All those cells have your human DNA. But at some point bacterial cells also appear as part of your body, for example in your digestive tract, playing important roles you can't live without. Their source is not from your human cells, but they still form part of your body as a whole, in a sense.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> Darwin didn't "discover" evolution. He just happened to collect evidence to support a popular theory.

It's been awhile since I read Darwin's book, but he gave a lot of credit to his father at the beginning. From what I remember, evolution was more of his father's theory and Charles was young enough to make the trip, and lucky enough to have a father with deep pockets to pay for it.

<comment><USER10> Yeah the title bothered me...

>The proposal that one type of organism could descend from another type goes back to some of the first pre-Socratic Greek philosophers, such as Anaximander and Empedocles.[34] Such proposals survived into Roman times. The poet and philosopher Lucretius followed Empedocles in his masterwork De rerum natura (On the Nature of Things).

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Evolution#History_of_evolution...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Evolution#History_of_evolutionary_thought)

Darwin described one _mechanism_ (i.e. natural selection) that drives evolution.

<comment><USER2> To be fair to Darwin, he proposed another mechanism as well, sexual selection.

Also, his two mechanisms were revolutionary at the time, and many decades later remain the most important factors in our understanding of evolution.

Yes, the general idea of evolution as "species change, rise and fall" is not a new one in Darwin's time. But today when we say "evolution" we basically mean "evolution by natural selection" which is Darwin's novelty.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> Darwin came up with a theory of a _mechanism_ (natural selection) by which the evolution that was _observed_ in nature happens. Neither Darwin nor Wallace "discovered" evolution. Evolution is a feature of our world, easily observed and utilized by animal and plant breeders for hundreds of centuries.

But what was brilliant about Darwin's theory was that he proposed it while knowing basically nothing about the underlying biological features that enabled it--ie, discrete genes that are duplicated, sometimes with errors, in successive generations of individuals.

What blew my mind when I first understood these ideas was that given discrete genes, and given unequal chances of successful reproduction for various sets of genes, natural selection is essentially axiomatic. The rules of the game force natural selection to exist. There is no other way it can work. So I think it's fair to say that Darwin discovered natural selection. But not evolution.

By the way if you are interested in this topic at all and you haven't read "On the Origin of Species", do yourself a favor and seek it out. It's public domain so it's available all over the Internet and there are plenty of good printed editions available as well. For its age, it's remarkably clear and concise even for modern readers. It's well-written and the author takes a very humble approach to the topic. As an argument it's a fantastic example of building to your conclusion by step after concrete step of irrefutable evidence. And when Darwin had to get speculative, he was correct an incredibly high percentage of the time, so even his wildest ideas still hold up today.

<comment><USER12> >> The rules of the game force natural selection to exist. There is no other way it can work.

care to cite a proven example of speciation caused by natural selection ?

<comment><USER13> Lenski's famous experiment observed speciation in the lab: [http://rationalwiki.org/wiki/Lenski_affair](http://rationalwiki.org/wiki/Lenski_affair)

<comment><USER12> Don't see any mentioning of speciation in that article. From the looks of it it's adaptation we're looking at, correct me if I'm wrong.

To my knowledge, to date, the established experimental cases of achieving reproductive isolation (none achieving complete isolation btw)- no experiments demonstrated morphological differences between the "species" they produced.

<comment><USER14> I'll correct you because you're wrong. Adaptation is evolution. There's no line in the sand, no requirement for 'morphological differences', and no reproductive isolation before you call it evolution. Calling it adaptation is just a no true Scotsman fallacy.

<comment><USER12> Are we not discussing the "origin of species" ? Sure, you can call adaptation "an evolution" in the same sense you can call a subset of something "something".

Just because there's no evidence that natural selection leads to speciation it doesn't mean speciation in an of itself is not an important part of the evolutionary process unless of course you don't consider emergence of new species a part of that process.

Defining a framework/requirement for "something" to be called "something" is not a fallacy, removing the requirement because it doesn't fit your narrative is though.

<comment><USER15> There is no bright line between species, ergo there is no point we can stop and say "there! it's speciated!"

'Species' just an arbitrary dividing line humans invented. The reality is much, much messier. We might call something a different species, but it might still be able to breed with some other species. It might not ever do so because of proximity. It might not ever do so due to some minor characteristic throwing off mate signalling. Maybe it does, but the offspring aren't fertile. Maybe it does, but the offspring are only rarely fertile, like mules. There's this and a thousand other edge cases.

If you sit there and change an organism gene-by-gene, at what point do _you_ think it becomes another species? If I flip a single gene and it affects reproduction, is it a different species? If I flip a thousand genes but it still interbreeds, is it a different species? Similarly, if you imagine going back through the line of your male ancestors, there's no point at which you can look between your great grandpappy^x and your great grandpappy^x + 1 and say one of them is homo sapiens and one of them is not.

<comment><USER12> Sure, biological taxonomy is not absolute and it's criteria like "morphological differences" can be interpreted in different ways.

That said though - we DO clearly observe speciation in the paleo records (assuming you won't be claiming that Eohippus == Modern Horse) so yes at some point these genome changes accumulate into a critical mass leading to speciation. Except that the "accepted" (there is obv some very solid criticism out there) narrative of natural selection being the only(or primary) vector of that change is yet to be proven after ~200 years of attempts to do so.

Speaking of flipping of the "reproduction gene" \- if it gets flipped in a single specimen via a random mutation then he's obv stuck in terms of his reproductive ability, but that's a whole another can of worms no pun intended.

<comment><USER15> > That said though - we DO clearly observe speciation in the paleo records > (assuming you won't be claiming that Eohippus == Modern Horse)

Sure, because we're looking at a big gap in time. An Eohippus never gave birth to a horse, though. There were intermediate organisms in between E and H. But as I said, there's no bright line you can point to and say one Eohippus is one species and its immediate progeny are another.

Put another way, if you have H(n), H(n+1), H(n+2), H(n+3)...and so on, there's no point at which you can say H(n+m) and H(n+m+1) are different species. But sure, you can compare H(n) and H(n+2000) and say they're different species. The line is inherently fuzzy. It disappears whenever you look too closely. Only when you zoom out is it present.

If you concede that natural selection leads to small changes, you have therefore conceded that it leads to speciation.

<comment><USER12> >> But as I said, there's no bright line you can point to and say one Eohippus is one species and its immediate progeny are another.

by this logic you can claim that "there's no bright line between the colors" because there are shades between them. there are discreet species in the Eohippus -> Modern Horse lineage however just like there's color white and color black. there are also "subspecies" out there like polar bears being essentially grizzly bears who adapted to living in the arctic but again this doesn't negate the existence of distinct species in their lineage.

>> If you concede that natural selection leads to small changes, you have therefore conceded that it leads to speciation.

and by this logic taking a CS101 class equals to graduating with a masters degree.

sympatric speciation (or rather lack of proof in this area) has been a thorn in darwinists' collective sides since the day "the origin of species" came out and is a huge hole in the whole "emergence of new species via natural selection" narrative. so huge as a matter of fact that after couple of hundreds of years of trying to figure out how it works they decided it wasn't all that important :)

<comment><USER15> > again this doesn't negate the existence of distinct species in their > lineage.

There's only distinct species from the million-years-view. They only _look_ distinct because the fossil record does not include every horse-ancestor who ever lived - the vast majority of them are gone from history. From the on-the- ground, year-by-year perspective, you have Eohippus very, very slowly looking more and more like a horse, so slowly that at no point do you really notice them changing from Eohippus to horse. We just arbitarily decided that the total gene pool back then was "Eohippus" and today it is "horse"; and even, say, the modern horse genetic pool is probably more diverse than any arbitrary Eohippus and many of its descendants.

The idea of a "species" in general only makes sense to us because almost everything that ever lived is dead.

> by this logic you can claim that "there's no bright line between the colors"

Well...there isn't. If you're dialing up light-frequencies a thousandth of a nanometer at a time from 400nm to 700nm, there's no point where you say "this is purple" and the next thousandth-meter adjustment you say "this is blue."

I'm not sure we're talking about the same things.

<comment><USER12> >> They only look distinct because the fossil record does not include every horse-ancestor who ever lived..

no, they look distinct because they belong to different species.

>> there's no point where you say "this is purple" and the next thousandth- meter adjustment you say "this is blue."

umm, there are discrete "blue" and "purple" points. to state the opposite is plain ridiculous :)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> Darwin and Wallace both thought of natural selection on reading Malthus's essay on the principle of population. I guess that's a reproducible route to the idea -- send a curious British naturalist to South America and some islands, then loan them a copy of Malthus. I'd like to read Malthus myself someday and see how close _he_ came.

Darwin did some historical research on his predecessors for a later edition of the Origin. Wallace wasn't the only independent discoverer, though the others did not take it nearly as far. [https://historiesofecology.blogspot.com/2013/08/predecessors...](https://historiesofecology.blogspot.com/2013/08/predecessors- of-darwin-and-wallace.html)

</comment><comment><USER17> Reading the first few pages of the "Origin of Species...." it is clear Darwin does not state he discovered evolution. From the onset the first book/chapter is a collection of studies on the subject and scientists who have come to similar conclusions well before him according to him.

</comment><comment><USER18> It's important to note that Darwin and Wallace didn´t "discover" evolution, which was already known at the time. Lamarck presented his ideas half a century before Darwin.

They came with an explanation on what was the cause for it (natural selection). The theory has been improved and consolidated with the understanding of genetics since then...

<comment><USER19> Darwin's own grandfather, Erasmus Darwin (a member of Birmingham's Lunar Society) was a believer in evolution, and even compared it to domestication and hybridization, an analogy that helped Charles develop his theory. Ironically, Charles originally believed in the fixity of species.

</comment></comment><comment><USER20> In a historic sense, It's quite fascinating to think that we all evolved from just dirt, water, and gas.

</comment><comment><USER21> Whitewashing by the BBC is becoming commonplace in this post-truth era. The article doesn't bother to mention the fact that Wallace was racist, even enabling and documenting the beating of indigenous "workers" during his first trip in South America predating his less violent South East Asian tours. Wallace wrote

Can the tropics be permanently colonized by Europeans, and particularly by men of the Anglo-Saxon race? This is the question that now occupies much attention in view of the mad struggle among the chief European Governments for a share of all those parts of tropical Africa and Asia still held by inferior races.

[http://people.wku.edu/charles.smith/wallace/S562.htm](http://people.wku.edu/charles.smith/wallace/S562.htm)</comment>


A technique for alleviating pain may help disable nerves that spread cancer - <AUTHOR> https://www.newscientist.com/article/mg23631480-200-how-hitting-our-nervous-system-could-let-us-defeat-cancer/ <comment><USER3> Reading articles like this reminds me how little we know. Before we had a theory of germs (viruses and bacteria), we believed that sickness came from phlogiston. This did a decent job of explaining how disease spread, but didn't do a very good job of how explaining how it originated. If you were sick, you were enveloped in a cloud of invisible nastiness, and staying away was a good way to remain healthy. Certain things, like carcasses and stinky puddles, were thought to be carriers of phlogiston.

The thing that I find most interesting about the theory of phlogiston is how close it is. It's almost right, but humanity needed a fundamental shift in the way we thought about disease to actually start to solve the problems of disease. I feel like cancer is the modern form of phlogiston. It's close, but cancer is slippery enough that it's got to be wrong; I want to be clear, though, that the theory may still be useful.

Now, perhaps breaking down cancer into it's distinct forms (breast cancer, skin cancer, etc.) will get us there - this approach may have led us to the discovery af germs as different types of phlogiston. But I can't help but think that our mental model for cancer is wrong.

<comment><USER4> I don't think it's our model of 'cancer' that is wrong - we can recreate it in lab, we know quite a bit about it, even though it's extraordinarily disingenuous to call it a single thing.

Our model for developing drugs is stuck. Small molecules were unbelievably (literally) useful against invaders of our bodies. They can discriminate and interupt vital processes of one biology without effecting another's biology. This made the development of small molecule drugs in the 20th century against bacteria, fungi, and even some viruses verry effective. Cancer _is_ you. There is no biologically 'other' one can use as a discriminant that doesn't apply equally somewhere else in you. Socially we've built an entire pharmaceutical industry whose talents are focused entirely on a methodology for finding 'interruptors' of foreign disease. And again, that is not cancer.

Look the the new CAR-T therapies for cures to cancer. They disrupt the pharmaceutical industry's methodologies in thier development. There can't be a tox test or a primate study. They are fundamentally customizable, cheap, and curative, but they are the injection of genetically modified immune cells containing invented and designed protein tools - _not_ small molecules. There is literally not yet a vocabulary to distinguish these new therapies from the drugs of the 20th century. They are as distinct from drugs as vaccines - <USER2> have literally only been tested on a few hundred people, being approved by the FDA only in the past two months.

<comment><USER5> Hi /u/toufka, do you have any papers or summaries of CAR-T you'd recommend?

The first-level Google results are all PR-heavy so I'm hoping you can share something more granular and explanatory.

<comment><USER4> /u/pas has some good links below.

The primer is that a CAR is an engineered protein that is inserted into your immune cells with a kind of 'cellular surgery'. Here proteins are the actual machines that accomplish life's tasks within a cell - where small molecules are the fuel, building blocks, and modulators _of_ proteins. From inside the linked reddit post, here's a kind of diagram of the designed CAR from a high- level abstraction layer: [https://serotiny.bio/notes/proteins/car19/](https://serotiny.bio/notes/proteins/car19/)

These proteins can have additive functions in precisely the way small molecules cannot; they can provide new capabilities to cells - whereas small molecule drugs are almost only capable of disrupting an existing capability.

The reason these engineered proteins are useful _now_ is that we now have not only have arbitrary read access to genomic information, but with recent advances, we also have arbitrary (and economical) _write_ access to DNA that is long enough to encode an entire protein's blueprint (chemical DNA synthesis). And with those capabilities we've rapidly developed the first novel biological tools to deliver that DNA in a biological way (CRISPR). Until recently we could read an entire blueprint, but we could only make copy/paste changes. We can now design them de novo - and to interesting effect. There is a gene for human hemoglobin out there that is v1.1 - it is actually an intelligent improvement upon our existing human 1.0 version of hemoglobin, in that it can not only not aggregate in a way that causes sickle cell disease, but it can disaggregate mal-formed hemoglobin, inhibiting the disease. We can now start to program those new tools into biology in well-designed ways.

Further, with a decade of read-access to life's various genomes, we have started to actually be able to inspect well-written code in other organisms for inspiration.

And combining a few of these technologies, we can now start to think about attacking cancer and the like from first principles rather than simply repurposing our small-molecule hammer... And in their preliminary results they have performed remarkably well.

Some more discussion:

[http://www.onclive.com/web-exclusives/expert-discusses- appro...](http://www.onclive.com/web-exclusives/expert-discusses-approval-of- first-car-tcell-therapy)

[https://www.fda.gov/NewsEvents/Newsroom/PressAnnouncements/u...](https://www.fda.gov/NewsEvents/Newsroom/PressAnnouncements/ucm581216.htm)

<comment><USER5> Thanks for putting the links together.

If I understand this correctly (my biomedical engineering undergrad finally coming to use!):

1\. Cancer cells present antigens that are specific to cancer cells and do not occur in healthy cells.

2\. CRISPR allows us to genetically engineer someone's existing T cells to target those antigens.

3\. When re-introduced, these T-cells target the cancer cells and destroy the tumor.

4\. Because they are T-cells, they're effectively distributed through blood to the entire body and are able to affect cancerous cells that may be too small to observe or detect.

5\. They become inactive and stowaway in the lymphatic system but if the cancer comes out of remission, an "immunity" type response brings them back.

This is amazing. This feels like science fiction from my childhood and the life changing possibilities unlocked by CRISPR that I was taught in my undergrad classes.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> > People who regularly took medication, such as beta-blockers, which impede > parts of the nervous system, often had lower rates of cancer

This is not far away from backing up the link between long term stress and cancer.

<comment><USER7> You may also be interested in Dr. Bruce Ame's "Triage Theory of Nutrtion" - basically, chronic deficiencies of nutrients makes your body prioritize short term survival over long term, and these trade offs bear consequences in the long run:

Ames had become well aware that many micronutrient (vitamins and minerals) deficiencies are associated with chromosome breaks and cancer in humans, such deficiencies having caused DNA damage in rodents or human cells in culture. It had also been established that chromosomal breaks cause early aging. As a result Professor Ames proposed that DNA damage and late onset disease are consequences of a 'triage allocation mechanism' developed during evolution to cope with periods of micronutrient shortage.

<comment><USER8> Here's a video in which Dr. Ames discusses his Triage Theory... [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wrfxdtXjXHs](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wrfxdtXjXHs)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> Do I understand it correctly? If you can block the nerves then the tumour losses one of its ways to interact with the host's organism. It does intuitively make sense.

<comment><USER10> That's my understanding too. I'm shocked it never occured to me that the nervous system had its role in tumors even though we see nerves around and these are still .. well cells.</comment></comment>


Rock climber Alex Honnold doesn't experience fear like the rest of us - <AUTHOR> http://nautil.us/issue/39/sport/the-strange-brain-of-the-worlds-greatest-solo-climber <comment><USER3> For such along article (and I did enjoy some of it) they spent almost no time on describing the study methodology.

> Nowhere in the fear center of Honnold's brain could the neuroscientist spot > activity.

Could this be solely accounted for in the selection of pictures and experience of the participant? Compare e.g. the response to the sound of explosions for someone that has lived in the US vs. someone who has lived in Damascus the past couple years.

edit: Not sure why this is being down-voted? Is there a detailed description of methodology that I missed somewhere?

<comment><USER4> Well, they do touch on desensitisation as a potential route to how he ended up as he is, so it's possible that he's equally desensitised to gruesome imagery. They don't mention much about the control subject other than that he's also a climber - but he may come from a culture where the kind of imagery described is less prevalent.

I'm a high sensation seeker - I don't climb, but I do skydive, bungee, and I love to ski at ludicrous speed down unmarked terrain - flying off a cornice that you didn't see and having to think fast about where and how to land is a crazy rush. Why I mention this - I can identify with the visualisation and memory rewrite process he describes. I am, by no means, master of my amygdala - but more often than not I am. I think about the bad possibilities of anything I'm about to do, and visualise avoiding or dealing with them. I rehearse in my head. By the time I get to the real thing it's old hat. There's no fear, just supreme confidence that I know what I'm doing. It's the same sort of process one goes through before pitching to a customer or investors. Rehearse mentally until it's easy, even if you've never done it before.

When I do have an unfortunate experience, like chopping off a thumb, knocking myself out, or shattering a hand because I forgot that trees are quite hard at 100mph, I revisit it until it's funny, and no longer regrettable and associated with pain, both in my own mind and by recounting the tale. Having a wilful disregard for the integrity of your own body is quite useful - I know I'm not bulletproof but I don't mind the missing and numb bits.

That all said, once in a while I find myself with shaking legs, tunnel vision, and all the rest - usually from stupid and inconsequential shit that, critically, I didn't anticipate - like his ten foot fall.

I remember the moment I figured it out, aged seven, halfway down an icey mogul black, panicking and crying, and then suddenly realising that I didn't know what I was scared of - and then blasting down the piste, realising that it was all about just believing that you can and it'll all be fine and just getting on with it.

Anyway. My two cents is that you can self modify and override "hardwired" behaviour with only moderate conscious effort, and far more people do this than we currently realise.

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> I was four when I saw on television a special that featured either Peter Croft or John Bachar free soloing a granite face somewhere in Yosemite and I decided then and there that that was the most badass thing a person could do.

I've been obsessed with climbing ever since, and progressed from furniture to trees to nearby buildings, and it wasn't until I was 16 I finally got my own car and gear and independently made the 4 hour drive to the nearest natural vertical face to climb it. This was in the early 90s, before climbing gyms were common.

Though I decided not long after, after spending most of a day stranded 2/3rds of the way up a cliff that I had taken it as far as I was willing to go as a free soloist.

Alex Honnold is something else.

<comment><USER6> I was under the impression that Alex practices each free solo route multiple times while roped.

I'm by no means discounting his accomplishments and skills, but rather highlighting that it isn't quite as reckless as it first appears.

<comment><USER5> Here's a video that touches on Honnold's prep for his ascent of El Sendoro Luminoso. Given that it's likely the most difficult ropeless climb in history (and on limestone, which is far more prone to breaking holds than Yosemite granite), he wasn't exactly super meticulous:

[https://youtu.be/Phl82D57P58](https://youtu.be/Phl82D57P58)

At lower grades he has been known to just go for it.

<comment><USER7> It's pretty crazy with 11 pitches rated 5.12, but it's still not the most difficult free solo that's been done. For example Honnold himself free soloed 5.13, and Dave MacLeod free soloed a 5.14b. These are only single-pitch but they're still tall enough to classify as free solo (as opposed to bouldering/highball). And don't go thinking that 11 pitches of 5.12 is harder than one pitch of 5.14. Lots of people can do 11 pitches of 5.12 without falling. Only an extremely small portion of these can send a 5.14 - rope or no rope, when someone sends that grade it often ends up in the news (well, climber news, of course).

<comment><USER8> > Only an extremely small portion of these can send a 5.14 > \- rope or no > rope, when someone sends that grade it often > ends up in the news (well, > climber news, of course).

Rarely does anyone make even climbing news climbing 5.14, as the limit now for sport climbing is 5.15c and bouldering is V16. There are routes rated 5.14 at the gym I frequent that get sent nightly. Granted I live in Boulder CO, lots of pro climbers do as well, and grades at gyms are often soft, but still...

The last time 5.14 was newsworthy was the first female ascent of a trad. route in Boulder Canyon

[http://www.alpinist.com/doc/web16b/newswire-china- doll-5.14-...](http://www.alpinist.com/doc/web16b/newswire-china- doll-5.14-heather-weidner-interview)

and the Dawn Wall, which is 32 pitches,

[https://www.mountainproject.com/v/dawn-wall- free/109951912](https://www.mountainproject.com/v/dawn-wall-free/109951912)

a few of which are rated 5.14.

Perhaps Ashima makes news climbing 5.14's, but it's also because she's still a teenager.

There's a dude that works as a routesetter at my gym that just sent 5.15. His instagram was pretty popular for a while, but he's just a dude.

[http://www.rockandice.com/climbing-news/jon-cardwell- sends-b...](http://www.rockandice.com/climbing-news/jon-cardwell-sends- biographie-realization-5-15a)

5.14 made big news 25 years ago with routes like Action Directe. Things have progressed since then.

IMHO rating comparing a one pitch 5.14 and a 11 pitch 5.12 is comparing two different things. :shrug:

<comment><USER7> You guys in Boulder CO have all the mutant climbers. You should see our little Ontario climbing news outlets! I'm pretty sure there's only one guy in the entire province that even _sets_ indoor 5.14 (despite having quite a few gyms, I believe at least 15). Anyways, it was a bit overboard and in terms of international climbing news, I very much agree with you.

<comment><USER8> > You guys in Boulder CO have all the mutant climbers

There's some truth to this. Just today, I was bouldering next to a dude that look somewhat familiar. Turns out it's Paul Robinson, just here traveling through town.

Took a few tries to nail a V12 set, didn't even look like he broke a sweat.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> I feel compelled to post this video whenever Honnold comes up. Here he is free-soloing El Sendero Luminoso:

[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Phl82D57P58](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Phl82D57P58)

He really is something else.

<comment><USER10> Amazing video. I went to see him speak and he introduced himself with that, and then quickly went over his philosophy about the risk of death as "the boring stuff".

He seems genuinely sick of discussion about death, which at first shocked me (shouldn't someone _tell_ him that almost every free soloist dies?! It's irresponsible not to!).

But if you listen to him, it's immediately apparent that he's fully cognizant of the situation. After just a few minutes even I was annoyed by the hypocrisy and judgment when someone questioned his risk assessment. And he has to deal with that almost every time he interacts with people outside of his inner circle. I can hardly imagine how frustrating that must be.

<comment><USER11> Almost every free soloist dies? Literally? That would make it the most dangerous hobby in the world? Are there any references or discussions on that handy?

<comment><USER8> Well everyone dies.

If you mean, "died while freesoloing", you've got,

* Derek Hersey * John Bachar

off the top of my head. There are others,

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Free_solo_climbing#Notable_acc...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Free_solo_climbing#Notable_accidents)

Dan Osman died from a roped fall (jumped with the intent of the rope system to slow his fall), not a free solo. Dean Potter died from a wingsuit accident, which "literally" is probably the most dangerous hobby.

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

"72 percent of fliers had witnessed death or serious injury, and 76 percent had experienced what they categorized as a "near miss." [http://www.newsweek.com/2014/09/12/thrilling-deadly-world- wi...](http://www.newsweek.com/2014/09/12/thrilling-deadly-world-wingsuit- flying-267468.html)

Dean Potter on Heaven, [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wRUkolahw58](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wRUkolahw58)

<comment><USER12> The late, great Patrick Edlinger survived a terrible fall before retiring, only to fall into depression.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> Fear is crippling. But safety if also misleading.

I do aerial acrobatics, I've tried to battle fear of heights when being 5/10m up and making a drop, having to be sure that I did the correct moves and the rope will stop my fall. The only safety I have is a 2 by 2m crash mat that won't protect me from broken bones. Not to mention that falling to the mat in the wrong position or outside of the mat will also have potentially serious consequences. And yet when I don't have it, something goes off in my mind and it gets much scarier. I'm afraid of doing anything, even the most inconsequential moves.

Fear is irrational, and I've realised that safety is sometimes psychological and misleading. You'll likely put yourself in more dangerous situations by having a safety net, and knowing you can fail. Thing is, safety also fails, and you can also fail in setting up the safety material (knots, ropes, mats).

My point: This guy knows the consequences of every move, will be much careful in execution of every step. Much more than if he had a rope. He can't afford to get distracted, while someone with a rope will likely pay less attention to details.

</comment><comment><USER14> "many high sensation seekers' problematic behaviors involve intense experiences that can be pursued impulsively and without obvious immediate consequences, such as binge drinking or drug use....Joseph wonders if that energy could be redirected into high-arousal activities—such as rock climbing, but with protective gear—that by their nature involve constraint, premeditation, and specific goals, reinforcing different life patterns."

I read some time ago about a drug treatment program centered around rock climbing, said to have astonishingly high success rates. But then I never heard much more about it. Perhaps it doesn't scale due to small supply of climbing teachers and/or large supply of skeptics?

<comment><USER3> I grew up getting dragged along on climbing trips, also competed briefly (my father as most of his friends were mountaineers). It's a great sport and community. Most significantly, that you can climb with a relative stranger and trust them to belay you (even if it's just top rope) is a wonderful thing I think most people never experience (I'm rationalizing in retrospect now) - still I think this is part of the underlying basis which makes the community so much more trusting and friendly. Also the outdoors, physical exertion etc.

Do you have a link for the study?

<comment><USER14> Yes, climbing is a very cool sport and community. I wish I had a link, but it was years ago that I read it.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> Tim Ferriss actually did a podcast interview with Honnold [0] and it delved into how he handles fear and thinks about risk in his own life. A really great interview.

[0] [http://fourhourworkweek.com/2016/05/17/alex- honnold/](http://fourhourworkweek.com/2016/05/17/alex-honnold/)

</comment><comment><USER16> To quote Bill Burr on Lance Armstrong:

"The guy was a sociopath on a bicycle. As far as I'm concerned, we got off easy!"

Just keep him on the rocks...

[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uol6e5YAPqs](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uol6e5YAPqs)

</comment><comment><USER17> Why not just get rid of the amygdala? Looks like it doesn't reduce brain function. If you can live with the 3% mortality rate, maybe a lifetime free of anxiety?

[http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/18590383](http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/18590383)

<comment><USER18> Wrt. Honnold's amygdala - it isn't clear that his amygdala doens't work - <USER2> least looking at the brain scans of Honnold and of a control climber's one can see that the control's brain has the signal going all the way from the visual cortex (back of the neck) to the amygdala, while Honnold's brain doesn't seem to conduct that signal to the amygdala. According to the article both climbers were _looking_ at the same arousing images. One can wonder - how about scary sounds or touches - would Honnold's amygdala receive such signal from the corresponding parts of the brain processing such sensory input? Or alternatively - if we instead of getting rid of amygdala just block or attenuate the signal pathways to it?

</comment></comment><comment><USER19> Nothing else makes my palms as sweaty as when I watch videos of Alex Honnold free soloing.

<comment><USER20> I've watched many free soloists that make me nervous, but I don't get nervous watching Honnold. He is so amazingly solid, so methodical, so smooth.

<comment><USER21> Indeed. From his facial expressions and body language, I get the feeling he is utterly dialed in to a personal real-time risk-assessment algorithm. He is 100% focused on rational self-preservation, given the parameters of the task at hand.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER22> There's a great documentary on the history of climbing in Yosemite called Valley Uprising that he is in (albeit towards the end). Truly remarkable what they do.

<comment><USER23> I love this documentary. It's entertaining even for non climbers. Netflix.

</comment></comment><comment><USER24> Slightly relevant video about him living in a van: [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CArfaGmYuGM](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CArfaGmYuGM)

</comment><comment><USER25> > "This is what I do".

Kelly Slater and I'm sure many other athletes have expressed a similar sentiment.

I suspect there are other professionals, mathematicians, physicians, playwrights, who have a similar sentiment. I wonder if a rather simple model of this is that their neural nets are highly optimized for the task. And if that's the case, is that a tell for a task that can or can't be automated?

Can a machine drop into a triple-overhead wave and throw improv tricks with grace? What does grace mean to the machine? Dignity?

</comment><comment><USER26> I followed with rapt attention the first free-climb of the Dawn Wall[1] but free soloing is orders of magnitude more incredible and he makes it look so easy. Amazingly talented guy.

[1][http://www.nytimes.com/2015/01/15/sports/el-capitans-dawn- wa...](http://www.nytimes.com/2015/01/15/sports/el-capitans-dawn-wall- climbers-near-top-yosemite.html)

</comment><comment><USER27> Here is a great interview with Joe Rogan (yeah, i know) where Alex shares information about his climbs and free soloing in general.

[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OusYaNWBy08](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OusYaNWBy08)

<comment><USER28> Your comment suggests reservations about Joe Rogan content...what are they?

</comment></comment><comment><USER29> Here is the NatGeo talk that is referenced at the beginning of the article.

[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NFfTHoJ9khs](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NFfTHoJ9khs)

</comment><comment><USER30> He probably won't experience old-age, child-rearing, and working to improve his local community like the rest of us either. Because he'll likely be dead in the next few years.

</comment><comment><USER31> I am unable to read articles about fMRI results without thinking of this:

[http://www.wired.com/2009/09/fmrisalmon/](http://www.wired.com/2009/09/fmrisalmon/)

<comment><USER32> A humors piece, thank you!

In Honnold's case, they may be safe from this, as it's the _total absence_ of signal relative to a control subject that is interesting, not activity in some unexpected region of the brain.

</comment></comment><comment> guard-of-terra Frankly I don't understand why people turn risk of falling into risk of death.

Why can't they make some device for him, say, a thick-ish belt, which will make him hang inside of a sphere full of compressed gas, after a second of free fall? Not unlike how car SRS work?

Why don't ships have inflatable balloons strapped to their hulls that would allow them to float indefinitely? We still have sinking ferries with hundreds dead that could perhaps been fully prevented?

<comment><USER33> _Why can 't they make some device for him, say, a thick-ish belt, which will make him hang inside of a sphere full of compressed gas, after a second of free fall? Not unlike how car SRS work?_

Probably because the inflation of such a sphere, like an airbag going off, would be an incredibly violent event in itself. Also, decelerating inside the confines of a small sphere wouldn't be much gentler than just hitting the ground at full speed.

Some sort of jet-assist contraption to slow your descent might be a better bet. It would arm itself when it senses that you've fallen, and fire the next time it senses that it's upright.

I have a feeling that a lot of people who die in this sport are either paralyzed or dead before they hit the ground, due to collisions with outcroppings in the rock face. Free climbing isn't something that you would want to do if you have the slightest concern for your own neck, and I don't think any number of Rube Goldberg gadgets will change that.</comment></comment>


China suspected of breaching U.S. Postal Service computer networks - <AUTHOR> http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/federal-eye/wp/2014/11/10/china-suspected-of-breaching-u-s-postal-service-computer-networks <comment><USER2> _Still, "it's perfectly appropriate for us to do everything we can to embarrass and punish the Chinese if they're in our systems, whether or not we're in theirs," said former National Security Agency general counsel Stewart A. Baker. "It's the case that the U.S. and Russia and other countries are much more cautious about getting caught because they think there are going to be consequences. It's only the Chinese that think there are no consequences to getting caught."_

Stewart Baker making himself look foolish again! Last time he popped up on HN:

[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8559454](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8559454)

I really wonder how someone can come out with stuff like this. I doubt the PRC feels one iota of embarrassment for even one split second, and if senior US officials really bring up Chinese state sponsored hacking "every time they meet with their counterparts in Beijing" then the US Government is living up to its reputation as plumbing the depths of hypocrisy. They embarrass only themselves.

<comment><USER3> The US doesn't engage in economic espionage, and then turn around and give/sell intellectual property to US companies.

<comment><USER4> In fact their pals at CSEC were found to be doing _exactly_ that. [http://www.theglobeandmail.com/news/world/brazil-spying- repo...](http://www.theglobeandmail.com/news/world/brazil-spying-report- spotlights-canadas-electronic-eavesdroppers/article14720003/)

<comment><USER3> Which private US company received this information in an attempt to boost that company's economic power?

I can't find that information in the article.

<comment><USER5> There are several mentions of this in the Snowden papers. I think the most well known is Boeing, in their dealings against Airbus.

<comment><USER3> That's not in the Snowden papers, and the actual source for that is _highly_ suspect.

I forget the name of that project, but the Wikipedia page's reference are _all_ terrible. Not a single one stands up to scrutiny.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> They buried the lede a bit -- since I doubt organized attackers are after the personal information of postal service employees:

"It is also possible that the Chinese were after other types of data, analysts said. For instance, the U.S. Postal Service, at the request of law enforcement officials, takes pictures of all addressing information from envelopes and parcels."

[http://www.nytimes.com/2013/07/04/us/monitoring-of-snail- mai...](http://www.nytimes.com/2013/07/04/us/monitoring-of-snail-mail.html)

<comment><USER7> So the US spying made Chinese spying _easier_ (as expected). Wonderful.

<comment><USER8> That's an effect of certain poorly-made security decisions.

For example, if a small organization such as a gym or school makes copies of all customer/user driver's licenses: They end up creating a small pile of gold that they can't afford to protect.

<comment><USER7> Don't ask for data you can't securely store. I think that's just common sense. If you keep the data on paper, you wouldn't leave it out in the open for anyone to take it would you?

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> It was USSR before. It has been China since 1990's. An imaginary and powerful enemy has to be created. Iraq, Iran, Afganistan are too small for the title.

<comment><USER10> > It was USSR before. It has been China since 1990's. An imaginary and > powerful enemy has to be created.

I agree that espionage is over-emphasized -- everyone does it. Also I agree that some like to imagine enemies; it fits their narratives. That doesn't make every enemy imaginary.

The USSR was a real enemy. Many Chinese leaders openly proclaim themselves our enemy and they take aggressive actions against us; among the public, aggressive nationalism is at least somewhat popular. Hopefully the relationship doesn't turn out that way, but it's a real risk that I don't think we should ignore.

<comment><USER11> > Many Chinese leaders openly proclaim themselves our enemy and they take > aggressive actions against us

[who?] [citation needed]

<comment><USER10> Sorry that I'm not going to spend the time to look them up, but there are extreme nationalistic military officers who take this position. What I'm saying is not controversial in foreign policy literature, though perhaps the position is more often strongly implied than literally stated. Also, realize that the Chinese government seems to have less control over the statements of its military officers; I can't imagine U.S. officers making statements like these.

Try searching for 'kill a chicken to scare the monkeys'. A popular meme (at least popular enough that I've encountered it many times) is that China suffered a "century of humiliation" at the West's hands, that China is ascending and the U.S. is in decline, and now China will take what it wants as the great power of the world, including control of their region and territory from their neighbors (some of whom have security guarantees from the U.S.).

As far as actions, for example the Chinese military actively have harassed U.S. and allied nations' ships and planes, including causing a few serious collisions.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> Good thing we photograph every piece of mail, OCR and store that information indefinitely.

<comment><USER13> Got a source on "every"?

<comment><USER14> How about TFA?

"It is also possible that the Chinese were after other types of data, analysts said. For instance, the U.S. Postal Service, at the request of law enforcement officials, takes pictures of all addressing information from envelopes and parcels. [1]"

[1] [http://www.nytimes.com/2013/07/04/us/monitoring-of-snail- mai...](http://www.nytimes.com/2013/07/04/us/monitoring-of-snail- mail.html?pagewanted=all&_r=0)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> "Acting too quickly could have caused more data to be compromised," Partenheimer said.

This statement really confuses me

</comment><comment><USER9> "For one thing, the Chinese may be assuming that the postal service is more like theirs — a state-owned entity that has vast amounts of data on its citizens, said James A. Lewis, a cyber-policy expert at the Center for Strategic and International Studies."

State-owned? That is true. "has vast amount of data on its citizens"? Please do some homework before speaking.

</comment><comment><USER16> As a side note, I really hate article titles that use this kind of wildly inaccurate accusation. The nation of China did not breach the U.S. Postal Service, a Chinese government team did. Still inaccurate and vague, but there's a world of difference between the United States launching a drone strike and the CIA, an agent of the US, launching a drone strike.

Edit: I've read more than enough articles where the agent or actor is NOT a member of the government, yet still referred to as "China" or "America". However, even in situations where it is a member of the government or of a company, I still think the connotations conveyed by imprecisely labeling the actors totally throw off expectations and perceptions.

<comment><USER17> I am not sure if I agree with your rationale. An agent of a government acts on behalf of his or her government. According to your reasoning, a nation cannot breach a system or wage war because it is an agent that does the hacking or a soldier that does the firing.

Nevertheless, I liked this excerpt by the NSA's general counsel:

> Still, "it's perfectly appropriate for us to do everything we can to > embarrass and punish the Chinese if they're in our systems, whether or not > we're in theirs," said former National Security Agency general counsel > Stewart A. Baker. "It's the case that the U.S. and Russia and other > countries are much more cautious about getting caught because they think > there are going to be consequences. It's only the Chinese that think there > are no consequences to getting caught."</comment></comment>


Solo – Open-source FIDO2 security key - <AUTHOR> https://solokeys.com/ <comment><USER2> What processor parts will this be using?

A major benefit of the Yubikey U2F parts is that they're almost indestructible. I've heard over and over again about how flimsy the Feitian parts are, and from people who have run over their Yubikeys with cars and still had them work. How resilient (in particular: waterproof) will these be?

<comment><USER3> Of two U2F yubikeys I own, one of them has stopped working when touching it, in less than 2 years. I don't know about other companies, but my personal experience is that they are not that long lasting.

(I have them alongside my keys; one is a NEO - still working - the other is (was) U2F only)

<comment><USER4> My NEO has been on my keyring for several years. Still going strong.

<comment><USER5> My Yubikey Neo has been on my keyring for over three years, too. No problems at all. They seem pretty rugged.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> I've spent some time building small open source USB devices, I went through a "let's just use the PCB to make the USB plug" phase but frankly they're not wonderfully reliable, I'm not a fan, and actual USB plugs are cheap and reliable (you do need to use one that has thru-hole lugs to be robust, not just surface mount which is an extra manufacturing step).

I just finished building my first USB-C (for standard USB) board board, it's surprisingly easy, 2 extra resistors - pad tolerances are tight, but it's not hard

</comment><comment><USER7> If you could manage to modify Signal so it's keys were stored on the security key, and the user had to tap each time they log in, that would be far more valuable than GPG.

<comment><USER8> As cool as that would be its probably not doable because gpg doesn't support curve 25519, which is what signal uses for its authentication keys. So either needs gpg decides to support the curve or hardware keys need to explicitly support either signal or the 25519.

<comment><USER9> GnuPG supports Curve 25519: [https://gist.github.com/jmgrosen/5e646d6a6624c0d0e45f241be21...](https://gist.github.com/jmgrosen/5e646d6a6624c0d0e45f241be21faf9d)

However, perhaps you're referring to the OpenPGP Smart Card spec, which does indeed lack support for Curve 25519 and EdDSA.

<comment><USER10> Even though Gnuk supports them: [https://debconf17.debconf.org/talks/162/](https://debconf17.debconf.org/talks/162/)

I wish the spec would be updated to include them...

<comment><USER11> Can confirm, I use a NitroKey Start (which is a gnuk token) with that curve. I have used it for GPG signing/encryption and SSH authentication without any issues.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> > It protects against phishing

Not so much. U2F proves only that the user tapped the device when asked to do so.

You still have to trust your browser and your entire desktop that the tap will be used to log in to the service you are browsing instead of e.g. quietly logging to your home banking.

To prevent "tap hijacking" we need a display on the U2F key to show the URL/service you are really authenticating to.

<comment><USER13> What you're describing is a different attack vector than phishing. I would describe it as malware. The classic phishing attack is to convince a target to visit a web page with a subtly different URL than the real thing, where they enter their credentials, which could include most second factors (OTP codes or push notifications). With U2F however, the browser will pass the URL of the requesting site to the U2F token, and that will be signed by the U2F token. The resulting signature cannot be used to login to the real service. You have to own the user's device or browser in order to do a phishing attack with U2F. And if you own the device or browser, it's probably easier to steal the short lived session auth credentials than it is to man in the middle U2F. You are correct, however, that U2F is not resistant to malware. Unfortunately, nothing really is, and it's not an easy problem to solve.

<comment><USER12> No: the phishing attack leads the browser to parse and run malicious javascript and HTML.

If the phishing page is then able to compromise the browser the security is breached.

For example it could trick the browser into presenting the legitimate URL to the U2F token, or wait for the user to log on the home banking site for real and then perform transaction, or many other attacks.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> I wonder where are they going to manufacture it, and what control and visibility will they have into their supply chains, both upstream and downstream?

Absent some very serious issue with the crypto implementation, that would be my greatest concern -- how easy would it be for a state-level actor to introduce some sort of backdoor or other vulnerability (even a subtle one, e.g. modification to EM radiation pattern) to either all or just a select subset of devices, either into components "upstream" in the supply chain, in manufacturing itself, or downstream in transit to the retailer/customer.

<comment><USER15> This is a good point and generally a hard issue to solve completely.

Right now, we plan to do the programming ourselves to at least verify that goes okay. Since we are bootstrapping, we are outsourcing the PCB-A, but hopefully since this is pretty expensive threat for an adversary to invest in, I don't think it would be an issue unless we show to have a large market. By then, we can move more supply chain in house :)

</comment></comment><comment> m-p-3 Is it U2F only or can it also do some of Yubikey stuff like storing GPG keys, etc?

<comment><USER16> First version will be fido2 only, thought the firmware is open, so easy to extend.

We'll just have to verify which features are copiable vs proprietary for yubikeys. To be honest I don't know at this point, I mostly use my keys for auth, rarely otp, but no gpg/ssh/etc.

Do you have any primary use case that you're interested in?

<comment><USER17> Secure storage of GPG/SSH keys preferably 4096bit, so I can have offline "cold signing"/emergency keys that are valid for a long time.

<comment><USER10> I'm using Yubikey for that too and would also be interested in open source solution, especially if it included ed25519 and secure, tamper proof element. (Gnuk has the former but not latter).

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER18> See also the all in one OnlyKey - [https://crp.to/](https://crp.to/)

</comment><comment><USER19> Solo describes itself as "An upgrade to U2F Zero." What does it do better than U2F Zero?

<comment><USER20> It implements FIDO2: [https://www.yubico.com/2018/05/what-is- fido2/](https://www.yubico.com/2018/05/what-is-fido2/)

</comment></comment><comment><USER21> Bit of a tangent, but out of interest, why KickStarter as opposed to CrowdSupply?

<comment><USER16> Ehm, our ignorance. I'm investigating, though now we're a bit of in an "advanced stage" with Kickstarter and I'm not sure we can easily swap to CS.

</comment></comment><comment><USER22> What's nitrokey's status regarding fido2 ? I know that their current open source products don't support it, but they were planning to add it.

<comment><USER23> FIDO2 is planned but prior to this we are going to release a FIDO U2F first.

</comment></comment><comment><USER24> Does FIDO2 imply WebAuthn? How do the two relate to each other, other than WebAuthn being an 'outgrowth of' FIDO2?

<comment><USER25> webauthn is the in-browser API that allows using existing U2F keys, new "FIDO2" keys, built-in "secure elements" / TPMs, and whatnot.

FIDO2, according to [https://fidoalliance.org/fido2/](https://fidoalliance.org/fido2/) , is the overall project that includes both WebAuthn and CTAP — the latter being the new protocol for talking to the keys.

</comment></comment><comment><USER26> Woohoo! My urge-zero key stopped working mysteriously and I wasn't happy about that but I'll give them another chance.

<comment><USER15> Thanks!! This next should will come with case and be more robust!

</comment></comment><comment><USER27> From the image it doesn't look like it'll be easily hand solderable. I love that about the U2F zero (though I'm still torn on if I should build it or buy it).

<comment><USER15> Yes :(. I've been soldering with paste, stencil, and air gun and have had a good success rate, but it can be a bit more difficult.

I'm thinking about making a short video showing how to solder one reliably for folks interesting in making their own. Unfortunately newer MCUs these days often don't come in easy-to-solder packages.

</comment></comment><comment><USER28> Any chance someone might make this work with Nextcloud?

<comment><USER16> Do you know if Nextcloud supports any form of 2fa?

<comment><USER29> There's a plugin for TOTP 2FA.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER30> I think I like my tomu.im gadget better.

Just sayin'.

<comment><USER31> So far, the tomu only supports U2F though. Is anyone working on FIDO2 for it?

</comment></comment><comment><USER32> Looks awesome, just one thing about the website if anybody knows them personally. The motto under the Product, "Secure login, open, easy." is mostly hidden by the photo.

<comment><USER16> Thank you, I'll fix it later tonight. Can you confirm your resolution? I mostly tested it on small screens, I wasn't expecting the front page.

<comment><USER33> Overlaps on widths >1500px.

(My recommendation would be to not make this a background image, but simply an image in the markup after the headline.)

<comment><USER16> It should be fixed, thanks again for catching it.

(followed the recommendation -- only for large screens though, it's late and I don't want to make mistakes ehehe)</comment></comment></comment></comment>


Minecraft is Actually Finished. It's Done. It's Ready. - <AUTHOR> http://kotaku.com/5859539/minecraft-is-actually-finished-its-done <comment><USER2> A bit of honing in on the news as kotaku's story isn't entirely there.

Minecraft has over 16M registered users, of which >4M have purchased the game. Neither figure is a firm representation of active players however. Minecraft receives roughly 10,000 new sales every day(at 15 euros a pop), so we can generally assume that there is a large, if rotating, pool of active players.

Additionally, while the game is seeing the 1.0, it's far from finished. This is more of a formality for running out of time before the booked-well-in- advance launch venue. The "adventure update" (originally planned for the 1.7 beta) has been sidelined for the moment on account of the minecon launch. Instead the game now features a boss fight and an ending. The developers (notch/jeb) have kept an active voice in the community and have made it known that there is still much more content on the way, including what I assume to be the completion of the adventure update, and possibly other game modes and/or more advanced pre-built content being generated into maps.

While I feel the game isn't "done" or "ready", it's still a reasonably nice time filler, even if it's ideology has an existential crisis.</comment>


Recommendation for Online Store Software - <AUTHOR>

My friend's parents own a (physical, actual building) adult clothing store[lingerie/costumes]. It's extremely profitable.
They asked me (10+ years programming on Linux, mastery of C; familiar enough to hack x86 assembly / GPU / ruby / python / haskell code; can read php / javascript / actionscript) for assistance with building an online store.
They already have an artistically talented graphic designer. The question is, what software to use for:
1) running the backend of the online store 2) processing credit card / payments 3) automatically sending orders for shipment 4) logging everything [for data mining & finding consumer patterns]
Given background knowledge of: 1) I have worked through parts of the Ruby on Rails 3rd edition book for fun and 2) They aren't 'innovating' in building a better online store / better web2.0 website; the goal is just to sell online what they're already selling in the physical store
I believe the right solution is to:
1) find some existing open source / commercial ( < $100 / month) software that handles all  this 2) throw the store online, see how profitable selling this online is 3) rewrite everything [server, credit card processing, shipment] if the commercial solution's over head (inefficiency, or transaction costs) is a big deal (i.e. when volume is high)
The questions are:
1) does the analysis for using pre-existing online software instead of rolling our own sound right?
2) if so, what existing solutions [open source or commercial] do you suggest
3) if not, why? and what should I read up on / learn?
Thanks! <comment><USER2> Sometimes a related articles widget comes in handy -- came across this when looking at the page for osCommerce (probably the most widely used OSS shopping cart):

[http://pedia.directededge.com/article/Comparison_of_shopping...](http://pedia.directededge.com/article/Comparison_of_shopping_cart_software)

Actually, some of the other related articles are more useful. Magento looks cool.

<http://pedia.directededge.com/article/Magento>

</comment><comment><USER3> Use Drupal - it has several ecommerce modules, and you can plug in paypal, Google Checkout or Authorize.net shopping carts and be up-and-running in no time.</comment>


The Trouble with Popularity - <AUTHOR> http://blog.stackoverflow.com/2012/01/the-trouble-with-popularity/

<comment><USER2> A harsh, anti-meme stance is the only sane one of any sizable community that wishes to maintain integrity. Otherwise it risks devolving into ever- increasing depths of groupthink (and thus, mediocrity). Discussion gets pushed to the margins, and then the site is left to die.

Devaluing any sort of metrics also seems vital. It's sad that people would rather increase scores than actually, you know, discuss things.</comment>


Dream Wildly - Steeler coach's commencement speeches apply to hackers, too - <AUTHOR> http://sportsillustrated.cnn.com/2008/writers/peter_king/05/11/mmqb/index.html

<comment><AUTHOR> "The one common bond that the really successful people I've met have is they're ridiculous dreamers. I'm a ridiculous dreamer. Continue to dream. Don't let the reality of the world diminish those dreams."

AFAIC, that pretty much says it all.</comment>


S/MIME Version 4.0 Message Specification - <AUTHOR> https://tools.ietf.org/html/rfc8551 <comment><USER2> This section describes the changes made between S/MIME v3.2 and S/MIME v4.0.

       -  Added the use of AuthEnvelopedData, including defining and
          registering an smime-type value (Sections 2.4.4 and 3.4).

       -  Updated the content-encryption algorithms (Sections 2.7 and
          184.108.40.206): added AES-256 Galois/Counter Mode (GCM), added
          ChaCha20-Poly1305, removed mention of AES-192 Cipher Block
          Chaining (CBC), and marked tripleDES as historic.

       -  Updated the set of signature algorithms (Section 2.2): added the
          Edwards-curve Digital Signature Algorithm (EdDSA), added the
          Elliptic Curve Digital Signature Algorithm (ECDSA), and marked DSA
          as historic.

       -  Updated the set of digest algorithms (Section 2.1): added SHA-512,
          and marked SHA-1 as historic.

       -  Updated the size of keys to be used for RSA encryption and RSA
          signing (Section 4).

       -  Created Appendix B, which discusses considerations for dealing
          with historic email messages.

<comment><USER3> Formatting note: using code blocks for list works horribly on mobile.

<comment><USER4> The original document is preformatted monospace text, so a preformatted block is the only way to display it without a lot of effort to rejoin the lines and separate them into paragraph breaks (so that HN won't combine them inappropriately).

<comment><USER3> Fair enough, but if I simply copy and paste the above without indents it doesn't look so bad:

\- Added the use of AuthEnvelopedData, including defining and registering an smime-type value (Sections 2.4.4 and 3.4).

\- Updated the content-encryption algorithms (Sections 2.7 and 22.214.171.124): added AES-256 Galois/Counter Mode (GCM), added ChaCha20-Poly1305, removed mention of AES-192 Cipher Block Chaining (CBC), and marked tripleDES as historic.

\- Updated the set of signature algorithms (Section 2.2): added the Edwards- curve Digital Signature Algorithm (EdDSA), added the Elliptic Curve Digital Signature Algorithm (ECDSA), and marked DSA as historic.

\- Updated the set of digest algorithms (Section 2.1): added SHA-512, and marked SHA-1 as historic.

\- Updated the size of keys to be used for RSA encryption and RSA signing (Section 4).

\- Created Appendix B, which discusses considerations for dealing with historic email messages.

<comment><USER5> Yes this is actually readable.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> Nice to see AES GCM & ChaCha20-Poly1305 in there. Seems to generally be moving in a good direction.

Now we just need a CA that will offer free S/MIME capable certificates in a space that is rapidly shrinking (Sectigo have recently removed their offering... I think Actalis is now the only CA in this area that's trusted.

Let's Encrypt, will you step up to the mark?

<comment><USER7> Head of Let's Encrypt here.

So far as we can tell, there is no viable plan for mass adoption of S/MIME. It will remain a niche system whether or not we participate. There is no opportunity for impact that would justify the effort and expense on our part, no vision for the future of S/MIME that we're excited about.

There was a viable plan for mass adoption of HTTPS in a reasonable time frame, that's why we chose to execute.

A fundamental difference between those two ecosystems is that the burden of HTTPS is almost entirely on server administrators, end users don't have to do anything. The HTTPS user-agent ecosystem has been solidly in place for a while. In the S/MIME case individuals need to be more participatory, and it's hard to get end-users to do anything, let alone correctly.

<comment><USER8> People aren't making S/MIME software better because too few are using S/MIME. Too few are using S/MIME because it requires certificates to get started.

Making it easy to get email certificates certainly doesn't guarantee mass adoption, but the lack of easy access to email certificates absolutely is blocking mass adoption.

<comment><USER6> This hits the nail on the head exactly. It's a vicious cycle.

Let's Encrypt are perhaps one of the only players in a good position to make a real difference here. I don't see any other CAs implementing ACME for S/MIME ([https://tools.ietf.org/html/draft-ietf-acme-email- smime-04](https://tools.ietf.org/html/draft-ietf-acme-email-smime-04)) and offering free certs.</comment></comment></comment></comment>


Mechanical keyboard with analog input for precise control in games - <AUTHOR> http://www.wooting.nl/ <comment><USER2> I'm happy with my red switches thanks</comment>


Taking on Amazon, Google launches EC2 rival Compute Engine - <AUTHOR> http://gigaom.com/cloud/taking-on-amazon-google-launches-compute-on-demand-rival-to-ec2/

<comment><USER2> Hmm, looks like they're competing directly on price:

1 virtual core, 1.7GB RAM, 160GB disk for $.055/hr (Google)

1 virtual core, 1.7GB RAM, 160GB disk for $.08/hr (Amazon)

Amazon is still much cheaper if you use reserved instances or spot pricing, though. And for these sorts of compute jobs, I'm not sure why you wouldn't use spot pricing.

<comment><USER3> This is part of what I find amazing. Google and Amazon and every other 'EC' vendor looks to 'lock in' the price per 'equivalent compute unit'. What that means is that when Intel gets 50% more performance the EC vendor gets 50% more profit as they don't lower their price. For a user of cloud services it means that your cost to deliver your product will only go 'up' with features. In the past a large number of players have been able to deliver additional features at the same cost because they just upgraded to faster hardware.

The economics of this move starts pouring dollars into the EC providers and puts upward price pressure on web services. This 'price ratchet', if widely adopted, it going to put a huge kink in the productivity gains we've seen over the last 10 years as folks have ridden the commodity compute bandwagon. We've seen previews of that when people who used AppEngine got bit by the big price increases. Its like commuters who are forced to give up their income to the the gas pump, elastic compute resources are the 'gas' of the 21st century.

<comment><USER4> Hopefully competitive forces will sort that out. There will be an incentive for price per 'equivalent compute unit' to be lowered as the underlying infrastructure costs decrease.

<comment><USER3> I think the competitive forces will have some bearing here, although gas prices are an example of something which gets regulatory barriers put in place of expansion (you can't easily get approval to build a refinery). Given the 'cyber war' type mentality I am keeping a close eye on the regulatory environment growing up around providing 'cloud' services, be they compute, storage, or web front ends.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> Thank goodness for competition. Now maybe we'll see better performance from Amazon EC2 servers. A return to Moore's law maybe.

</comment><comment><USER6> Why is Apple's iCloud being mentioned in the same sentence with Compute Engine and EC2? That's like putting Google Drive in there, too.

<comment><AUTHOR> Right, and they conveniently forgot to mention Rackspace. I highly doubt Apple is going to release a direct competitor to EC2 or the like; unless they can turn a service into a consumer product, Apple is not going to waste their time with it.</comment></comment>


Google celebrates Roswell UFO Incident with a doodle - <AUTHOR> http://www.google.com/doodles/roswells-66th-anniversary

<comment><USER2> Awesome!</comment>