Transcript of meeting between Julian Assange and Google CEO Eric Schmidt - <AUTHOR> http://wikileaks.org/Transcript-Meeting-Assange-Schmidt?nocache <comment><USER2> Say whatever you will about Assange; it's clear he puts a great deal of thought and effort into what he does. I highly recommend his essay on the nature, structure, and weaknesses of conspiracies he wrote shortly after starting Wikileaks:

[http://web.archive.org/web/20070129125831/http://iq.org/cons...](http://web.archive.org/web/20070129125831/http://iq.org/conspiracies.pdf)

It's not exactly a pg classic, but it does give good insight into his motivations and thought processes.

</comment><comment><USER3> JA: " I have been told actually that VeriSign, by people who are in the know, although I am not yet willing to go on the public record, cause I only have one source, just between you and me, one source that says that VeriSign has actually given keys to the US government. Not all, but a particular key."

<comment><USER4> Thats not surprising in the least bit, In fact if you're really paranoid you can assume most of the signing authorities have given up some of their private keys....

<comment><USER5> As a non-crypto-literate web denizen, does an individual (in this case, governmental organization) possessing the "root" CA private key mean they can decrypt messages that were encrypted by derived 'child' certificates/keys?

I might be completely off base and confusing certificates and keys here, though...

<comment><USER6> Having the private key of a trusted root CA lets you create leaf certificates (or intermediate CAs) that your computer will trust implicitly (because the root is trusted). This would allow someone to man-in-the-middle your connection to, say, gmail (with help of your ISP) and you would not be able to easily detect it.

Gibson Research Corporation created a page that shows the real signature for some common websites (and lets you check any site you want). You can then connect to them and view the signature in your browser and compare them. This is what you would have to do to know if you were being MITMed with a "real" certificate.

<https://www.grc.com/fingerprints.htm>

<comment><USER7> That's a nice enough idea, but how do I know I'm looking at the real grc.com? They use an SSL certificate from a US CA too.

<comment><USER8> This is the implicit weakness of the SSL system. The question is always "how do I know I can trust _those_ people?"

<comment><USER5> Relevant, "Reflections on Trusting Trust": [http://www.ece.cmu.edu/~ganger/712.fall02/papers/p761-thomps...](http://www.ece.cmu.edu/~ganger/712.fall02/papers/p761-thompson.pdf)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> JA: there was this fantastic video that came out of Stanford in about '69 on nuclear synthesis of DNA. Have you seen it? It's on youtube. It's great. A wonderful thing. So it is explaining nuclear synthesis through interpretive dance.

Here it is: <http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=u9dhO0iCLww> Skip to 3:30 and, um take something to get in the mood of the era...

<comment><USER10> <http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=u9dhO0iCLww#t=3m30s>

</comment></comment><comment><USER11> I wonder if one could automate a process to find articles that has been removed (censured) from news papers, but which still exist in libraries.

Is there any project which digital store some index of news articles outside the control the publishing newspaper? Maybe Google could give such index (and only index), so as to enable investigating reports and citizens to notice when articles get pulled.

</comment><comment><USER12> This is incredibly fascinating. If you are trying to figure out whether this is worth a read or not, I don't think you'll be disappointed spending an hour or two following along through the interview. For those of you that are tight on time, here are some heavily paraphrased notes I've been taking, referencing some of the more thought provoking parts of the interview. (And I'm only half way through! I'll need to finish reading this tomorrow):

\- We should create human readable (memorable) hashes to map names to specific data, so people can trust the documents they have are not tampered with and so that such documents can't be removed from the public record. Sort of an immutable DNS system for data built on hashes. Readability is important so the keys can be transmitted independently of computer networks. Bitcoins may be a good reference technology for this. (See: "So this Bitcoin replacement" and passages leading up to that)

\- We need secure, robust communication systems for medium sized groups of people (think revolutionaries) that don't need to rely on centralized (government owned) networks. Possibly use UDP to message someone (since without ACKs you can send to many hosts, and a listening host looks the same to the network as an unrelated host). More ideas about this in passage: "Right, so you send it to random internet hosts"

\- The internet lets one hear their own beliefs echoed back with such force that it drowns out any other input. It reinforces (makes extreme?) the person's original thought. This creates a "radicalization of internet educated youth," makes us highly political.

\- The US doesn't need to care as much about free speech since free speech won't change the fiscal outlook of those at the top (US is in a "rigid fiscalized structure"). China and Egypt are a more political society though, so they still need to control free speech. (See passage:"I am not going to say governments")

\- "censorship is always cause for celebration. It is always an opportunity, because it reveals fear of reform. It means that the power position is so weak that you have got to care about what people think."

\- Censorers don't care what information exists in darknets. They only care that their bosses don't find out about the darknets. (See: "Even the censors in China" passage)

\- There is a second type of censorship beyond overt government censorship: "Censorship through complexity." Harkens back to the earlier discussion in the interview about the 'self-censorship' pyramid for journalists.

\- Journalists should give all of their source data, not just choice quotes, so that people can make up their own minds. (See: "scientific journalism")

\- "Most wars in the 20th century have started as a result of lies. Amplified and spread by the mainstream press. And you go, well that is a horrible circumstance, that is terrible that all these wars start with lies. And I say no, this is a tremendous opportunity, because it means that populations basically don't like wars and they have to be lied into it. And that means we can be truthed into peace."

<comment><USER12> And, since there seems to be interest in these notes, here are my paraphrased notes from the second half on the interview (once again, only including the parts I found especially thought-provoking):

\- Systematic crime/injustice requires a paper trail. The threat of making documents public disrupts that paper trail, which causes mass ineficiency in an organization. ES: "So it's exactly your point, so that in order to kill six million Jews, you actually have to write it down." JA: "It's a big logistical process"

\- "Fundamental justification [For Wikileaks] is that, there is really two. First of all, the human civilization, its good part, is based upon our full intellectual record, and our intellectual record should be as large as possible if humanity is to be as advanced as possible. The second is that in practice releasing information is positive to those engaged in acts that the public support and negative to those engaged in acts that the public does not support." [Ok, I don't really buy this. Small groups are just as capable as large groups of harbouring secret plans that the public is opposed to. Secrecy is a double edged sword for both those in power and those outside of it.]

\- If you support these ideas, you should "give money to WikiLeaks [Laughter]". But seriously.

\- "Courage is not the absence of fear. Only fools have no fear. Rather courage is the intellectual mastery of fear by understanding the true risks and opportunities of the situation"

\- "because we all only live once, we all suffer the continuous risk of not having lived our life well. Every year. Every year that is not used is 100% wasted, it's not a risk of that, it is a dead bet"

\- Assange's response to accusations that wikileaks causes harm, is interesting. See: "Up until Collateral Murder"

\- Interesting aside about the purpose of the Pentagon's posturing, see: "WikiLeaks became the status quo"

\- A great story straight from Firefly, episode "Our Dear Mrs. Reynolds" See dialogue after: "The woman from Catalonia"

\- Leading through values instead of through command and control allows an organization like WikiLeaks to be better protected against two types of organizational attacks: infiltration and getting members plucked off (scared away?). This creates a P2P network of people instead of a classic client/server hierarchy.

\- Wikileaks does premature redactions not because there is a "risk of producing harm as a result of disclosure", but because "there is a probable risk that if we don't engage in that sort of behaviour, our opponents will opportunistically attempt to distract from the revelations that we have published." Once again goes back to "controlling the story" conversations they had earlier. Interestingly, Assange failed to control the story w.r.t. rape allegations, and that is now what he and wikileaks is known for. Resulting discussion on the slippery slope of redaction is interesting. Assange would ideally like the source of the material to provide the redactions.

\- "If it is true information we don't care where it comes from. Let people fight with the truth, and when the bodies are cleared there will be bullets of truth everywhere, that's fine"

\- Lisa asks "How do you know if you've won?" JA: "... [insightful comments snipped]...I think we can make some significant advances and it is perhaps, it is the making of these advances and being involved in that struggle that is good for people. So the process is in part the end game. It's not just to get somewhere in the end, rather this process of people feeling that it is worthwhile to be involved in that sort of struggle, is in fact worthwhile for people."

There's a lot to think about here. Regardless of Assange's actual character, he has some amazing ideas. I think I may have a new answer to "If you could have dinner with one person in the world..."

<comment><USER13> I agree with many of Assange's positions, but I disagree on one fundamental position: anonymity.

Anonymity is where wikileaks breaks down. All of the lies and deception Julian speaks of are possible because there is no systemic transparency or accountability in the information ecosystem. All of those lies are abstraction events in the cognitive plane of existence and require action in the physical plane to manifest any outcome.

At the end of the day, I think people must step up to the plate and say, "no, this happening, it needs to stop and I am cosigning this information with my community identity on the line." At that point, a wise community should support that person through any life interruption or transition, if the individual cannot.

The thing about living a lie is that it is extraordinarily expensive to sustain or scale because the lie must defy nature and reality. The internet news information systems make it easy to proliferate small/trivial lies in/for a short period of time, but it makes any non-trivial lies much more expensive to sustain. People need more information, more transparency and more accountability.

If you have the accountability, you won't have the "boy crying wolf" problem at scale because of the individual cost of lying.

Ironically, one such platform exists and is six months into beta, but this community hell-banned it in week one. Think about how that will look, PG, in a couple of years. I have screenshots and the record won't be going away. nwzPaper is lean and will be here, it will continue getting better as an application and stronger as a community.

<comment><USER13> The fundamental flaw with an anonymity-structuree news information system as acknowledged by Assange:

"There is many ways for people to transmit anonymously. One of the greatest difficulties for sources is their proximity to the material. So if they have high proximity to it and it's a limited number of people know it. It actually doesn't matter what technical mechanism you then apply at the top. It would be quite difficult for them to evade scrutiny. And it doesn't matter what country or regime you are in."

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> Very interesting. I'm curious about the role Eric Schmidt and Google play in this, however.

From the looks of it, Eric definitely seemed to be a supporter (especially considering how he mentioned getting in trouble for being against Patriot I and Patriot II), yet Google hasn't spoken out against CISPA. Seeing as how Assange mentioned how important funding was for the movement, I would think it'd be very easy for Google to funnel a few million dollars to Wikileaks if they truly wanted to help.

Too bad there's not more about those aspects being discussed.

<comment><USER15> The impression I got from the interview is that Eric Schidt feels there is some common ground between what Google does and what Wikileaks does. Some of his reactions seem like "that's the missing idea we needed".

That may also relate to the book they were working on, now called the "The New Digital Age" and to be released in 3 days apparently ( [http://www.amazon.com/The-New-Digital-Age- Reshaping/dp/03079...](http://www.amazon.com/The-New-Digital-Age- Reshaping/dp/0307957136) ) - this interview is great marketing for the book then.

The Draw Shop has a nice summary of what's in the book - <http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=39tvjOATrCA>

<comment><USER14> My impression was that Eric tried (successfully), to keep Google completely out of the picture, while only talking about issues from a personal perspective. A lot of the technical challenges JA mentioned would arguably be trivial for Google to solve, or attempt to solve (creating a name-hash network tree architecture like the one JA mentioned he'd liked to have seen become popular).

The problem I think is two-fold: 1. Google aligning with Wikileaks/JA will be seen as a political landmine for Google, since Wikileaks' agenda is very much at odds with many governments. This would obviously be something Google will have little interest in pursuing.

2\. It's not in Google's best interest to propagate anonymity (as of now). Google's core revenue model derives from its ability to track people on the Internet. Making it easier for them to don anonymity will undermine and possibly destroy this model.

Whether Google's/Eric Schmidt's ultimate goals are good or evil is anybody's guess, and I don't think I gained any new insights into it based on this interview. It does appear that Eric/Google do have an interest in seeing freer access to information, as evidenced by them pushing for faster Internet, more secure/private browsing (https, 2-factor authentication, fighting official requests for access to user accounts [2]), access to the Internet in North Korea, etc. The more people are on the Internet, and the more they browse, the greater Google's revenues.

Google's upper management have also allegedly (and secretly) played a part in the Arab springs, which I would hazard a guess was a altruistic move, rather than a purely political one, but that's speculation [1].

Oh, and BTW, the timing of this 'leak' a few days before Eric Schmidt's book is highly suspect, no? :)

[1]: [http://thepassionateattachment.com/2012/03/23/stratforleaks-...](http://thepassionateattachment.com/2012/03/23/stratforleaks- confirm-jared-cohens-involvement-in-arab-spring/) (sorry this is not the best source, but Googling around will get you the actual Wikileaks cables and analysis)

[2]: [http://www.theinquirer.net/inquirer/news/2259557/google- figh...](http://www.theinquirer.net/inquirer/news/2259557/google-fights-us- government-requests-for-private-data)

Edit: formatting

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> Pretty good summary by the Verge, but definitely worth reading the whole thing: [http://www.theverge.com/2013/4/19/4241486/eric-schmidt- and-j...](http://www.theverge.com/2013/4/19/4241486/eric-schmidt-and-julian- assange-conversation-published-on-wikileaks)

</comment><comment><USER9> [LS spills water all over her note taking laptop]

[JA quickly grabs her laptop and turns it upside down]

JC: Ha ha ha! Why do I feel that has happened before?

LS: Did you see how fast he was? It was like an impulse.

</comment><comment><USER17> Great discussion in there about Bitcoin, Namecoin, alternative CA system, anonymity, censorship, etc.

</comment><comment><USER18> Well now I'm looking forward to the book.

I greatly appreciate Julian Assange's views, even if his approach runs afoul of the law.

<comment><USER7> I don't believe Julian Assange's approach to Wikileaks-related issues has put him on the wrong side of the law. He is charged with rape, not with publishing what people sent him, AFAIK.

<comment><USER19> He wasn't charged with anything.

[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Assange_v_Swedish_Prosecution_A...](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Assange_v_Swedish_Prosecution_Authority)

"Assange has not yet been formally charged with any offence.[62] The prosecutor said that, in accordance with the Swedish legal system, formal charges will be laid only after extradition and a second round of questioning. Observers note however that Assange has not yet been interviewed about several of the allegations,[63] including the most serious, and that Swedish law allows interviews to be conducted abroad under Mutual Legal Assistance provisions.[64]"

<comment><USER20> So he is stuck in Trial? <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Trial>

<comment><USER21> It's more like he's a fugitive.

<comment><USER22> Usually fugitives are at least charged with a crime...

<comment><USER21> He'd have to show up to be charged.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER23> On "putting people at risk":

\--

So if we look at the attacks on us, they always talk about the words "placed people at risk." But risk relative to what? Is it a proportionate risk? Is it a risk that is significant enough that it is even worth speaking about?

So these rhetorical tricks are often used by people who are making their argument in relation to security. What has to be done is people need to engage in an intellectual defense against manipulation by rhetoric by understanding that if someone mentions that there is a risk without saying the risk is higher than crossing the road, or the risk is twice that of being stung by a bee, then you must ignore it. Similarly with possibility versus probability.

\--

</comment><comment><USER24> Definitely worth a read. Its like reading a wonderful short story that just works on so many levels. It has many layers - interesting ideas on technology, free-speech, values & idealism, information flow, bitcoin - plus the personalities involved themselves (JA, ES). Fascinating indeed.

In particular, I am intrigued by JA's thoughts on a peer-to-peer mobile network. For those who understand this well, can you explain how feasible it is to do this today? What are the challenges involved? Why isn't a startup doing this? It would be nice to one day, bypass the telecom company towers to transmit data directly to another person/phone.

<comment><USER23> > Why isn't a startup doing this?

There is no financial incentive. A recurring theme throughout the interview.

</comment></comment><comment><USER25> Eric Schmidt is not google ceo, he is google chairman

<comment><USER26> I was about to reply that when this meeting took place in 2011 Schmidt was still CEO. But in fact you're right, he was not: he'd stepped down a couple of months previously.

</comment></comment><comment><USER27> There are some interesting comments in here, namely:

"So, on the one hand we have live dynamic services and organizations... well there's three things. Live dynamic services. Organizations that run those services, so that you are referring to a hierarchy. You are referring to a system of control. An organization, a government, that represents an organized evolving group. And on the other hand you have artefacts. You have human intellectual artefacts that have the ability to be completely independent from any system of human control. They are out there in the Platonic realm somehow. And shouldn't in fact be referred to by an organization. They should be referred to in a way that is intrinsic to the intellectual content, that arises out of the intellectual content! I think that is an inevitable and very important way forward, and where this... where I saw that this was a problem was dealing with a man by the name of Nahdmi Auchi. A few years ago was listed by one of the big business magazines in the UK as the fifth richest man in the UK. In 1980 left Iraq. He'd grown rich under Saddam Hussein's oil industry. And is alleged by the Italian press to be involved in a load of arms trading there, he has over two hundred companies run out of his Luxembourg holding unit. And several that we discovered in Panama. He had infiltrated the British Labour political establishment to the degree that the 20th business birthday in London he was given a painting signed by 146 members Commons including Tony Blair. He's the same guy who was the principal financier of Tony Rezko. Tony Rezko was the financier and fundraiser of Rod Blagoyevich, from Chicago. Convicted of corruption. Tony Rezko has been convicted of corruption. And Barack Obama. He was the intermediary who helped Barack Obama buy one of his houses and then the money not directly for the house but it bouyed up Tony Rezko's finances came from that... [indistinct]. So during the - this is detail, but it will get to a point. During the 2008 presidential primaries a lot of attention was turned to Barack Obama by the US press, unsurprisingly. And so it started to look into his fundraisers, and discovered Tony Rezko, and then they just started to turn their eyes towards Nadhmi Auchi. Auchi then hired Carter Ruck, a rather notorious firm of London libel solicitors, whose founder, Carter Ruck, has been described as doing for freedom of speech what the Boston strangler did for door to door salesmen.

And he started writing letters to all of the London papers who had records of his 2003 extradition to France and conviction for corruption in France over the Elf-Acquitaine scandal. Where he had been involved in taking kickbacks on selling the invaded Kuwaiti governments' oil refineries in order to fund their operations while Iraq had occupied it. So the Guardian pulled three articles from 2003. So they were five years old. They had been in the Guardian's archive for 5 years. Without saying anything. If you go to those URLs you will not see "removed due to legal threats." You will see "page not found." And one from the Telegraph. And a bunch from some American publications. And bloggers, and so on. Important bits of history, recent history, that were relevant to an ongoing presidential campaign in the United States were pulled out of the intellectal record. They were also pulled out of the Guardian's index of articles. So why? The Guardian's published in print, and you can go to the library and look up those articles. They are still there in the library. How would you know that they were there in the library? To look up, because they are not there in the Guardian's index. Not only have they ceased to exist, they have ceased to have ever existed. Which is the modern implementation of Orwell's dictum that he controls the present controls the past and he who controls the past controls the future. Because the past is stored physically in the present. All records of the past. This issue of preserving politically salient intellectual content while it is under attack is central to what WikiLeaks does -- because that is what we are after! We are after those bits that people are trying to suppress, because we suspect, usually rightly, that they're expending economic work on suppressing those bits because they perceive that they are going to induce some change."

</comment><comment><USER28> Is there a recording of the talk? I would much prefer that to the transcript.

<comment><USER29> How odd. I usually find myself thinking exactly the opposite when someone posts a video or audio clip.

<comment><USER28> I wish I had time to read but I don't. I listen to everything I can though; books news etc. while commuting and working.

<comment><USER29> I wish I had the time to watch and listen to things but I don't. I skim read everything I can though; books, news etc. It's much quicker for me than listening watching!

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER30> I can't get over the Fiji comment. I'm from there you see and I'd never heard of this particular theory regarding the CIA.

</comment><comment><USER31> SC: This is a fantastic tree. It keeps us totally dry.

LOL

</comment><comment><USER32> TL;DR!

</comment><comment><USER33> Ugh, is Eric Schmidt really that non-technical that he can't remember the right name for TOR?

I mean I don't expect him to write code or know the implementation details of TCP/IP but as Google CEO he should at least know a little about the field his company is playing in and the right names for the more important technologies.

Or is this some kind of practical joke I don't get?

<comment><USER34> Eric Schmidt has a Ph.D. in Computer Science, wrote Lex [1], and just spent 10 years running one of the most important software companies in the world, while generally retaining the respect of the thousands of engineers in his company. His credentials are as close to unimpeachable as, say, PG's.

Tech is massive, multifarious, and constantly growing. It's easy to believe one's parochial corner is the center. Tor, it's safe to say, is not the center.

[1]: <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lex_(software)>

<comment><USER33> Well, Ok, I didn't know that. Thanks for clarifying that for me.

So I guess it really was a practical joke I didn't get.

<comment><USER26> Also, "Tor" is the Scandinavian spelling of Thor. He probably thought of that when he saw the name, and mentally hashed it as "that anonymous routing software that's named for the Germanic god of thunder". I can imagine making that mistake.</comment></comment></comment></comment>


React vs. Vue: What is the best choice for 2019? - <AUTHOR> https://www.mindk.com/blog/react-vs-vue/ <comment><USER2> They are both fine. Use the one you like more. The article sucks though.

<comment><USER3> that's basically what the article says too: both are fine, here is a list when to use each one. You say "use the one you like". How can I like something I have not used before?</comment></comment>


Ask HN: Linux laptop with MacBook-like build quality - <AUTHOR> Am I just looking in the wrong places, or is it still really hard to buy a Linux laptop with MacBook-like build quality? Are you running a Linux laptop? Where did you get it? <comment><USER2> MacBook Pro 2015. I've used ArchLinux on this with no issues. Used a 2013 MacBook Air before that, same OS (I actually used `ssh | dd` to just copy the image, rather than reinstall anything).

The MBA needed non-kernel driver (which was a breeze to install anyway). The MBP uses an in-kernel one, so no issue there.

It doesn't get more MacBook-like than that. :P

<comment><USER3> shh | dd? How does that work? Please say more.

<comment><USER4> Boot both machines via usb†, start ssh server on one

Depending on where the ssh server is (source or target):

        dd if=/dev/sda | ssh -C 220.127.116.11 dd of=/dev/sda
        ssh -C 220.127.116.11 dd if=/dev/sda | dd of=/dev/sda

† or mount the source / as ro, or systemd-switchroot to a ramdisk. Just make sure that source / is not getting writes. Or not, if you don't care.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> Dell 5520 ([http://www.dell.com/learn/us/en/555/campaigns/xps-linux- lapt...](http://www.dell.com/learn/us/en/555/campaigns/xps-linux-laptop)). I bought one for work earlier this year and liked it so much I bought a second for home. Dual Xeons, 32GB ram, 4k display, great battery life, and a body design which feels decidedly mac-like, yet different. In fact, I actually prefer the tactile feel of the 5520.

The only real problems I have is the touchpad (currently tweaking synclient to get it just right) interfering while typing occasionally, and the completely crappy experience with the Thunderbolt docking station (it rarely goes perfectly when docking/undocking, but even if it does, sometimes the displays refuse to wake up while docked).

All that said, I really dig it. I've had two macbooks in the past, and can honestly say this machine is a FAR better experience and much more cost effective.

<comment><USER6> You can disable the touchpad while typing, it's much nicer that way IMO.

</comment></comment><comment><USER7> Well, there are two contenders in this space (based on the information I've gathered over time) and those are the Dell XPS 13, and the Thinkpad X1 Carbon. You can also look into HP as they've been known for being quite linux friendly. Hope this helps.

<comment><USER8> The Thinkpad X1 Carbon is an astonishingly good machine

</comment></comment><comment><USER9> I have a X1 Carbon 5th generation with Ubuntu 17.04.

I'm very satisfied, the installation was easy, everything is working correctly, apart the fingerprint reader but biometric is a joke so no big loss.

The biggest problem with this machine is the fan system, it's configured at a pretty conservative temperature and when the fan start, it does a 1-2 seconds at almost full speed which is noisy.

The ports are just right for me, an hdmi port, two usb-3 and two usb-c which will make my life so much better when I will buy this screen/usb-c dock: [http://www.philips.co.uk/c-p/258B6QUEB_00/brilliance-lcd- mon...](http://www.philips.co.uk/c-p/258B6QUEB_00/brilliance-lcd-monitor-with- usb-c-dock). With an unique cable I will have everything I need when working from my desk: power, video, audio, ethernet, keyboard and mouse!

<comment><USER10> "Biometric is a joke"

Speak for yourself because fingerprint sensor on my smartphone has changed the way I use it. Don't call the whole field of tech useless because Lenovo chooses to cheap out on their components.

<comment><USER11> I believe that comment is in reference to the fact that biometrics authentication is not as secure as folks would think. For example a printed copy of a fingerprint is likely sufficient to bypass it.

Of course there's the balance of security and convenience.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> I run Linux on a slightly modified Chromebook. It seems solid to me, but I never owned a MBP.

It has all of the things I care about:

\- 1080p IPS display (13.3" screen)

\- SSD

\- 4GB of RAM

\- Fast enough to handle real work loads (lots of browser tabs, running large Rails apps in Docker, streaming music, etc.)

\- SD card and USB ports

The whole thing was $350 USD and it's under 3 pounds.

Details are at: [https://nickjanetakis.com/blog/transform-a-toshiba- chromeboo...](https://nickjanetakis.com/blog/transform-a-toshiba-chromebook- cb35-into-a-linux-development-environment-with-galliumos)

<comment><USER13> My mbp has 2560x1600 screen, effectively making 1080p quite bad in comparison.

<comment><USER14> This is an unfair comparison. macOS doesn't run at that resolution out of the box. Your max effective resolution is 1680x1050. Even a 15" rMBP has a max effective resolution of 1920x1200. So, 1080p is plenty competitive for dev work. Now, if all you care about is the smoothness of HiDPI, then your point is valid, but most of us care more about how much code we can fit on screen than how smooth the font looks.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> Dell XPS13 with a high-res screen

Works flawless under Fedora 25. Plus I even get the firmware updates presented "through Gnome".

Build quality is very nice, although it's no full aluminium unibody

<comment><USER16> I'm running this setup, and only found out today about this feature! I was looking into the i7 hyperthreading bug, and I'm looking forward to receiving the BIOS update automagically.

</comment></comment><comment><USER17> Xiaomi's notebook. 12.5" or 13.3".

[http://www.mi.com/en/mibookair/](http://www.mi.com/en/mibookair/)

<comment><AUTHOR> It looks promising- but does it come with Linux?

</comment></comment><comment><USER18> Dell Precision 5510 user here, hands down the best computer I ever had. Great build quality, powerful, sober, beautiful and professional.

<comment><USER19> Is that the little brother of the XPS 15 ? Cause I have an XPS 15, and it's been a (expensive) disappointment for the last year.

<comment><USER20> It's sort of an XPS rebranded for the business market

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER21> In my opinion I find that the hard truth is that (1) linux battery performance will always be worse than windows and (2) over time linux will completely destroy your battery.

I've found that using a thinkpad and the TLP program helps 1 by setting some sane defaults and allowing for customization and it helps 2 by allowing the computer to better maintain the battery.

<comment><USER22> References?

<comment><USER21> First comment is my experience and opinion and TLP can be found at [http://linrunner.de/en/tlp/tlp.html](http://linrunner.de/en/tlp/tlp.html)

<comment><USER22> References for 2?

<comment><USER21> I guess you don't have to use it or trust me :) My comments are just my opinion and are based on my personal observation.

<comment><USER22> It contradicts my decades-long experience and I would have loved to know whether I have just been lucky. Is there a bug report somewhere? Or just some blog about some more data?

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER23> What about trackpad quality. Does any other laptop begin to compare to MacBooks?

<comment><USER24> yes, is there any recent laptop that have as good as macbook.

<comment><USER25> The best non-MBP trackpad I've ever used is Dell XPS. Carbon X1 is also up there. Apple is still leading when it comes to trackpads though

<comment><USER26> I own the 2017 XPS 13 and its trackpad is still horrendous, but not as bad as most windows machines.

OP would be well suited to bringing their mighty mouse along with them.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER27> If you're into huge laptops, I'm running Linux (Ubuntu) on an ASUS ROG G752VS right now, previously ran on G750 and G751 models. Build quality is solid and the specs are no doubt high end. However, not everything works out-of-the-box and some things have no fix as far as I know. For example with my current G752VS, the microphone port is completely useless as well as the function keys (only volume control Fn keys work). Other fixable issues are brightness control (fixed using xbacklight) and headphones jack (fixed using hdajackretask).

</comment><comment><USER6> I'm running a fully specc'd Dell XPS 13 with Ubuntu on it, and it's been amazing. My only quibbles are battery life, which is acceptable but not as good as I'd like, and the screen, which is fabulous - but I have the touch screen (I got this option by accident) and the hidpi resolution isn't supported by some software. It's not enough of a problem to limit my workflow so I kept it.

I'd say it's a great laptop, just don't get the touch screen. That'd probably help with the battery life as well.

</comment><comment><USER28> I bought a 'shell' of a Thinkpad X220 on eBay for ~£66 ($85) and then bought an SSD, 8GB RAM, Wifi module, 9-cell battery. All in, about £120 with some smart shopping.

Replacement parts (such as a palm-rest from dropping it off the sofa) cost a few quid, and that's if you manage to absolutely deck the thing.

It's happily chugging away with Debian, all components work OOTB.

Got to recommend a used Thinkpad, and advise checking out the Thinkpad subreddit, they've got some great advice on buying - not all Thinkpads are alike.

<comment><USER29> Seconding this. I paid closer to $700 for my Thinkpad X230 in 2011 and it's still going strong with Arch Linux. Not much of a gaming laptop, but it's been very solid fox nearly six years now.

</comment></comment><comment><USER30> I use a tuxedo infinity since 1 1/2 years and couldn't be happier. [https://www.tuxedocomputers.com/Linux-Hardware/Linux- Noteboo...](https://www.tuxedocomputers.com/Linux-Hardware/Linux- Notebooks/10-14-Zoll/TUXEDO-InfinityBook-Pro-13-matt-Full-HD-IPS- Aluminiumgehaeuse-Intel-Core-i7-U-CPU-bis-32GB-RAM-zwei-HDD/SSD-bis-12h-Akku- Typ-C-Thunderbolt.geek)

</comment><comment><USER31> Dell XPS 13, build quality is great, next day on-site service is unbeatable.

<comment><USER32> how well does linux work on it?

<comment><USER33> I'm running Arch and i3 on mine... Works beautifully. I seem to get good battery life too, as I've been pretty selective about what I installed. Powertop takes care of the rest. The trackpad perhaps isn't as nice as my workhorse MBA, but just about everything I use regularly has some sort of Vim mode, so my fingers are hardly ever off the keys.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER34> I'm a fan of the Thinkpads, especially for Linux. Lenovo maintains a certification list of models that are certified under Ubuntu and RedHat. Note, though, that not all Thinkpads have the same chassis materials. Here is a list of the materials for various 2017 models: [https://www.reddit.com/r/thinkpad/comments/6bvlb9/2017_think...](https://www.reddit.com/r/thinkpad/comments/6bvlb9/2017_thinkpad_chassis_material_matrix/)

Note that the T470 line is built with magnesium, and the X1 Carbon / Yoga have a lot of carbon fiber parts. Both make for a high quality feel.

<comment><USER35> I dislike how their website makes you pay the Microsoft tax (no way to choose "no operating system"). Is there a way to customize it to not have to pay for Windows?

</comment></comment><comment><USER36> X1 Carbon series is awesome and runs linux/gnome3 flawlessly.

</comment><comment><USER37> For build quality I like my Razer Blade (late 2016 build), but support is not perfect out of the box. I'm running Linux Mint 18.1. The WiFi was not supported by the live disc, but works after install. Switching between the NVidia and Intel graphics has been a problem that I haven't yet resolved.

The pros are a quad core i7, NVidia 1060, a better keyboard than MBP (my opinion), 16gb RAM, option of 4K glossy or 1080p flat panel. I chose the 1080p so I don't have glare.

<comment><USER38> I like the Razer Blades, but it is the only laptop I've ever had shutdown from overheating. Have you had any issues with cooling?

<comment><USER37> I haven't had any cooling issues yet. I accidentally put it in my laptop bag when it was running and I thought it had gone to sleep. It was exceptionally hot when I pulled it out, but I powered it off to cool.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER39> I don't own one but what about a purism laptop? [https://puri.sm/](https://puri.sm/)

</comment><comment><USER40> I've been using Lenovo Thinkpads. Not the prettiest laptop but well built, military spec and I've never had an issue running Linux on any Thinkpad I've owned. Currently have a Thinkpad L430 which I got refurbished for $300 on ebay. Used to have Debian on it, now I'm running kubuntu 17.04 with no issues.

</comment><comment><USER41> I have the new HP envy model, runs Ubuntu 17.04 perfectly out of the box. Even sound and wifi works, scaling of the hidpi screen works perfectly too. Really recommend if you want fast, thin, mac quality laptop for an affordable price. I got mine for 745€ on the HP store for the i5, 8gb,256gb ssd.

</comment><comment><USER42> Dell XPS 13 also has great build quality.

</comment><comment><USER43> I just got a Galago Pro from system76. It's a really nice laptop with a solid aluminum build. Not as slick as a MacBook, but has better specs and is much more repairable as well as being a lot less expensive.

</comment><comment><USER44> Have you tried the ThinkPad T series? I'm running a T460 with Linux.

</comment><comment><USER45> [https://www.razerzone.com/gaming-systems/razer- blade](https://www.razerzone.com/gaming-systems/razer-blade)

</comment><comment><USER46> Running Debian on a Thinkpad X1 Carbon (5th gen). Everything except fingerprint reader works smoothly out of the box, couldn't be happier with it.

</comment><comment><USER47> My current trick is to limit my search to "gaming laptops" because gamers are picky as hell when it comes to components.

<comment><USER2> Gamer laptops tend to be very overpowered video-wise, and have much poorer battery durations. Either that, or they're very big and clunky.

<comment><USER48> Yeah, the Clevo I got from Mythlogic about 3 years ago is like that--it's basically a desktop machine squashed into a small package. Which means it's a little heavier, runs hotter, not great battery life (but I rarely take it anywhere I can't plug in, so it's not a big deal really). But it's quite solid and fast. Don't know what of their current offerings would be more Macbook- like.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER49> Did anyone try this yet: [http://kde.slimbook.es](http://kde.slimbook.es)

</comment><comment><USER38> I ran Ubuntu variants on a Samsung Book 9 (now the Ativ Book line) for about 5 years. Worked pretty well.

</comment><comment><USER50> Check out System76 [https://system76.com/laptops](https://system76.com/laptops)

<comment><USER51> They are not even close to MB quality and they are not worth it. They are also making questionable decisions regarding supported OS. Apparently they are going away from Ubuntu and wants to fork Ubuntu with Unity 7.

<comment><USER52> AFAIK, they intend to continue to offer Ubuntu as a choice. Their hardware is vastly superior to the garbage that is MB.

<comment><USER51> No, they are buildin Pop! OS [https://system76.com/pop](https://system76.com/pop)

About the quality. If you don't believe me about S76 quality please read this [https://www.reddit.com/r/linux/comments/48y2db/system76_lapt...](https://www.reddit.com/r/linux/comments/48y2db/system76_laptop_reviews/) maybe that will change your mind. MBs are not perfect (non laptops are) bud they are so damn close (depends on what you need). If you want solid laptop you should really look mostly in to MB, Thinkpad series and XPS series, depends on your requirements (wants look and HD speeds? take MB, wants upgrade your laptop in the future? take Thinkpad or XPS)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER53> Microsoft Surface Laptop</comment>


MIT's free online classes can now lead to MicroMaster's degree - <AUTHOR> http://www.sfgate.com/business/technology/article/For-1st-time-MIT-s-free-online-classes-can-carry-6556128.php <comment><USER2> Isn't the point of having a degree that you don't have to explain it? Isn't it shorthand for "I know X"? I'm not sure I want to spend a year working on an "MIT micromasters" only to have every interviewer ask wtf.

<comment><USER3> The Second (in person) Semester, at 33K USD leads to an actual Master's Degree[1].

It looks like the first master's program this is available for is Supply Chain Management, which from what I've seen[2] is one of the harder parts of manufacturing

1\. [http://micromasters.mit.edu/](http://micromasters.mit.edu/) 2\. General Motors Assembly Plant (IT though, not supply chain)

<comment><USER4> I work for a manufacturing business. I agree with what you say about supply chain, especially if "harder" implies "more stressful." Purchasing is one of the most stressful and high-burnout jobs in the plant.

I doubt that a person would be hired fresh out of school for this kind of job, which implies that the 33K USD would be paid for by an employer, perhaps for someone who is showing promise in a related field or at a lower level.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> This is a step in the right direction. However the $33k for the 2nd semester is still out of reach for many.

"As part of the pilot project, students who perform well in the online half can take an exam to apply for the second semester on campus. Those who get in would pay $33,000, about half the cost of the yearlong program."

Would be nice to see them eventually offer affordable online courses & exams for 8 semesters.

<comment><USER6> Seems far too much for an online-only degree, but I guess the danger is devaluing the MIT brand.

And in essence I guess it is a sort of freemium structure.

<comment><USER7> The $33k is for an on-campus semister to complete the Master's, not the online MicroMaster's degree.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> As someone living in a country with free education, 33k is a metric shit ton of money. (Denmark)

But always cool, with more options.

<comment><USER9> Your education is obviously not free, somebody (still you) is paying for it, just not directly. I wonder how the actual cost differs?

<comment><USER10> So I googled it, and for Germany there seems to be a mean cost of 118,000 € per student for the whole degree.

It is very different depending on degree and also university. Medicine is very expensive and half the money goes into educating doctors.

The cost per year per student ranges between 5930 € and 12,170€ over the Bundesländer (counties), maybe depending on the degrees offered? [1]

I found a number for the average cost in the US at US$36,564 per year [2], which today is 32,199 €. So, for Germany, it's about a third per year on average.

edit: Is the US tuition the full cost?

[1][http://www.spiegel.de/unispiegel/studium/grossbild-263275-28...](http://www.spiegel.de/unispiegel/studium/grossbild-263275-288574.html)

[2][http://www.topuniversities.com/student-info/student- finance/...](http://www.topuniversities.com/student-info/student-finance/how- much-does-it-cost-study-us)

<comment><USER11> The German number is measuring the _cost_. The US is measuring _the amount that universities charge_. Those are two very different things.

The actual cost is probably still substantially smaller in Germany -- IMO higher ed is one of those areas where markets create lots of inefficiences that a mostly or completely socialized system doesn't have (e.g., spending tens of millions on fancy new buildings and other amenities designed to attract people).

<comment><USER12> The lesson of the USSR seems to have been that competitive free markets tend to be more efficient than socialized ones, because the inefficient universities would be out competed by the efficient ones. (You could still be right though, because universities are not a perfectly free market.)

<comment><USER11> _> The lesson of the USSR seems to have been..._

...that victors write the history books.

Seriously, the notion that there was a single cause for the decline of the USSR -- and that this cause corresponds _exactly_ to the ideologies at the heart of its antagonistic relationship with its enemies -- is prime facia suspicious. There were a myriad of economic, structural, political, environmental, geopolitical, and military reasons for the collapse of the USSR. Boiling all of that down to "Socialism Bad" is a nice rallying cry, but not exactly a helpful analysis (or at all likely to be very accurate).

 _>... because the inefficient universities would be out competed by the efficient ones_

What does this even mean? What does it mean for a university to be "efficient"?

I think you're confusing what ideology claims should happen with observable reality; namely, that higher education in the US is 1) closer to a free market than peer nations; and 2) horrendously more expensive than peer nations.

 _>... because universities are not a perfectly free market_

It's one thing to say "we don't know what works, so let's try the thing that one particular ideology prescribes."

It's another thing to say "Those people over there don't have our problem. I bet the reason is because we're not doubled down on the exact _opposite_ of what they're doing."

In any case, I think I answered above why a free market won't fix higher education: brand names / flashy stadiums / dorms / academic buildings sell better than good instruction and solid research.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> Here's the direct link to MITx MicroMaster's credential [http://micromasters.mit.edu/](http://micromasters.mit.edu/)

</comment><comment><USER14> They did not mention whether non-US residents are included in this program or not.

<comment><USER15> Open to all: "MIT proudly announces two new programs that offer learners around the world ..." \- [http://micromasters.mit.edu/](http://micromasters.mit.edu/)

</comment></comment><comment><USER16> Is this for their OpenCourse Ware thing? IMO MIT OCW is very underrated and looked over in favor of Coursera, which I've almost always found inferior.

<comment><USER17> I've never taken a full class in either, but although Coursera seems more structured (they have quizzes, tests, homework autograders), my impression is that Coursera is more technically diluted. This is for the CS and stat courses I have tried.

<comment><USER16> A lot of MIT OCW courses have all of those aside from the autograders, but the reason I prefer OCW to Coursera is because OCW is self-paced.

Many Coursera courses move very slowly (not their fault since they're taking thousands of students), or move too fast and have too much "homework" for a 9-5er. What's worse, some don't let you get ahead! With OCW I can set my own times and pace myself for my kind of learning.

I also prefer college lectures and books to Coursera lectures. Like you said, Coursera content can be too simple.

<comment><USER18> Most of the Coursera courses I take are actual college courses, like this algorithms one - [https://class.coursera.org/algs4partI-009](https://class.coursera.org/algs4partI-009) They are a lot of work to keep up with, but the good ones have deadlines about a month past the 'end' of the course so you can work at a much slower pace.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER19> Well, Why do we care of showing degrees off and that gets counted in? "I have a board which says 'Alas, I graduated MBA from 'bla bla'"

I would say, if we are able to show what we have built, or talk and convince intellectually as to what we are capable to build should matter more than any piece of paper. I do agree, there would be a problem of filtering the right ones for a job in lieu of a "paper degree", but I hope there comes a better way in the world to judge and educate people to be more innovative and building real incremental things rather than just getting 'paper degrees'"

<comment><USER20> Did you create a second account to re-post the same comment? [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10410926](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10410926)

</comment></comment><comment> rebekah-aimee This has to be really cost-effective for MIT; I mean, they aren't really putting much in the way of resources towards these online students. But I think it's an attempt to solve a problem that's already in the process of evolving into a non-problem.

Most of the good programmers I know just go to school mostly for the credentials and to socialize with other programmers there, and then go home and self-teach for actual skill. School centers around getting a job. But it's starting to become not the only way to get a job. (Leaving out startups, of course; you don't really need credentials there except to impress VCs.)

Some companies are recognizing that formal education in programming is not very effective, and are paying more attention to StackOverflow and GitHub accounts and that sort of thing. Our work and expertise is becoming more visible through the Internet. That suggests that maybe we're not going to have to worry so much about credentials.

My older brother is doing very well for himself as a developer, without any formal training past some classes in high school back in the 90s. As for myself, I'm leaving for Kansas City once I'm done with my Associate's degree, and I'm going to UMKC there... for a few semesters, until I find a job and/or a cofounder. I don't intend to finish the degree I'm going to sign up for. They let slip during my visit there that they're already having issues convincing students to finish their degrees rather than let themselves be hired out.

But I do intend to go, in order to meet other programmers. That's the real power of universities: they collect bright, ambitious people and let them work together. Online classes don't have that power, and the credential problem is already being solved better, so I don't think this is going to go very far. But maybe it'll help accelerate the current solution by giving more credence to self-teaching and online study. Good try, but it'll probably be irrelevant in the end.

Kind of begs the question of whether one could recreate the social aspect of universities and leave out the expense of formal classes as they are now? For instance, whether you could make a sort of hackerspace-modelled university where all the "classes" were projects that one student was looking for help with? I'd attend that.

Hmm... sounds familiar, doesn't it? ;)

<comment><USER21> >> Kind of begs the question of whether one could recreate the social aspect of universities and leave out the expense of formal classes as they are now? For instance, whether you could make a sort of hackerspace-modelled university where all the "classes" were projects that one student was looking for help with? I'd attend that.

Sounds kind of like Make School [1]. Will be interesting to see the outcomes for their first real 'class' of students.

[1] [https://www.makeschool.com/](https://www.makeschool.com/)

<comment> rebekah-aimee I was referring to YC, but I'm glad to see there are others following this model. I'll have to keep an eye on Make School; thanks for the link!

<comment><USER22> Make School is a great school. I have talked to students, they love it. Also a YC company :)

FYI also sounds like Holberton School[1] - 100% project-based.

[1] [https://www.holbertonschool.com](https://www.holbertonschool.com)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER23> They should just allow for exam taking for free and if you pass you need to pay a certain amount for the degree. At least it'll cut through the BS.

<comment><USER24> Exams will be proctored. That costs money. Who picks up the tab when a student fails?

<comment><USER23> Ok, charge cheap exams, whatever the proctors cost + getting a room etc. (<$100)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER25> I guess this is for poor isolated geniuses that will find ways to be sponsored the remaining $33K otherwise I don't see how this would work.

</comment><comment><USER26> If this is successful, perhaps they'd consider expanding this to a Bachelor's (MicroBachelors). It's a step in the right direction, at least. I've gone through a lot of the MIT OCW videos and notes, and by and large, the quality is very high. Promising.

<comment><USER27> I think that would be very useful for a lot of older tech types, like myself, who never bothered with a Bachelor's degree in the first place. I'm in the East Bay and there are a number of master-level programs that seem very interesting, but the idea of doing a 4-year undergrad degree at this point makes me want to stab my eyes out - I'm pushing 40, have kids, and doing fine in my career.

</comment></comment><comment><USER28> MicroMasters? Is that like a Bachelor's without calling it a Bachelor's, so people keep paying exorbitant amounts of money to attend physical classes to ultimately get a piece of paper? Ok MIT.

<comment><USER29> If you read the article, it clearly says that they let you do the first half of the Masters in this degree program online for much cheaper than doing it on campus. Then if you do well enough they give you a certificate for that part, and if you want you can do the second half of the Masters at that point, paying half of the normal amount you would pay for the full Masters degree.

If nothing else, this restricts the set of people who end up paying for that second half to those who have already demonstrated they can handle the work.

<comment><USER30> It also makes it more likely that their employers will foot the bill. Saying "I did the first half, here are my grades, please send me for the second" is a pretty compelling pitch.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER31> Are there no online undergraduate degree courses? Why is it always master's?

For example Georgia Tech has online master's degrees but no undergraduate courses.

<comment><USER32> Getting employers to accept online bachelors is a lot harder than masters. Most jobs have bachelors requirements and an online degree will likely get flagged. But for a masters it can work as an added bonus.

</comment></comment><comment><USER33> you also have to pay $150 for the verified certificate in the semester. and I believe that has to be paid before the semester starts.

<comment><USER34> In a pilot project announced Wednesday, students will be able to take a semester of free online courses in one of MIT's graduate programs and then, if they pay a "modest fee" of about $1,500 and pass an exam, they will earn a MicroMaster's credential, the school said.

If the trial fee is $1500, I'm not sure they'd go right back to $150

<comment><USER35> > The cost of the MicroMaster's includes $150 for each of the five online > classes, plus up to $800 to take the exam.

So, sounds like $150 up front for each course, and then $800 to tie it all up with the exam, for $1500 total.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER36> Anyone has more information about what subjects they'd offer?

Honestly, it's surprising this took so long to happen.

</comment><comment><USER37> All I can think of is the Micromasters transformers toy line.

</comment><comment><USER38> Will it help to get visa? I'm in :)

</comment><comment><USER39> Slightly OT.

The video embedded in the article talks about Tsinghua University beating MIT in rankings. This is a quantity vs quality since Tsinghua University churns out more research papers than MIT [1] because of the vast amount of students.

[1] - [http://qz.com/522471/the-real-reason-chinese-universities- ar...](http://qz.com/522471/the-real-reason-chinese-universities-are-climbing- the-ranks-in-engineering-and-beat-out-mit/)

<comment><USER40> To be fair, Tsinghua is widely accepted as the second best university in all of China; the quality of the students is extremely high. The quality of the research is probably not so high.

<comment><USER41> And Tsinghua graduates figure disproportionately in the national leadership:

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

I suppose it's a bit like if MIT grads were ~40% of the US cabinet or Senate committee chairs – rather than so many Ivy League lawyers.

<comment><USER40> [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/C9_League](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/C9_League)

As far as I know, the prestige university you go to if you want a specifically technical education is Shanghai Jiao Tong Daxue. (Don't take that as particularly authoritative; I'm mostly familiar with it as a contrast to Fudan.) But I don't believe Tsinghua is technically focused in the manner of MIT. It's very much part of China's Ivy League.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER42> The same story submitted here a few days ago

[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10381464](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10381464)

<comment><USER43> Reposts are ok if a story hasn't had significant attention yet. Once it has, we treat reposts as dupes.

[https://news.ycombinator.com/newsfaq.html](https://news.ycombinator.com/newsfaq.html)

</comment></comment><comment><USER44> But "supply chain management"? It seems that three months buying parts in Shentzen, a month at the Port of Los Angeles, and an intership at Digi-Key or Mouser would be the path to expertise in that.

<comment><USER27> I spent eight years building software for global sourcing operations and supply chain management. It's both incredibly dull and incredibly intricate. As a result of designing and building the software, I have a fair amount of expertise in the field, but I'd never admit it to anyone.</comment></comment>


Medieval villagers mutilated the dead to stop them rising, study finds - <AUTHOR> https://www.theguardian.com/science/2017/apr/03/medieval-villagers-mutilated-the-dead-to-stop-them-rising-study-finds <comment><USER2> Surely if this practice is so widespread, at some point it should have happened, or at least seemed to have happened right?

Perhaps so many people lived in near death circumstances due to plague and such that some persons simply looked dead for a while, and then came back as the disease relented a little? I can imagine someone suffering late stage bubonic plague certainly looked like zombies.

<comment><USER3> Actually there are a lot of reasons for dead people apparently coming back. Burying bodies so they stay down is actually a big effort for most cultures, wild animals and weather conditions can easily pull a body from a shallower grave and redeposit it somewhere else. Add that to the tendency of bodies to continue to change after death, or at least appear to (gums receding looks like teeth growing, etc.) and it's not hard to see how people in earlier culture s might get the impression that the dead are up and walking around. Factor in also how diseases can take members of a family or others close to the dead person invisibly, and, well...

<comment> awinter-py Disagree -- agriculturists & hunter-gatherers are way more familiar with death than moderns because they slaughtered their own livestock. We don't even experience human birth & death at home; it's packaged for us by hospitals and funeral parlors.

The basic anatomical knowledge in a society where everyone has killed a goat is arguably higher than industrialized 2017 where we get our steaks pre-cut.

I'd be interested in an argument that says wealthy, artistic, anatomically modern humans in the stone or bronze age aren't aware of the symbolic content of their death rituals. But I haven't heard one yet.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> I'm Jamaican. My mom (64) says that when she was growing up, it was standard practice to hammer nails into the soles of the dead, so their spirits couldn't "walk".

<comment><USER5> My late grandmother (Trinidadian) used to tell a story of a funeral procession where the body sat up in the coffin (something to do with the bandaged, poorly-embalmed body swelling in the heat?).

Apparently the locals wouldn't approach the body for some time afterwards, for fear it was 'walking'.

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> We'll it looks like it worked! The dead didn't rise.

</comment><comment><USER7> There is no direct link to the paper (only the journal), but I wonder if they considered this (apparently) previously common practice: [http://www.smithsonianmag.com/history/the-gruesome- history-o...](http://www.smithsonianmag.com/history/the-gruesome-history-of- eating-corpses-as-medicine-82360284/)

<comment><USER8> Disturbing practice but interesting article. Good point about hypocrisy on the part of the people of that era.

I was wondering though, what is meant in the following sentence:

>And in 1908, a last known attempt was made in Germany to swallow blood at the scaffold.

What does "swallow blood at the scaffold" mean in this context?

<comment><USER9> Scaffold refers to the structure used for execution by hanging. It's a somewhat clumsy phrase meaning: the last attempt to drink someone's blood after they were executed (presumably hanged)

<comment><USER8> Thanks, I thought it might be something relating to execution but was confused by the Google results which was had a Wikipedia article stating "scaffolding, also called scaffold or staging, is a temporary structure used to support a work crew and materials to aid in the construction, maintenance and repair" as well as a lot of pictures of such structures.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> There's a whole book on this topic: [http://www.goodreads.com/book/show/715512.Vampires_Burial_an...](http://www.goodreads.com/book/show/715512.Vampires_Burial_and_Death)

</comment><comment><USER11> Still happens in parts of East Europe.

[https://www.theguardian.com/world/2005/jun/19/theobserver](https://www.theguardian.com/world/2005/jun/19/theobserver)

</comment><comment><USER12> I went there about a year ago. This is a gravestone in the churchyard. Just saying... [https://goo.gl/photos/C9JnEHddouNcKuEb8](https://goo.gl/photos/C9JnEHddouNcKuEb8)

<comment><USER13> Sure, but I'd still want a bling tombstone (angels, cherubim, the works) to tell everyone I basically Owned It when I was alive.

<comment><USER14> ...and that's why funerals/burials are so expensive :P

<comment><USER15> Well, seriously though, they are expensive because the industry* takes advantage of people who are grieving.

*Service Corporation International namely, and other companies that buy up local funeral homes to basically price fix the area.

<comment><USER16> Yes those evil corporations, making a profit by providing a service!

<comment><USER15> > Yes those evil corporations, making a profit by providing a service!

Pretty low quality comment. Perhaps you misread. There are funeral homes that provide a service. Then there is SCI, which buys up the local homes and just increases prices. And they get away with it because they take advantage of people when they are mourning, aka emotional, and state regulations on the death industry vary widely.

The whole industry needs some heavy federal baseline regulations, IMO.

> SCI charges $6,256 on average (excluding casket and cemetery plot), 42 > percent more than independents. [1]

And then there's numerous cases of SCI just overselling plots, skipping embalming regulations, etc.

[1] - [http://www.businessweek.com/articles/2013-10-24/is- funeral-h...](http://www.businessweek.com/articles/2013-10-24/is-funeral-home- chain-scis-growth-coming-at-the-expense-of-mourners)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER17> Why wouldn't you want the dead to come back?

<comment><USER18> Because they come back... _different_.

</comment></comment><comment><USER8> Not really surprising. I've heard about corpses being fastened in their coffins with a metal pole through the corpse and that said practice is the origin of the idea that you can kill a vampire by driving a wooden stake through their heart.

</comment><comment><USER19> Ever heard the story behind, "saved by the bell" ?

<comment><USER20> Nothing on Wikipedia!

Care to expand? Is there some oral history behind it?

<comment><USER14> You'd be buried with a bell, so in case you woke up (weren't really dead), you could ring it and be rescued.

Or at least that's the story.

<comment><USER21> Not buried with it, you'd have a bell tied to you as you sat on a gurney waiting to be buried. They'd leave you for a period of time in case you awoke. There are instance where people were buried with poisons to take in case they woke inside the coffin - at that point its pretty much over for you.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER22> So we have beliefs in the dead rising, a bunch of decapitated and burned bodies, and then they all leave anyway.

Guess it's time to re-read the Zombie Survival Guide.

<comment><USER23> Probably not zombies, just miss identification of a deep coma. Especially during plague times, people knew to not linger near the dead and quickly get rid of them (a logical reason for the miss ID, rather than the normal stupidity people seem to think the ancestors had).

Someone only needs to wake up once to start the story.

<comment><USER24> Reminds me of a Gaelic word I found in a dictionary - somehow this is the second time I've got the chance to roll this out on HN:

Teurmnasg (lit. thumb binding). a bandage on the toes and thumbs of a dead person, to prevent his ghost from hurting foes.

I couldn't find anything to indicate the origin of this practice but it seems like what you've said here would pretty much make sense. Cool!

<comment><USER25> There are records of similar practices (binding toes or piercing the soles of the feet to stop the dead from escaping) in Scandinavia, so it may have been something that came over with the Norse influence in Scotland.

See e.g. [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Draugr#Means_of_prevention](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Draugr#Means_of_prevention)

<comment><USER26> >so it may have been something that came over with the Norse influence in Scotland.

Not only via Scotland. Vikings regularly raided and colonized Ireland directly, too.

<comment><USER25> I know -- I just apparently parsed Gaelic as Scottish and forgot that the spelling is same for Irish Gaelic...

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER27> not limited to medieval times at all. prehistoric tombs also revealed tribes that used to bind hands and legs and feet of the dead probably for the very same reasons.

</comment><comment><USER28> "21st century commoners burnt the dead to stop them from rising, study finds" (2295)

A study of early 21st century literature shows a tendency to burn their dead, instead of interning it in a space capsule. "Early space goers faced high costs to obtain orbit" an unnamed source at the International Space Consourtium said "which likely resulted in them burning the bodies before sending them into space." What is unknown is how many allowed the remains to drift once reaching space and it seems the practice of sending towards Sol didn't begin in earnest until Priest Johobath's teachings began to spread in earnest.

"Despite the seeming uncouth behavior, it was likely an established tradition. Much detailed information probably will be discovered once we crack the code surrounding the Facegoog group's information trove." reported the Cyborgisty in a statement.</comment>