Talos Secure Workstation - <AUTHOR> https://raptorengineeringinc.com/TALOS/prerelease.php <comment><USER2> I like it as competition to Intel in the desktop space for power users. Workstation market used to be fun with interesting machines from SGI, IBM, Sun, HP, Compaq, and so on. SGI's blew people away with graphics & NUMA architectures. DEC/Compaq's Alpha's could be microcoded for concurrency or performance using regular assembly via a scheme called PALcode. HP PA-RISC and SGI's Itanium systems have memory keying scheme for access control, originally in IBM mainframes, that constrains attackers a bit if used well. The RISC systems supported more programming models without the efficiency hit of x86's that assumed stacks and had little registers. Unfortunately, x86 was very good at running C and x86 code becoming more prevalent. Plus the Microsoft partnership. So, everything else pretty much disappeared.

Anyway, it would be cool to have options. Especially with security extensions for code in the CPU and/or open CPU's. Unfortunately, this really ain't it. People are better off licensing or directly using Gaisler's 4-core SPARCs with security extensions a la Cambridge's CHERI, SecureCore, or Hardbound. We'd have fast, open CPU's w/ open firmware w/ open OS's w/ support at CPU level for confidentiality and/or integrity. _That_ is how you _begin_ on a secure workstation. ;)

<comment><USER3> I'm super excited about CHERI. ... But the fastest CHERI implementation now or likely in the next couple years is orders of magnitude slower than the offerings from AMD and Intel. (Not fundamentally-- but primarily as a product of maturity and development)

There are many applications where I'd gladly take a 100 fold performance (or energy efficiency loss) for the kind of security improvement that CHERI gives. But there are also many applications where I (and importantly, other people who care less about security than I do) cannot afford those sorts of reductions.

Meanwhile, the fast machines available to us all have opaque, cryptographically locked, and seemingly often vulnerable supervisory code running on them.

To make an impact OpenPower solutions need merely be better in some respect (avoiding the secret supervisory code) and not too worse in others. It might be a tougher call if MPX were already a practical reality or if SGX weren't being held back by ridiculous licensing.

<comment><USER2> "But the fastest CHERI implementation now or likely in the next couple years is orders of magnitude slower than the offerings from AMD and Intel. (Not fundamentally-- but primarily as a product of maturity and development)"

That's due to a lack of demand. The ultimate problem for high security. Gaisler's stuff is already implemented. The RISC-V Rocket core is 1.4Ghz. Basic checks like in SAFE's atomic groups have single-digit, percentage effects on performance. The mods can be tweaked to give desire performance. Worst I've seen was 70-80% loss on a prototype designed for research rather than performance on most memory-intensive stuff. Not 100x or anything.

"Meanwhile, the fast machines available to us all have opaque, cryptographically locked, and seemingly often vulnerable supervisory code running on them."

Definitely improvements to be had in things with open firmware and such. POWER and SPARC have had that for quite a while via Open Firmware standard. SPARC and MIPS have open _implementations_ with SPARC not requiring an ISA license. Not sure about availability of server-grade POWER implementations or licensing costs. Definitely need more to work with in that area.

"To make an impact OpenPower solutions need merely be better in some respect (avoiding the secret supervisory code) and not too worse in others."

I hope that's true. What killed it before was legacy effect: key apps or capabilities that worked on x86 didn't on alternatives. Even Apple abandoned PPC. Only one doing it on desktops are the Amiga systems.

For common use-cases, we need to port Flash, JS JIT's, ASM-optimized codecs... all sorts of things to POWER to achieve parity. I've always liked POWER better than x86. It's just that users use apps not ISA's. That's why x86 has holding power.

So, it's literally gotta be users who don't need games, fast browsers, CAD, etc. It has to be people using native apps written in portable code leveraging components written similarly. Even better if it's multi-threaded or benefits from POWER's accelerated instructions. How many use-cases does that represent for desktop users?

<comment><USER4> Flash is dying, so ignore that.

Debian has more than 96% of packages compiled for POWER and IBM is working on porting the reset and optimising things.

[https://buildd.debian.org/stats/](https://buildd.debian.org/stats/) [https://wiki.debian.org/ppc64el](https://wiki.debian.org/ppc64el)

It isn't hard to create new ports, you just have to have the source code, but everyone uses proprietary software so new ports have zero chance outside the open source world.

<comment><USER2> So, there's nothing critical for modern desktop use that isn't on POWER? What about graphics and sound cards? Printers? They got it all these days?

That would be cool because one of my disposables is an old Mac laptop with G4 CPU. Getting modern Linux distro on it would be cool.

<comment><USER5> The in kernel, free radeon drivers are good and supported by amd. They should work on little-endian systems, which all of the newer POWER systems are[0].

Unforunately big-endian amd/radeon support seems to have bit rotted. So if that g4 laptop has an amd device accelerated video might not work. I'm not sure how well nouveau works for nvidia devices.

There have been some discussions about this problem on the debian-powerpc mailing list so check out the archives if you're interested. Some of us also hang out on OFTC/#debianppc.

Sound support should be the same as intel and printers are handled by userland so that shouldn't be a problem with most printers that work with linux.

JIT support for ppc64el is good because of IBM support. It has jdk and v8 ports.

[0] [https://wiki.debian.org/ppc64el](https://wiki.debian.org/ppc64el)

<comment><USER2> The graphics situation sounds rough. Good on printers and sound. And this...

"JIT support for ppc64el is good because of IBM support. It has jdk and v8 ports."

...I didn't even think about. Of course IBM's components might be usable for the desktop. ("Doh!") Thanks for the info.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> I'd like to know that they consider to be sufficient interest to justify a production run. This is a really niche project, and $3000 seems quite low for a one-off motherboard made in a couple of hundred units.

Hopefully these guys have worked out the math, I've just noticed that most people, especially software people, seriously underestimate the cost of producing hardware in small quantities.

<comment><USER7> The number is 1500. I know because I have been talking to them about this since last year.

<comment><USER6> Thanks, that sounds a lot more realistic than what I had in mind. Hopefully they'll get enough interested people to commit, it'd be great to have a choice in workstation architecture again.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> Define "secure". In too many cases it is a marketing buzzword. At some point those of us who are security professionals really need to get serious about pushing for some standard language and certification in this space. I'd love to see a rating system which makes it clear which attacks this platform can defend agains. As an example, is it only secure if locked in a secure facility, protected from physical access or can it exist in a physically hostile environment? How much of it can be exposed to an attack surface before it's not secure? At this moment I'm aware of several physical layer attacks that this would absolutely fail to protect against so I question why exactly this gets me anything more than any other hardware platform.

<comment><USER9> In a world of millions of networked devices it seems redundant to classify any one single element as "secure". The secure device cannot possibly trust any other device, and those devices in turn cannot trust the secure device. By necessity we use a combination of different systems, and any one rogue system could undermine the rest. The only way to make that safe is to understand how different systems interact and ensure they are sand boxed from one another. This is particularly difficult when a single machine can have several processors running their own platform.

</comment></comment><comment><USER10> > NO signing keys preventing firmware modification

Not really a "secure" workstation if you can't have a secure bootchain. An open, secure platform would allow you to fuse your own root key.

<comment><USER6> This seems to be an unfortunate relic from the fight against the clipper chip.

Buying hardware that you don't own and control is a big problem, but that doesn't mean all methods of securing the boot process are evil. The important bit is that it's the owner of the hardware that's in control of the keys, and that (s)he can retain sole control of the signing keys if desired.

<comment><USER7> Intel controls the keys for the management engine and other bits that are vectors for back doors:

[https://libreboot.org/faq/#intel](https://libreboot.org/faq/#intel)

The Snowden leak claimed that the NSA had special Intel chips, but no one has ever claimed Intel did a special production run. However, if they stole Intel's signing keys and internal documentation, they could just reflash the existing chips and Intel would not need to know a thing about it. Anyone who gets their hands on that information would be able to do the same and there is not a thing you can do about it beside using hardware where that is not possible.

<comment><USER6> I think we're in agreement then. Intel's system does not meet the criteria I set forth in the post you're replying to (since there is only one key, and it's generated out of the owners control). So that's a bad solution. If there were some way for a physically present user to set a new firmware signing key, that would get the benefit without having to throw out any attempt to secure the boot process.

Of course, intel's microcode is not open for scrutiny, so the point is moot there (what would you sign instead?)

The linked project states that having no way to lock the boot process is a benefit. I disagree that it's a feature to advertise, because it's possible to implement in such a way that the user retains complete control. Pointing out bad implementations is not a good answer to that.

<comment><USER7> The ME is an embedded device that has its own independent CPU and operating system. Whether Secure Boot is possible is tangential to that. Secure Boot is as relevant to security here as lowering the anchor on the titanic after hitting that iceberg. Whether the measure is in place or not does not actually fix things.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> Any details on the graphics chip it apparently uses to drive the HDMI (so much for "workstation grade"…) output?

Libre graphics hardware is quite rare, virtually everything on the market requires binary firmware blobs.

(As do all mass storage devices…)

<comment><USER12> The brand is Aspeed, blob-free operation but 2d acceleration only, found in server boards. This is not an SGI-style Iris GL workstation.

<comment><USER11> Ah, shame.

<comment><USER13> It has 4 x8 PCIe slots.

<comment><USER11> I've seen that. But where would I find a completely blob-free graphics card to plug in there? Neither AMD nor Nvidia offer any right now.

<comment><USER13> Not sure if it'd work but if the blob is to be loaded on the card, it would be just like a x86 setup - it should work as long as the host part is compilable for POWER.

<comment><USER5> Radeons work without kernel blobs, just binary firmwares that are loaded on the card.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> There are preliminary benchmarks from Phoronix available here:

[http://www.phoronix.com/scan.php?page=article&item=talos- wor...](http://www.phoronix.com/scan.php?page=article&item=talos- workstation&num=1)

TL;DR Performs similarly to current E3/E5 xeon CPUs, and the 64 cores (57 tested) are great for parallel workloads. There's some applications (OpenSSL) missing POWER8-specific optimization.

<comment><AUTHOR> The open-toolchain FPGA sounds interesting too, is there any more information on that?

<comment><USER4> Some resources are listed here (including an open source FPGA):

[https://wiki.debian.org/FPGA](https://wiki.debian.org/FPGA)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> So, honest question, what kind of workloads and tasks would a box built from this motherboard be good for? Video or audio editing? CAD? 3d Rendering? Programming? Assuming the hardware is up to the task, cool, now what about the software?

In my years working IT, it seems to me that by and large, the professional software for tasks you'd throw an expensive workstation at (CAD, 3d rendering, etc) has by and large migrated to being targeted for x86 Windows boxen, because that's what their clients have. For some tasks (audio/video production) some software still targets macs, but that's about it from what I've seen.

I'm tempted to try to pick up a couple of these to see if I can turn them into something useful, but the rare power user or hobbyist doesn't seem like enough demand to sustain development of a product like this, as cool as it might be. Is there some niche somewhere that I am not aware of where something like this would be useful? Enough for someone to buy enough of these to sustain further development and production?

<comment><USER16> I'm actually pretty interested in this as a potential form of cheap(ish) HPC. I do a lot of stellar simulations and other computational astrophysics stuff, I think a couple of these might be able to stand in when I don't necessarily feel like dealing with the campus supercomputer for a small task. Although in terms of marketability, I'd say that products like these might fulfill the gap between traditional farms <-> giant supercomputers.

</comment></comment><comment><USER17> Interesting... but I see only two reasons I'd get it at that price. If I actually expect cover channel data exfiltration, or really don't trust in generating crypto keys on standard Intel architecture. But the second one is solved by HSMs too.

So does anyone know why one would prefer this board?

<comment><USER18> The IBM OpenPOWER firmware is all open source. (disclaimer: I work for IBM Systems)

<comment><USER7> The microcode is not, although I heard that it is under consideration for POWER9 depending on how well Talos does.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER19> I have a secret dream of having a secure "big data in a box" solution based on Linux / GPUs (likely nVidia) and lots of storage (like 8 6TB drives in Raid z2). This processor and motherboard would be fine if it had more IO (4-6 16x slots) and onboard 10Gbe. Right now seems like this is still a pipe dream.

</comment><comment><USER20> I might be interested, but I'm not hardware buff enough to build a computer myself. And what kind of software would run on that CPU?

<comment><USER21> Some form of Linux, then compile as needed I imagine.

[https://www-01.ibm.com/support/knowledgecenter/linuxonibm/li...](https://www-01.ibm.com/support/knowledgecenter/linuxonibm/liaam/liaamdistros.htm)

The page above lists RHEL, SLES (the commercial variant of OpenSUSE), Ubuntu in the context of servers.

<comment><USER18> Debian as well. IIRC there is a FreeBSD porting effort which hasn't made that much progress as yet.

<comment><USER4> Link to the Debian port:

[https://wiki.debian.org/ppc64el](https://wiki.debian.org/ppc64el)

More than 96% of Debian is compiled for it and hopefully works ;)

<comment><USER18> I've personally run a KDE environment on ppc64el Debian, and it pretty much works straight out of the box :D

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER22> What sort of work could this be used for?

<comment><USER7> > What sort of work could this be used for?

Computer hardware can be used to run computer software.

<comment><USER22> ..such as..?

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER23> I realize they are two differ et domains of expertise, but if I'm paying someone $3000 for a computer, shouldn't they at least be able to _hire_ a competent web designer?

This is atrocious - floating menus and text blocks that move and cover over the main text when you try to zoom, and no responsive design so you have to zoom in mobile. Sorry, I'm not going through the hat much work to read your site.

<comment><USER21> Personally, I'd rather they just went with plain html and no attempt at presentation of any kind. Cheaper and the viewer gets to decide on font size/styles &c.

But, no, with hardware this specialised, those who have a need for it won't mind what the page looks like.

</comment></comment><comment><USER24> LOL - It's only secure until they hand over the back door keys to one or more of the US 3 letter agencies...</comment>


Using Native Python Libraries in Lambda - <AUTHOR> http://codrspace.com/apeschel/using-native-python-libraries-in-lambda/ <comment><AUTHOR> Hello, just put up this quick walkthrough on how to use a native library with Amazon Lambda. Any feedback or suggestions would be greatly appreciated!</comment>


Ask HN: Is this any value to you? Social posting site overrun by spam - <AUTHOR>

Hi!
Background:
Last year I decided to put up a social posting site for car enthusiasts to post current for-sale car ads. Being the complete non-coder that I am, I used a free package and installed it on some available server space. I played with it some but couldn't really figure out how to gain traction.
Spam slowly started to roll in, but now its hitting an interesting level.
Here are my stats from last month:
819 Visits
550 Absolute Unique Visitors
5,210 Pageviews
6.36 Average Pageviews
00:05:18 Time on Site
21.73% Bounce Rate
64.10% New Visits
My question is as follows: Does anyone have any suggestions on what I should do with this property? Is any ad person interested in analyzing the spam content/source etc? I am not sure if there is any value but wanted to put this out there for this amazing community.
Any comments are valuable.
www.drovit.com
(it seems the site is throwing some errors at the top, I will try and fix this) <comment><USER2> why would there be value in analyzing where the spam is coming from? spam is garbage so unless you're getting non-spam hits the site wouldn't be worth anything

<comment><AUTHOR> That's why I asked. My thought was maybe site admins could use this to create a blacklist of spam sources, or run some kind of experiments. No idea, that's why I threw it out there.

Thanks for your input!</comment></comment>


ETHMap – Own a Country on Ethereum Blockchain - <AUTHOR> https://willdn.github.io/ETHMap <comment><USER2> inb4 someone clones this repo and eliminates the 2% fee.</comment>


Apple reportedly paving the way for Lightning headphones - <AUTHOR> http://www.theverge.com/2014/6/4/5779662/apple-reportedly-paving-way-for-lightning-headphones <comment> brian-armstrong There is one very tangible benefit to doing this for Apple. Namely, it would block all of the existing Square etc. readers for magstripe cards. Who needs all those silly external accessories for outdated payment technologies when you have Apple Pay, right?</comment>


Total Moving Face Reconstruction - <AUTHOR> http://grail.cs.washington.edu/projects/totalmoving/ <comment><USER2> Can't help but think of "The Running Man" watching Schwarzenegger's face being rendered in 3D.

It's terrifying to think that in the next 5 to 10 years we won't be able to distinguish a forged, high definition video of pretty much anybody.

<comment><USER3> Terrifying would be continuing to take everything we see as fact in 5 to 10 years. I think we are in a special time where if you see a video of pretty much anybody, you can usually tell right away if it's fake or not. Sometimes it's hard, but it can usually be debunked. Before that, you really couldn't fake any videos without it being obvious.

In 5 to 10 years, hopefully we will have learned to never ever ever take anything we see as fact, because we absolutely will not be able to distinguish rendered video from the real thing.

<comment><USER4> True, but the downside of this is that anyone caught in the act will use this as a defense of first resort - it'll be the 2020's equivalent of 'my twitter account was hacked' until we establish some sort of reliable ELA tool to grade source material.

Indeed, as there are more and more cameras around (including autonomous ones of increasingly tiny size) imagery of the videographer will probably become a major authentication factor.

<comment><USER3> I believe everything you have said is true, especially with cameras becoming smaller and more common.

However, I'll still be optimistic and hope that with the increasing number of cameras, people will be less likely to engage in activities where they shouldn't. The opposite argument would be that with the increasing technology to fake such an activity, the amount of 'my twitter account was hacked' incidents will rise.

I guess only time will tell?

<comment><USER5> But the "activities where they shouldn't" will be defined by the powerful. It's total state or corporate control, depending on your dystopian future preference.

<comment><USER6> The solution to this problem of pools of power probably lies in solving what is and isn't allowed using a continuous consensus based method. To enable that, we need realtime feeds of everything available, available to all, and some sort of filtering mechanism to deliver video to the right people for evaluating consensus on whatever happens that is contestable. Today's 'powerful' are only powerful because they control the information. Whatever gets built to improve upon society needs to ensure it can't be wielded for self gain or increased lever of power action.

<comment><USER7> Social regulation by Youtube commenters? What fresh hell is this?

Consensus is not sufficient. This is why rights-based approaches are developed. It has to be OK to live an unpopular lifestyle that's not harmful to others.

<comment><USER6> I agree, which is why I said "deliver video to the right people for evaluating consensus on whatever happens that is contestable". That gives you the right to live a way that is 'contestable' without having to pay a price for it (because you have a right to it).

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> I run a startup specializing in this space called the 3D Avatar Store (www.3d-avatar-store.com).

3D Reconstruction of human faces is literally on the edge of mainstream. I'm betting on it, personally.

Our system is similar as theirs, but more general: we laser scanned 300,000 real people and then associated each laser scan with dozens of photos of that person taken from different angles, lighting conditions and expressions. That data set was then used for a neural net training - actually a pipeline of neural nets.

We can accept 1 photo and get back a good quality 3D model, or a series of photos and get better quality, or HD quality video and get back frame by frame, in expression reconstructions just like their solution. In fact, our system is able to recover 36 people per video feed in real time, as well as handle 4 video feeds at once. We don't need as much reference information as they do, because we trained our system to generally understand the human facial form, rather than their solution that operates in isolation for a single reconstruction operation.

Our current system is targeted as a WebAPI for games and serious simulations - enabling 3rd parties to implement "put yourself in the game" functionality. As such we have 3 different geometry outputs aimed at game/simulation developers. We also do facial recognition, and we have a special "forensic" output for that.

Our current "best output" is purposely "Pixar like" rather than realistic. Taking them realistic tends to freak people out - especially women (seems like our culture has trained women to have an idealized self image, and when presented with their non-mirror true form, they don't like it.)

You can learn more at these links: [https://3d-avatar-store.com/Web-API- Features-May-2014](https://3d-avatar-store.com/Web-API-Features-May-2014) [https://3d-avatar-store.com/3D-Avatar-Creation-walkthru](https://3d-avatar- store.com/3D-Avatar-Creation-walkthru) [https://3d-avatar-store.com/New-Face- Finder](https://3d-avatar-store.com/New-Face-Finder)

<comment><USER9> Very nice! Our work is different though: we create high detail 3d moving 3d models from youtube videos -- without any manual interaction (looks like there is quite a bit of interaction in creation of an avatar on 3d-avatar-store) Ira [http://homes.cs.washington.edu/~kemelmi/](http://homes.cs.washington.edu/~kemelmi/)

<comment><USER8> The interaction is primarily there to support users who supply poor quality photos. Given a photo taken with an actual lens (not a mobile phone's pin hole) the manual portion can be skipped. Plus, since we are only exposing single photo input (because given the opportunity to supply multiple photos, most users supply multiple garbage photos) certain profile features are difficult to recover. So we have a "3D detailing" interface so people can adjust their profile and add smile creases and so on. That 3D detailing interface also allows for exaggeration - which is how the avatar on our home page is presented.

Your work is very nice as well. Like yours, our video version requires no manual interaction. It's primarily used by government agencies, and we've not exposed it to the public yet.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> I like that they show cases where it has problems. It's very much "here's what we can do, and here's where it doesn't work." There is no hype, no claims of "novelty", no speculation on uses, just results. I wish this were far more common.

<comment><USER11> I still would like to see the reconstruction from another angle than the original. Depending on how much you accept to cheat, it is not too hard to get a good result from that anfle only.

<comment><USER12> They demonstrate the reconstruction at different angles in the video @1:49

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> Somewhat off-topic, but I wonder why facial recognition/modeling experts seem to persistently ignore ears and jawline. As someone who works in film and does some picture editing (though it's not my primary skillset), ears are just as individual as other parts of the face, and they're one of the trickiest things for makeup artists to work on. As CG in movies and videogames keeps improving, my suspension of disbelief is often broken by noticing problems with the ears, eg watching a CG anime film and noticing that everyone has the same ear shape.

<comment><USER13> > As CG in movies and videogames keeps improving, my suspension of disbelief > is often broken

I have never really seen CG portrayal of people in live action films that didn't break suspension of disbelief, it always falls right into uncanny valley stiffness. The exception being Avatar, which for whatever reason doesn't seem to have had the problems other films have.

<comment><USER14> That's a silly statement. If it didn't break suspension of disbelief then it's because you didn't even realize it was CG! If you go to movies at all then I can all but guarantee you there are CG shots that you had no idea were CG.

Here's some super impressive CG from the first Captain America movie back in 2011. Crazy insane stuff they're doing it. And that's for a very, very extreme case. You better believe they are doing slick stuff in non-extreme cases! [http://www.fxguide.com/featured/case-study-how-to-make-a- cap...](http://www.fxguide.com/featured/case-study-how-to-make-a-captain- america-wimp/)

For Iron Man it's not quite the same because it's a suit but it's just as impressive. Since Iron Man 2 there is no full suit worn by an actor. There are no legs and at this point there are barely even arms. There's a chest piece and open mask face piece and that's about it. [http://movies.stackexchange.com/questions/2198/how-are- the-i...](http://movies.stackexchange.com/questions/2198/how-are-the-iron-man- suit-scenes-filmed)

In The Social Network there are a lot of scenes with the Winklevoss twins. Spoiler: They didn't use twin actors. They used two actors and CG'd the face of one onto the other body. No way in hell did you call this out on first viewing. (number 3) [http://www.totalfilm.com/features/50-cgi-scenes-you-didn- t-n...](http://www.totalfilm.com/features/50-cgi-scenes-you-didn-t-notice/the- social-network-2010)

<comment><USER15> I think we are talking about CGI faces here and thats just not doable yet and this research won't change a thing about it. The last movie I remember having a CG face was Clu in Tron Legacy which certainly was state of the art CG, unfortunately 'state of the art'[1] in face modeling/animation is just not perfect yet.

[1] [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CvaGd4KqlvQ](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CvaGd4KqlvQ)

<comment><USER14> That link is real time. State of the art server farm rendered is orders of magnitude better.

"The last movie I remember having a CG face was Clu" By strict definition if you remember it having a CG face then it wasn't good. It's not possible for you to remember a good CG face because if it's good you wouldn't know it was CG!

The next big test might by Paul Walker in Fast and Furious 7 or Philip Seymore Hoffman in Hunger Games 3. Both big budget movies where the actor died and CG will be used in at least some places. That's the ultimate. I think we can already get away with CG if the actor isn't known. But for actors who have faces we know and mannerisms we subconsciously recogonize it's another step up in difficulty.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> 3D reconstruction is used in state-of-the-art facial recognition as well.[1] Essentially you reconstruct the face in 3D, rotate the 3D model to the front, project it back into 2 dimensions, and then feed it through a CNN with deep architecture. Because this gives you very good alignment, you can do tricks like not having shared weights across the entire image. That is, each section of the input vector is known to correspond to a certain part of the face and thus can learn unique parameters that are well suited for that specific region.

The paper claims that it takes about 105 seconds to render a single frame. So one second of 30 fps video would take about 52 minutes to render. I would have to read more in depth to see what kind of savings can be had by sharing information across frames. (The paper also doesn't mention the use of GPU acceleration.)

[1] [https://www.facebook.com/publications/546316888800776/](https://www.facebook.com/publications/546316888800776/)

<comment><USER17> Roughly they use a model of the face, render it, compare the source image and the rendered image, estimate changes of position, orientation and deformation for the model that will yield a better match and then just repeat this until the result is good enough. While you probably can exploit temporal coherence between frames the process is inherently pretty expensive due to its iterative nature. But it may also be relatively easy to parallelize bbecause of this.

</comment></comment><comment><USER18> I'd like to ask the authors how they managed to do such great/natural looking reconstructions of the eyes. Eyes are tough because they're naturally specular, transparent in places, and refractive.

<comment><USER17> After quickly reading the paper, I think they did nothing special for the eyes; it's probably just the result of the final refinement step. The result looses a bit of its magic, though, when you read in more detail how it works. But it remains impressive.

</comment></comment><comment><USER19> I think I'm missing the point. Why are all the reconstructed videos from the same angle? It would demonstrate it better if they repositioned the camera.

<comment><USER20> If you watch the George Bush segment, it shows the reconstructed video from a different angle (straight-on, eliminating the head movement).

</comment></comment><comment><USER21> I've been increasingly interested in the Face. Human beings must have some incredible mental calculations going on when parsing a face. We're an evolved species that use the face as a form of communication.

I love the attached video in the link because it isolates perfectly the face. If you look closely you can see these tiny minute combinations within the face as each person talks; the eyes shifting, the face rotating, looking in various directions, the forehead crunching, the eyebrows raising, smiling, etc. All of these "cues" combine to create a message that we interpret instantly.

The face has inspired me lately to read more into this subject as it seems, at least on the surface, to be an extremely complex innate human ability; facial recognition.

<comment><USER22> It really is incredible. I mean, in the original link, look at the image of Arnold used for the video before playing. It's a blurry, greyscale section of his face. Nonetheless, most people could easily recognize that face as being him.

Billions of people in this world, we all have a very similar facial structure with two eyes, a nose and a mouth, and yet you can recognize that small blurry face in a fraction of a second.

I imagine it's similar with animals. You can have thousands of birds in a flock, and they can recognize their mate instantly. To us, we'd have to carefully analyze the birds for days or weeks to make that same match.

<comment><USER23> What amazing is that scientists discovered that brain allocates one single neuron fires for each recognized face. For example, You have a one special neuron in your brain that fires when you see Bill Clinton's face. And that exact neuron fires no matter what picture of Bill Clinton you happened to see.

<comment><USER24> > What amazing is that scientists discovered that brain allocates one single > neuron fires for each recognized face.

This is nonsense, citation needed.

> For example, You have a one special neuron in your brain that fires when you > see Bill Clinton's face.

This is New Age science, i.e. not science at all. It's a myth. One neuron is equivalent to one bit in a computer. One bit of information is insufficient to distinguish between faces.

> And that exact neuron fires no matter what picture of Bill Clinton you > happened to see.

Maybe you could learn a tiny bit of neuroscience before spreading this kind of nonsense.

<comment><USER23> You need to learn some neuroscience buddy. One neuron is not one bit. A neuron works in much complex way than a single bit in a computer. A neuron has hundreds to thousands axons and dendrites and connect with other neurons in a dense network. I am surprised by your knowledge of neuroscience yet attacking me. very strange.

EDIT: As dragonwriter says below, lower levels of neural networks are responsible for general facial recognition but that triggers more specific neurons once the recognition is done from generic face -> specific person. Even in artificial neural networks single bit is sufficient at the end of the classification.

<comment><USER24> In that case, your original claim was false -- either one neuron is acting alone as you claimed, or it isn't. Your claim was that one neuron was acting alone, which is absurd.

A neuron is interconnected to many others, but this doesn't mean one neuron is many neurons, any more than one binary bit is 64 binary bits by virtue of its position in a binary word.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER25> This can help a lot in recreating the faces of avatars, in animated movies and games. They have tough time tracking facial details using small markers. I was wondering using shadow and shine removal to solve the issues shown in end. An example here is implemented by these autonomous car designers detailed as shadow correction: [http://www.igvc.org/design/2013/US%20Naval%20Academy.pdf](http://www.igvc.org/design/2013/US%20Naval%20Academy.pdf)

</comment><comment><USER26> This kind of advancements is one of the reasons I don't post photos of myself online. In a few years we will be capable of making videos with anybody's face replaced with anybody else's. It will be trivial to produce a fake video that can cause all kinds of legal troubles.

And yes, I realize it's even possible now, but with all the new algos and software coming out it will be easy enough for somebody to just mess with people's lives for fun.

<comment><USER27> doesn't matter if _you_ post photos of yourself online, very likely it will be others that do so. And your image is being digitally captured constantly, if you travel on public transport or go through an airport, or do anything in a public place your photo has been captured many times. Figuring that it's you is also pretty straightforward. All it takes is a DMV hack or Facebook (where one of your coworkers tagged you in a photo, or instagram where your niece tagged you by the bbq on july 4th etc etc etc...

<comment><USER28> In the future, we are _all_ in porn.

<comment><USER29> While I think this is a derangement of society, I can imagine a porn app that let's you drop in a facebook id to superimpose your crush's likeness upon a porn actor.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER30> Technology likes this makes me wonder how long of a shelf-life video "evidence" has.

Or perhaps these same algos will also provide utility in detecting / decoding "fakes", sort of like edge-tracking / error level analysis etc today.

</comment><comment><USER31> Tragic they removed the verbal audio from the demo video. It would have been much easier to judge the visual accuracy if the reconstructed lip motion were combined the original sound.

</comment><comment><USER32> Hi! Anybody have some sources? I want to touch this method =) This 3D reconstructions are the best material for the face recognition!

</comment><comment><USER33> Very impressive. How large does the photo collection of the individual have to be to achieve results like those in the video?

<comment><USER4> The source videos they used as examples are about 600 frames each, which is ~40 seconds of video. For a politician or professional actor this would be easy to achieve. Likewise if you wanted a good 3d model of yourself or a friend you could do it cheaply using this method.

<comment><USER33> I may be misreading the paper, but as far as I understand you need a collection of photos _in addition to_ the video.

<comment><USER4> I thought that too, but then they have some ambiguous sentences like 'In this paper we target high detail reconstruction from a single video captured in the wild, i.e., under uncontrolled imaging conditions,' where it seems as if they treat that as their input library. Other parts of the paper support your interpretation. It's annoyingly vague.

...but still, outstanding work even if it requires manual calibration like curation of the input set.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER34> This will be huge for VR.

</comment><comment><USER23> This + Virtual Gesture Tracking + VR = Virtual Meetings

</comment><comment><USER35> The question that burns me is - when will we see this amazing algorithm implemented as part of OpenCV ?

</comment><comment><USER36> Quite dangerous what this technology will mean in the future, they could manufacture evidence against you, publish it, and then let the masses lynch you.

I think this is what happened to the recent decapitation videos, they were reconstructed from home videos.

IMO the videos with the people dead in the floor are true, but the videos where they talk are staged.

Today we know there was a CIA team whose job was faking videos of Osama Bin laden: [http://blog.washingtonpost.com/spy- talk/2010/05/cia_group_ha...](http://blog.washingtonpost.com/spy- talk/2010/05/cia_group_had_wacky_ideas_to_d.html)

Remember Osama Bin Ladem appeared and disappeared according to US army interest at the time, finally ending in very strange circumstances(and being buried on the ocean, not letting anyone else interantionally to confirm(by DNA) he was Osama).

For me it is staged because current technology could synthesize a voice only if there are not strong emotions. The same happens with the voice.

With strong emotions it becomes very easy for familiars and friends to notice as people do specific gestures and most of them are not recorded in video.

That people are perfectly calm before dying I could understand, but that they do while saying exactly what their captors want I can't.

Also, before the videos most of the population in UK did not want to go to war, after the videos(with a UK native), most of them support war, quo prodis?</comment>


Ebay to buy Shutl as it aims for one-hour delivery in UK - <AUTHOR> http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/technology-24637668

<comment><USER2> Regardless of eBay's plans, this is good news for Shutl and a win for British startups. Good job!

</comment><comment><USER3> Startups tend to die (not go anywhere) after being acquired by eBay. I'm just hoping this isn't another one of those cases.

I don't think eBay can really outdo Amazon. The only thing that could happen is that Amazon could stop "killing it" allowing their service to degrade until it's at the level of everyone else. I always price compare when buying, and I usually end up going with Amazon. Usually because they are cheaper, but sometimes because of the convenience (long history, shipping speed) even when they aren't the cheapest option. eBay doesn't have that kinda hook. Also, every time I buy something on eBay there ends up being something wrong with it. Even these days.

<comment><USER4> Go ahead and build an auction site with better customer service and better features than eBay and tell us how that goes.

<comment><USER3> There will never be another auction site like eBay. They completely trounced any chance of anyone getting into that business. And as for eBay, I think it's been made clear that they are trying to move toward buy it now items to be more like Amazon. That means the auction market (save small niches) dies with the auction arm of eBay.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> Another example of eBay's shift in markets. They started out being about the small guy auctioning stuff online. Now as of late they've been all about the warehouse in China selling stuff in masses and being more like Amazon.

<comment><USER6> One thing eBay seems to be doing better at than Amazon, is having well known retailers using them as an outlet. I also find it amazing how PayPal has morphed from a payment option that people may have used on suspect e-commerce websites, to something that is expected when customers check-out at a major retailer.

<comment><USER7> They have been taking active steps to partner with retailers, their relationships seem to sour quickly, at least in the case of Neiman Marcus. The partnership was abruptly shut down because Neiman Marcus said, "It did not meet all our expectations." Hope eBay can set appropriate expectations.

<comment><USER8> eBay works with most major retailers out there ( like: [http://www.ebayenterprise.com/news_events/news_releases/gsi_...](http://www.ebayenterprise.com/news_events/news_releases/gsi_commerce_expands_relationship_with_toysrus_inc_to_include_etoyscom_baby/) is still going strong). I have no idea what happened in the Neiman case, but it definitely seems like the exception, not the rule.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> Amazon use Royal Mail and generally use 2nd class unless you pay extra for delivery ('Super Saver Delivery'). I'm not going to pay extra just for a day or so.

<comment><USER10> Unless you have Prime, which in the UK gets you next day delivery on almost everything at no extra charge. I frequently find myself ordering stuff at 6-7pm rather than going to a store after work because I know it'll arrive at the office the next day.

</comment></comment><comment><USER11> ecomm market heading towards more competition. it will be good to watch this space :-)</comment>


Pentagon scientists are making talking plasma laser balls as non-lethal weapons - <AUTHOR> https://www.militarytimes.com/news/your-military/2019/07/19/pentagon-scientists-are-making-talking-plasma-laser-balls-for-use-as-non-lethal-weapons/ <comment><USER2> I see music festival and rave applications for this.</comment>


Show HN: Priceur – Geo-located pricing in Stripe for SaaS made easy - <AUTHOR> https://priceur.com <comment><USER2> Great idea!

Does it work with yen and other currencies that don't have decimals?

<comment><AUTHOR> Yes it does! And it works with all currencies supported by your Stripe account. It will automatically format the price in your landing pages according to the currency standard. E.g: $199, AU$249, 199€, ¥19999 etc :-)

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> That would solve elegantly how I do my pricing!

</comment><comment><USER4> love this idea!

</comment><comment><USER5> Good idea, very interesting way to use code tags to set prices

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks! Yes, we tried to make integration with your existing landing pages and pricing tables as painless as possible :)</comment></comment>


What caused Seattle crane to collapse? - <AUTHOR> https://www.seattletimes.com/seattle-news/what-caused-seattle-crane-to-collapse-experts-say-a-common-practice-is-likely-cause/ <comment><USER2> AvE on youtube came to the same conclusion 2 weeks ago: [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cexN2-T6dxY](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cexN2-T6dxY)

And a follow-up after new pictures became available further confirms this: [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7Wo7J_buZUE](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7Wo7J_buZUE)

The article makes it seem like it's a common practice in the industry. Pretty scary! I don't really understand how it saves time, though... I'd think the bottleneck is the heavy-lift crane, isn't it?

<comment><USER3> In the AvE comments there's a lot of people claiming that this is NOT a common practice--because its incredibly dangerous. It just takes a gust of wind when those pins are out to cause massive damage.

<comment><USER4> Except now somebody's boss is going to site this article to show it's common practice (I'm only partially kidding) or only remember the removing pins saving time part.

I'm reminded of the LA TV news shorts reminding people not to modify their lighters to continuously spew flame and throw them out the window on the freeway. The alignment of stupidity and (anti)social incentives to risk other people's lives is a dangeous thing. Antivax rallies come to mind.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> Seems like a good example of the Normalization of Deviance. Instantly made me think of this post form the other day [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=19770562](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=19770562).

<comment><USER6> Society has stopped being self-regulating. It's the same result as zero- tolerance for violence school policies, just on a larger scale.

<comment><USER7> I often think that we're missing feedback loops, so learning opportunities are wasted.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> They took the pins out!

[https://youtu.be/cexN2-T6dxY](https://youtu.be/cexN2-T6dxY)

<comment><USER9> AvE did two videos on the collapse, both very good. The comments are excellent, and worth skimming even if you're generally allergic to YouTube comments. There are explanations from several ironworkers who actually erect and dismantle cranes, as well as from managers and foremen.

</comment></comment><comment><USER10> This article confuses bolts and pins...

Removing the _bolts_ doesn't really have an impact on strength. A lack of a bolt can cause wear on a pin as the structure flexes, but typically unless you're leaving it for years that wouldn't be an issue. You can inspect the wear the next time you use the pin.

Removing _pins_ weakens the structure substantially. However when the crane isn't in use, it doesn't need anywhere near all of it's strength, so removing one of two pins is fine.

I would guess in this case, they removed 2 of 2 pins, leaving gravity the only thing holding everything in place, which is plain stupid.

<comment><USER11> Can you explain the difference some more? I think of a bolt as a pin with threads, that gets secured with a nut on the other end. A pin has no thread and gets secured by putting another piece through a hole in the end of it.

So they have different failure modes (a bolt can get its thread stripped, or vibrate the nut off) but otherwise can be used interchangeably. What's the structural difference you are referring to?

<comment><USER12> Bolts are (generally?) intended to apply force between two surfaces and not themselves act as shear resistance.

Whereas a pin is (generally?) entirely a shear-force resistance component.

<comment><USER13> Right. Bolts are usually weak in shear but strong in tension.Their job is to create high friction between two pieces; that friction joins the two pieces as one.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> This might be a stupid question, but how is the assisting crane finally disassembled? Is it a different type that doesn't need disassembling in the same way?

<comment><USER15> Yes, the assisting crane is a mobile crane where the boom pivots up and down about the base. Some have booms that need to be disassembled piece-by-piece, so you just pivot it down until the top is resting on a flatbed trailer, then unbolt it.

These mobile cranes can reach just as high as tower cranes, but can't carry as much, can't reach out over the tops of buildings, and take up more room on the ground. Hence the need for tower cranes.

<comment><USER16> Another interesting advatange of tower cranes is that they can grow/shrink themselves by using a special jig; that's how they're able to negotiate 200 story skyscrapers. That jigs tends to be too convulted to use for smaller projects, in which case they use a mobile crane as seen here.

<comment><USER17> 200 story skyscrapers? In some other universe?

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER18>
      sometimes they're loosened all the way
      to "finger tight," sometimes a few pins
      are removed ahead of time
      [...]
      "It saves time, which equals money."

I'd have thought the time it takes the supporting crane to lower the top section to the ground would have been greater than the time it takes to remove eight bolts. After all, presumably the guys doing this for a living have the best tools available.

Does anyone know why removing the bolts is so slow? Or is the supporting crane actually really fast?

<comment><USER19> Thinking about it, they need to remove eight bolts per section, then the section itself, then eight bolts for the next section, and so on. I could have expected them to save time by removing the bolts of the second top section in parallel to the supporting crane removing the top section, but removing the bolts of _all_ sections only makes sense when the supporting crane is actually faster than the bolt-removing guy/team.

Something else might be going on -- maybe they did not want the workers who were removing the bolts to wait for the supporting crane and sent them home to save on wages or gave them other work to do.</comment></comment>


Revenue and Customs Brief 9: Bitcoin and other cryptocurrencies (2014) - <AUTHOR> https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/revenue-and-customs-brief-9-2014-bitcoin-and-other-cryptocurrencies/revenue-and-customs-brief-9-2014-bitcoin-and-other-cryptocurrencies <comment><USER2> So no VAT on cryptocurrency-service, cryptocurrency-cryptocurrency transactions, but yes VAT on cryptocurrency-goods. And standard rules on capital gains, income tax, corporate tax if you treat your bitcoin as an asset with a liquid price. ie you pay income tax whether you are paid in money or assets of equivalent worth. You pay cap gains on annual asset appreciation.

</comment><comment><USER3> Does this mean one has to pay Capital Gains or not?

<comment><USER4> It seems to suggest that buying bitcoin based on speculation is considered gambling and thus GCT isn't applicable (nor is offsetting your losses against other taxable income).

<comment><USER5> I doubt that. Not all speculation is gambling. They say:

 _" Gains and losses incurred on Bitcoin or other cryptocurrencies are chargeable or allowable for CGT if they accrue to an individual [...]"_

But also:

 _" depending on the facts, a transaction may be so highly speculative that it is not taxable or any losses relievable"_

In my opinion, this means that gains from regular buying and selling of bitcoin are very likely subject to CGT, and that there would have to be an additional element of risk or chance to make it more speculative in order to be exempt from CGT.

I wouldn't want to defend any other position and therefore I will be including my bitcoin gains (and potentially losses) in my CGT tax return.

<comment><USER6> I think it means normal people pay CGT, rich people don't need to.

<comment><USER5> Normal people, as in average earners, are unlikely to pay any tax at all. They tend to use spread betting or stay below their £11,300 CGT allowance.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> Why are they concerned about being homogenous with EU rules when brexit was clearly voted for and said to be enacted and on the way?

More evidence of a 'stall forver' plan for brexit.

<comment><USER8> Fist off, this was written pre-Brexit.

Second, given the importance of the EU to UK trade, it's likely that almost all regulations will be harmonised with the single market going forwards anyway.</comment></comment>


Show HN: Autumn (macOS window manager) is going open source - <AUTHOR> https://sephware.com/blog/2019-03-25-autumn-macos-window-manager-now-open-source.html <comment><AUTHOR> If anyone takes this over, here's a patch of what I was working on last: [https://sephware.com/autumn/innertabs.patch.txt](https://sephware.com/autumn/innertabs.patch.txt)

</comment><comment><USER2> Thank you for making this open-source instead of just letting all your hard work over the years go stagnant. I understand this can be a tough decision, but hopefully your efforts will lead to a bright future for Autumn.</comment>


Cool hover state--with no input added, hover over "Im Feeling Lucky" - <AUTHOR> https://www.google.com//

<comment><USER2> I see nothing special.

Is this for Americans only?

<comment><USER3> Mine adds a rolling animation and then settles on something random like: "I'm feeling confused" or "puzzled" or "playful". Each random word has a different set of results if you click it. Example "I'm feeling trendy" sends you to <https://www.google.com/trends/hottrends>

I am in the USA.</comment></comment>


Ask HN: Considering an affiliate program. How to decide/implement? - <AUTHOR>

We're considering an affiliate program for one of our web apps. Something along the lines of what Freshbooks and 37signals does.
My only concern is this: we have a really good reputation online and serve a niche market. If we have an affiliate program, I fear people would be more skeptical of the referral ("you're just referring them because you get a cut").
Is this a valid fear?
Any thoughts on affiliate programs or how to best implement them? <comment><USER2> Sure, it's valid. That's why it'll be important to manage your affiliates and not let them go nuts. (And boy, they will.) Fortunately, you can go far by having someone look through the referrers and see who is playing games and nuking them.

As to an affiliate system, you need to figure out what are essential features. For instance, do you want to cut checks? Do you want it to be multilevel? Do you want to be able to modify the source? (And what language do you prefer?) What about budget?

All critical questions you'll want to ask before you start the hunt.

<comment><USER3> What do you mean by "go nuts"?

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> _"you're just referring them because you get a cut"_

Do you think this would be different if the people were required to have a subscription themselves in order to become an affiliate? I think this is a good way to go. Is it enough to curb _everyone's_ skepticism? Probably not.

<comment><AUTHOR> Good thought–we were planning on doing this anyway ... mainly because we would just build their referral stats into the app somewhere.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> Read wickedfire.com. You'll learn everything you need from the advertiser perspective and the affiliate perspective.</comment>


CalendarPicker: a new concept for date selection. - <AUTHOR> http://roberto.open-lab.com/2010/04/06/ultra-light-jquery-calendar/

<comment><USER2> >> the next/prev buttons are no fashionable: now you can hide them!

So how will the user know that they must use the mouse wheel to navigate pre/next year or months? For me, it's not good usability-wise.

<comment><USER3> Also, I use a laptop with no scroll wheel. There are ways to do scrolling, like clicking both buttons, but it doesn't seem to send all the scroll wheel events. So I can't even find a way to get that version of the calendar to work.

An alternative to both might be to use a linear fisheye. It would just need a selection for 31 days at the bottom, 12 months in the middle, and a few years at the top. The thing that you would probably need to change for the fisheye is not scrolling between months from the day row or years from the months row. In some ways, this is a bit more intuitive anyway.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> Pair that with the jQuery timepickr: <http://haineault.com/media/jquery/ui- timepickr/page/>

It's not bad with the year and the month view. I would have the year slide left and right, not just switch because that makes it look like nothing happened at first.

The actual date picker is a bit awkward since it's not a traditional calendar. It's a lot easier to figure out whether the 7th of the month is a Tuesday or a Wednesday by seeing which column it's in rather than what is written underneath it. That way you would have a much cleaner view as well.

<comment><AUTHOR> This was my initial inspirator: read the history [http://roberto.open- lab.com/2010/03/23/so-hard-to-have-a-dat...](http://roberto.open- lab.com/2010/03/23/so-hard-to-have-a-date/)

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> Interesting experiment, but not a win.

For a new UI to be a success, it needs to be faster for the user to USE or faster for the user to LEARN. The former is more important for tools with repeat users (like a mail app), the latter is more important for sites with transitory users. You could argue that it could perform okay on the former point IF you ignore the meaningful population of people who use trackpads or mobile devices... But how can you possible argue that ignoring that population is a good idea?

</comment><comment><USER6> I like the idea of letting you jump through multiple months at once, but I think it should show all of the days in the month. If you aren't looking for something in the span initially shown, you're probably looking for something just beyond that. If you start changing the month around it could be anywhere that you want and extra clicks are added to find the right day to select.

<comment><AUTHOR> Interesting point of view. I'll try to see how it react. Thanks

</comment></comment><comment><USER7> Who else think the wheel direction is inverted?

<comment><AUTHOR> :-) LOL..... I made a poll before doing it....

<comment><USER8> How did you do the poll, though? Were they supposed to pick between two live demos, or did you just ask "should scrolling up increase or decrease the value"? In left-to-right languages, I would think most people's intuition is to scroll down to move right and scroll up to move left (with a unidirectional scroll wheel, anyway).

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> On a related note, drop-down date selection has always driven me nuts. Isn't it easier to type "1977" than to find it in a drop-down? Isn't it easier to type "1 <tab> 17 <tab> 1977" than to select each in a drop-down?

Drives me nuts, mostly when clients request the drop-down over the text field...

<comment><USER10> For things like video or website age gates then text entry can be annoying for us heretics who prefer using the mouse to navigate computers rather than keyboard. Any time I have to type something in instead of being able to select with a mouse is a fairly annoying occurrence.

<comment><USER9> Good point, it makes sense for age verification or any situation where you wouldn't otherwise be using the keyboard.

Though what would really be ideal is a text input with a drop-down... might be a good addition to jQuery UI (or similar).

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> It needs some easing and transitions to let the user know what's happening.

Maemo has a similar date picker, by the way. It's vertically, and the scrolling is more intuitive partially due to this fact.

</comment><comment><USER12> It's nice, but it really needs keyboard navigation...

<comment><USER13> I want it!

</comment></comment><comment><USER14> It is really missing Monday - Friday. Otherwise I like the idea.

</comment><comment><USER15> it looks nice, but i don't think it's a good example of UX</comment>


What data does Facebook collect about you and how do they use it? - <AUTHOR> https://omnii.co/blog/2020/03/13/what-data-does-facebook-collect-about-me-where-does-it-go-and-how-can-it-be-used/ <comment><USER2> Photos and stories</comment>


Lisp Meta-Programming for C++ Developers - <AUTHOR> https://deque.blog/2017/05/02/lisp-meta-programming-for-c-developers-introduction/ <comment><USER2> Other articles from same blog series reported on HN recently:

[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14299020](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14299020)

[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14486157](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14486157)

[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14424305](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14424305)

[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14347702](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14347702)</comment>


Ask HN: Marketplace for swapping - <AUTHOR>

Do users want a marketplace which allows them to buy stuff/articles for a price (like existing marketplaces craigslist...) and by swapping articles that they don't want
Following is the use case for a swap marketplace:
1. User A searches for a something (say Article X) that he wants, and he finds that User B is ready to swap Article X.
2. User A finds User B's list of "Wanted Stuff", which includes a list of articles User B wants.
3. User A decides that User B wants Article Y, which has approximately same value (in $ price) as Article X that User A wants.
4. User A makes an offer to User B for Article X in exchange of Article Y.
5. User B seals the deal.
This marketplace allows transactions by exchange of articles and not just by price <comment><USER2> I might use this. I suggest you consider defaulting to USPS Flat Rate Priority Mail boxes (assuming you're in the U.S.), as that might make the swap seem slightly more equitable.</comment>


Santa Fe Board Crushes George R.R. Martin's Plan for 'Medieval Castle' - <AUTHOR> https://www.nytimes.com/2020/09/11/arts/game-of-thrones-santa-fe-castle.html <comment><USER2> Santa Fe is quite prickly about maintaining the integrity of its aesthetic vision of itself. It also doesn't suffer outsized egos gladly, and hasn't for over 100 years now. Something oddly wonderful evolved out of only allowing 200 acceptable shades of brown and, in honor of the "mud hut nuts", Santa Fe means to keep it wonderful.

"Crushing"...no, thankfully this happens in Santa Fe all the time.

Wondering why this hit HN. How are the high-rise housing development plans coming along in San Francisco? Any plans to tear down City Lights and put in a Starbucks?

</comment><comment><USER3> > Mr. Martin did not appear before the board. In a statement released on > Friday night, Michel Stern, a representative for Mr. Martin, said: "Mr. > Martin and his wife are frankly in the midst of processing this > disappointing news. They are carefully weighing their options with their > advisers."

Hope his absence was due to him being too busy writing.</comment>


Machinarium Is Coming In October 2009 - <AUTHOR>

Hi!
I created the promo page of Machinarium and shared it with my friends. So I encourage you to do the same.
Machinarium is wonderful game and your friends will be happy with it. And your support will inspire Amanita Design to do their best!
How can you help? Please spread http://bit.ly/machinarium
P.S. This is not paid advertisement or affiliate program. I spread this product because I like it. I'm sure you will like it too! :) <comment><AUTHOR> Follow Amanita Design

<http://twitter.com/amanitadesign>

<http://friendfeed.com/amanitadesign>

</comment><comment><AUTHOR> Please spread <http://bit.ly/machinarium></comment>


Writing a Lisp: Explicit Stack and Stacktraces - <AUTHOR> http://reinvanderwoerd.nl/blog/2017/05/11/writing-a-lisp-explicit-stack-and-stacktraces/ <comment><USER2> I feel like writing a LISP in a gc'ed language is taking away most of the fun of it. I wrote one in C (without a conservative garbage collector) and the most interesting aspect was what had to be done to allow garbage collection.

Garbage collection can run inside nearly all subroutines. So any temporary references stored outside of the heap need to be kept track of at all times. If gc occurs you have to able to walk the entire heap _and_ the entire callstack to mark live data. This is obvious but I enjoyed finding it out (and subsequently rewriting everything).

<comment><USER3> The irony of implementing Lisp in assembly is that, almost for free (sorry about that), you get precise, convenient control of the memory situation. Just put the gc root exclusively in registers.

I wrote a Lisp interpreter in assembly that dedicates 4-5 registers for the current expression, eval environment, and so on. The mark-sweep collector starts from these registers.

[https://github.com/marcpaq/arpilisp](https://github.com/marcpaq/arpilisp)

<comment><USER4> No irony there. You need precise control over the machine to implement a paradigm accurately from the ground up. It's hard to do that using someone else's paradigm, living with their choices of what aspects of the machine are still revealed and which are hidden.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> Back when I wanted to write a Lisp interpreter, I thought Haskell would be one of the best languages for it because of its type system. But looking at this code, although I'm sure it's probably very good, it just doesn't strike me as very intuitive or readable. Is this something you get used to over time, like reading Lisp code? Or is it just inherently harder for non-mathematically- minded people to read?

<comment><USER6> I had the same reaction. The only part of this that I could read was a little surprising:

        pop :: CallstackIO ()
        pop =
          modify popFrame
          where popFrame (_:xs) =
                  xs
                popFrame xs =
                  xs

Not that it's very onerous to implement, but I would expect these "pop" semantics to be imported from some more general type (or trait, or whatever Haskell uses for type composition). That said, I don't know what `modify` means.

<comment><AUTHOR> From the documentation:

"Maps an old state to a new state inside a state monad. The old state is thrown away."

[https://hackage.haskell.org/package/mtl-2.2.1/docs/Control-M...](https://hackage.haskell.org/package/mtl-2.2.1/docs/Control- Monad-State-Lazy.html)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> I've been writing my own lisp (in Clojure) by following the make-a-lisp[0] process guide. So far it's been challenging and interesting. It gives clear direction without being too hand-holdy.

[0] [https://github.com/kanaka/mal](https://github.com/kanaka/mal)</comment>


Ask HN: Review my startup, suggestashow.com - <AUTHOR>

Hey HN, Suggestashow was created by myself and a co-founder.  You put in the name of a tv show you like and it spits out recommendations, based on a whole slew of attributes we came up with.  Sort of a 'TV show genome project', if you will.
Been working on it for a couple months now, mostly in our spare time, and feel like it's ready to go, at least the core product.
Frankly, though, we have virtually no traffic.  The few 'users' we do have are mostly friends and family, which is nice, but not particularly great feedback.
So we would greatly appreciate thoughts on what works, what doesn't, and if anyone has any ideas they'd be willing to share re:getting the word out, that would be phenomenal.
Thanks, hope you like it! <comment><USER2> Aforementioned co-founder here. I think there is a lot room for improvement, but the site successfully does the core of what we set out to do. If we can't direct traffic to it now, the question is will continued improvements eventually lead people to use the site, or are we just putting lipstick on a pig.

Any suggestions are appreciated.

<comment><USER3> I don't see much value in it to the user. Your competition is the netflix algorithm...how do you differentiate?

<comment><AUTHOR> The thing with Netflix is it only works after you've given them your money. They do have a great recommendation algorithm, but ours lets anyone get results, without requiring you to 1) be a paying customer and 2) already have chosen dozens of things you already like.

There's no barrier of entry.

<comment><USER3> That Netflix has one's money makes it profitable. Is this a for profit site you're designing?

<comment><AUTHOR> True. Yes it is a for-profit site, although as of now only through amazon affiliate links. We have no plans for any kind of subscription model similar to theirs.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> I choose what TV show to watch based on what's on while I'm sitting on the couch. In addition to that, it has to be agreeable with anyone else here. If I'm looking for a show to watch, I'd check tv guide before this site. If you integrated show times, that might make it more valuable to me personally.

<comment><AUTHOR> I guess we're aiming more at the DVD-buying/heavy tv-watcher crowd. Granted, a lot of show discovery comes from those sitting on the couch, but I often find channel surfing to be rather tedious. If I already know what I like, flipping through Comcast's 1,000 channels often yields nothing.

And the TV guide doesn't do recommendations, just tells you what's on.

That said, we're looking into getting local times integrated with the results, as that would obviously be hugely useful.

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> 1) Let me click on one of the attributes to search all within that attribute.

2) Include a description of the attributes and the process.

<comment><AUTHOR> 1) Making the attributes clickable is in the pipeline. 2) There's a brief blurb in the 'about' but you're right it's not clearly explained. Any thoughts on how to display that? Bottom of page? We've got some ideas for stuff to add but trying to keep it uncluttered.</comment></comment>


Live Writer Is Now Open Source - <AUTHOR> http://www.dotnetfoundation.org/blog/open-live-writer <comment><USER2> Please open source "Windows Live Photo Gallery" too (also part of the Live package for Windows 7+).

It's a superb photo management application that was introduced with Vista (similar to iPhoto/Photos/Lightroom). It stays in low maintainance mode since its Vista days (moved to Live apps bundle) and it would have a better home in the open source community.

<comment><USER3> I could not agree more. Windows Live/Essentails Photo Gallery is the best tool for keeping the file as the source of record. I evaluated several photo face tagging tools and it was the best as far as leaving meta data in the file and updating the file information properly. Picasa and Photos/iPhoto just couldn't seem to do it and each has a separate database.

Check out this post from 2006 where they talk about it and some cases where they can't "truth in the file" that seem like a very reasonable list of circumstances. [http://blogs.msdn.com/b/pix/archive/2006/08/16/702780.aspx](http://blogs.msdn.com/b/pix/archive/2006/08/16/702780.aspx)

</comment></comment><comment> vive-la-liberte Someone knowlegable about Live Writer should update the Wikipedia article about Windows Live Writer with this information. [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Windows_Live_Writer](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Windows_Live_Writer)

<comment><USER4> Done - I just linked to [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Open_Live_Writer](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Open_Live_Writer) which is pretty comprehensive.

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> To this day I run a Windows 7 VM in Parallels on my MacBook Air in Coherence mode just so I can write blog posts in Windows Live Writer. I looked for years for a setup that could beat this, and unbelievably, never found it.

<comment><USER6> Not necessarily better, but sort of equivalent: Windows Terminal Server since version 2008-or-so has had "RemoteApp" support, meaning that you can configure the (multiplatform) Microsoft Remote Desktop client to connect to a (single running app on a) Terminal Services server with a similar UX to Parallels' Coherence mode.

Azure offers what's effectively "Running-individual-apps-as-a-Service" by booting TS server VMs and serving RemoteApp sessions from them. They have a demo to see how it feels ([https://www.remoteapp.windowsazure.com/en/tour.aspx](https://www.remoteapp.windowsazure.com/en/tour.aspx)). If you don't like Azure, you could do something equivalent using e.g. AWS WorkSpaces instances.

Or, disregarding the networking aspect, you could just run your Windows VM headless on your MBA (and therefore using any VM software you like, e.g. VirtualBox) and RDP into it with the same RemoteApp configuration. It may or may not be more responsive than Coherence, but I'd bet on it being less battery-intensive.

<comment><USER7> Do you have any instructions on how to do RemoteApp with AWS Workspaces? I use an AWS Workspaces box to run a few key apps on Windows, and I'd love to use them in a more Coherence-mode style.

<comment><USER6> Checking further, it looks like AWS WorkSpaces doesn't actually support any protocol other than "Teradici PC-over-IP"—I'm guessing that whether or not you enable RDP on the remote, the AWS firewall policy won't expose the port. (This is apparently on purpose; WorkSpaces advertises "keeping your data on-premise by never exporting it to the client; the client only gets pixels.")

I guess plain EC2 Windows instances will still work, though. The setup is simple enough:

1\. on the instance, select a base image of any edition of Windows 7/8/10 that supports receiving Remote Desktop Connections;

2\. enable receiving Remote Desktop Connections on the instance's System prefs (might already be enabled if that's how they expect people to connect to manage their instances);

3\. install this thing on the instance: [http://www.kimknight.net/remoteapptool](http://www.kimknight.net/remoteapptool) (since Windows doesn't come with any sort of GUI for this†);

4\. use the tool to generate an RDP connection profile on the instance—naming the session and browsing for an EXE path is usually enough;

5\. in the same tool, generate an .rdp file for that session, and get it back to your computer;

6\. import the .rdp file into Microsoft Remote Desktop;

7\. edit the new RDP connection to supply the correct server address (from the client's perspective) and prepopulated authentication credentials.

Now launching that RDP session should give you e.g. a Notepad window on your desktop.

Note one restriction: if the EC2 instance you're running isn't a _Server_ edition of Windows, you'll be restricted to one RDP session at a time. There are things you can do to get around this, though I'm not sure they're compliant with the Windows EULA.

\---

† The actual, official thing you're supposed to do is to have a Server-edition instance running the "Remote Desktop Connection Broker" service; the Server Manager app, pointed at that machine, then lets you manage "RemoteApp and Desktop Connection Resources" (i.e. an RDP session directory).

Interestingly, the "session host" instances that the Connection Broker, well, brokers for, can be any edition of Windows (but are usually Enterprise); productivity apps aren't written for, or tested with, Server-edition Windows, after all, so it wouldn't make sense for the instance the users actually _connect_ to to be a Server.

The tool above basically skips the Broker by giving you the same .rdp profile the Broker would answer with after you negotiate with it. This is why the process feels so manual: if you had a Connection Broker server in-between, it'd be the thing transparently plugging in all those details for you, basically taking the .rdp "template" you get from the tool and filling out the client-side creds from the client step of the negotiation, and the server-side address by picking one of its load-balanced pool members.

<comment><USER7> Brilliant, thanks for the step-by-step. Being able to log right into a tool is a really exciting idea!

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> Oh very cool! This was one of my favorite apps at the time but it never worked with any of the blog platforms I was on so I only got to play with it. Glad it's opened up now. Maybe we'll see more usage.

</comment><comment><USER9> This is really cool. Open sourcing is always THE suggestion whenever a product gets abandoned and it is amazing to see Microsoft of all companies to follow through with it.

Thanks everyone who made this happen!

</comment><comment><USER10> Interesting that Live Writer uses Windows Forms, though WPF was available, at least within Microsoft, when the project started. I wonder why.

<comment><USER11> The readme on their github[1] says that Live Writer was originally part of an acquisition. I would guess that winforms may have already been in use when they acquired Onfolio. There may be other reasons as well, but I don't know what they are :)

[1] [https://github.com/OpenLiveWriter/OpenLiveWriter](https://github.com/OpenLiveWriter/OpenLiveWriter)

</comment></comment><comment><USER12> I wonder if it could be adapted for editing and publishing a Jekyll site?

</comment><comment><USER13> I always post this rant about HTML (WYSIWIG) editors. If you know what the buttons do, you can also code HTML! All you have to know is the button's corresponding html-tags: h1, h2, p, br, b, i, img, a, ul, ol, li, table, tr, th, td.

<comment><USER12> Users shouldn't need to know HTML to be able to write a blog post.

<comment><USER13> Removing your hand from the keyboard, to move the mouse pointer to a small button, then back again to the input ...

Or you could learn ten simple and standardized HTML tags and increase your productivity and control over the semantics.

<comment><USER12> Most users aren't programmers, we would serve our customer a lot better by understanding that.

<comment><USER13> I believe that teaching customers a standardized and widely used markup language such as HTML will be very valuable.

You do not have to use HTML as the ONLY option though. There can be two views, one HTML view witch contain only the blog post in HTML, and then a rendered preview including design and layout with contenteditable.</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment>


Google made a joke out of Chrome privacy policy - <AUTHOR> https://blog.lukaszolejnik.com/am-i-logged-in-or-not-addition-to-the-gdpr-case-study-on-the-example-of-google-chrome-69-70/ <comment><USER2> Not a link.

</comment><comment><USER3> link should be: [https://blog.lukaszolejnik.com/am-i-logged-in-or-not- additio...](https://blog.lukaszolejnik.com/am-i-logged-in-or-not-addition-to- the-gdpr-case-study-on-the-example-of-google-chrome-69-70/)

<comment><USER4> Thanks! changed from [https://blog.lukaszolejnik.com/am-i-logged-in-or-not- additio...](https://blog.lukaszolejnik.com/am-i-logged-in-or-not-addition-to- the-gdpr-case-study-on-the-example-of-google- chrome-69-70/https://blog.lukaszolejnik.com/am-i-logged-in-or-not-addition-to- the-gdpr-case-study-on-the-example-of-google-chrome-69-70/).</comment></comment>


Nextdoor Is the Lastest Company to Enter On-Demand Services - <AUTHOR> http://www.buzzfeed.com/carolineodonovan/nextdoor-is-the-lastest-company-to-enter-on-demand-services <comment><USER2> Not sure who came up with the idea to Dr. Frankenstein chop and sew together CraigsList and Facebook, but well, here we are.

I don't see this working in my neighborhood, like at all, mostly because my neighbors are predominately senior citizens or just about there. Of the 20% or so within my demographic, we've got our own social networks in the greater metro area. Honestly, I think my general perspective is that people in my region buy a house for privacy moreso than to be all personable and economically associated with neighbors - there's always 'burbs with HOAs for those types of folks.

I could see it working in the more dense, downtown apartment / condo markets, but the socio-economic status of those folks is pretty affluent. They don't need to ask neighbors for pet sitting or repair because they've got buying power. And their own social networks for referrals...

<comment><USER3> About 20% of the people in my hood are on it. It's terrible, though. Basically, there are these types of posts:

* need someone to do X (X = clean house, fix house, etc)

* lost dog/cat found

* need house sitter

* giving away X: anyone want it?

Also, the ND admins decided to change who sees what, a year or so ago, and I think the revolt scared them. The basically widened the neighborhood greatly, so you'd see stuff from much further away. I hated it and pretty much stopped using it at that time.

The idea of it sounds good. The reality is that it's not at all something I use. Full disclosure: I stopped using FB a few years ago, too.

<comment><USER4> Plus the "Did you see that creepy van / solicitor / someone who's not the same race as me?" post? It gets tiring.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> > _Nextdoor — the neighborhood-based social networking platform with a > billion-dollar valuation_

Am I the only one that's never heard of this company?

<comment><USER6> Seems to be popular in various parts of California where home ownership is high. It is also seems to be a haven for the "worst" type of neighbors who like to complain about everything and might be slightly racist. See "The Jerks Nextdoor" for a good overview of what happens way too often on the site: [https://www.newsreview.com/sacramento/jerks- nextdoor/content...](https://www.newsreview.com/sacramento/jerks- nextdoor/content?oid=18884464)

Edit: splat brought up a good point. A lot of municipalities are using it as an "official" communications platform.

<comment><USER7> There's a fair amount of activity here in central Ohio, as well. The most reliable source of discussion is that every few weeks the police department posts a notice about the locations where they will be having DUI checkpoints. Like clockwork this sets off a 50+ comment discussion where some people are dumbfounded that the police actually post where they will be ahead of time, followed by other people replying that in order for DUI checkpoints to be constitutional the police have to announce them ahead of time, followed by replies that it doesn't seem unconstitutional to have random police stops and drunk drivers should be stopped at all costs, etc. Every single time.

But it was useful to get information when people were getting upset that the city was trying to replace the green space in a park with a bunch of little league baseball parks.</comment></comment></comment>


Photos of Bird Stomachs - <AUTHOR> http://chrisjordan.com/current_set2.php?id=11

<comment><USER3> It seems a shame to me that nowadays "protecting the environment" is virtually synonymous with "curbing CO2 emissions", which means that serious issues like ocean pollution get very little attention.

<comment><USER4> We have serious problems to fix: like the pile of garbage the size of Texas that is sitting in the middle of our ocean.

I couldn't find a good article, and I am petty sure the wiki-has some incorrect data displayed, but I'll leave it to the curious to research =p

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

<comment><USER5> If you read that article it says that the patch being the size of Texas is conjecture by the media.

<comment><USER6> Don't worry, just wait a couple of years and it'll be the size of Texas.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> Anyone know why an albatross would feed this stuff to its chicks? I don't mean that in terms of comparing an albatross to a human (as in, I can tell that a bottle cap is probably not a good thing to eat) but comparing it to other animals - a cat or an eagle say - that come into contact with a lot of the same objects on land. Is it a question of intelligence (that albatrosses are just not very bright) or maybe desperation (if it looks like it might be food and you can't find anything else it's worth a try)?

<comment><USER8> From the article: "[The parents] soar out over the vast polluted ocean collecting what looks to them like food to bring back to their young."

In other words, the albatross fly over the water, and when they see small, colored things floating near the surface, they assume they're small fish or other edible things. Up until quite recently (on the scale of albatross evolution), this was a pretty safe assumption.

So, no, low intelligence and/or desperation aren't implicated; rather, it's a matter of habitat and how prey are identified.

<comment><USER9> That sounds like a decent explanation, but won't they sense that something is wrong when they touch these objects? I mean stuff like plastic caps are stiff and hard, while fish are not. May be the fact that they evolved to swallow their food instead of chewing it may make it harder for them to distinguish a fish from a plastic cap even when it's in their beak?

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> I saw the remains myself when I visited Midway a few years ago. It's very shocking, especially the large number of disposable lighters... where do they all come from? Laysan Albatross chicks on Midway are also dying because those in nests near buildings eat the flaking paint and end up with lead poisoning.

Thankfully, things are actually improving. Laysan numbers have increased in recent censuses and the species appears to be on the rebound. Thanks maybe in part to President Bush including Midway and several other atolls used by albatross in the National Marine Monument that he created.

During the breeding season every flat surface is covered with birds. It's one of the most amazing things I have ever seen.

</comment><comment><USER11> His other photos are good too.

For example:

<http://chrisjordan.com/current_set2.php?id=9>

<comment><USER12> Some pieces of the Running the Numbers series are currently on display in the Museum of Science in Boston (which is otherwise a joke except the probability machine in the math room which is really cool :)).

</comment></comment><comment><USER13> Related videos from TED talks:

\- Capt. Charles Moore on the seas of plastic ([http://www.ted.com/talks/capt_charles_moore_on_the_seas_of_p...](http://www.ted.com/talks/capt_charles_moore_on_the_seas_of_plastic.html))

\- Chris Jordan pictures some shocking stats ([http://www.ted.com/talks/chris_jordan_pictures_some_shocking...](http://www.ted.com/talks/chris_jordan_pictures_some_shocking_stats.html))

</comment><comment><USER14> Wow, this drawing makes a little more sense now.

<http://www.mattfurie.com/032009big.php?id=03>

</comment><comment><USER15> They should post these at every park / beach / national forest parking lot in place of the current "Please don't litter" signs.

<comment><USER16> On a related note, my school (Washington University in St. Louis) has recently changed the labels on all trash cans from "Trash" to "Landfill." It's amazing how much that little switch makes you think carefully about everything you're throwing away. If you can get people to truly understand the consequences of what they're doing, the majority of them will change their ways.

<comment><USER17> > On a related note, my school (Washington University in St. Louis) has > recently changed the labels on all trash cans from "Trash" to "Landfill." > It's amazing how much that little switch makes you think carefully about > everything you're throwing away.

And what do people do differently?

BTW - the above seems to assume that the US has a landfill shortage. It does, but only by choice.

The US tries to recycle some things that don't make economic sense to recycle today. It would be better to simply collect and store these things until it does make sense to reclaim them. Landfills are ideally suited to this purpose.

Yes, it's dumb to recycle when it doesn't make economic sense. Subsidies are waste. You'd think that folks who claim to care about waste would understand that and actually walk their talk.

What am I thinking? People do things because of how it makes them feel.

<comment><USER16> This change was accompanied by a switch to single-stream recycling - that is, all recyclable materials can be deposited in one bin and sorted later. From what I've seen, this change has significantly increased recycling.

Could you give some examples of goods that don't make sense to recycle currently? I certainly believe that could be true, I just haven't read anything solid about it.

<comment><USER17> > This change was accompanied by a switch to single-stream recycling - <USER2> > is, all recyclable materials can be deposited in one bin and sorted later. > From what I've seen, this change has significantly increased recycling.

If the two changes (signage and single bin) happened at the same time, why the claim that signage was significant (and the omission of the single bin omission)?

> Could you give some examples of goods that don't make sense to recycle > currently?

Sorry - I stopped tracking these things when I figured out that folks didn't care about the economics. I'm reasonably sure that they still exist because people are still people.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER18> This is horrific, unbelievable.

I'll probably be downvoted for this, but I can't help but think that precisely because it's killing them, it exerts an enormous selection pressure on albatrosses. Nature is also cruel.

<comment><USER19> On the other hand, you might consider that nature is _cleaning_ the garbage patch.

We've given up on being able to clean the garbage patch saying its impractical to go out there and fish such widely dispersed trash from the ocean. By this, of course, we mean "too expensive".

Nature has dispatched the cleaning crew to do it for us at an almost unimaginable cost. The albatross seems an almost perfect instrument for flying out there, spotting, and picking up exactly as much trash as it can carry and then returning it to land.

Hopefully the selection pressure you speak of will yield a method of collection that doesn't cost a whole bird for each load.

</comment></comment><comment><USER20> Does anyone know if other animals do this? Is that the presence of garbage combined with the birds' inability to taste plastic as well as their inability to regurgitate? That seems like an extreme environmental 'mismatch'. Sad.

</comment><comment><USER21> This is exceptionally powerful. I will now be aware of and care about this issue for the rest of my life. Thanks for sharing.

</comment><comment><USER22> I'd be interested in understanding what the ethical issue at hand actually is. Is it: a) the unintentional destruction of life b) the possible reduction of biodiversity or c) the fact that animals are being killed that don't supply human food chains?

<comment><USER23> I'm not sure what you mean by "ethical", but I'll go for "d) All of the above" as being unfortunate from my perspective.

<comment><USER22> What are people so shocked and distraught about? Most of us contribute to the destruction of life by eating meat and to the reduction of biodiversity by occupying many environmental niches that would have otherwise harbored other species. Frankly, c is not an ethical issue for me, as death is an essential part of life, and it always contributes to some food chain.

I'm not able to make the connection between some dead birds that happen to have eaten a human contaminant and all the outrage/shock etc in this discussion. So I'm hoping that someone will connect it for me.

<comment><USER24> Really? You have no idea why people are outraged?

Maybe it has something to do with the pictures.

What you cant see you ignore...

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER25> Fuckin' bottle caps, man

<comment><USER26> for real, reusable bottles are great. Though I suppose there is some debate over bisphenol A in nalgene bottles and it's just one more thing to carry around for some people.

<comment><USER27> I carry a metal bottle, and NALGENE is now moving to stainless steel bottles.

It would've been great if we'd just skipped all the steps between canteens and going back to metal bottles, though. That whole 80's-00's trend of making products disposable to increase sales and profit margins was really a waste.

<comment><USER28> > _That whole 80's-00's trend of making products disposable to increase sales > and profit margins was really a waste._

You think that this isn't still going on? Electronics are still get more disposable and designed to fall apart more quickly AFAICT.

<comment><USER27> Oh, yeah, it's still going on, but at least the tide of "in the future everyone will use disposable cell phones and computers" articles has died down a bit.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER29> In a way, these birds are cleaning our oceans...

</comment><comment><USER30> A bit of info for the curious: <http://elibrary.unm.edu/sora/Auk/v098n04/p0839-p0841.pdf>

Scroll down to "Ingestion of Plastics by Laysan Albatross"

</comment><comment><USER31> To quote Fight Club: " _very_ modern art."

how depressing.

</comment><comment><USER32> Truly disturbing, makes you wonder what other effects of pollution are out there that we won't get to see until it's too late.

</comment><comment><USER33> Hmmm... the first thing I thought of when I saw this post was "beware the ides of march."</comment>


Announcing the Epic Games Store - <AUTHOR> https://www.unrealengine.com/en-US/blog/announcing-the-epic-games-store <comment><AUTHOR> Fantastic news, long hoped for.

I think the following features are key:

\- Unobtrusive DRM

\- Anticheat

\- Player profile

\- Item store/marketplace

\- Cloud save

\- Basic matchmaking for multiplayer (linked to profile)

\- Mod workshop

\- Asset bundle support for patching

\- DLC support

\- Works in China

\- Complete UI support include Title name support for multiple languages

\- Limiting the number of games being launched to about 1-5 per day, and showing all of them somewhere

The last point is particularly critical. We want to absolutely avoid the situation that Steam is in: flooded by low-quality launches that undermine the basis of the store. If there is an upfront listing fee to get into the curation queue, it should be $2000+, partially recouped (eg. $1000 recouped) if the curation attempt fails, or the game sells beyond a certain threshold.</comment>


The Sky is Rising - Entertainment industry growing despite (because?) of piracy - <AUTHOR> http://www.scribd.com/doc/79846477/The-Sky-is-Rising

<comment><USER2> It would be really something if someone went and actually proved that their revenues has grown _because_ of piracy. It should at least put serious doubts in the lawmaker's minds who right now say "we all agree piracy is bad, so...".</comment>


Ask HN: is Google search down? - <AUTHOR>

<comment><AUTHOR> At least for me and my friends in Sedona AZ, Google search has been down for quite a while but other Google services like G+ seem to be fine.

</comment><comment><USER2> Not for me. Maybe it's a small region in the west coast. Who knows.

<comment><AUTHOR> OK, thanks. I figured it was local because there is nothing on HN or Twitter about it.

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> No problems here in New England</comment>


Photographer behind 'monkey selfie' is broke after years-long copyright battle - <AUTHOR> https://www.dpreview.com/news/7323283771/photographer-behind-famous-monkey-selfie-broke-after-years-long-copyright-battle <comment> 52-6F-62 I can't believe PETA sued him. That's worse than the Wikimedia business. And Wikimedia's play in that was really low. And I am a big fan of Wikimedia. I'm surprised at their conduct there.</comment>


Ultimate poster mockup- just 5$ - <AUTHOR> http://graphicriver.net/item/ultimate-poster-mockup-pack-1/1332986

<comment><AUTHOR> Showcase how the poster looks in just one click.. Best for contests, portfolio, or for client project!

<comment><USER2> This actually looks nice, but be less spammy. <http://ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html>

<comment><AUTHOR> oops.. I am sorry.. Didnt know that!.. Can I delete now??</comment></comment></comment>