Why there are so many engineers in India - <AUTHOR> http://thenextweb.com/in/2011/05/08/why-there-so-many-engineers-in-india/ <comment><USER3> This article is clearly biased and (not to put down the original author) borders on hero worshiping of India and her engineers. Some glaringly partisan comments "liberating Bangladesh (then East Pakistan) from Pakistan's colonialism", "India manage to fight (and win) two major wars just a couple of decades after independence", "slog through med-school, do a post-doc specialization, an internship, become an assistant, and finally 15 years later, in-debt, start your own medical practise.(sic)"

There are large number of problems with the engineering system in India (especially about the number of engineers and the quality of engineering education) and the author just sweeps them under the rug.

Poorly written.

Full disclosure: I am an Indian Engineer now studying in UC Berkeley. Almost a perfect fit to the model described (except that I didn't graduate from the IITs).

<comment><USER4> Thanks a lot for your comments, and I see where you're coming from. In retrospect, there may be a slight bias, and I'll be sure to keep that in mind when I write my next article.

My aim was not to glorify engineering in India; very far from it, actually. The aim of the article was to provide a really shallow look into the history of engineering culture in India. There's a lot more that I really haven't even talked about - how politicians set-up engineering schools since that was a major way to pick-pocket the middle class, the (alleged) abundance of black money in many "premier" institutes of engineering, and in general, the way engineering in India is taught is plain wrong.

I graduated in 2010 from an "NIT", and I am fully aware of how bad the engineering system in India is.

<comment><USER5> The bias wasn't slight -- in fact, it made it tougher to get through the whole article. It felt like the whole time I should be picturing the Indian flag waving majestically in the background, as India single-handedly picked itself up by its bootstraps and liberated its neighbors in wars of conscience, and literally rocketed itself into space, all via an army of Indian engineers (the gifted superior students), doctors (the snobby rich kids), and lazy good-for- nothing B.As. Viva India, who can do no wrong.

Even when the article makes a minor allowance for less-than-stellar engineering performance -- why did it take longer than expected to develop nuclear power? -- the answer given is not anything to do with engineering, but only that Indians were too peaceful under Ghandi and simply didn't feel like going nuclear.

I'm a big fan of India and Indian innovation and potential. I would just have liked to read a more balanced article that didn't bother with the nationalistic stuff. Viva Indian engineering in the 21st century!

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> The moment I read excerpts from "surely you're joking mr feynman" about Brazil, I thought someone had done a major typo and put Brazil in place of India, because that is how students are taught here; sad part is that Mr Feynman was referring to Brazil of 70's and 80's (correct me if wrong) and I am referring to India of 2011. I assume that Brazil is doing much better now (?). The Indian education is more about serving (read ITES) than leading.

The article is indeed right but it misses few points. Given the fact that India is just 60+ years old, the dreams that Indians see is lot different from the ones being seen in west. People in India still struggle with the basic lifestyle, which includes a car, a house, broadband, smartphones, 3g, air- conditioning (yes I think all of these are part of basic lifestyle). You don't find furnished homes in India very often. Once you are in, you have to manage everything (bed, refrigerator, laundry and what not). When you are asked to survive in one of the hottest part of the world and you cannot afford an AC, doing work is nightmare. So for an Indian guy right out of college, there are a lot of questions unanswered. I don't think this is the case in west, is it? (I stayed in London for an year and everything was there right from the first day). So it's a little unreal to expect everyone to jump into doing a startup or becoming famous.

But yeah, above all the best part is that situation is changing very fast, lots and lots of Indians are taking the unconventional path, trying to make sure that future holds something good.

<comment><USER7> I loved that story from Feynman's time in Brazil. What I've often wondered though, is this: Did his time there change anything for the better?

What became of his former students? If even a couple learned to look at the world a bit more like him, then the ripple effect might have been great. If nothing else, it's hard to imagine that the educational system has been unaware of his critique. Did it spur any sort of reform in the decades since?

<comment><USER8> As much as I enjoy Feynman's writings, I'm rather surprised at the significance people attach to that old anecdote. It was just his short experience with one class, and we don't even know which university it was. I wouldn't assume the situation depicted there is representative of Brazilian advanced education in the 60s. In any case, it certainly doesn't match my experience in the 90s (I majored in CS at a Brazilian university). For instance, my exams would typically involve writing and analysing algorithms, solving mathematical problems and proving theorems. If you memorized the textbook without understanding it you wouldn't pass a single class.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> Hi HN. I'm the original author, and I certainly didn't expect this to show up on HN. Ill be the first to admit I would've liked a little bit more time to research, and this is my first article for somebody else. I'm an aspiring writer and I'm new to the big bad world of long-form journalism; so treat me nice :) Comments about the ugly parts of the writeup are obviously welcome !

</comment><comment><USER9> In the past 15 years or so, there is an explosion of engineering schools and the number of graduates. I've been part of the crowd that lamented the decrease in the quality of Indian engineering graduates.

When you look at it in a different way. Would you rather have more engineers than less? I would go for more.

As an individual, having an engineering degree is better than having a degree in arts. An engineering degree provides these guys with better employment options even if our notion of quality is shattered.

India is coming of age and the days when 'I studied roman history because I am passionate about it' are not far off. As of now, livelihood trumps passion.

<comment><USER10> >>When you look at it in a different way. Would you rather have more engineers than less? I would go for more.

At the expense of quality?? Literacy isn't the same as education. And because of this sort of things its that Indian IT isn't able to take any thing more than IMS projects today. The managers haven't the slightest clue how to run projects, and engineers haven't the slightest clue how code, design and build.

No point in having paper degrees if people can't work! Money comes from work not from degrees! And its not about passion, its about doing one's job properly. And that can be done even without the burning passion. If my job is that of a coder, I should be able to do my job properly even if I don't have the passion to write the next big OS kernel.

And the employment opportunities, how can we sustain getting business when we can't deliver on the current ones?

</comment></comment><comment><USER11> The service industry standards in India are quite bad, as I have had first hand experience of the sorry state of our development environment. I have thought about this for quite some time, and as others have pointed out there is a definite dearth of passion as the industry is filled with people who worry nothing more than their paychecks at the end of the month. It's quite hard to find motivation amongst such peers(Just to clarify, I'm not badmouth- ing anyone, just stating the fact) At times it has often make me wonder at our consistent mediocre attitude. The top programming languages right now(Java, C++ etc) has had it's origins in the US and elsewhere, where the language authors have had put in painstaking efforts in creating libraries so as to make adoption of the language as easy as possible. The irony being since most of the hard work has already been done, the mediocre work gets outsourced for cheap labour. Just my 2 paisa...

</comment><comment><USER12> The one thing that the article overlooks is that engineering is still the safest way to get a healthy living standard in India. The salary paid by IT firms is exponentially higher than what middle class India has ever seen. Our culture taboos failure. People are worried about a child doing badly in 1st standard. This aversion to failure mixed with the IT boom has led to such a large number of engineers in India.

<comment><USER4> Thanks for your comments. I'm with you on that - and that's what I meant when I wrote:

"Becoming an engineer in India virtually guarantees financial security for life, and this blinds parents into forcing their children to choose engineering."

<comment><USER13> But if this is the case, then shouldn't your article be about 'how money is creating a lot of engineers in India' rather than saying that India has an engineering culture?

I see it in a similar vein to how there are so many finance people in the US - that's where the money is - quick riches compared to other jobs you could get. And if the money/financial security disappeared, so would all the interest in working in that field - ie the culture would evaporate.

It's different to say the US innovation culture which is an attitude and culture that has developed over decades due to many drivers, but money hasn't been the only or even major driving force behind it and in many ways is impervious to fluctuations in 'market demand'.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> The article is trying to show causation from correlation, the reasons for the number of engineers in India have nothing to do with the Independence, Wars with Pakistan, ISRO, DRDO etc. A much better and plausible argument is Y2K, a strong domestic IT sector and herd mentality.

<comment><USER15> +1. The article's argument is plain wrong.

<comment><USER16> Actually, I think the article makes some interesting points.

Firstly, anyone who has had experience with off-shoring to India is probably convinced that the whole country is just minutes from falling apart through shoddy engineering.

That makes the first part of the article very relevant, because an important part of realising that there is a problem is to realise that Indian Engineering _used to be_ very good.

Then the article hints at what I think are the two main reasons:

(1) Immigration (2) Cheating in the education system/lack of effort

I actually see this in the west as well, the attitude that the whole point of university is simply to get some piece of paper that is a de facto licence to print money.

Westerners today interacting with the off-shore engineers will usually come away shocked by how lazy the Indian programmers seem. They have no pro- activity, no problem solving ability.

But is that an accurate picture of Indian culture? Could they have modernised their agriculture, fought 3+ major wars, launched satellites into space and developed a nuclear program if they were all like the off-shore programmers? They'd have starved to death and/or been wiped out by their own incompetence if that was the case.

Clearly, the Indian Engineers of 2011 are a 'different breed' than their counter-parts in the 60s and 70s.

 _Something must have happened_.

If you accept that premise, that things have gone downhill in a big way, then it begs the question "why?". Now the author may not have all the answers - <USER2> he has some interesting points.

To dismiss him as "plain wrong" is unworthy of hacker news, and disrespectful of the effort it takes to create this kind of big-picture historical overviews that challenge entrenched views.

 _Do you really want hacker news to become yet another Digg or reddit?_

Personally, I find that a brief examination of American history provides some support for the view that brain drain for a country is a bad thing, and immigration of smart and motivated people to your country is a good thing. America got big and strong by two things: (a) enormous mineral wealth, (b) opening its borders to immigrants. Having avoided most of the draining effect of the European wars in the 1800s and 1900s helped, and also served to promote the view of America as a safe haven.

If you forget that immigration isn't just about "dumb people who are browner than me" and also includes "the intellectual elite of countries like Austria fleeing wars and persecution" then you start thinking that immigration is all about "they took aor jaorbs!", and close down your borders, impose quotas... and the stagnation begins.

<comment><USER14> "Firstly, anyone who has had experience with off-shoring to India is probably convinced that the whole country is just minutes from falling apart through shoddy engineering. "

Untrue, Uncalled for, Unsupported by any facts, and plain wrong.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER17> _The examination pattern fulfills their expectations – asking questions straight from the book which require no application-level knowledge at all._

It all fits together now. That's why so much code that is farmed out to India comes back looking in such sorry shape.

<comment><USER18> _It all fits together now._

No it doesn't.

If what you claimed was true then why does India still continue to be the top outsource destination?

If cheap labour is the excuse then its the problem of capitalism, not India or Indian engineers.

The same goes to China and Chinese goods.

<comment><USER19> I don't follow. How is it capitalism's fault that India produces large numbers of bad engineers? You seem to be conflating the fact that capitalism (specifically, cost-cutting) leads to these engineers being employed with the fact that their education is lousy.

<comment><USER20> "India produces large numbers of bad engineers" - that's a sweeping statement. Among all countries, India sends the largest number of engineering students to the US (according to NSF - [http://www.indianexpress.com/news/india-sends- maximum-number...](http://www.indianexpress.com/news/india-sends-maximum- number-of-sci-engineeri/644397/)), which is not bad for a country producing "bad" engineers. I am a professor in a US university, I work with a lot of technically trained undergraduates, and I can say that students here (as anywhere) when they complete their undergraduate education, are merely ready to become an apprentice at a company. Their education continues in the company (or research lab) they join. So when you compare recent Engineering undergraduates from different countries, I am willing to bet that their quality is on average not that different.

<comment><USER19> If they're in your class, India is not producing those engineers.

At any rate, we're talking about outsourcing. If they're not in India anymore, then by definition the US cannot outsource to them.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER21> The existence of a well-backed military-industrial complex seems to have very little to go with the glut of engineers in India, let alone cross-border politics.

As a product of this system, the reason seems fairly straightforward to me. Its plain simple economics. On average, in India, engineering is the path of least resistance to a quality of life better than your parents. When I graduated about a decade ago, engineering was perceived as a stepping stone. Indeed, most of my classmates are not in engineering anymore (most of them weren't even interested in it), and, by all modern measures, quite successful. A 4-year engineering is seen as a foundation to bigger things, and that doesn't seem like such a bad thing at all. Its the generally accepted way of getting to the top of the pile, if you're not born into money, and so its not surprising its such a popular choice.

There seems to be a small sliver of anecdotal evidence that this may be changing, with people willing to follow their passions more, but the effects of this 'at scale' remains to be seen.

To folks with the bad-programmers-from-India experience, the fault is solely yours. You're looking for engineers from this system to do your job for the least money. You're going to get people who're great at selling themselves, not great hackers.

</comment><comment><USER22> Here is an insightful take on this topic by Sridhar Vembu (Founder of Zoho an India based startup BTW)

[http://blogs.zoho.com/general/why-it-happened-in-southern- in...](http://blogs.zoho.com/general/why-it-happened-in-southern-india-an- unorthodox-explanation)

Although it focuses on only one region of India it provides more clues to answering "Why there are so many engineers in India?"

</comment><comment><USER23> Its called the Internet and it allowed brains in one area with fewer rewards for brains to connect to another area where brains are well rewarded and to do the sort of work that can be done over a network.

</comment><comment><USER24> Tedious Indian boosterism. HN has seen its share of naked press plants, but this article was really missing the FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE in the header.

</comment><comment><USER25> Interesting. I was always under impression that Jawaharlal Nehru's reforms (pretty much socialism) were the key. His policies and reforms were key in establishing India education system. Without him and his reforms there will be no path for better quality of life for many Indians.

How much of credit should be given to Jawaharlal Nehru's reforms?

I'm not Indian, so please excuse my ignorance.

<comment><USER10> The current form of education system is very different than what existed during the immediate post-independence era when the reforms were carried out. The entire Indian Industry and people passing out on the basis of their jobs in those times could be classified into the following categories.

First and foremost, The elite, the civil services, UPSC et al. Next opportunities in the defense services, Next came government jobs(clerks, small time accountants etc). The private sector jobs were limited to factories(Process based jobs) like ITI, BEL, HAL etc. Then small time business men. So depending on them the general qualification were BA, BCom and Industrial training courses(Welding, electrician etc).

Medicine and Engineering were considered elite, the demand and supply was both limited. For a while India had a Gulf boom, many people went to gulf to work. But real turn around happened after Manmohan singh's FDI's reforms in the early 90's. This is when the outsourcing market took off and the IT boom started and demand for both crappy colleges and engineers went high.

During that time, it was easy to get promoted and work in a foreign country. Due to all this every tom,dick and harry got promoted and became a millionaire. Even if he was moron and knew nothing and did nothing. The market was such that all this could go on. Now the entire Indian IT's middle management is rotten. The expectations of the current generation is very high. The college grads think they can easily promoted to be a manager in 3-4 years so they need not have to be technically good.

All this has led to horrible state of affairs that exists today. The scary thing is good people are never rewarded and bad ones some how keep making money through job hopping.

</comment></comment><comment><USER26> I would like to know how to find the great engineers. So far have hired fantastic engineers in the former soviet union and in the Philippines, but have not had one good experience in India.

I believe that there are some phenomenally good engineers and a very large number of terrible engineers. So as a foreigner trying to hire, without travelling there it's very difficult. The great people simply don't respond to job ads, and unless you are Google, are not interested in applying. Plus the great people earn $2,000 per month and higher. The large number of very average people earn $300-500 per month. So that's why I haven't found any great people, but I think if you have connections or a good recruiting team in India it's possible to find these people.

<comment><USER27> A perspective from opposite side, a skilled engineer that starts looking for remote gigs. Sites like dice.com or monster.com are of no use, there are very few telecommute job offers there. And on websites for freelancers rates are too low. So where do people like you are searching for skilled foreign engineers?

</comment></comment><comment><USER28> The real reason there are so many engineers in India is because there are many many crappy engineering colleges in India right now. The last decade saw engineering become a business and every person with a little money looked to start an engineering college. Yes India has a lot of population but the proliferation of colleges is the main reason.

<comment><USER10> Supply always meets the demand and not the vice versa, A more appropriate question to ask is 'Why is there so much demand for crappy engineers in India'?

<comment><USER29> Your question is surely rhetorical, for I would be astounded that you do not know the answer.

There is demand for _CHEAP_ engineers. It happens that many are from India. There is no demand for crap, but sadly, there is no demand for quality (over cost) in the eyes of many.

<comment><USER10> I am Indian, and I refuse to believe to this 'cheap' meme. FYI, as per Indian standards most of these crappy programmers are paid really well. In most cases better than the good programmers.

The thing about good productive programmers is same as that in the US, they tend to stick around for long time in one company, take time out to learn and master the trade. And are not usually on the job lists. On the other hand, due to rapid growth it has become fashionable here for the bad folks to hop a job often. The trick is simple, the performance evaluation happens every year in most companies here. Before their performance is even judged, they fly to some other company.

Hiring is often done by HR's. They are given a template of standard questions flicked from the internet. Most of which are factual and don't test a candidate analytical ability. Questions like 'What is a class', 'Can you define X'. If you memorize the answer you can easily pass the interview.

There are dumps of questions available for clearing common certifications like SCJP et al. They say some jargons in interview, negotiate a good salary and join the company. By the time their performance is evaluated in the company they go to some other company.

This is what is happening in India currently. The good folks are there but they are invisible and often lost in the crowd.

<comment><USER29> Well, I'm on the outsourcing end of the equation (although I haven't had a hand in the actual outsourcing itself), and I can say from firsthand experience the 'cheap' meme is accurate.

The reason given for removing existing personnel to replace them with outsourced people is twofold. One is cost, and it is the large majority of the sum total of the reasons. The other reason is the erroneous idea that the company can train up a bunch of outsourced people and have a flexible, dynamically sized, workforce.

The _justification_ is that "they're just as good".

In the 10-12 or so years I have seen this tried, it has yet to even COME CLOSE to what was promised. The reason it keeps happening is the person in charge of the decision gets his bonus for cutting the costs, then moves on, long before the actual long-medium terms costs become known. By then that person is long gone and/or up the corporate ladder to where no one dare say "this sucked, he's the guy that caused it".

My view is cynical and jaded, but it is from experience. And I say this not having ever lost my job over it, so that's not a factor.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER30> Quick & easy money. That's what my mom told me when I wanted to study medicine.

</comment><comment><USER31> good article, but the bulk of engineers now come out of private colleges. Engineering Education is the new business, every politician or big businessman owns one or more engineering college.

Middle class could afford it, IT jobs are easier to get, engineering is the new the minimum qualification for getting a good job.

if government liberalizes medical education, we would see a million more doctors soon.

</comment><comment><USER32> Engineers don't need to only mean 'startups'

</comment><comment><USER33> bad description doesn't connected it with the current problems or its causes rather connected with indo-china war but started making "some sense" after mid of the article.

</comment><comment><USER34> Doesn't mean they're any good. Last innovative startup you've heard from India in the past several years is....Visual Website Optimizer. Wow, mindblowing.

<comment><USER35> Not sure the article said anything about they being good. Any evidence on VWO being the last innovative startup from India? Just because the startups are not featuring on HN does not mean there are no innovative startups from India.</comment></comment>


Steve Jobs Interview about the Blue Box Story  - <AUTHOR> http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HFURM8O-oYI

<comment><USER2> I had forgotten that telephony was in his blood prior to the Apple II. It even surfaced momentarily at NeXT with ISDNKit. Not knowing about this history, it would be easy to think it odd, in 2007, that Apple brought a phone to market. Today it seems natural.

<comment><USER3> Interestingly, the greatest modem ever was an Apple II product and could be used as (among other things) a bluebox:

<http://www.jammed.com/~jwa/Machines/cat/>

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

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> And yet he goes ballistic when people "blue box" the iPhone by jailbreaking it. I know, it's not the same, jailbreaking is legal.

<comment><USER2> _...he goes ballistic..._

Is this hyperbole or is there a Ballmeresque chair-throwing incident I don't know about?

<comment><USER5> I can hardly recall Jobs saying anything about jailbreaking at all. Would be interesting to hear more about the case of him going ballistic over the issue.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> It really feels like the world finally caught up to Steve Jobs rather than the other way around. Its a wonder how early he has been using the word 'magical' and obsessed with creating the best version of anything out there even with a hacky product like a blue box.

<comment><USER7> they even included a guarantee with each one they sold. quoted in Return to Little Kingdom:

"The demonstrations provoked curiosity and Jobs and Wozniak made cassette tapes of tones that friends would need to call their favorite long-distance numbers. Jobs arranged a supply of about $40 worth of parts and Wozniak took about four hours to wire a box which was then sold for about $150. To cut down on time it took to build boxes the pair decided to stop wiring the boxes by hand and to have a printed circuit board made. Instead of spending four hours wiring a box, Wozniak could now finish a box within an hour. He also added another feature that turned one button into an automatic dialer. A small speaker and battery were attached to the printed circuit board, a keypad glued to the lid, and when all was finished, _a card bearing a message in purple felt pen was taped to the bottom. It read "He's got the whole world in his hand" and it was linked to an informal guarantee. Wozniak promised that if a faulty box was returned and still contained the card he would repair it free of charge._ "

<comment><USER8> Underpromise and overdeliver.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> Someone needs to make an iphone app called "Blue Box" that let's you make free phone calls and submit it to the store.

Then email Steve Jobs and ask him why they denied it when without the same concept, there would have been no Apple.

<comment><USER8> They have. It's called Skype. (Or Google Voice; take your choice.) And fittingly, they even have icons which are (approximately) blue boxes.

<comment><USER9> Not to land lines or other cellphones without the client?

And I thought Apple denied the google talk app for calling other phones?

<comment><USER10> The Google Voice app never purported to be a VoIP solution. It's simply a UI to the Google Voice API. When you attempt to make an actual call with it, it sends you off to the built-in dialer with a "predialed" phone number. The calls you send and receive via Google Voice use your cellular _talk_ plan and not the data plan (which VoIP would do.)

tl;dr- GV is not a VoIP service; it's a call management service

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> "Great minds discuss ideas. Average minds discuss events. Small minds discuss people." \- Eleanor Roosevelt

<comment><USER2> No one here wants to discuss Eleanor Roosevelt with you.

<comment><USER11> I honestly don't care. That's not why I posted this.

<comment><USER2> That wasn't lost on me. Neither was the fact that you were neither discussing an event nor an idea. You posted it to have a go at everyone participating in this thread.

 _Edit: "Be the change you want to see in the world." — Mahatma Gandhi_

<comment><USER11> Not true. I posted it because it built upon what Steve said.

"...and experiences like that taught us the power of ideas..."

That's what inspired my original comment. I respect Steve and Woz like founding fathers of the Computer Age. No offense taken pohl, semantics throw all of us off.

I am the change I want to see in the world. I don't bring other people down on HN or try to question why they posted something. I have no right.

<comment><USER2> I'm glad to hear that, and I'm sorry for misinterpreting you. I wasn't able to connect your quotation with the video.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> Am I the only person seing the iPhone UI on that Blue box?

</comment><comment><USER13> It's really cool to see someone so successful talk like a hacker.

</comment><comment><USER14> Jobs in his "neo-Amish" style phase!

</comment><comment><USER15> "We figured out", "we built". Something tells me Woz did those things, SJ.

</comment><comment><USER16> Didn't, like, everyone do this back in the day?

<comment><USER17> "Didn't, like, everyone do this back in the day?"

I don't know about _everyone_ , but back when things were a lot more electro- mechanical and the laws far less Draconian it was much easier for the techno- curious to hack around with stuff. Used to be able to do switch-hook dialing from ATM phones, for example. Very amusing.

Side comment: A friend of mine told me today that he recently fixed his dormant Philips DVD player when he learned it was a matter of replacing a capacitor. I told him it sounds like an Onion headline; "Area man repairs own DVD player."</comment></comment>


7 months and 88 screenshots: The Evolution of 2u.fm - <AUTHOR> http://natewienert.com/the-evolution-of-2u-dot-fm

<comment><USER2> Wow, that's a lot of changes! It sort of looks like you went from an OSX-esque appearance to Metro... that's quite interesting.

</comment><comment><USER3> Thanks for sharing. One can clearly see

* the "I like last.fm" moment,

* the "let's make the content bigger" moment,

* the "actually I prefer Facebook" moment,

* the "ehi, Soundcloud is cool after all" moment,

* finally the "maybe I found my identity" moment.

<comment><USER4> There is also the "let's jump on the Metro UI train". Which is the current style. But I preferred some of the screenshots to the actual result.

<comment><AUTHOR> I too liked the gradiented look a lot, but I'll say having spent a ton of time with the site I love a current look so much more for a music site. Though rather than jumping on some train there was actually quite a few steps that brought me there. I tried a lot of things, but honestly it's just easier and cleaner to strip details when they are unnecessary, and I added some twists on it (I like having the flat bevel on the buttons).

Just thought I'd note that the influences often came from multiple not-obvious places and decisions, or even, maybe, just occasionally, perhaps, from me!

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> I do this with all my projects just to see both my progress in learning UX/UI and also my thoughts. I've learned a lot by taking a look at what I thought was "amazing" then the next "amazing" and so on until I got the "perfect" design. For me, the #1 thing I've learned is to leave trying to perfect the design until the real data is available. It makes such a huge difference that I always, without exception, change some aspects of the design as soon as the data is displayed. Just my experiences over the years.

</comment><comment><USER6> This is a great example of showing clients how UX is not something you just create and never revisit. Thanks for sharing!

</comment><comment><USER7> Nice post; it'd be even better if the content displayed (a db seed?) was the same, making comparisons easier.

</comment><comment><USER8> What no slick video flipbook?

<comment><USER9> I thought the flickr interface was pretty slick: I only had to wait for an image to load once, right at the beginning.</comment></comment>


TellFi (YC W11) Helps Small Businesses Sound Professional on the Phone - <AUTHOR> http://networkeffect.allthingsd.com/20110228/tellfi-helps-small-businesses-sound-professional-on-the-phone/

<comment><USER2> I'm seeing a lot of negativity around this launch from people asking the question "how is this different from x, y and z".

My personal opinion is that you don't need to be that different in terms of functionality if you can make a difference in execution, which I think they're doing in terms of user interface and hopefully with marketing in general.

More broadly speaking I'm interested in how they plan to go to market beyond the "echo chamber". Some of that they're probably keeping under their hats but I'm keen to find out.

</comment><comment><USER3> Really nice. What i like mostly is the fact that you guys included screenshots within the article, great communication tactic. This definitely made me want to try your product. Good Job. I will keep an eye on your company for sure.

</comment><comment><USER4> Hasn't Phone.com been doing this for a couple years now? <http://www.phone.com/products/virtual-office/>

<comment><AUTHOR> Yes, they have. However, we're focused on making phone systems as easy as possible and will be adding a lot of functionality that no other players in the space currently offers.

<comment><USER4> Do you have any details about your unique functionality that you can share?

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> Can I use my 800 phone number from grasshopper.com?

<comment><AUTHOR> Yes, you definitely can port it or forward it. If you want to discuss, email us at firstname.lastname@example.com.

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> really nice stuff :)</comment>


Elizabeth Holmes Is a Visionary, and We Need More Like Her - <AUTHOR> https://www.realclearmarkets.com/articles/2019/10/14/elizabeth_holmes_is_a_visionary_and_we_need_more_like_her_103946.html <comment><AUTHOR> This author is getting ratioed in the extreme on Twitter, and for good reason. Look, we all know that startups carry an inherent risk, and in a lot of cases, game-changing ideas look terrible at first. It takes a certain amount of chutzpah to take this path, and failure is the default outcome when you do.

With all of that said, there is LIGHTYEARS of difference between failure and fraud. 99% of startups that fail fail because they run out of money or don't find product-market fit; they don't fail because they outright lie, repeatedly, to customers, regulators, investors, and partners.

<comment><USER2> They maybe fail because they won't outright lie or "cheat".

Theranos is obviously an extreme example.

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> This article is some nuclear weapons grade spin. She may have been a visionary, but we don't need more like her. Like many others in the community who attempted to do their due diligence before investing (we didn't invest) we concluded that she willfully hid information about using her competitor's testing equipment at Walgreens rather than being forthcoming with her machine's serious deficiencies.

<comment><USER2> > She may have been a visionary

I fail to see any indication of that.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> The Theranos investors were impatient to make it big. Would they have had Edison's persistence for 1000 attempts at making their innovation work?

Elizabeth Holmes's talent was to exploit the gullibility of greedy investors. History is replete with fraudsters using illusionary innovations to hoodwink investors. The Theranos management team are merely just a recent example.</comment>


Robot Car Wars: Nissan Jumps Into the Fray With Driverless Car by 2020 - <AUTHOR> http://singularityhub.com/2013/09/09/robot-car-wars-nissan-jumps-into-the-fray-with-driverless-car-by-2020/ <comment><USER2> I feel sorry for all those poor automotive marketers that can no longer pitch based on how well a car handles, performs and drives. What a car actually _is_ will change once they're completely automated, particularly seating configurations and ride comfort more than anything else.

Also the need to own a car diminishes, replaced with an on-demand go-anywhere taxi service. Don't need a car? Don't need car garages. Don't need a driveway. Don't need traffic lights or signals or pedestrian crossings.

Though there will be the transition period when a glitch launches some poor sod off a bridge. The news will eat it up as how the technology can't be trusted, but will ignore the statistics of casualties from manual vs automated drivers.

The same technology will filter through to everything from the military to the pizza delivery guy - just as it already has for the massive mining trucks driving themselves around Australian mine sites.

The impact of a 100% driverless car on city layouts would be profound. At some point I'm sure the OH&S arm of the governments will ban all manual-driver cars on the road and such modern day classics we be held in showrooms or farmyard sheds, available only on private roads where no insurer will dare cover.

<comment><USER3> Chris Bangle had the idea that future cars will be fleet based, but people will own customizable interiors. These would deploy into the vehicle. You could also have self-assembling cars - individual electric autonomous units of drivetrain. Two wheels and an axle - you call up as many as you'd like.

While very future looking, I think these address both the ownership desire and the efficiency benefits.

<comment><USER4> But then you'd have to keep your interior around.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> I have a pretty low bar -- I just want something which can drive on I-5 (and a few other interstates) in good weather without me actively controlling the car, such that I could safely use a laptop or tablet. I'd still be a licensed driver and in the seat ready to take over with 3-5 seconds notice.

If I can have that by 2020 in a car like the Model S AWD, I'd be quite happy.

The next big jump in functionality for me would be pretty far -- a car which can operate genuinely autonomously, so I can get out and it doesn't require me to find a parking spot. I imagine doing that in an urban environment will be the last thing a self-driving car is technically or legally able to do.

Something which can self-drive for 30 minutes to drive from SF to PA doesn't get me a huge amount. It'd be nice to be able to use a tablet or something instead of driving, but it would be a lot cheaper/easier to just make a halfway decent audio-only (and maybe trivial HUD and chording keyboard) computer for the car, rather than self-driving tech. _that_ we could have done 15 years ago; self driving probably wasn't feasible until 5-10 years ago.

<comment><USER6> When driving from SF to Palo Alto you want to talk to a computer or perhaps look at a computer screen through your windshield and type on a one-handed keyboard? You are easy to please. I'd much rather have a wank from the back seat of my self driving car. And then a nap.

<comment><USER5> What I _really_ want is a transporter which instantly beams me from Palo Alto to Seattle, never having to go north of Redwood City. I was trying to be realistic.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> I think the main threat to the advancement of self-driving cars was always going to be big companies without a product using lobbyists and regulatory capture to hamstring those with a product. So an announcement like this from a big player is a very good thing and will accelerate the product plans of the others too.

<comment><USER8> Absolutely, but I wouldn't be surprised to see the big car manufacturers pursue both avenues.

Fully automated cars will decimate consumer demand for vehicles as people find it much more practical to share vehicles when they don't have to stay in the same place when you are not using them.

<comment><USER9> I don't think consumers are quite that rational - a lot of people I know, myself included, would be far better of financially by using taxis and hiring a car on the occasions when we need to drive a longer distance.

However, for that extra wee bit of convenience (and no doubt other purely emotional factors) we all buy our own cars....

<comment><USER8> Renting a car is inconvenient because you have to go somewhere and pick it up and fill in forms, try to rip you off with insurance and petrol charges.

Taxi's are inconvenient as they can take a long time to arrive and are relatively expensive for the time you are using them. They don't always turn up when you request them because the human drivers have motivations of their own. Added to this is some people don't love interacting with the drivers.

These factors are not a "wee bit" of an inconvenience. They are a pain in the ass.

Driverless cars will solve a lot of these issues. They will arrive more reliably, they will be far cheaper, they don't have a driver that makes you feel uncomfortable if you don't want to talk. They will be ordered with a few clicks of your smart phone.

Sure, some people will want to continue to own a car. But a large percentage will opt for the the convenience of getting "short term rentals", especially in big city's where parking is at a premium. How large a percentage? I guess that is the point of contention. I think it will be larger than you think.

Personally, I can't wait to get rid of my car: [http://jamespmcgrath.com/why- i-am-not-buying-an-autonomous-c...](http://jamespmcgrath.com/why-i-am-not- buying-an-autonomous-car/)

<comment><USER9> Where I am the taxi service is about as good as it could be (iPhone app or IVR, payment through Chip-N-Pin or account) - similarly I went for a while renting cars and the would come and drop the car off at my office and pick it up again from there.

I still ended up buying my own car.

<comment><USER8> 2 things. 1. You do not represent everybody. 2. Even the best current systems are not representative of what automated cars will bring. What you are talking about are still way more expensive than the automated solution will be (I have to make some assumptions) and organising someone to drop the car off at a specific time is not the same as being able to make the decision 5 minutes before you need it.

At the end of the day, even if I am half right, car production will see a huge drop.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> The value I place on an announcement that a certain product, especially a bleeding edge tech one, will be available by 2020, is, well, close to zero. Let's see it when/if it exists. Long term _precise_ predictions are about as valid as long term precise weather forecasting. There are just too many variables at play, too many actors in motion, too many random events that can happen.

<comment><USER4> 2020 isn't that long term any more.

</comment></comment><comment><USER11> I'm looking forward to the car I buy next year being the very last car I have to drive. For me, driving is stressful micromanagement which I don't want or enjoy doing.

</comment><comment><USER12> As long as they don't install that automated robot in the taxi from Total Recall, I'm all for this.

I can see how traffic flows would dramatically improve if all cars were automated. Biggest factor for traffic is human driving.

</comment><comment><USER13> So basically car companies have to decide in electric, driver-less technologies or both to be competitive in the future. Will driver-less tech kill the electric car movement?

<comment><USER14> I don't think the two technologies are mutually exclusive.

<comment><USER9> I think they might work rather well together. For example where I live I doubt there will be charging points at street level for a long time (if ever, due to conservation restrictions) - but if a self driving electric car can take itself off somewhere else to get charged at night or during the day then it might make things rather more practical.

<comment><USER15> Exactly like a big Roomba: do your work, go off to charge itself, come back for more.

<comment><USER16> A big Roomba with valet service everywhere.

<comment><USER17> Also; it won't be a vacuum.</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment>


'60 Minutes' hacks congressman's phone for security report - <AUTHOR> http://thehill.com/blogs/ballot-box/276626-60-minutes-hacks-congressmans-phone-for-security-report <comment><USER2> Hacks? They were given access to the SS7 network.</comment>


Why filming police violence has done nothing to stop it, so far - <AUTHOR> https://www.technologyreview.com/2020/06/03/1002587/sousveillance-george-floyd-police-body-cams <comment><USER2> The filming is still crucial, because most of society (in particular, wealthy whites) would not believe that the police could be so brutal unless it was undeniably captured on video.

I think that a similar technological innovation was key during the civil rights movement in the US in the 60s. Capturing the cruelty of racists against blacks in America and showing it on television was crucial for turning public opinion in favor of civil rights.

<comment><USER3> there is video of the Minneapolis police slashing tires including a whole parking lot full of cars all under the guise of protecting the public and themselves.

filming will do nothing till the the protections afforded the police by their union and local politicians; don't let these mayors fool anyone as most had budget increases planned for their cops; are made illegal. every violent act committed by any police officer must have the possibility of assault charges for the officer unless video clears them. any time the police must make a payout for an act committed by an officer that officer must be released and have their permanent record flagged so they just don't walk across state lines.

the only real national database we need is of government employees, be they cops, firemen, teachers, or clerk. get busted and you are done for nationwide with regards to public service.

<comment><USER2> You and I wouldn't even be having this conversation without the video though. If reform is hard even with video, it's completely impossible without it.

<comment><USER4> My thought is without someone who just happened to have a video recorder ready the whole Rodney King thing would not have happened. Nor the riots or the partial reform of the LAPD.

Societies attitudes are very persistent. Takes decades for things to materially change. The root of that is the Max Plank quote: A new scientific truth does not triumph by convincing its opponents and making them see the light, but rather its opponents eventually die, and a new generation grows up that is familiar with it.

That said I think juries are becoming much more aware of the implications of letting bad cops off the hook. Muni's are becoming tired of paying out settlements for cops that should have been long since fired. And this is in the contexts of increasing militarization of the police while the crime rate has been falling persistently for 30 years.

Things always look like they'll never change and then they do.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> I think because we all made the presumption that obvious police abuses would be punished once we had video evidence.

We didn't take into consideration the justice system's complete lack of appetite at holding officers responsible for egregious violations of life, civil liberties, and property rights.

<comment><USER6> Well, I always think about the Rodney King case: you and I saw a very damning video, played over and over again, on the news that looked incriminating as hell. But when the case went to trial, the jury voted not guilty. What did they see that we didn't? Did they make the right choice, after having seen a lot more evidence than we did? Or are jury trials just inherently untrustworthy?

<comment><USER7> > "[The beating tape] didn't look good. It looked bad. But it was, as far as I > was concerned, it wasn't against the law. And then I couldn't convict 'em > because to me they were doing what they were supposed to do. And, well, the > majority of us felt the same way at the trial."

Source: [https://abcnews.go.com/Entertainment/fall-rodney-king- juror-...](https://abcnews.go.com/Entertainment/fall-rodney-king-juror- words/story?id=46712060)

> "But I assumed that the videotape showed everything that had happened. I was > amazed to discover how much more of it existed than had been shown on > television. The whole tape was only eighty-one seconds, but even so, only a > small portion of that eighty-one seconds had been shown on television. The > whole tape, seen in context, presented a far different scenario than what > the public had seen."

Source: [https://laist.com/2017/04/25/rodney_king_jury.php](https://laist.com/2017/04/25/rodney_king_jury.php)

It's a shame they were acquitted, but our culture of violence runs deep, and our [low] expectations reflect that. It's not surprising that the jurors considered the brutality justified.

<comment><USER8> Full video: [https://youtu.be/sb1WywIpUtY](https://youtu.be/sb1WywIpUtY)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> Part of it may be our grudging acceptance of bad apples in the police system, like bad apples in organized religion and education. And unfortunately, police brutality has been around for millennia. Our modern police system has been modeled after London's 1829 police force, which they called the Peelers, Because they were organized by Sir Robert Peel. He was so concerned with introducing armed forces into the city and the backlash it may incite that he (1) disarmed the police, and (2) outfitted them in "blue" neutral colors, to make sure it looks nothing like the British red coats.

</comment><comment><USER10> What Camden, NJ did in 2012:

[https://www.cnn.com/2020/06/09/us/disband-police-camden- new-...](https://www.cnn.com/2020/06/09/us/disband-police-camden-new-jersey- trnd/index.html)

The City's department was replaced with a County department ... rehiring -some- of the officers. Outcome?

"Now, seven years after the old department was booted (though around 100 officers were rehired), the city's crime has dropped by close to half. Officers host outdoor parties for residents and knock on doors to introduce themselves. It's a radically different Camden than it was even a decade ago."

</comment><comment><USER11> Filming criminals hasn't stopped them either. Actually the ACLU is determined to now suppress a lot of body cam footage that they originally demanded. Maybe the public should see how terrible their peers are and take a lesson.

Instead the video is suppressesd A LOT. You've seen a handful of body cam footage, a handful of proofs of the thousands of calls in every city every day.

Think about that.

</comment><comment><USER12> Science-fiction author Arthur C. Clarke published several books of essays. In one, published in the 1970s well before the capability was widespread, he asserted that the capacity to capture audiovideo and live stream or transmit it from any spot on earth would make authoritarianism and terror impossible, because the eyes of the world would be watching at all times. This coloured much of my own thinking of the early Internet and Web, and the democratisation of information and transmission technologies.

That's proved to be a pathetically overoptimistic vision.

The reasons are several, and other HN readers touch on most of these:

1\. It is _impunity_ and _immunity_ rather than credible accusations which enable most oppressive behaviour. Those who know that they can act without consequence ... will. Whether this is cover of numbers (e.g., mob mentality), specific legal protection, or simply acting extrajurisdictionally, the upshot is the same: you don't need to be an evil supergenius if you cannot or will not be caught or held to account. Or, even, if you simply believe you won't or just don't care.

2\. As Yonatan Zunger, chief architect of Google+ has observed, information is not power, _information is a power multiplier._ This was a specific response by him to David Brin's _Transparent Society_ argument that persistent sousveillance would hold power to account. Without the power to _act_ on information, very little is done.

(This isn't to say that, to use Neal Stephenson's terms, either the _mobility_ and _nobility_ are entirely immune. Each has both strengths and vulnerabilities. The _nobility_ (establishment) has the power of institution, centralisation, and capacity to motivate resources, but relies strongly on its own acknowledged power. The _nobility_ (populace), has strength in numbers and some resistance to decapitation, but is also tremendously disorganised and often weakly effective, at least until it isn't.)

3\. Attention is limited. At any social scope --- locally, regionally, nationally, internationally --- there is only so much attention to go 'round, and the effective focus tends to be on a _vanishingly_ small number of items, I'd argue for roughly 1 to 100, with 10 items being a very frequent limit. That is, no matter how much is going on, and how rapidly issues on the list itself rotate, focus is effectively on about 10 _or fewer_ top stories in a day. Evidence for this is somewhat anecdotal, but pretty persistant: a top-of- the-hour five-minute news bulletin typically lists 4-6 items, giving less than a minute to each (introductions, sponsorship spots, etc., chew into time). A full-hour news programme similarly covers about the same number of items, though giving 3-4

For some examples:

The two-hour afternoon NPR flagship today lists 14 stories, 7 per hour, running largely 3-4 minutes, with an in-depth item "New Police Force From Scratch: N.J. City Proves It's Possible To Reform The Police" today, running 8 minutes:

[https://www.npr.org/programs/all-things- considered/](https://www.npr.org/programs/all-things-considered/)

The President's Daily Briefing, an intelligence summary of gobal developments of significance, runs 10 pages, typically lists ten items, and runs about an hour. There are archives of selected versions of this dating to the 1960s.

The Vanderbilt Television Archive comprises US national news broadcasts dating to August 5, 1968. Though the actual video isn't freely available, rundowns of news stories _are_ listed at the site. Before switching to a 25 minute format, an hour-long news programme typically ran 6-10 items, plus another 4-6 in the top-of-the-hour summary. Shorter formats include fewer and shorter stories.

[https://tvnews.vanderbilt.edu](https://tvnews.vanderbilt.edu)

Major newspapers typically run about 100--500 stories daily (more on weekends), with ~250 being a rough median. Only a fraction of this is actual hard news (news, politics, some of business coverage), with a substantial amount of copy being largely advertorial: sport, much of business, entertainment, style, real estate, automobiles, travel, etc.

The high-popularity lists ("most popular", "most read", "most emailed") of online sites typically list 5-10 items.

The news wires -- UPI, AP, Reuters, AFP -- typically see 1,000 - 5,000 items filed per day (various annual reports and other sources).

Hacker News tends toward a higher bound at 30 items on the front page. As those of us who submit regularly are aware, that is a precious resource and hard to land on. The Hivemind is fickle and operates curiously. (Mods do, _lightly_ , put a finger on the scales, and yes, I've benefited from that on occasion.)

________________________________________________________________________

That's not to say that recording has no merits. I've justified a fair amount of my own reading, writing, and sharing as simply bearing witness. Acknowledging (and attempting to understand) what it is that's going on, hoping to preserve some record for a future in which the limitations listed above have shifted their favour.

But don't for a second believe that information and record are panaceas of themselves, and work yourself to shift the balances noted above.</comment>


Be a Manager - <AUTHOR> https://medium.com/servant-leadership/be-a-manager-3b0e39d87179 <comment><USER2> Being a manager is tough. It takes people skills, and multi-dimensional thinking. Anybody that says "lets get rid of management" has clearly had bad management and perhaps should go into it themselves. I see this a lot in the tech industry. Tech people aren't by default good managers (neither are people in any industry). You have to get the people you manage to want to do what you need them to do. You have to inspire them, basically at the very least have your own mini-reality distortion field to induce the desired motivation (especially in the tech field). Highly educated, well paid employees will still do what they want to do...even if their paychecks are tied to your vision. The managers job is to make the they're vision the one that each employee sees when they sit down to work. At least, IMHO.</comment>


Bash bug: apply the unofficial patch now (CVE-2014-6277) - <AUTHOR> http://lcamtuf.blogspot.com/2014/09/bash-bug-apply-unofficial-patch-now.html <comment><USER2> For Mac OS X, until Apple releases a software update, I've applied the original CVE-2014-6271 (shellshock) patch and the CVE-2014-7169 patch. I will be applying Florian's patch once it or a similar patch come out for 3.2.

Repository and instructions to reproduce without trusting me are located here: [https://github.com/ido/macosx-bash-92-shellshock- patched](https://github.com/ido/macosx-bash-92-shellshock-patched)

Binary releases are here: [https://github.com/ido/macosx-bash-92-shellshock- patched/rel...](https://github.com/ido/macosx-bash-92-shellshock- patched/releases) ...including a .pkg file that can be installed with a double-click.

Instruction here: [https://github.com/ido/macosx-bash-92-shellshock- patched/blo...](https://github.com/ido/macosx-bash-92-shellshock- patched/blob/master/README.md)

Pull requests are welcome, especially if you've modified Florian's patch to apply cleanly on 3.2, which is my next task.

<comment><USER3> For the record, it applies cleanly on top of the other two patches.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> Looks like it's in Ubuntu's build:

      $ lsb_release -a
      No LSB modules are available.
      Distributor ID:	Ubuntu
      Description:	Ubuntu 12.04.3 LTS
      Release:	12.04
      Codename:	precise
      $ dpkg -l bash | tail -1
      ii  bash                              4.2-2ubuntu2.5               GNU Bourne Again SHell
      $ foo() { echo foo; }
      $ export -f foo
      $ env | grep BASH_FUNC
      BASH_FUNC_foo()=() {  echo foo

Is this a correct test?

Probably as of about 13:27 UTC yesterday, if I'm reading correctly here: [https://bazaar.launchpad.net/~ubuntu- branches/ubuntu/precise...](https://bazaar.launchpad.net/~ubuntu- branches/ubuntu/precise/bash/precise-security/revision/64)

<comment> f- Yup, as of yesterday, they are shipping the unofficial patch. I added a simple command to test if you're patched at the bottom of the blog post.

<comment><USER4> Ah, much simpler test. Thanks!

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> Given that Florian is the guy making the decisions on the RHEL bash package updates, I suspect this patch is already in the latest RHEL/CentOS/Scientific Linux bash package (the one that came out early yesterday, soon after the patch was posted to the oss-sec list).

Edit: Confirmed in this bugzilla ticket comment [https://bugzilla.redhat.com/show_bug.cgi?id=1141597#c51](https://bugzilla.redhat.com/show_bug.cgi?id=1141597#c51)

</comment><comment><USER6> ASLR is another one of the nice things about dash compared to bash in Debian:

      $ hardening-check  /bin/dash /bin/bash
      /bin/dash:
       Position Independent Executable: yes
       Stack protected: yes
       Fortify Source functions: yes (some protected functions found)
       Read-only relocations: yes
       Immediate binding: yes
      /bin/bash:
       Position Independent Executable: no, normal executable!
       Stack protected: yes
       Fortify Source functions: yes (some protected functions found)
       Read-only relocations: yes
       Immediate binding: no, not found!

<comment><USER7> Gentoo Hardened for the win:

      zx2c4@krantz ~ $ hardening-check /bin/bash
      /bin/bash:
       Position Independent Executable: yes
       Stack protected: yes
       Fortify Source functions: yes
       Read-only relocations: yes
       Immediate binding: yes

</comment></comment><comment><USER8> As an alternative, make sure that /bin/sh is set to something other than bash. In Debian and Ubuntu it is already set to dash by default.

(There's no guarantee that dash doesn't have similar problems, but at least the surface area is smaller.)

<comment><USER9> Ehh... Plenty of shell scripts explicitly specify bash in order to use its extended features, so this may or may not protect you.

<comment><USER10> The problem really is with calls like system("command") which ultimately translate to: '/bin/sh -c "command"'.

I'm quite sure that's what happens in DHCP case.

<comment><USER6> Unfortunately this is not the case in debian. There is an open bug to replace bash with dash. There do not seem to be many bashisms in the actual script. Sadly a member of the security team did not seem to be persuaded by the utility of the switch:

      > Given the many eyes now turning towards findings bugs in bash
      > and  building exploits  with them  it might  be safer  to fix
      > those bashisms and switch dhclient-script over to #!/bin/sh.
      >
      > What do you think?

      Actually, if you go that road,  you would need to drop anything
      ever calling  python, perl,  ruby or whatever  language somehow
      remotely. Some scripts might have good reasons to uses bash and
      bashisms (I'm not saying that's the case here, but still).

      What I  find more concerning  is to pass  unchecked environment
      variable directly from remote (or any input, actually).

[1]: dhclient-script uses bash, allowing remote bash exploits / [https://bugs.debian.org/cgi- bin/bugreport.cgi?bug=762923](https://bugs.debian.org/cgi- bin/bugreport.cgi?bug=762923)

<comment><USER11>
        What I  find more concerning  is to pass unchecked
        environment variable directly from remote (or any input, actually).

You can understand the opinion to an extent because it would require the every program to know in every case what variables are needed and what they're supposed to look like.

sudo does this to a small extent; it wipes function env vars.

In the rare system/popen my programs do I explicitly give the entire env - just PATH=/bin:/usr/bin; sometimes I give an empty env.

For something like a dhcp client it is obviously bad. The responsibility there is to whatever invokes it.

<comment><USER6> My complaint with the response was the "if you go down that road" response. The bug submitter was not suggesting dropping shell scripts, it was a request to remove the bashisms from dhclient so that it could work with dash.

It is not like there is an alternative python/ruby implementation that is "more robust against software failures" and has DEB_HARDENING turned on. If there was I would totally support going down the road of "making small changes to programs that process data from anyone on the network" so they could run on HardPython.

If there was something like HardPython alternative that was "more robust to software failures" with st

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> I'm impressed by Florian. Not only is his turnaround time quick when people finds faults in what has been his baby for quite a few years now, he immediately recognizes real issues from the contant stream of non-issues being reported.

Everyone would think this is the way we would react, but in reality most people go out of their way to prove that these issues are not exploitable first. He spots them straight away with no pride to get in the way. Very professional.

<comment><USER13> Well, if somebody like lcamtuf tells me there's a vulnerability in my code, I would tend to doubt myself first :)

But I do agree, impressive and professional.

<comment><USER12> I meant to write Chet above of course. Sorry about that. Sometimes there is an edit-link I can click on to fix my mistakes and sometimes it's gone, I never understood why.

<comment><USER14> The edit link goes away after an hour or so of posting the comment.

<comment><USER15> Exactly an hour, in fact: [https://github.com/wting/hackernews/blob/master/news.arc#L11...](https://github.com/wting/hackernews/blob/master/news.arc#L1180)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> here is someone's github that has some sample tests:

[https://github.com/hannob/bashcheck](https://github.com/hannob/bashcheck)

</comment><comment><USER17> In case the site goes down or something, here's a check to see if you're vulnerable:

        foo='() { echo not patched; }' bash -c foo

<comment><USER18>
        If the command shows "not patched", you don't
        have the patch. If it shows "command not found",
        you're good.

(FYI; I thought "command not found" meant that the test code was malformed.)

</comment></comment><comment><USER19> For homebrew:

        cd $(brew --repository)
        git remote add krishicks email@example.com:krishicks/homebrew.git
        git fetch krishicks bash
        git checkout krishicks/bash
        brew upgrade bash

I've opened a PR: [https://github.com/Homebrew/homebrew/pull/32753](https://github.com/Homebrew/homebrew/pull/32753)

</comment><comment><USER20> Thank you God for Florian Weimer! Now that reason has prevailed over this insanity [1][2] I can sleep well again.

1\. [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8368272](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8368272) 2\. [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8368676](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8368676)

</comment><comment><USER21> Does this unofficial patch work with a source code compile of bash 4.3 and patches 001 to 026? (Does this patch work on 4.3? Does this patch need to go on top of 025 and 026, or do I need to omit 025 and 026, or some other approach?) Thanks for advice -- much appreciated!

<comment> f- It should work on top of the original patch with 4.3. Don't omit 025.

</comment></comment><comment><USER22> Must say I'm rather hesitant to recompile it myself with some code someone suggests will "harden" it somehow. If it's a good patch, why wouldn't it be included in the repositories? Or will it, but it probably takes a few days?

Edit: To clarify, after recompiling I would need to manually update it in the future (or switch back to the repositories once they include it). Applying this patch is not a apply-and-forget action. I don't really see the value of applying it myself, especially when I don't connect to public/company/school networks during the weekend.

<comment><USER23> Florian (the author of the new patch) is from Redhat - not just a random internet stranger.

<comment><USER22> So then surely Mint's (or Ubuntu's) team will include it in the repositories?

<comment><USER24> AFAIK, Florian Weimer is also in the Debian security team.

<comment><USER25> Not that this a good qualification. Being the redhat bash maintainer and member of the redhat security team is one.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> I have a proposal. As an alternative to #!/bin/program I propose that

        #!program

is executed by using a program at a known location (or perhaps by following a system defined internal `PATH`) with a system cleaned or defined environment (e.g. PATH=/bin:/usr/bin and a TERM matching [a-zA-Z0-9-]+

This would fix a lot of this shellshock nonsense and also be a better alternative to the #!/bin/env hack for finding programs at different locations on different systems.

Programs should use args for communicating.

Extended syntax for programs to declare that they really need certain environment variables:

        #!program env=WHITELIST OF ENV VARS ALLOWED

<comment><USER26> This would have done nothing to prevent shellshock; placing user submitted data placed in ENVVARs is 'working as intended' for CGI, DCHPCP, etc.

<comment><USER11> Yes, with the whitelist (any whitelist) it would not have stopped shellshock. But having a whitelist would at least make them think about what they use which might help prevent other vulnerabilities.

I could propose that the whitelist be parsed before handing to any program. But that would be putting a potentially expensive and difficult job in a higher privileged place.

I think the rest is worth considering though.</comment></comment></comment>


Are 529 plans another force to drive up college tuitions? - <AUTHOR> http://www.cnbc.com/id/102447322?__source=yahoo%7cfinance%7cheadline%7cheadline%7cstory&par=yahoo&doc=102447322#.

<comment><USER2> "Government's support is driving up college tuitions" is a great sound byte. But it is not that simple.

This book provides fascinating analysis on the rising costs of college.

The primary reason is: 1) wage skilled labor has been rising at the same rate

Followed by fun but less influential secondary reasons: 2) college provide more amenities now. eg having to hire entire IT departments 3) Engaged in arms race to protect its rankings

[http://www.gatesnotes.com/Books/Why-Does-College-Cost-So- Muc...](http://www.gatesnotes.com/Books/Why-Does-College-Cost-So-Much)</comment>


Hulu begins encrypting HTML content to thwart non-browser apps - <AUTHOR> http://www.engadget.com/2009/04/01/hulu-begins-encrypting-html-content-to-thwart-non-browser-apps/

<comment><USER2> _HTML is now encrypted at the source and then decrypted using Javascript on the client_

That is obfuscation, not encryption.

When you provide a function capable of 'decrypting' the ciphertext with the ciphertext, I don't really think it can be called encryption anymore. It's kind of like saying: email@example.com is encrypted ...

If it's just Javascript, this should be pretty easy to fix (technically at least), right? I don't know the details of boxee's architecture, but there are plenty of free Javascript engines.

<comment><USER3> Yes, what a brilliant idea. "We'll encrypt our content using a standardized language which by definition runs on several open source platforms. That ought to trump those user agents."

</comment></comment><comment><AUTHOR> This is clearly a response to Boxee, and I think Hulu will continue to try to block Boxee using technical and/or legal means. It's not in the interest of Hulu or the studios/networks to cooperate with Boxee. The Boxee approach significantly weakens Hulu's position. The only alternative to a legal/technical block is an acquisition or formal partnership, but there are a number of issues with such an approach, including the acquisition price ($6-8 mil min given Boxee's recent $4 mil financing), the fact that another startup could emerge and use Hulu's RSS feeds, etc.

</comment><comment><USER4> Wow, because you can't just run the code using Spidermonkey to get the source!

</comment><comment><USER5> Meanwhile Plex just launches a copy of Safari (I'm simplifying the process here) to get around any limitations. It's awesome.</comment>


Diamond Foundry launches lab-grown diamonds - <AUTHOR> https://medium.com/@DiamondFoundry/introducing-the-ultimate-diamond-621e1d29a4a0 <comment><USER2> Similar to dairy farmers and milk, when will incumbent diamond companies lay claim to the word "diamond" and sue to have them use a different name?

</comment><comment><USER3> boo for forcing an account sign up or facebook login to view</comment>


Why my car cost more than taking Uber everywhere - <AUTHOR> http://da-data.blogspot.com/2015/06/why-my-car-cost-more-than-taking-uber.html

<comment><USER2> 900 miles per year... You definitely don't need a car at 900 miles per year. Get zipcar or rent a car when you occasionally need it.

</comment><comment><USER3> Try buying a _used_ car! I've had a 1992 GM car for 18 years. It runs great, gets OK mileage and repairs are ridiculously cheap. Only downside: soon it will become a "classic car" and I'll have to pay more for insurance. See

[http://www.daveramsey.com/blog/saying-no-to-new- cars/](http://www.daveramsey.com/blog/saying-no-to-new-cars/)</comment>


On Iteration and Recursion [pdf] - <AUTHOR> https://www.cs.utexas.edu/users/EWD/ewd08xx/EWD820.PDF <comment><USER2> Five hand-written pages and no scratch-outs or corrections. And maybe I'm wrong but I'm pretty sure this wasn't the Nth draft. I don't doubt that he just sat down and wrote it out in one go.

(It's so impressive it's almost galling. He makes me feel just a little like Salieri, of Mozart.) [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Amadeus_(film)](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Amadeus_\(film\))

<comment><USER3> EWD almost certainly wrote these on transparent film, because he gave his lectures on overhead projectors. Such film allows easy correction of mistakes because overhead projector markers are water-soluble.

<comment><USER2> Ah! Now that you mention it I see what you mean. Whew! That must be it. Thanks!

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> > the syntax for natural numbers, for which there are at least three forms

No, this incorrect[0]; consider the number 102, which under the second parse rule yields first the natural number 2, to which a zero is prepended, giving 02, aka... 2; prepending a 1 then produces 12, which is clearly wrong. The third rule has the same problem, nondeterministicly. Only the first rule is correct, producing 1,10,102, by successive multiplication by ten and addition of intermediate digits.

This is similar to defining subtraction with:

      sum ::= term
      sum ::= term '-' sum

it may happen to match the same strings, but parsing "1-2-3" as 1-(2-3) produces 2 rather than -4.

It's not clear that chop shares this problem, but personally I would much prefer:

      chop 0 x = x
      chop (S n) (p:q) = chop n q

0: or least, you'd need two forms other than the ones provided for "at least three" to be true

<comment><USER5> the string '02' is not the same as '2'. I'm not sure I see a problem with the syntax grammar in parsing the string '102'.

<comment><USER4> And the string "2-3" is not the same as "-1"; that doesn't make `sum ::= term '-' sum` correct.

<comment><USER5> concatenation is associative while subtraction is left-associative. you're getting yourself in trouble defining subtraction in that way.

<comment><USER4> > concatenation is associative while subtraction is left-associative

Yes, exactly my point: `sum ::= term '-' sum` is right-associative, and therefore _not_ a correct syntax for subtraction. Similarly, place-value notation[0] is left-associative, so `nat ::= digit | digit nat`, which is right-associative, is not a valid grammer for a place-value-notation natural number.

0: well, big-endian place-value notation, which is what we're talking about here

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> (1982), see last page</comment>


Show HN: I built an Android game - <AUTHOR> https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.scl <comment><AUTHOR> I built this (using libGDX) having bought Andreas Oehlke's book [1], which I found very useful. I'd used libgdx before to make a simple snake game, but somehow Andreas made things a lot clearer for me. What's particularly good is that he gives the full source code to a game (a side-scrolling jump/run game).

My design skills are awful, but using Inkscape [2] I was able to come up with something half-decent (according to my friends, assuming they're not just humoring me). I found Derek Banas' youtube tutorials [3] very handy for learning how to use Inkscape.

Incidentally, one very useful tip I found (can't remember where, maybe stackoverflow) is that you must avoid creating any new objects during the render() method (ie during the game), because you'll get unpredictable garbage collection, making the game pause at random intervals. A handy way to check you haven't missed anything is to put a breakpoint in the Object class constructor in android.jar. If it gets hit during play when running in debug mode on a real device, then you're creating an object when you shouldn't be.

Feedback / suggestions on this game very welcome. Thanks!

[1] [http://www.packtpub.com/learning-libgdx-game- development/boo...](http://www.packtpub.com/learning-libgdx-game- development/book) [2] [http://www.inkscape.org](http://www.inkscape.org) [3] [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zUIOEXssTSE](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zUIOEXssTSE)

<comment><USER2> It's always nice to hear these libraries and people get a mention around here. I have been fortunate enough to have worked with both Mario/Nate of libGDX, and Andreas (the book). LibGDX really is a fantastic project. I've spent 3 years with it every working day.

I see a bright future too. For the best part of the last 12 months, a team of us have been working on a very complex game. Just the other week; using an outdated (pre-RoboVM), bastardized fork of libGDX, it took me a grand total of 3 hours (and I had never attempted it before) to merge in the RoboVM changes, install RoboVM on my system, fix a couple of bugs; then had the whole thing running flawlessly on the iOS simulator, iPhone and iPad. It runs faster than our native (albeit, Objective-C) iOS version of the game.

I couldn't recommend a better set of tools. I have a lot of respect for the contributors.

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> I don't like the graphics (I haven't installed the game, just looking from the screenshots).

The graphics look like it was something created in 2002 using Paint Shop Pro.

I'm not a designer, but in order for me to install a game, the design needs to look appealing.

</comment><comment><USER4> I feel the game is missing an exit option.

<comment><USER5> Oof, yeah, overriding the back button so heavily is really bad.

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> The difficulty needs to ramp up significantly quicker (does it even ramp up at all?).

Make the tutorial a single page.

</comment><comment><USER7> Nice little game, if anyone wants to upgrade to silver you can use my code:NRtZCAa7

<comment><USER8> Clever two-tiered upgrade system.

You can upgrade to silver using someone else's code. But to upgrade to gold, you need someone to upgrade to silver using your code.

The forced ad impressions are very annoying though.

<comment><USER9> Yeah. I want gold now though so here is my code NAT6rw96 :)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> What's the upgrade code? :D

<comment><USER11> PZ4cp7fy

</comment></comment><comment><USER12> Here's a code: GFt3JRxr

</comment><comment><USER13> Got any gameplay videos?</comment>


Ask HN: Has anybody else had issues playing YouTube videos in Firefox? - <AUTHOR> It's happening more and more frequently that once I go to a YouTube video page, I get the error "An error occurred. Please try again later.". When the issue happens, it's reproducible with all YouTube videos. Switching to Chromium fixes the problem. Although MPV with youtube-dl integration works even better. <comment><USER2> The only minor annoyance I have is that I put a video on fullscreen, it takes a second or so. First the frame resizes and then the picture, doesn't happen with chromium/chrome.

</comment><comment><USER3> I got the error with chrome several days ago but im seeing less of it now.</comment>


Show HN: JPipe – sed/awk using js expressions - <AUTHOR> https://github.com/sharafian/jpipe <comment><USER2> Some time ago I tried writing a terminal environment that would fit better for people familiar with JS and Python. I failed miserably, but I still think it would be a good idea.

[http://xon.sh/](http://xon.sh/) is something related, but my idea was to make more interesting use of pipes, like passing structured data.

</comment><comment><USER2> Good to have these things. See also [https://github.com/Russell91/pythonpy](https://github.com/Russell91/pythonpy) and [https://github.com/alecthomas/pawk](https://github.com/alecthomas/pawk)</comment>


A Solution to Too Much Email (funny comic) - <AUTHOR> http://community.livejournal.com/pearlswine/354882.html <comment><AUTHOR> I normally wouldn't post this here, but I thought it was funny (and slightly on topic) in light of people saying (they get thousands of emails a day|friendfeed is too noisy|etc).</comment>


Fighting spam with pure functions - <AUTHOR> https://www.facebook.com/notes/facebook-engineering/fighting-spam-with-pure-functions/10151254986618920

<comment><USER2> it's nice, and i don't want to be that guy, but surely this screams out to be implemented in lisp unless the type system (not mentioned here) is important (and i'm not a lisp hacker!). or maybe they have separate teams developing and using the language and purposefully want to expose a limited interface to the users?

in short: why a new language rather than extending a language that loves to be extended?

maybe they want to exclude mutable state totally? even then, wouldn't it be easier to hide the relevant special forms?

<comment><USER3> Hi. Author here.

> and i don't want to be that guy,

Nah. Be that guy. They are all valid questions.

> unless the type system (not mentioned here)

I had bits in about the type system but it got cut cause, well, it was too long. It has static types, (not many, the basic types required to parse json) plus first order functions. There are no user defined types beyond ad-hoc via maps/vectors. And it has "strong" typing and does type inference.

> but surely this screams out to be implemented in lisp

One of the reasons this developed into its own language is historical. It started off very, very simple and slowly evolved into a domain-specific language. But there are a set of design requirements that complicate the situation: 1) easy to deploy changes and patch running instances (response time is critical), 2) embedding in a service, interoperatibility with the service, and so on.

> want to expose a limited interface to the users?

Yes, indeed. Part of the goal is to make the language as simple as possible for analysts to use. Obviously you need to be technical to some degree to write in a functional language, but we were trying to make it a business-logic layer on top of the infra.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> I love the approach you took with halting I/O operations until they can be all batched later. Could this be done in other languages, say JS? I know Python has yield, but I wonder how one could batch all Ajax queries during pageload of dashboards using this pattern.

</comment><comment><USER5> Interesting, but would be nice to hear why they're _writing rules_ to catch this, rather than (or on top of) taking the Bayesian route (as in pg's 'Plan for Spam'[1]).

1\. <http://www.paulgraham.com/spam.html>

<comment><USER6> Cow-orker of ldbrandy (and nbm!) here, and one of the clients of FXL. We definitely make use of machine-learned models to catch some kinds of spam. They're good at keeping old attacks at bay, and some are pretty good at catching new attacks before they have a chance to evolve.

But any time we get good enough at catching an attack on a given channel, the attackers will switch to a different one - often times one where we haven't seen abuse before, and maybe don't have much good training data. In this case, it takes time to gather the right data and train new models, whereas analysts and engineers can do a reasonable job of stopping the attack in a faster timeframe.

Though interesting, all of this is somewhat orthogonal to what this article is about, though. FXL is the way we define features that are fed into classifiers, and its engine does all the data-fetching necessary to get the values of those features for classification. It also works for just putting rules on top of or next to the ML.

</comment></comment><comment><USER7> I'm also wondering the same thing as others. What specifically made it worthwhile to make this a separate language, as opposed to a domain-specific language implemented on top of an existing language with an existing ecosystem? You could even enforce the usage of only a subset of the base language if you really wanted.

</comment><comment><USER8> That's why Simon Marlow was hired by Facebook, to develop that language?

</comment><comment><USER9> Short circuiting AND isn't a very good example of the advantages of pure functions. Most languages, including those heavily based on mutation (e.g. C and its descendants), do this.</comment>


Show HN: Hacked Hacker News - new comment highlighting and keyboard navigation - <AUTHOR> https://github.com/j-clark/hacked_hacker_news

<comment><AUTHOR> I created this based on how difficult I found it to be to follow conversations here, especially long ones. It's always been fairly easy to keep track of replies to your own comments, but if you haven't commented in a thread or subthread, you're basically stuck counting timestamps. Since I've gotten it working it's made the browsing experience better. Please report any issues here or on github.

<comment><USER2> Great extension, I'll definitely be using it. If I can suggest something, I think it would be better to bold the unread comments (in the home page) only if you've actually open the link or read the previous comments. Otherwise it adds a lot of distraction on the page, and the bold links don't tell me whether I cared or didn't care about the associated news.

<comment><USER3> On that note I suggest that the UI should have the following three "states":

1/ New article, never read:

        22 comments

I know that they are all unread, don't need to tell me.

2/ Visited article

        25 comments (3 unread)

This is nicer IMHO than having another | separator. The 3 unread could be bold as it is now.

3/ Visited and all read:

        25 comments (0 unread)

But this time 0 unread does not need to be bold.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> I like the way that comments become "read" as you move through them with the shortcut keys.

But I prefer the simple orange line highlight that the hckrnews.com extension and (shameless plug) the Hacker News Enhancement Suite [0] use. Your variable width grey highlight becomes looks very chaotic.

[0] [https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/hacker-news- enhanc...](https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/hacker-news- enhancement-s/bappiabcodbpphnojdiaddhnilfnjmpm)

<comment><AUTHOR> I agree that the style in your link is cleaner looking. I don't have a very good sense for how to make things look nice. I might clean it up a bit because my goal is to keep HN simplistic but just add the few features that I've been itching for. I hadn't seen your before, though. It looks nice.

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> Very cool, I've tried lots of other HN reader-type things, and this one is my favorite. Very unobtrusive, but solves some major pain points.

</comment><comment><USER3> Very cool! I wish I had that last week when I was scrambling to reply to comments... (I used text search the page for "minute" and "minutes" but that not very efficient...)

Bonus if you adapt the script to reddit -- the same problem of not knowing which comments are new exists (except for top level comments which can be seen if you sort by new).

<comment><USER6> I would expect RES (Reddit enhancement suite) to support these features already. (I don't personally use it, but others can probably vouch).

<comment><USER7> reddit gold has that feature.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> I like this a lot. Just one small issue:

The default background color for new comments seems too dark for me--the contrast is low enough that new comments are more difficult to read than previously read ones. What about making the background for new comments _lighter_ than the HN default?

</comment><comment><USER9> Nice. The infinite scroll doesn't start until the second page though. Is this deliberate?

<comment><USER9> OK when I hit 'back' from this page then go 'more' it works.

<comment><AUTHOR> It's currently working for me. Maybe you were just too fast and hit it before domready had fired? Let me know if you have any more issues with it.

<comment><USER9> Seems to be working now thanks. Not sure how domready works, how do you tell?

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> Is there any sort of directory for Hacker News skins/mods/hacks? I feel like there is probably a more efficient way for me to view Hacker News, but I've found no convenient way to compare the different options.

</comment><comment><USER11> Nice! Without having tried this, does the infinite scroll get around the 'unknown link' error when you wait too long to hit the Next Page link?

<comment><AUTHOR> It doesn't. The best solution for that that I could think of was to re-GET the current page and pull the new link out of it, but I'm nervous about doing that since HN is so sensitive about HTTP requests being made in rapid succession[1].

[1] <http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4981907>

<comment><USER11> Fair enough, still like the extension. That said, I can't seem to get infinite scroll working on the home page / or /news, maybe because of HTTPS?

EDIT: Never mind, you click the More and it puts them on the current page. I thought it was done automatically when you scroll down. Good stuff!

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> Works great on OSX ML. Anything similar for Firefox ?, I just prefer that to Chrome (FF esp with Pentadactyl).

<comment><AUTHOR> If there ends up being enough interest, I'll support FF and Safari.

<comment><USER12> I believe FF is heavily used in the HN community.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> I get an error message when trying to install: "Manifest file is invalid."

Chrome stable, Mac Mountain Lion.

<comment><AUTHOR> I've uninstalled and reinstalled a couple times on Mac and a Windows VM without getting that message. I know Google checks the manifest file on upload for validity, but I've seen reports[1] of seemingly random installation failures. Have it happened more than once?

[1] <http://code.google.com/p/chromium/issues/detail?id=103281>

<comment><USER13> Yes, more than once, but I tried again just now and it worked fine. Thanks!

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> Will be very handy! Good job. I wonder why it isn't part of HN already. Would love to use it on my Firefox.

</comment><comment><USER15> The unread counts don't work for me on OS X Chrome 23.0.1271.101 .

<comment><AUTHOR> I've got the same setup as you. Are they wrong or just not showing? Console errors?

<comment><USER15> No console errors, just not showing. Let me know if there is anything I can send to help debug.

Also, not sure if this is by design, but after I post an in-place reply, I have to reload the page to see my post. However, upon editing a post, the page reloads immediately. I didn't see any error in the console.

<comment><AUTHOR> I was conflicted about whether or not to update new comments inline or force a page refresh. So the behavior with the comments is intentional. I may end up changing it if it's confusing.

As for the other problem, I'm confused about why that's the only thing not working. Are you running any other extensions that could be conflicting?

<comment><USER15> Makes enough sense re: problem #1. Re: the unread counts not showing up, this still occurs for me even when Hacked Hacker News is the only enabled extension.

 _EDIT_ : I have no idea why, but as I was hammer-clicking on the Hacker News main button, all of a sudden the unread counts started to appear. I wonder if there was some cache issue or something such as that.</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment>


Good News and Bad News about Covid-19 Misinformation - <AUTHOR> https://blogs.scientificamerican.com/observations/good-news-and-bad-news-about-covid-19-misinformation/ <comment><USER2> So I guess Scientific American also joined political bias? Should have expected that, but it's a bit sad.</comment>


Did Blockchain Become Obsolete? Demystifying Hashgraph: Benefits and Challenges - <AUTHOR> https://medium.com/@jiayaoqijia/demystifying-hashgraph-benefits-and-challenges-d605e5c0cee5 <comment><USER2> This is an extraordinary claim. VISA can do 24,000 transactions per second (TPS) Hashgraph is claiming more the ten-times that number.

<comment><AUTHOR> Basically, it is unfair to compare permissioned blockchain to public blockchains.</comment></comment>


Science and Trans-Science by Alvin Weinberg (1972) [pdf] - <AUTHOR> https://science.sciencemag.org/content/sci/177/4045/211.full.pdf <comment><AUTHOR> Alvin Weinberg (a Manhattan Project scientist and later the director of Oak Ridge National Lab), speaks on trans-science in a way that anticipates some of the discussion we're having on climate change.

> But when what we do transcends science and impinges on the public, we have > no choice but to welcome public participation. Such participation by the > uninitiated in matters that have both scientific and trans-scientific > elements may pose some threat to the integrity of the republic of science. > In my mind, however, this is a lesser thread than is the threat to our > democratic process that would be posed by excluding the public from > participation in trans-scientific debate.</comment>


Springsource acquired by VMWare - <AUTHOR> http://blog.springsource.com/2009/08/10/springsource-chapter-two/

<comment><AUTHOR> Interesting to see what will happen to the open source community around spring source?</comment>


Show HN: ShareQuick – Send stuff from your desktop browser to mobile apps - <AUTHOR> http://share-quick.com/?ref=shn <comment><USER2> This is pretty much the same as DeskConnect for Android but as a Chrome Extension [http://deskconnect.com/](http://deskconnect.com/)

<comment><AUTHOR> It does offer some of the same features, but Deskconnect is just for iOS and Mac specifically.

ShareQuick works with any desktop OS that has the Chrome browser, and it works with Android.

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> Definitely more useful than Pushbullet. I'm a big whatsapp sharer, and often see a lot of pictures online i'd love sharing on whatsapp to discuss.

<comment><AUTHOR> We are glad you liked it! Our aim was to simplify things even further :)

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> This is really nice. It's very easy to set up, and it just works!

(BTW I'm not sure why the Android app requires access to see who is in my circles.)

<comment><AUTHOR> Glad you liked it! We will be fixing that with the next update :)

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> This is essentially what I use PushBullet for. I'll definitely give it a try. Thanks!

<comment><AUTHOR> The difference is that you can directly choose a specific app to share stuff with. Thanks for trying!</comment></comment>


Ask HN: If money wasn't a problem, which Masters or PhD degree would you choose? - <AUTHOR> And why would you choose it... <comment><USER2> Neither. No interest in obtaining a degree. If there's a topic of interest, I'd study it without a degree. At most take relevant courses.

</comment><comment><USER3> It depends. May I purchase the degree outright or do I actually have to do the work?

<comment><AUTHOR> You have to do the work :)</comment></comment>


LuaPort: An erlang port for scripting application logic in lua (MIT; v1.0.0) - <AUTHOR> https://github.com/asciibeats/luaport <comment><AUTHOR> Hey guys, i just released v1.0.0. Since the port runs outside of erlangs safety net, every bit of help is especially appreciated to make it as rock solid as it can be. I have no plans to add features/complexity from now on and will be concentrating on fixes. Thanks for reading, have a great day!</comment>


Lahaina Noon - <AUTHOR> https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lahaina_Noon <comment><USER2> Does not seem to be trademarked ;-)</comment>


Stand up against the stand-up - <AUTHOR> https://techcrunch.com/2016/08/06/stand-up-against-the-stand-up/ <comment><USER2> I'm intrigued by the idea of replacing the "stand up" with the "check in". Especially, as the author of TFA says, when you have distributed teams, or teams where work hours don't always coincide.

I'd pitch it at my $DAYJOB, but I have a gut feeling I know how this idea would be received. We're pretty locked into Cargo Cult Agile here, and I don't see a lot of receptiveness to change. _sigh_</comment>