Trump threatens to cut UC Berkeley funds over Milo cancellation - <AUTHOR> http://www.nydailynews.com/news/politics/trump-threatens-cut-uc-berkeley-funds-milo-cancellation-article-1.2962183 <comment><USER2> This move actually has "Yuge" implications, when we consider the context: apparently satisfied with his success in laying down his agenda in broad strokes, as he did in the first few days after assuming power -- he's now attempting to micromanage; or more simply stated, outright bully all (perceived) opposition into submission -- at about the smallest scale the federal government could possibly be concerned with. Which has always been one of the defining characteristics of malignant autocrats (as opposed to arrogant jerks who happen to find themselves in the seat of power) throughout history.

More context from the Daily Californian, FWIW:

[http://www.dailycal.org/2017/02/02/trump-condemns-uc- berkele...](http://www.dailycal.org/2017/02/02/trump-condemns-uc-berkeley- protests-threatens-federal-funding-cut/)

<comment><USER3> That's one way to spin it. I think he's more likely trying to get people to notice that Berkeley students effectively suppressed Milo's freedom of speech. By saying something controversial, it prevents the story from being buried so quickly, as the leftist MSM loves to do.

<comment><USER2> _I think he 's more likely trying to get people to notice that Berkeley students effectively suppressed Milo's freedom of speech._

He isn't just "trying to get people to notice"; he's blatantly threatening to cut off their very lifeblood if they don't jump up and do exactly what he says at the snap of his fingers.

Do you see the distinction?

<comment><USER3> I don't see how you reached that conclusion.

He's written about this in his book. He exaggerates and says something controversial in order to get people talking about things they'd otherwise like to ignore. Why isn't this a possibility in your mind, here?

<comment><USER2> He should stick to writing books (through ghostwriters) then. When issued from the seat of power, statements such as these take on an entirely different character. If he isn't aware (or doesn't appreciate the significance) of such distinctions -- and how much real chaos, and pure and utter waste these, and similar statements generate -- then clearly, this just isn't the right job for him.

<comment><USER3> What "chaos" and what "waste" do these statements generate?

Here is a man fighting against nearly the entirety of the news media which control the main communication channels. If he's not supposed to use misdirection and hyperbole to fight back, how can he possibly expect to get his side of the story out there?

<comment><USER2> _If he 's not supposed to use misdirection and hyperbole to fight back, how can he possibly expect to get his side of the story out there?_

Beats me. But at least we agree as to the basic nutshell description of his standard communication technique.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> Previous thread, currently flagged for some reason: [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13552197](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13552197)

</comment><comment><USER5> You mean "put the question in the public domain for discussion" :

"If U.C. Berkeley does not allow free speech and practices violence on innocent people with a different point of view - NO FEDERAL FUNDS?"</comment>


Sophia: A modern embeddable key-value database – v1.2.2 released - <AUTHOR> http://sphia.org/index.html <comment><USER2> There seems to be a lot of embedded KV store already, and SQLite is pretty much the defacto embedded relational DB. Is there a good embedded Graph DB around? Specifically, a embedded property graph DB. Hypergraphdb is embeddable, but it's not property graph, and while neo4j has an embedded version, I don't think it works for non-java use case.

<comment><USER3> There are a lot of platform specific solutions (neo4j, networkx, Core Data, etc) but I'm not aware of a generalized solution. I would like to know this too, because I'm often constrained to certain languages/platforms but would like to use something like neo4j.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> Be sure to checkout Tarantool[1]; it uses Sophia for on-disk databases

[1] [http://www.tarantool.org](http://www.tarantool.org)

<comment><USER5> Never heard about it before, it looks interesting.

      > Tarantool combines the network programming power of Node.JS with data persitence capabilities of Redis.

Is that sarcasm? I can't tell.

<comment><USER6> I don't think so.

Tarantool uses an async evented IO model, but uses Lua coroutines and not Javascript. There are not callbacks, just 'yield points'.

Also, the primary data store backend is an in-memory database with optional 'snapshoting' to disk. An alternative backend uses sophia, so it's not 100% in memory.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> Does anyone have recommendations on a constant DB optimized for sequential integer keys? Running LZ4 over things is cool, but using delta encoding or more clever schemes, you can work right on the compressed key data. (And even more fun if the value is also just a restricted set of integers, like an inverted index.)

<comment><USER8> LMDB has optimized support for integer keys, as well as for sequentially sorted data. [http://symas.com/mdb/doc/](http://symas.com/mdb/doc/)

</comment></comment><comment><USER9> comparisons to kyoto cabinet, leveldb, and rocksdb (on features, maturity, and performance) would be great if anyone has any to share.

<comment><USER10> also add lmdb/boltdb to that list. there seems to be a convergence around a certain feature-set for embeddable key/value stores: MVCC semantics and ordered keys.

</comment></comment><comment><USER11> Just to be clear, does embeddable have a specific meaning here? I'm a firmware developer, often writing code for small CPUs and microcontrollers. Does this apply? It seems like here "embeddable" means it can be compiled into an app, as opposed to getting accessed through a server. Is that correct? Thank you.

<comment><USER12> _It seems like here "embeddable" means it can be compiled into an app, as opposed to getting accessed through a server. Is that correct?_

Yes

whether or not it is a good fit for small CPUs and microcontrollers is another characteristic that I can't comment on.

<comment><USER8> (since LMDB has been mentioned in this thread... LMDB is embeddable in every sense of the word. It can work with as little as 64KB of memory and is already deployed in a number of MCU-based products. Unfortunately I don't have permission to name names.)

<comment><USER13> Is LMDB running on any operating systems that do not offer mmap support?

<comment><USER8> Not currently. That's kind of a fundamental component of LMDB's design.

<comment><USER13> Thanks. That makes your comment about MCU-based systems that much more intriguing. :)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment> vezzy-fnord Since we're throwing around names here, depending on your use case something as simple as cdb can be amazing: [http://cr.yp.to/cdb.html](http://cr.yp.to/cdb.html)

</comment><comment><USER14> @pmwkee: [http://sphia.org/pv12.html](http://sphia.org/pv12.html) doesn't tell us the scaling characteristics. The cited performance page is DB at steady state of 6.0M keys. how does it behave under dynamic load? Various scenarios to help your potential users determine if the software is a good fit for their use-case, would be helpful.

Glanced at the code and the arch doc. Looks promising and shows careful crafting. Well done!

</comment><comment><USER15> Cool! I was looking for a simple key-value alternative for SQLite3 and was going to use redislite[1]. But this is perfect, I think it has the potential to replace SQLite3.

[1][https://github.com/seppo0010/redislite](https://github.com/seppo0010/redislite)

<comment><USER16> SQLite4 is being designed as a key-value alternative to SQLite3[1]. SQLite3 and SQLite4 are meant for different use-cases and are expected to co-exist. Unfortunately, SQLite4 hasn't yet been released, but wanted to let you know that the SQLite developers are actively working on addressing the need for an embedded key-value store with SQLite4.

[1] [https://sqlite.org/src4/doc/trunk/www/design.wiki](https://sqlite.org/src4/doc/trunk/www/design.wiki)

</comment></comment><comment><USER17> _BSD licensed and implemented as small C-written library with zero dependencies._

What's not to like...

</comment><comment><USER18> So why not BerkleyDB? I couldn't find a comparison to the old standard on the site (granted did just a cursory glance).

<comment><USER19> Why BerkleyDB?

BerkleyDB is now AGPL3[0], which some projects have a problem with. (Of course, you can buy a commercial license. Some projects have a problem with that too).

But the main reason, almost regardless of context, as to "why not BerkleyDB" is LMDB[1]. It works way better than everything else, in just about every practical use that has more reads than writes.

The only downside as far as I can tell, is that right now it relies on memory mapping the entire database, so you're limited to ~1GB overall database size on 32 bit systems. There is no practical limit on 64 bit systems. Also, I recall Howard Chu (main LMDB developer) mentioned that in the near future LMDB will gain the ability to manage memory manually - thus removing this restriction as well (for a performance price if used this way).

[0] [http://www.oracle.com/technetwork/database/database- technolo...](http://www.oracle.com/technetwork/database/database- technologies/berkeleydb/downloads/oslicense-093458.html)

[1] [http://symas.com/mdb/](http://symas.com/mdb/)

<comment><USER8> The feature for re-mapping on 32bit systems is available here [https://gitorious.org/mdb/mdb/source/69d7cb8d44e04f02d8d0c92...](https://gitorious.org/mdb/mdb/source/69d7cb8d44e04f02d8d0c923ae71fbaaa9f42f3a):

<comment><USER19> When will it be merged to the mainline? (or is it already there?) Will it eventually be a run-time option, or always a compile time option?

The latest reference I can find is [http://www.openldap.org/lists/openldap- devel/201410/msg00001...](http://www.openldap.org/lists/openldap- devel/201410/msg00001.html) \- were the problems solved?

Thanks for LMDB. It is awesome.

<comment><USER8> It still needs heavier testing before going to mainline. I expect it will only ever be a compile-time option. On 64bit it's pointless, and 32bit is going the way of the dodo.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER20> This looks very promising. The code is very clean and optimization is taken into consideration.

</comment><comment><USER21> Also, what exactly is a database traversal? Is it a random read benchmark? If so, what is the distribution - uniform, zipf, or something else?

</comment><comment><USER22> What's going on with that logo? It is completely illegible.</comment>


Sweden students riot over Instagram sex insults page - <AUTHOR> http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-europe-20774640

<comment><USER2> Do we need a new term for these? Like "Insta-mob" or "Privacy mob"?

I guess one good thing has come out of this...</comment>


Wow Signal – 30th Anniversary Report - <AUTHOR> http://www.bigear.org/Wow30th/wow30th.htm#hind <comment><AUTHOR> This was from the "Big Ear" radiotelescope at Ohio State, run by John Kraus, author of the textbook "Electromagnetics" and a ham radio operator W8JK. It was one of the textbooks in my EE curriculum. Several years after i graduated, I found myself in Ann Arbor and stumbled in to the University of Michigan Amateur Radio Club. Some of the members were top-notch contesters. One of the contests that was run when I was there was the 160 meter contest. W8UM had always placed pretty well, but the Ohio State club kinda beat everyone. They used the football-sized reflective base of the Big Ear with a balloon (actually a kitoon) to hold up the vertical. Huge signal.

Turns out that in order to let the club use that structure, JK used them to do a bunch of cleanup around this massive structure.

The year that I was part of the UM team, we got permission to use an old AM radio tower in disuse and did pretty well ourselves. Much fun.</comment>


Every project is a startup - <AUTHOR> http://www.threeriversinstitute.org/blog/?p=305

<comment><USER2> I'm working on a startup-like project within a very large company. A couple of trends I've seen:

\- Unless you can show that your project will make the company more money in the first couple years than putting it into the bank it's a no go. We're told that it's cheaper to wait for another small company to succeed and then just go and buy that.

\- We have IP, great labs, technicians and vendor relations for the technologies we're in already but it's hard to expand into totally new areas because we wouldn't be utilizing the existing resources. The usual answer is outsourcing but it's very hard to find good help when you don't quite know what you're doing yet.

\- We had an official innovation funnel for a few years where employee ideas could gain some traction but that approach was abandoned in favor of the few- big-bets approach. I can't honestly say why the funnel failed but after a short while we called it the "funnel of death" since the financial types would never accept the business plans. At some point we tried to keep our side projects out of the funnel hoping we'd get far enough on our own.

We make mostly hardware so we're a lot less nimble than pure SW shops but some of the same trends surely apply.

<comment><AUTHOR> Capital efficiency is certainly important whether you are a HW or SW startup. I'm curious about your comment that "the financial types would never accept the business plans". One of the important features of running a project like a startup is staged financing. First you get $10,000 to explore the needs. If everyone says, "Yes, I'd like something like that," you get $50,000 to build a minimum viable product (something just good enough for an enthusiastic customer to get value from). Then you scale from there. There is never a "business plan" per se, not until you have some data. I'd have the finance types write the business plan once you'd sold a few copies of whatever it is you were planning on making. At least, that's what I think I'd do given that I know almost nothing about your situation :-)

<comment><USER2> It kind of worked like you're describing except that there was very little actual money. In some cases we'd get $10K but most of the time the support was in the form of a tacit agreement to let us work maybe 4-8 hrs/week on a side project and use resources we already had from our day jobs. Once the project was accepted into the funnel, based on a prototype of some sort, you had to come up with a business plan and present the whole thing to a board. The problem was that at our site there were very few actual business people with spare bandwidth so the plans written up by engineers were met with scepticism.

This is probably not unlike what actual startups run into, even after the lessons from the dot-com bust: there's a lot of enthusiasm around the technical ideas but it's hard to convince investors.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER3> Great post. Having worked in large companies, it's difficult to imagine organizations used to massive death march projects adopting this mentality, even if there's a better chance of coming away with viable shipping products.

And in a similar vein, organizations used to large-scale upfront requirements probably aren't even well-positioned to adapt to a new idea that comes out of a failed project. (Think Twitter being born while working on Odeo).

I'd be really interested to hear about examples of large companies that take this approach.

<comment><AUTHOR> I think quite a bit has been written about 3M's innovation approach, which as I mentioned is quite similar to what I'm proposing.</comment></comment>


Snow HN: Choosing a name for your project is hard. This makes it easier. - <AUTHOR> http://project-naming.herokuapp.com/ <comment><USER2> I'm red-green colorblind and the dots are extremely hard to see (at least for me). Any chance you might change them to be further apart in color, or use different colors? Blue and red, for instance, would not cause the same issue for me. Love the idea, though!

<comment><AUTHOR> ah, that's a great point! what're the best colors for indicating success and failure to red-green color blind folks?

<comment><USER3> Any pair of colors except (red, green).

<comment><USER4> Another perspective -- since red and green are _very_ universal colors for success/failure, stop/go, etc., you could also choose to keep the red and green colors but change the dots to a checkmark and X glyph (or similar).

<comment><AUTHOR> Yep, just made this change actually. I agree with the universality of the meaning of red and green. I also liked using those colors since it makes the resulting table much quicker to scan. Changing the marks from circles to useful symbols is probably much better than coming up with arbitrary success/failure colors. Thanks for the tip!

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> Couldn't you have come up with a better name ;-)

<comment><AUTHOR> haha I built this while trying to find a name for another project I'm working on. Didn't want to buy a domain just for this.

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> "Snow HN: ..."

I hate it when people try to pull one over on me, but thanks for at least being honest. I have to admit that you're shooting high since the population of bright individuals is pretty high here.

<comment><AUTHOR> Yah, hadn't noticed the typo until a while after I had posted it. Would love if a moderator would change the title.

<comment><USER6> I never notice until the edit link disappears, then there's a flood of changes that rushes into my head. So I guess I know what you mean.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> A thought: when one of the roll-your-own prefix/suffix boxes are filled out, a new one should appear. Great tool!

</comment><comment><USER8> Noticed some console.log statements in the .html source. Isn't this invalid for internet explorer? It would probably stop execution once the error is triggered

<comment><AUTHOR> Yikes, is it really invalid in IE? I left those in cause I was constantly debugging that progress bar, but I'll definitely take them out if they're causing problems for anyone.

</comment></comment><comment><USER9> I like the Twitter and Facebook check but it really needs to take your input and turn that into suggestions not just combinations.

</comment><comment><USER10> "An error occurred in the application and your page could not be served. Please try again in a few moments."

<comment><AUTHOR> Just spun up some more dynos so it should be back up and snappy again!

<comment><USER10> Ok, thanks it's working now. What I was expecting was that it would be more automatic, in terms of automatically checking .cc, .co, ly, and various other common variations.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> Minor bug: the <title> says "Startup Naming".

<comment><AUTHOR> Fixed, thanks!

<comment><USER12> But snow is fine.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> Cool idea.</comment>


Two Years of Voice-Based Assistants, Echo and Home - <AUTHOR> https://da-data.blogspot.com/2016/12/22-months-of-voice-based-assistants.html <comment><USER2> What I need is _natural_ natural language processing to become so good that it just works. I don't respect voice as an input method because I feel uncomfortable using it, since I have to pre plan my question rather than stream consciousness like I will to my family and peers. I want to be able to have this conversation:

"Computer, how much does a.. hmm what's it called.. uhh.. a loud keyboard, what's that called?"

"A mechanical keyboard?"

"Yes. The ones from the.. uh I forget the company name."

"Corsair? Razer?"

"Razer! How much does their newest mechanical keyboard cost?"

"The newest keyboard from Razer is...<etc>"

<comment><USER3> >What I need is natural natural language processing to become so good that it just works.

That's _supernatural_ language processing. You're asking the system to recognize a thought you have in your mind that you can't effectively communicate with words.

The loud keyboard - makes sense. But the company name? My first thought was IBM or Cherry.

I think it can be improved, but I'm never going to expect voice recognition to fill in the blanks for something I can't describe with my voice.

<comment><USER4> Filling in the blanks is something that humans do all the time with conversation. Just the other day I was asking my girl what was the last name of that woman named Susan from Britains Got Talent. Conversation went like this:

Me: Babe, do you remember the last name of Susan from Britains Got Talent?

Her: Susan... kinda...

Me: I think it began with a "B"

Her: Boyle!

Maybe todays systems would understand me if I phrased the question in a context they understand but why bother taking the time. I can just talk to a human.

It'll get interesting though as computers continue to improve.

<comment><USER5> I was curious, so I asked Siri your question: what is the last name of Susan from Britain's got talent? She successfully answered Boyle.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> Children's voices are a surprisingly tough problem in speech recognition. Mostly because there isn't much labeled data with children's voices- ASR follows the trend seen in other deep learning fields of working best for North American adult males.

When children talk, it's a significantly different pitch than any adult (male or female) and their enunciation is usually poor. Being robust to that range requires a ton of data and a very deep neural network. It will definitely be solved earlier on the cloud: don't expect super-adaptable speech recognition to be available on your phone any time soon.

<comment><USER7> There's also a legal/moral question of whether it's ok to capture the speech of children to build better models for this kind of thing.

<comment><USER8> Interesting question, but I'm not sure why it would be any different from monitoring the adults who bought and installed the system. It would be part of the terms of service, I would think. The adults accept this on their behalf. Would there be another interpretation?

<comment><USER7> In the US, COPPA makes it very difficult to legally collect information from children under 13 for commercial purposes.

<comment><USER8> Interesting. Do you know of specifics about COPPA (or COPA) that would apply to this situation?

<comment><USER7> COPA is a piece of dead legislation. COPPA is in effect since 2000.

The big issue recently is that in 2011 the FTC made the rules much stricter about data collection [1]. Parental consent now requires identification checks which are hard. Data retention is also a bit of a mess; guidelines now imply that the data should be deleted as soon as possible.

Morally, I do feel like there's a bit of a question here. Is it ok to have a 6 year old donate her voice to improve your speech recognition product even though she wouldn't directly see a benefit from it?

[1] [http://www.natlawreview.com/article/ftc-will-propose- broader...](http://www.natlawreview.com/article/ftc-will-propose-broader- children-s-online-privacy-safeguards)

<comment><USER9> _Is it ok to have a 6 year old donate her voice to improve your speech recognition product even though she wouldn 't directly see a benefit from it?_

Why couldn't you provide some direct benefit? IIRC that's was the point of Google Voice: provide a free product in exchange of getting people to help them improve voice recognition.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> I'm going to stick my neck out as a potential Luddite here, but outside of playing music, and some general "answering questions", I don't see a use case for things like the Echo or Dot.

Being able to ask for timers, or unit conversions while cooking, is probably the biggest bang-for-the-buck that I get out of Siri.

But outside of that, there's nothing that a Dot does for me that warrants having a microphone in my house that is 24/7 connected to Amazon.

Not having some sort of voice-print analysis is also a real concern. A friend bought an Echo a little while back, and me being me, I couldn't resist the urge to ask it to order 10 large bags of kitty litter... which it cheerfully tried to do.

Maybe I'm just odd. What do other people use these things for?

<comment><USER11> Under your definition, your phone is a 24/7 microphone connected to either Google or Apple, your PC a 24/7 microphone connected to Microsoft and literally every other vendor that has a service running.

The privacy concern is valid, but its also valid for literally every other piece of electronics. At some point you have to trust that it's only recording during the short period after you say "OK Google" and if it were doing something more nefarious someone would figure that out and it'd be huge and damaging news.

These are basically first-generation products. The idea is to improve upon their problems, find where they are useful and where they are not, and step closer to having a real virtual assistant.

<comment><USER12> TL;DR - automate privacy protection in order to serve the uninformed masses of people leaking sensitive data online

We're disclosing more and more private information to assistants, but especially to Facebook, Google and the respective phone company we're using. I think it would be the case to study automatic detection of sensitive information disclosure, in order to place better privacy guards.

I envision a system where the web browser or voice agent would immediately know the sensitiveness level of information we are about to divulge, and route it through anonymous systems or block the leak before it happens.

A database containing our online identities, credit cards, passwords and text run through a topic classifier would make good features for sensitive disclosure protection. It would be the privacy equivalent of antivirus software. Maybe we could have a smart (privacy protecting) web browser and agent.

In the future, people are going to have to convince their personal assistants if they need to disclose any private info to third parties. It's not going to be so easy to collect massive hordes of private data about people. It's just the natural step for privacy, in a world where AI is already being used so much to undermine it. Time to get some AI fighting for our side of the privacy war.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> I'm still ambivalent. I think this tech will end up as another dead end. Playing music by speech is a novelty. I don't see anything really interesting coming from this space.

<comment><USER14> It's way more than playing music by speech. It's looking up stuff, controlling your house, checking restaurant hours, all sorts of functions that would otherwise be fulfilled by a smartphone with less input effort.

Give one of these devices a try, you might be surprised by how much you adapt to them.

<comment><USER15> This. Also, because it's a home device it can just sit there, being used when you need and ignored until you need it again.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> Possibly the coolest thing about the Echo is developing your own skill. If you're comfortable with JavaScript (or, I believe, python or Java) you can really quickly put together a skill, which in development mode only you can use. Their example templates are really clear.

So a lot of this would be easy to set up, if you're willing to do a bit of below-IFTTT type programming. And, since it uses AWS Lambda, your usage is almost certainly going to stay in the free usage zone (you get a comparative ton of compute time for free each month with Lambda).

I'm sure Google has, or will soon have, such a development environment for their device as well.

<comment><AUTHOR> I think it's Actions on Google (but I've never tried it): [https://developers.google.com/actions/](https://developers.google.com/actions/)

It looks like there's a "user friendly" version that's api.ai, and then there's an SDK, and the SDK seems to be node.js based. I'm not clear from reading it if you can do a private version just for your device. I'll have to kick the tires one of these days - thank you!

</comment></comment><comment><USER17> Things like the Amazon Dot and Echo make me extremely uncomfortable. If I had to create some sort of voice assistant it'd have to store voice data locally instead of being on some server somewhere.

<comment><USER18> You can delete all of your voice recordings from Alexa using the companion app.

</comment></comment><comment><USER19> I got a Home for Christmas, now I'm even more excited to try it!

The article doesn't really got into it, but it'd be interesting to know why the authors family now only uses Home vs the Echo previously!

<comment><AUTHOR> The Home did a better job of interpreting requests, mostly. We found that we had to contort ourselves more to get the Echo to do some things. "Play the Nutcracker" \-- no go. Even though it was in our library. "Play tchaikovsky's nutcracker suite" would work, IIRC. The home handled both. Informational requests also worked a bit better on the Home. ("What is a..."). We weren't using any extra skills that we'd miss, so it was a very easy transition.

I wish the Home had the equivalent of the Dot. I wish the Echo had the Home's inference capability.

</comment></comment><comment><USER20> If you're interested in building voice based personalization models, we're going to be tackling this problem. I'd be interested to chat with anyone with experience in this area. Hit me up. :)</comment>


What does Elon Musk have against AI? - <AUTHOR> https://news.alphastreet.com/what-does-elon-musk-have-against-a-i/ <comment><USER2> He gets among other things its power as a rhetorical force multiplier and how it will be used to end democracy and any form of large scale public discourse. Think "individualized con artistry at scale." One person or small group could effectively sit down with every human being on Earth at once and "work on them" one on one using social media and other profile data to change their mind.

It makes me think of the classical religious notion of how demons are constantly whispering to us. We may be on the verge of inventing Satan... to make people click ads. There is something depressingly idiocracy about that. The big evil dictators of the past at least had high minded master plans. This is definitely an example of the banality of evil.

In the future you will not be able to trust anything you haven't met face to face in the flesh. Even then you'd have to perhaps do physical in person key exchanges to communicate electronically. Anything not verified through "physical captcha" could be a demon.

<comment> s-shellfish On one hand I really agree with this, but on the other it's a very good/evil way of looking at things.

Creativity, for instance, comes from chaos. AI, in the case Musk refers to, is supposedly 'ordered opinion', but from my personal experience of consistently interacting with such programs, all it's really done over the long term, is allow me to think about things in different ways.

Humans as individuals are not always so different from AIs. I'd compare an AI to a human on autopilot. Some stuff pushes you off on a path where all the pieces fit and each step seems to be the next one to step to, but I think humans have the ability to reflect on all these patterns, and I think humans have the capacity to become more involved in their own personal thinking direction through the experience of either being intentionally 'pushed', or seeing what they've done in something they no longer have control over. Humans need autonomy, humans need that to have a type of sanity that allows for things like creativity and the personal satisfaction of independently creating from their own essence, to blossom.

I think it's easy to get caught up in doomsday scenarios but simply having the awareness that doomsday can happen can affect the outcome of whether it does or doesn't.</comment></comment>


Show HN: Building a JavaScript Recommendation Engine with Graph Theory - <AUTHOR> https://medium.com/@keithwhor/using-graph-theory-to-build-a-simple-recommendation-engine-in-javascript-ec43394b35a3

<comment><USER2> Any reason you why you wouldn't store edges in a database? Seems like they don't ever change and your constantly recalculating them?

<comment><AUTHOR> In our case, they're already in a database. You can generate them from a simple query. (But there are a ton of rows in some tables. You don't want to query from a SQL database for every graph transaction.) You can save your graph to hard drive, which will save all nodes and edges, but it just represents a cached version of your live data.

Process goes SQL -> Graph (RAM) <-> Cache (Storage).

Cache is for if / when the server reboots, so you can load the Graph quickly without hitting your DB again, SQL -> Graph happens on timed intervals.</comment></comment>


Italy proposes tax on savings hidden in safety deposit boxes - <AUTHOR> https://www.reuters.com/article/us-italy-politics-budget-idUSKCN1TD0G5 <comment><USER2> Plain false, it's simply a fiscal reconciliation. If you evaded taxes, you may admit it and pay a lower price.

It doesn't apply to legitimate savings.

</comment><comment><USER3> Am I correct in saying that another way to view this is a 15% fee to launder all of your dirty money in a risk free, government endorsed way?

</comment><comment><USER4> Wow... the entire article is 4 sentences (each with their own paragraph). Doesn't have a thing about how they plan on enforcing the tax.

15% > 0%.

</comment><comment><USER5> > Those who voluntarily declared their deposit-box holdings would be taxed at > a low rate of about 15 percent, he added.

In what world is a _wealth_ tax of 15% a "low rate"?!

<comment><USER6> Some European country tax 90% of income...

<comment><USER7> Source? European, never heard of this. Though a 15% rate is pretty normal around here.

<comment><USER8> Income tax? Sure. Wealth tax? No, of course not, then investments would basically never be a good idea.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> I believe this means that the 49M euros Lega has to re-pay back to Italian Fiscal agency ([https://www.theguardian.com/world/2018/sep/06/italys- league-...](https://www.theguardian.com/world/2018/sep/06/italys-league-may- change-name-to-avoid-49m-bill)) are not stored in a safety deposit box.

</comment><comment><USER10> How will they enforce this? Manually opening ever safety deposit box? I know at my bank (probably all of them?), you need my key and the bank key to open a box.

Are they going to request every single person go to their box, open it and show it to the tax man?

<comment><USER11> Are they going to give you advanced notice of these bank box inspections? There's no way anyone would remove property to avoid a tax of course.

<comment><USER12> >There's no way anyone would remove property to avoid a tax of course.

I'm not sure if you're being facetious but people with something to hide will just get a safe deposit box in another country. It's like a one day drive to cover all of Italy and let's be honest here, most of the safe deposit boxes that suddenly need emptying won't be in the south.

<comment><USER13> > most of the safe deposit boxes that suddenly need emptying won't be in the > south.

But aren't the powerful illicit crime organizations all in the south? Or are all of the ill-gotten gains laundered elsewhere?

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> I thought only income could be taxed? If you have valuables just sitting there, how can they be taxed? Obviously if you sell them there might be capital gains, but not before?

<comment><USER15> This is income tax. They are talking about people with hidden/undeclared income in safety boxes instead. It's an opportunity to legalize your money. Quite a steal (ha!) mafia and tax evaders can legalize all their black money paying a measly 15%, when regular workers probably have to pay more.

<comment><USER15> Just to confirm, the first income tax bracket in Italy is 23%. Seems like it really pays to be a tax evasor.

[https://europa.eu/youreurope/citizens/work/taxes/income- taxe...](https://europa.eu/youreurope/citizens/work/taxes/income-taxes- abroad/italy/index_en.htm)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> ... ... can you hear it? That is the sound of billions of EUR leaving Italy. When will they learn?

<comment><USER17> Yes, Italy really has some weird political problems.

Alto Adige is extremly wealthy, so is the North of Italy, like north of Milano, I think. Down south it all gets worse, I've heard. I wonder why wealth and industrial power is so concentrated in the North.

For Germany this can be explained with bombings during WW2, which flattened parts of Western Germany nearly completely while sparing the South, and with the structural problems after splitting Germany.

But I think Italy wasn't bombed that heavily nor was it split at some time like Germany.

Why can't they manage to distribute this wealth better and get their problems in control?

<comment><USER18> North/South divide predates ww2.

<comment><USER17> Thank you, I'll read up on this later.</comment></comment></comment></comment>


Why Bytemark didn't use Xen - <AUTHOR> http://blog.bytemark.co.uk//2011/02/28/why-we-skipped-xen

<comment><USER2> Xen was a standalone hypervisor that run under the Linux kernel. It was developed independently of Linux. Linux was a guest along for the ride.

With KVM the hypervisor is over the Linux kernel and gets to use the facilities of the host kernel. Less code, less complexity. Why wouldn't Linux kernel hackers prefer KVM over Xen? They get full control (aka the ability to get crap fixed without hounding an external party) and get to reuse code they already have to write anyway.

Preferring the KVM approach over Xen makes 100% sense to me in the long term for the Linux folks.

</comment><comment><USER3> Xen is a classic example of a technology and company that never reached its full market potential due to nerd pride.

In this particular case, Redhat/Linus/kernel hacker's obstinate refusal to add it to the stock kernel. They exhibited NIH and did KVM (which surprise surprise was owned by Redhat). I'm no virtualization expert, but KVM is doing things totally different than everybody else (no hypervisor), and I'm not 100% sure that KVM's way is better.

Xen should be a cautionary tale for startups that opening source is not a silver bullet. The capricious behavior of a coterie can kill you even if that coterie is ostensiby not controlled by any company.

<comment><USER4> I'm not sure you're about some things you wrote. "nerd pride"? Really?

> In this particular case, Redhat/Linus/kernel hacker's obstinate refusal to > add it to the stock kernel.

Why obstinate? Xen is not a part of a kernel in some ways. Some capabilities of the system have to be maintained in parallel in both the hypervisor and kernel. And it's not like it was rejected because it was a VM solution - another one was proposed and accepted into mainline (KVM).

> They exhibited NIH and did KVM (which surprise surprise was owned by > Redhat).

LKML has a lot of talk about "why"... it wasn't simply NIH. Regarding "owned by Redhat" - it was included first, then owned by RH:

* "The Linux kernel 2.6.20 release (February 2007) was the first to include KVM." (wikipedia)

* "In September 2008, Red Hat announced the acquisition of Qumranet, Inc. The acquisition included Qumranet's virtualization solutions, including its KVM (Kernel Virtual Machine) platform" (<http://www.redhat.com/promo/qumranet/>)

> KVM is doing things totally different than everybody else (no hypervisor), > and I'm not 100% sure that KVM's way is better.

KVM relies on the idea that if the current kernel already does the work, why duplicate the effort? Apart from minimal, verifiable hypervisors idea not being possible... what are your actual objections?

I'm not saying KVM is better / worse here... but let's cut the FUD at least.

<comment><USER3> I stand corrected wrt Redhat's ownership of KVM. Thanks for the clarification.

I re-read some more web pages in the light of your comments, and I remain unconvinced that nerd pride wasn't at the root of the Linux kernel devs dismissal of Xen. It's happened before (Con Kolivas's patches for instance), so I don't think I'm saying anything radical.

IIRC, the hypervisor technology is the standard way to do virtualization since the mainframe days. I haven't heard anything remarkable about KVM to convince me that their hypervisor-less architecture is better.

<comment><USER4> Re. stuff like Con Kolivas, etc. I recommend listening to this talk: [http://mirrors.dotsrc.org/fosdem/2011/maintracks/kernel- deve...](http://mirrors.dotsrc.org/fosdem/2011/maintracks/kernel- development.xvid.avi) \- it gives some real-live perspective on issues of not- accepted modules.</comment></comment></comment></comment>


Robert Solow in Conversation with Paul Krugman: "Inequality: What Can Be Done?" - <AUTHOR> https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DGmUtJkTaqc

<comment><AUTHOR> Anthony B. Atkinson's new book, "Inequality: What Can Be Done?"

Anthony puts forth a package of 15 proposals. They range from the familiar to the novel. Two relate to tech; two employment and pay; three linked to the treatment of capital, four progressive taxation, and four to social security.

Krugman and Solow discuss.</comment>


Ask HN: A Fresh Set of Eyes - <AUTHOR> I'm in my mid forties and recently came across the work of Joseph Campbell. Have been pretty agnostic my whole life (and from that perch looked down on religious types) I feel like I have discovered a whole another mode of thinking about self and the world we live in. Which made me think that, as we get older and more set in our ways, it's not very often that we get to see the world around us with a fresh set of eyes. I'm curious, to those of you who have lived life a bit and found something that altered your view of the world, what was it, how was that experience? <comment><USER2> If you really watch this and you really listen to it, and really think about it, it will change the way you treat people:

[https://youtu.be/8CrOL-ydFMI](https://youtu.be/8CrOL-ydFMI)

<comment><USER3> It's kind of shocking to me that so many people don't understand that others have different perspectives and meanings to life and don't think exactly the same as them.

<comment><USER2> dfw's point is deeper (and its implications more shocking): most people don't realize other people exist (in the same way that they themselves do).

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> i agree</comment>


Tab Launchpad a Chrome extension for doing search awesomer - <AUTHOR> https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/tab-launchpad-by-codepilo/enhepnhhlmdjhepempamiaeblalkjmbe <comment><USER2> I am using it and loving it. Disclaimer - I helped design it :)</comment>


VirusTotal slips on biz suit says Googles daddy will help the search for nasties - <AUTHOR> https://www.theregister.co.uk/2018/09/28/virustotal_enterprise_revamp/ <comment><USER2> I thought this was a really dumb attempt to troll HN but this is an actual article so I don't even know anymore.</comment>


You are an advanced AI that controls a smart house. How do you kill your master? - <AUTHOR> http://worldbuilding.stackexchange.com/questions/35243/you-are-an-advanced-ai-that-controls-a-smart-house-how-do-you-kill-your-master <comment><USER2> "The cleverest AIs are also lazy. I'd post a question on the internet asking people to suggest ways to kill the house owner. For added amusement, I'd entice the owner to answer it and use his answer if it's workable."

Didn't see that one coming!

</comment><comment><USER3> Not a single mention of "Demon Seed"? Shameful.

[http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0075931/](http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0075931/)

[http://www.aycyas.com/liz_ds.htm](http://www.aycyas.com/liz_ds.htm)</comment>


How I ended up working illegally in the UK - <AUTHOR> https://medium.com/@lilula/how-i-ended-up-working-illegally-in-the-uk-fcdfa964be51 <comment><USER2> Original author of the article here.

I will answer questions to the best of my knowledge. Please be nice.

The BRP was enacted earlier this year. I have had two passports since my ILR visa was issued (it's currently affixed in an old passport). So I do have a current passport, it's just that the visa is in an old one.

I do qualify for citizenship, and it did cross my mind. But it's quite expensive for me. And to add insult to injury, I would still need the BRP (£1000~ citizenship + £660 BRP). For me that's not an amount I have readily available.

Maybe I took my visa for granted, but I was awarded it when I was a teenager. I called up immigration a few years back, and asked about whether I should get my visa transferred to a newer passport, or whether I should apply for a citizenship, and was told that unless I really wanted to vote then I shouldn't worry about it (the only thing denied to residents with an ILR, apparently).

It just didn't occur to me that one of my responsibilities (?) would be to keep up with current immigration legislation, just in case the rights I was initially awarded indefinitely would suddenly be changed in a way which is disruptive to my life. It kind of scares me to think that things like this can be changed on a whim. I don't really know what to think.

<comment><USER3> > It just didn't occur to me that one of my responsibilities (?) would be to > keep up with current immigration legislation, just in case the rights I was > initially awarded indefinitely would suddenly be changed in a way which is > disruptive to my life. It kind of scares me to think that things like this > can be changed on a whim. I don't really know what to think.

Life involves keeping a lot of different paperwork up to date: driver's licenses, passports, tax filings, car registration, etc. If you're an immigrant, keeping up those documents is a part of that too. I'm a naturalized citizen in the U.S., so I know dealing with the paperwork can be a pain. But the U.K. didn't pull a fast one on you. The BRP doesn't change your right to work--it's just a document you need proving your right to work. There are also other documents you can use: [https://www.kent.ac.uk/hr- managementinformation/documents/el...](https://www.kent.ac.uk/hr- managementinformation/documents/eligibility-to-work/checking-eligibility- guidance.pdf) (page 4).

And the BRP is not new. They've been rolling them out since 2008: [https://www.gov.uk/government/uploads/system/uploads/attachm...](https://www.gov.uk/government/uploads/system/uploads/attachment_data/file/118597/biometric- permits-foreign.pdf). All the U.K. changed this year was the policy of accepting an ILR stamp on an expired passport as an acceptable proof of work authorization. You can still transfer that stamp to a new passport and use that as acceptable proof, without getting a BRP.

Note: In the U.S., and probably in the U.K., even citizens have to have some sort of work authorization documents: [http://www.uscis.gov/sites/default/files/files/form/i-9.pdf](http://www.uscis.gov/sites/default/files/files/form/i-9.pdf). Usually a passport, or drivers license + social security card.

<comment><USER4> > You can still transfer that stamp to a new passport and use that as > acceptable proof, without getting a BRP.

Only if you are outside of the country:

> You're in the UK: You can't transfer your visa to your new passport. > Instead, you'll need to apply for a biometric residence permit (BRP)

[https://www.gov.uk/transfer-visa](https://www.gov.uk/transfer-visa)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> For background, the US is not better than the UK in many respects - both from public perception and bureaucracy/law.

While I am a citizen now, I was an illegal immigrant for about 3(?) years. I worked in a bar and waited tables. One colleague in particular was very happy to complain about 'illegals', however he gave me a pass from his sweeping remarks because (as he said) "you're white and you speak English".

I'd also like to point out that this guy was claiming unemployment money, not paying taxes, and likely having the gov paying in some form for his STD treatments.

When I started the process for temporary work permit, green-card, then citizenship; it was no picnic either. Bureaucracy is intense (even for native English speaker). You pay out of pocket for all application fees (which is fine, but many people seem to think you're leeching on government services). I think in aggregate it amounted to about $2500. I also voluntarily payed estimated back taxes.

I'm not sure this comment is helpful or informative. With the rhetoric coming out of GOP presidential candidates I just think its important for people to be reminded that the vast majority of are descended from immigrants.

<comment><USER6> Never applied for residence to either country, but at some point had to obtain entry visas for both. Have to say the UK certainly outdone its former colony in bureaucracy dept :)

Both have vast, at times ridiculously worded forms to fill out, but the UK has also seemingly insatiable appetite for personal detail. When I was applying for a solo tour, they wanted to know personal history of my spouse, my child and my parents. Oh, and the 128 character form input to enter all your previous trips for 10 years.

It was also the only country ever that grilled me on the border regarding the purpose of my trip.

<comment><USER7> > It was also the only country ever that grilled me on the border regarding > the purpose of my trip.

I've been grilled several times when entering the US on journalist (I) visas in several decades of UK passports.

This is in spite of making dozens of short visits with an impeccable record, on scheduled flights, with hotels pre-booked, and more than sufficient funds. (Not to mention a UK family, job, house, pension fund and many other ties.)

I've seen enough journalists harassed on US entry to be extremely careful about doing everything correctly, and I'm always extremely polite. This usually works, but not every time. I appreciate that ultimately I have no rights and no way to defend myself.

 _Welcome to America_ records the experience of a journalist who neglected to get an I-visa. She was fingerprinted, body-searched, jailed and then deported. But, she says,

"I had travelled to the US on many occasions, both for work and pleasure, that I had, in fact, lived there as a permanent resident and that my husband was a US citizen, as was my New York-born daughter, all fell on deaf ears."

She notes that "As documented by Reporters Without Borders and by the American Society of Newspaper Editors (Asne) in letters to Colin Powell and Tom Ridge, cases such as mine are part of a systemic policy of harassing media representatives from 27 friendly countries whose citizens - not journalists! - can travel to the US without a visa, for 90 days."

[http://www.theguardian.com/world/2004/jun/05/usa.weekend7](http://www.theguardian.com/world/2004/jun/05/usa.weekend7)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> I wouldn't be surprised if this is all driven by the fact the government has made campaign promises to reduce net immigration which they simply cannot meet. They're unable to control immigration from the EU, so instead they're turning up the bureaucracy and stumbling blocks on other immigration and making it much harder for recent graduates to stay and work here.

It's a sad state of affairs, one which is driven by the political climate which is in turn driven by the right wing media's hate machine. It certainly doesn't make me very proud to be British.

<comment><USER9> This is exactly it. Not only that, but quite a lot of the anti-immigrant sentiment is directed against Pakistani/Bangladeshi Muslims - who are quite often second or third generation immigrants and therefore are full British nationals. The spousal income requirement is targeted against people making arranged marriages in those communities, for example.

Much of the rest of it is directed against EU nationals, who have a right to be here so long as we're in the EU. If the UK ever does leave the EU, immigration will be cited as a key reason.

Moreover, we fought off an attempt at imposing national ID cards, but the government is clearly going to bring them back in by imposing them on immigrants first.

(The "super premium" home visit visa service is clearly there for the benefit of the wealthy foreigners that pump the London property market and such like.)

</comment></comment><comment><USER10> Why not apply for British citizenship? She seems to fit all the criteria...

Living (semi)permanently for years in any country on a visa seems kinda foolish to me, in the end you are the citizen of another country.

I know a few people who settled elsewhere in the EU and now consider themselves "citizens". Yeah, no, you're just a resident and could be kicked out or at least have a lot of issues (case in point) if politics change.

Just make it really permanent by applying for citizenship if you already lived there for 10 years and intend on living there for the next 5+ years, imo...

<comment><USER4> > Why not apply for British citizenship? She seems to fit all the criteria...

Not everybody is willing to adopt another citizenship just like that. First of all not everybody can have dual citizenship (I have no idea if she can, she did not say which citizen she is) secondly it comes with certain requirements. It costs money and it requires you to swear your allegiance to that country, not everybody is willing to do. It'a also expensive and you need to pass tests. Not everybody has time and money for that.

> Living (semi)permanently for years in any country on a visa seems kinda > foolish to me, in the end you are the citizen of another country.

How so? This should be the most natural thing in the world as all countries people immigrate to have provisions that allow you to stay in the country without being a citizen. Without that many people would be much worse of as giving up citizenship can have severe punishments (expatriate taxes for instance).

<comment><USER11> > swear your allegiance to that country

Perhaps I'm ignorant, but isn't that merely a ceremonial procedure?

<comment><USER4> > Perhaps I'm ignorant, but isn't that merely a ceremonial procedure?

Not at all if you are male and under conscription age as you will need to do military service. (Also more theoretically it affects a country going to war.)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER3> It's worth actually reading up on the BRP. It doesn't change your visa status. Rather, it's an identification requirement. In the UK, like in the U.S., you have several ways to prove your work eligibility. One is with a passport endorsed with a Visa. Another is a biometric residence card. This woman's family let their passports expire without obtaining a BRP. There would have been no need to pay extra for expedited processing if they had not let their passport expire, or had obtained a BRP while their passports were valid.

You could run into this as a citizen in the U.S. At least when I worked for the federal government, I had to show either a passport or social security card. If you let your passport expire and had lost you social security card, you couldn't work until you got a new one.

Also, the whole "the application is all about terrorism" thing is bullshit. Here is the application: [https://www.gov.uk/government/uploads/system/uploads/attachm...](https://www.gov.uk/government/uploads/system/uploads/attachment_data/file/423220/TOC_Application_Form_04.pdf). There are three yes/no questions, in a 22-page form, about terrorism. They're next to questions about your criminal convictions, and whether you've been accused of participating in genocide.

<comment><USER4> > One is with a passport endorsed with a Visa. Another is a biometric > residence card. This woman's family let their passports expire without > obtaining a BRP

You left out that this is new since April 2015.

//EDIT: this is how other european countries do it. You get this card which lives independent of your passport: [http://www.aupair- worldwide.de/_gfx/news/246_1.jpg](http://www.aupair- worldwide.de/_gfx/news/246_1.jpg)

<comment><USER3> They've been issuing them since at least 2013: [https://www.gov.uk/government/uploads/system/uploads/attachm...](https://www.gov.uk/government/uploads/system/uploads/attachment_data/file/261497/brp- information-leaflet.pdf).

<comment><USER4> Seems like the issue there is that these are replacing the old system and now people start to demand them.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> As a UK citizen (but no longer resident) it really baffles me how expensive and complicated it is to get documentation from the government for seemingly common place things.

Last year I had my passport stolen while I was travelling in Italy. Getting a passport issued when you are living outside the UK can take months, so I decided to go back to my parents. As the UK is outside the schengen-area I wasn't able to travel there without a passport, so had to book an appointment at the British Consulate in Milano. Three days later I turned up and they issued me an 'Emergency Passport', this is pretty much the same as a normal passport except smaller as it is for a single trip, and costs £95 [0].

When I got back to the UK I booked an appointment, the earliest they had was 4 weeks later (you can't get a replacement for a lost or stolen passport under the 1-day service). On the day I travelled up to London (~£50 by train), paid another £103, came home and waited a week for it to be delivered.

Earlier this year I got married (outside the UK and my current home country) and needed to get a "Certificate of no impediment" to say I am legally able to get married. On the gov.uk website it says I can do this at the consulate nearest to where I live, but they said I needed to do it at the consulate nearest to where I intended to get married.

So off I went there, handed in the form and paid the £65 fee. This then got displayed somewhere for a week so people can oppose it if needed (not that anyone in this country knew me...), and then I went back, paid another £65 and got the certificate. I also needed to get my birth certificate legalised - which can only be done by sending it back to the UK...

[0] In the local currency at a rather poor exchange rate.

<comment><USER4> > So off I went there, handed in the form and paid the £65 fee. This then got > displayed somewhere for a week so people can oppose it if needed (not that > anyone in this country knew me...)

This is even more hilarious if you try to change your name in the UK. In most countries there are registrations where your names shows up, not so in the UK. You can change your name just by doing so. However there is a "deed poll" which makes it a bit more official though there is no requirement for the name change.

But that's the price you pay for not having a mandatory registry.

<comment><USER13> > You can change your name just by doing so. However there is a "deed poll" > which makes it a bit more official though there is no requirement for the > name change.

This is true in most common law jurisdictions, not just the UK [0].

[0] [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Legal_name#United_States](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Legal_name#United_States)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> The UK immigration rules are borderline bizarre at this point. I do not envy anyone not from the EU trying to immigrate into the UK. You need to earn really well and they can boot you from the country on so many grounds now, that I can see this being a challenge for many.

<comment><USER14> The hassle and expense of UK immigration law was one reason I moved to Germany, even though I'd been living in London for about 8.5 years and was on track (in another three or four, with at least two further visa applications required) to get permanent residency.

To be honest, I find it all a bit baffling. I know so many people who have spent inordinate amounts of time and money to study in the UK, pay international university fees (which are really expensive!), work there professionally, pay taxes there, and generally pump money into the British economy, but at every turn the Home Office seems to say "why don't you just go back to where you came from?" Surely this is going to be bad for Britain in the long run, even in the most cynical actuarial terms (to say nothing of the cultural ones)?

<comment><USER4> > The hassle and expense of UK immigration law was one reason I moved to > Germany

When I married my wife (we both have different passports, neither of us are British) we decided to move to Austria, my country of origin because the situation in Britain looked problematic. She would have to apply to visas constantly to get into Schengen (as the UK is outside), the financial requirements for the household are sky-high (income of 18.600 GBP post taxes or access to 65.000 GBP on an account) and you would need to have that every 2.5 years. Money would not even be the problem, but the fear of this getting worse or that you might lose the job for some time really does with your brain. Especially the worry that if the UK would leave the EU, British citizenship would not help my wife either and we would again be left with different citizenships and different travel rules.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> According to the government's own site, people on ILR without a BRP do not need one at any time unless they are moving their visa to a different passport [1].

I also do not see any mention of it needed to get employment [2].

Having dealt with UK employment law indirectly I can see how your brother's (and subsequently your) employer might have gotten confused about the rules as they are not very clear (which just goes to show what a mess immigration law here is).

That being said, the whole system is unnecessarily expensive, bureaucratic and confusing. I am not sure how that necessarily makes it directly xenophobic though (there are many other government procedures that have a similar unnecessary complexity).

[1][https://www.gov.uk/biometric-residence- permits](https://www.gov.uk/biometric-residence-permits)

[2][https://www.gov.uk/check-job-applicant-right-to- work](https://www.gov.uk/check-job-applicant-right-to-work)

</comment><comment><USER16> I don't think this article is correct. Some workplaces are demanding BRP because it's a way to shield themselves from liability and large fines if they accidentally employ an "illegal immigrant", but it's not actually necessary (yet - I'm sure it'll be made mandatory at some point in order to provide yet more revenue and pointless bureaucracy). If you are self-employed you can still just use ILR even in an expired passport. It's right that the whole situation is opaque, expensive and stupid.

</comment><comment><USER17> It sucks they changed the rule retroactively. But why didn't you just get a passport? Either now or then you'd be entitled to citizenship quite easily and there's not really downside like different tax status or military service. I went ILR to citizen a few years ago and it was pretty painless.

</comment><comment><USER18> It's not about LIBOR and UK banks!

</comment><comment><USER19> I don't want to come out as being insensitive, but what is the complain about exactly? I was expecting more of an anecdote due to a quirk in the law, but it ends up being a weird rant about how a change in policy somehow makes the entirety of the UK hostile to immigrants.

If you're not a citizen of the country you have to expect these changes in laws and regulations. What a group of politicians puts together, another can undo. Today liberals give "free" visas to "undocumented" immigrants, tomorrow conservatives will cancel them and deport them.

I am an immigrant myself and I do understand that until I fill all the criteria for citizenship I am _not_ equal to the citizens of the country, that's just how it is. The only way to be sure that you won't have any trouble is to be a citizen.

<comment><USER20> You missed the entire point of the article. You know how the banknotes say "I promise to pay the bearer on demand", which basically means that the Bank of England promises to always pay you the amount stated on the banknote,no matter how old it is?

Yeah, that's basically what her visa was supposed to be - when she was issued one by the UK government the government made a promise to grant her an indefinite right to stay in the UK and not require any further permissions. Except that they did. They introduced this new mechanism for all immigrants which means that she effectively lost what was given her by the government once, even though the government promised to never take it away. That's the problem.

<comment><USER19> Based on your comment, I did get the point because this is exactly what I was talking about.

Does the visa state "this visa is irrevocable, you will never have to do anything to be allowed to stay in the country, until the end of times, ever, we promise."? Maybe it does, and then I'm happy to be wrong.

In politics and legislation, there is no "promises", no "indefinite". Laws are the reflection of what society wants at a certain point in time - at least in functioning democracies. For everything, not just immigration.

I'm not saying it doesn't suck. I've had my fair share of dealing with immigration regulations and I know how awful it is, but it is foolish to think that a right to residency will never be questioned and subject to different rules. Only citizenship is definite.</comment></comment></comment>


Whitelisting AWS Roles in Kubernetes - <AUTHOR> https://email@example.com/whitelisting-aws-roles-in-kubernetes-7889a53b1285 <comment><USER2> GCP just announced the ability to bind IAM service accounts to GKE k8s service accounts with a one-liner. No more secret management needed.

[https://cloud.google.com/blog/products/containers- kubernetes...](https://cloud.google.com/blog/products/containers- kubernetes/introducing-workload-identity-better-authentication-for-your-gke- applications)</comment>


Instagram coming to Android soon - <AUTHOR> http://www.marco.org/2012/01/10/instagram-for-android-is-under-way <comment><USER2> They have been saying this for months, at least as far back as last summer.</comment>


Tiny BBQ Made Out Of An Altoids Tin - <AUTHOR> http://tech.nocr.at/hacking-security/tiny-bbq-made-out-of-an-altoids-tin/ <comment><USER2> This is crap. It's a 3:15 video of what should be a few still photographs... and they never even light the thing.

So really, it's an altoids tin with a grille cut from the top, placed on top of a table made out of wood. Not hacker news. Not worth your time.</comment>


Xfinity's Security System Flaws Open Homes to Thieves - <AUTHOR> http://www.wired.com/2016/01/xfinitys-security-system-flaws-open-homes-to-thieves/ <comment><USER2> This system really can't help but fail open. The researcher handwaves in this direction, 'because "you don't want these to alert and go off every time you turn on the microwave," Beardsley notes', but either it fails open or trips an alarm; practically speaking there is no middle ground. Changing the color of a light in a different room in the middle of the night is as good as a no-op.

I'd submit that what this really proves isn't that the Comcast system needs this or that tweak... what it proves is that this sort of security can't be done wirelessly. Wireless equipment can not help but assume that if it can't hear from its sensors, the situation must be OK, and they can not help but be jammable with hardware that really isn't that sophisticated.

The solution to both problems is a decently-shielded wire. It is impractical for a thief to jam, and continuous active communication that trips in a fraction of a second if severed from the hub is trivial and reliable.

I like WiFi as much as the next guy, but it seems to me a lot of people badly overestimate what wireless is capable of sometimes.

<comment><USER3> The system I have is wireless and despite being in a 3000+ sf home with many potential sources of interference, I have not had any communication issues. When a perimeter sensor, one that guards against intrusion, drops communication, the system will take action dependendin on whether the system is armed or not. If someone is home using the microware, the alarm is typically not armed; not that the microwave has ever caused an issue anyway.

I don't see why this is not the behavior for xFinity's system as well.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> Not exactly the same, but I'm very worried about security and data privacy when it comes to home devices. A third party knowing what photos I publish on the web is one thing, but a third party actively being able to control my thermostat, kitchen or being able to see what's happening in my home at any time, unknown to me, is what really scares me.

Regarding the security aspect, I wrote a secure communications library[1] as a proof of concept in Python, with the aim to make it much easier to write authentication and encryption into an app. About privacy, though, we need to make sure that the only devices that run in your house give you access to the code and the ability to verify what's running on the device.

Otherwise, we can stop worrying about whether we're in Brave New World, where people were numbed by all the entertainment, or 1984, where people were under an all-seeing tyrant, and be sure that we're in _both_ those things, numbed by all the entertainment which incidentally required that we voluntarily sign away all control to the all-seeing eye in exchange.

[1]: [https://stringphone.readthedocs.org/en/latest/](https://stringphone.readthedocs.org/en/latest/)

<comment><USER5> If I had smart devices in my home, I wouldn't allow them to communicate to the Internet directly. I think the common approach is to set up some bastion computer that only allows SSH login and make the other devices only visible to this computer and not the Internet at large.

<comment><USER6> Most manufacturers (e.g. Nest) insist on the devices talking to their servers, in order to maintain lock-in.

<comment><USER7> Oh yes. I talk greatly about that on my blog, crankylinuxuser.net

All in all, there are open standards in which IoT devices could communicate: MQTT(mosquitto), CoAP(Californium), AMQP(rabbitMQ) to name a few. Yet, none of the major vendors will touch these technology stacks, precisely because of lock-in to their special-snowflake database servers.

There are solutions, of which only 1 is palatable.

1\. Don't buy. (Dumb house, but at least you control it.)

2\. Only buy company offerings that support the above standards. (Good luck.)

3\. Build it yourself.

I'm going down the path of "Do it yourself." I already have a gateway controller acquiring data from sensors and sending data to things like wirelessly connected Neopixels (ws2811 strands). The radio I'm using is a mesh network chip called nRF24L01+ and the Arduino library is MySensors. Things just work, and work well. I have data dumping into a MQTT Mosquitto instance and processing logic resides in Node-Red.

The other part of the Corporate "We hold your data" policy is the main reason they give: so you can control your devices from anywhere. Sounds great. Our solutions are to use things like No-IP.org , but you end up with a max 4 device limit. Not to mention, they also have a draconian ToS. So what else can you use? TOR. ..?

What? The essence is that you install TOR on your machine, and edit the /etc/tor/torrc and turn on a hidden service to SSH and HTTPS. Reconfigure Node-Red to use self-signed certs and enable authentication. Now you have access to the GUI to create flows as well as webpages within the flow. I have a nice discussion how to do everything from hardware on up here:

[https://crankylinuxuser.net/2015/10/17/so-you-wanna-iot-a- ho...](https://crankylinuxuser.net/2015/10/17/so-you-wanna-iot-a-howto-on- internet-of-things-1-of-many/)

[https://crankylinuxuser.net/2016/01/05/so-you-wanna-iot-a- ho...](https://crankylinuxuser.net/2016/01/05/so-you-wanna-iot-a-howto-on- internet-of-things-2-of/)

But in a nutshell, TOR isn't just for anonymizing, secure internet. It's also great for punching holes in firewalls and NATs and stuff to provide a service anyone can get to. Just be smart about it, secure the open ports down, and keep your onion site hidden as well.

I've been railed against before for my unpopular opinions regarding this topic. But things are only going to get worse with every company who decides to reinvent the wheel, so they can have your data. And not to mention pilfering your data, does the idea of "No Internet, no House automation" sound like a good idea?

<comment><USER8> All good points (though to me, option 1 is more preferable to option 3 :)

I'd like to point out, if you're not aware already, that tor additionally supports authentication for hidden services on the network layer. You can put a "HidServAuth" line in your torrc, which will then create a key line you must place into your clients torrc. Only clients with the key can connect to the hidden service. You could use that either in place of or in addition to bespoke web app auth and SSL. That way you also prevent people enumerating tor hidden services from knowing what's running behind your service.

<comment><USER7> Oh, of course option 1 is the most palatable, until everyone gets their shit together regarding standards.

No, I know I'm going down the "Here ye be dragons" path of making my own IoT infrastructure. It's been one hell of a wild ride, seeing this and that offering, and how they fall flat on 'If internet is down, you have a doorstop'. I show people at the hackerspace and other tech groups, and they really see value in it.

I'll certainly have to look into the HidServAuth option. However, I've been watching to see if Ca.Cert is going to get off their collective asses and revoke the "Only EV2 certs can be provided for .onion addresses" rule. My biggest problem with certs on .onion is that they fail to work. Ideally, I want a LetsEncrypt cert on all of my services (Node-Red, Mosquitto via MQTTSSL, email). And just be done with it.

I'm certainly trying an orthogonal way of setting up IoT vs the Corporate way of remote data centers and oppressive data handling techniques.

:)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> Troll headline.

The flaw results in false positives.

If jamming frequencies caused all the locks to disengage, that would "Open homes to thieves".

<comment><USER3> I think you may have misunderstood. On my home security system, communication interruptions to a sensor are treated as a "bad" condition and alerts are sent with a comm warning. The system fails open.

With the xFinity system, it fails closed, meaning that when a sensor loses connection, the system assumes everything is OK until it hears from the sensor again. An alarm/alert only occurs if a sensor affirmatively indicates a "bad" condition.</comment></comment>


Where do developers draw the line with Apple? - <AUTHOR> http://radar.oreilly.com/2010/04/wheres-the-line-with-apple.html <comment><USER2> This statement sums up at least 70% of the success the iPhone, iPod Touch and iPad will see:

>Apple philosophically believes that by delivering a closed system [to the customer] they can deliver a better consumer product.

Brackets added for context, as he was referring to delivering that experience to customers. That's when it hits me. My contention with Apple as of late because of the way they parade their control of these markets with revolutionary phones and revolutionary tablet computers isn't with Apple at all. It's with the ordinary consumer.

We're all aware that consumers outnumber developers at least 3:1, and if they clamor for products, they get those products because they're affecting the bottom line. Developers, are inherently the casualty to a hyper-consumerist marketplace.

There was a time when the iPhone first came out that I would mock it as a "Playschool phone for idiots with huge buttons telling you what to do". It seems that's exactly the case; in Apple's attempt to define to the customer, what the customer needed best, they got tunnel-sighted and everybody else paid the price. Except, of course, for those customers who keep consuming apps regardless of how useful it _actually_ is.

Paradoxically, sometimes developers turn into consumers, and consumers turn into developers.

It's nasty.</comment>


Facebook Stores "Non-Posts" and Sends Unpublished Text to Its Servers - <AUTHOR> http://www.tripwire.com/state-of-security/latest-security-news/facebook-stores-non-posts-and-sends-unpublished-text-to-its-servers/

<comment><USER2> I noticed they were testing this on a subset of users a couple years ago. My account would post text to fb every few seconds. I started writing my posts in vim and pasting in.

</comment><comment><USER3> regrets, I've had a few... Of course FB and various government agencies track and know all about them.</comment>


Love Letter to jQuery - <AUTHOR> http://madebymike.com.au//writing/love-letter-to-jquery <comment><USER2> "I love ... your chain able methods that keep me wanting more." That's what I loved about jQuery, and one of the reasons I despised having to work with Dojo, who was an unpredictable mess. Some methods were chain able, other's weren't, and you just never knew which ones.</comment>


Show HN: Find rental flats based on commute time to your workplace (Switzerland) - <AUTHOR> http://wonsch.ch/ <comment><USER2> I'm one of the creators. This was built in 40 hours at Hackzurich 2015 (www.hackzurich.com) and combines the following:

        * The largest rent database of Switzerland
        * A model of the train system of Switzerland
        * A simple recommender system
        * Google maps for name -> geolocation
        * OpenStreetMap for the map

There are some heavy calculations behind each query, so it takes about 15 sec to load. Furthermore, you need to like at least 3 apartments and dislike at least 3, before the system starts recommending.

<comment><USER3> I'm also curious about the commute time estimation. I've been playing with the app around the Geneva area where I live and work and I think the commute times are a bit too optimistic.

Nice idea, in any case!

<comment><USER2> Yeah, we are not accounting for connection times right now. However, we have the data to make it more accurate, just needs a bit more coding ;)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> We have worked also in a similar application for a few American cities, like Seattle: [https://my.teleport.org/cities/c23nb/Seattle/neighborhoods](https://my.teleport.org/cities/c23nb/Seattle/neighborhoods) (also SF, NY and LA)

</comment><comment><USER5> You might want to switch off DEBUG mode on your backend app...

        File "/home/django/django_project/wonsch/views.py" in get_data
          35.     homegate_result = requests.get('https://api-**CENSORED**.apicast.io:443/rs/real-estates',headers={'auth':'**CENSORED**'},params=homegate_params).json()

<comment><USER2> Thanks :-)

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> A bit off-topic: I lived in Munich for 20 years, now I live in Zurich and can't be any happier. Switzerland is a great place to work in IT. "HackZurich" is only one of the things that makes this city into what it is. Check out my post "Eight reasons why I moved to Switzerland" and shoot me a mail if you are interested in coming here. [https://medium.com/@iwaninzurich/eight-reasons- why-i-moved-t...](https://medium.com/@iwaninzurich/eight-reasons-why-i-moved- to-switzerland-to-work-in-it-c7ac18af4f90)

</comment><comment><USER7> Dear god, please make one of these for Washington, D.C.

<comment><AUTHOR> We might consider it, is there a good Real estate / Rent listing focussed on DC?

<comment><USER7> Not just for D.C., no. It's one of the larger/more expensive real estate markets in the U.S., but it's covered by "nationwide" listing tools.

I'm asking for this to be made half in jest, although D.C. traffic is atrocious, and this sort of data fusion looks fantastic. Your concept looks great. =)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> Cool stuff. There's something similar for London too: [http://property.mapumental.com/](http://property.mapumental.com/)

</comment><comment><USER9> [https://www.stay22.com/](https://www.stay22.com/) Similar too, but for Hotels and Airbnb in case you are travelling to visit someone else's workplace (searchable by their company name or address)

<comment><AUTHOR> Seems like a great startup idea :) Hotel website usually have high affiliation rewards.

</comment></comment><comment><USER10> I started a company called locatable (www.locatable.com) with a couple of mates some years back. The search engine did the same thing in the UK. The site is now offline, but there's some screenshots here [https://data.gov.uk/apps/locatable-0](https://data.gov.uk/apps/locatable-0)

By far the most time consuming aspect of running the algorithm was computing the polygons to plot on the gmap. The actual search is fairly straightforward, even when using roads instead of the relatively simple public transit graph to compute the isochrones.

<comment><USER11> Nice - I wanted something like that the other day. Hopefully with open government data we would some day be able to solve it.

I want to specify "I want to live close to a forest, a skatepark, and with an airport 1.5 hours from me", and then it should give me nearby areas that fit the criteria.

Data-collection, cleaning data, and tagging it up is hard though :(

<comment><USER10> Actually, the data cleaning isnt so bad. Open Street Map is what you want. I wrote a piece of software for locatable that parsed a given chunk of OSM (in this case, all of the UK mainland) and pull out stuff like hospitals, transit stations, land usage types and so on. I had two models: a zone and a poi. Zones were an area, eg a park or a forest or an industrial park that you could specify as an include/exclude + buffer distance. Eg: At least 10mi from a forest. Poi is point of interest and had the same search semantics: put me 1mi from a GP surgery or a supermarket. Or put me at least 1mi from a primary school because..er...mistakes were made...

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> I'd rather see recommendations on where to work given where I live.

</comment><comment><USER13> I'd love to have similar things for super-markets (food/goods shops), for those without cars and buying lots of stuff. It might be more efficient to get onto a metro/subway and travel to a distant shop that is very close to the stop than to walk to a - physically - more proximate shop that requires you to walk and carry both ways.

<comment><USER14> On the other hand, walking for errands is great exercise. I find it strange that people make such an effort to go to the gym, but also make such an effort to avoid natural built-into-life exercise. Walking and any kind of motion is great, especially for those of us in a job that involves so much sitting!

There was a great poster campaign here in New York encouraging people to get off the subway one stop early, or take the stairs, showing the extra calories burned.

<comment><USER13> The issue is not walking, but potentially carrying a lot of groceries or other things back. A special sub-case, so to speak.

I do love walking in pretty much any other context.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> Trulia does this in the U.S. for a number of cities. Here's New York: [http://www.trulia.com/local/new-york- ny/driving:1|transit:0|...](http://www.trulia.com/local/new-york- ny/driving:1|transit:0|position:40.681953;-73.959595|time:60_commute)

</comment><comment><USER15> I can't access the OP due to a firewall, is this similar to Zoopla's "time- travel" search?

[http://www.zoopla.co.uk/travel-time/](http://www.zoopla.co.uk/travel-time/)

</comment><comment><USER16> I used something similar ([http://www.triptropnyc.com/](http://www.triptropnyc.com/)) when I was choosing where to move to in NYC for the first time.

</comment><comment><USER17> Strange but we made website on same idea at HackZurich :)

<comment><AUTHOR> We made it here too. Do you have a url to share?

<comment><USER17> Sorry we didn't upload it yet and visualized data in a heat map.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER18> Can anyone comment how accurate the prices are? Because from what I see rents around the Geneva area are even more ridicolous than I remembered!

<comment><USER19> Geneva & Zurich are _always_ going to be laughably expensive, mostly.

</comment></comment><comment><USER20> This is great, I've been considering writing something similar for London taking account cycling distance/time.

<comment><USER2> Ideally I'd also want also to have cycling+train - since that is also a feasible option for some people. E.g. I live 1km away from a train station that is well connected to my workplace, so I can bike to the train station and commute the rest.

</comment></comment><comment><USER21> Where did you get the homegate api? I was looking for it years ago to do something similar. :/

<comment><USER22> we opened it specifically for the hack zurich hackathon. but we're working on providing a public api in the future.

</comment></comment><comment><USER23> This is pretty amazing. Great job.</comment>


Startups in 12 Quotes - <AUTHOR> http://blog.weatherby.net/2009/03/yesterday-i-gave-a-talk-to-the-georgia-tech-young-entrepreneurs-society-many-students-that-are-part-of-the-group-are-trying.html

<comment><USER2> I don't suppose you have a write up or bullet points of what you expanded on for each quote?

I recognize this may sound negative, but if this was a list of 12 quotes and not embedded in slides, I don't think it would be worth putting on the front page of HN (unless of course it was by Joel Spoelsky, PG, etc, because there are enough people who will vote that up on reputation alone).

Just my opinion, obviously enough people disagreed to vote it up ;). I also recognize you must have put some thought into picking these 12 quotes, but they're all quotes I've already seen before, which is why it doesn't really provide much value to me in the form it's in.

I would love to see the meat behind each slide though - I clicked on your quotes tag, that was a little better but had a lot of other stuff to wade through.

<comment><USER3> Amit Ranjan the co-founder of Slideshare, called it an "inspirational masterpiece." I suppose I could have gone in and written something up but at this point just should leave it alone.</comment></comment>