FBI May Not Have Had Access To Instapaper Hard Drive Data After All - <AUTHOR> http://blog.instapaper.com/post/6990340491

<comment><USER2> I think he should make an open apology to the FBI.

People really have to understand that "the government" isn't after you and that Western society has generally had a really good track record of not abusing their power as compared to most places around the world. The FBI simply doesn't walk into data centers or your homes and try to disrupt things. There are real American people who work in the government and police agencies who do good work. You have to realize that when they do something they shouldn't be doing, they have to answer to the court of law just like you and I with presented evidence.

I'm sorry if you disagree with me. But I don't think it's fair to assume corruption on part of the police.

<comment><USER3> The FBI still took Instapaper's blade servers, and that was wrong. I don't think it was intentional at all, but it was certainly careless, and therefore I don't think there's any need for Marco Arment to apologize to the FBI. If anything, the FBI should apologize for their careless seizure of hardware not covered by the warrant.

<comment><USER4> You are making an assumption that his blade server wasn't covered by the warrant. It's much more likely that the warrant was quite broad and allowed for the FBI to take exactly what they did. This has proven to be the case throughout the years under similar circumstances. I'm more surprised they only took one enclosure.

<comment><USER5> It's still careless to take something that wasn't relevant to the investigation and thereby cause harm to citizens who aren't involved.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> So... is this just a case of massive incompetence on the FBI's part? Why would they take the server and not the HDDs?

<comment> brown9-2 We don't know that they didn't seize other hard drives, just not ones used by Instapaper.

<comment><USER7> But it would be odd if the FBI was clueless enough to take an entire rack of servers when they were after just 1, yet smart enough to pick exactly the right drives out of a disk array. (assuming thats even possible)

<comment><USER4> A single C7000 is 10U in height and can house 16 half height blades. If they are using full height blades it houses eight. A typical enclosure is 36U, 42U, or 45U so it's certainly plausible the enclosure that was seized housed multiple blade chassis and or storage chassis. In which case it's also completely plausible that the storage array for Instapaper was in a different enclosure but the storage array the FBI cared about was in the same enclosure as the blade chassis.

What would be odd is if the FBI pulled out only the blades they were interested in at the data center and left everything else intact. What's much more likely is they took the entire chassis as it is in working condition so they could do their analysis. If they missed something or their warrant didn't include additional enclosures or equipment then they'll probably be back with a second warrant to collect the enclosure with all the storage arrays.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> so they took the blades but not the drives? what would the point be?

<comment><USER9> Never assume malice or intent when incompetence is a possible explanation

<comment><USER10> Actually, do assume malice. Too many cooks go free otherwise.

<comment><USER11> too many crooks in the kitchen

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> A rarely promoted benefit of a SAN!

<comment><USER13> FBI Raid ready?

<comment><USER14> Raid 0!

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> Well, yeah. Did anyone honestly think the FBI intentionally (and perhaps even illegally) took data belonging to Instapaper to.. what? Build profiles on upper middle class Americans' reading habits?

I'm definitely not an apologist for the post-9/11 police state, but that's a pretty silly conspiracy theory.

<comment><USER16> No, people thought the FBI _accidentally_ took data belonging to Instapaper. You're right that the FBI wouldn't have looked at it anyway since their investigation is not about Instapaper. They can't even afford to investigate crimes that are reported, so they definitely don't have the resources for random Web 2.0 fishing expeditions.

<comment><USER17> My concern would be that if the wrong disks get imaged (either by real bumbling, or erring on the side of over-collecting, or calculated-hoovering- that-could-be-portrayed-as-an-honest-mistake-later), the disk data could then wind up in some broader forensic analysis pipeline, or long-term evidence archive, and then be eventually misused.

For example, if they think they may have imaged too much, do they promptly and irreversibly wipe the extra? Or keep it, just in case their assessment of its relation to the current investigation changes again? Could current or future automated criminal-activity-analysis engines be run against every old disk image in their possession, ignoring the details of how/why they were collected?

<comment><USER16> _Could current or future automated criminal-activity-analysis engines be run against every old disk image in their possession..._

As problematic as that is, it's a drop in the bucket compared to things like Echelon. I think people should be realistic about their paranoia.

<comment><USER18> Echelon can be guarded against with in-transit crypto.

Physical access to systems is far more problematic. Even if the data is nominally encrypted on-disk, the key must be in RAM to make use of the data, rendering it vulnerable at the time of seizure. (You can partially mitigate the risk, but you can't make it 100%, and it's very likely you'll have issues with cost, performance, and user-friendliness along the way.)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER19> ...unless they had one of these: <http://www.wiebetech.com/products/HotPlug.php></comment>


Ask HN: What has been your purchasing experience on Alibaba - <AUTHOR> One of my managers at a company I used to work at would talk business with me, and encouraged that I start a business, no matter how small.
Given that I wanted to start with something "easy" and low-investment, I considered try selling soap.
I've checkout out Alibaba and even got some quotes that I'm happy with. Of course, buying in bulk makes me cautious because it would be several thousand USD up front.
Have you made any purchases on Alibaba? If so, how much money have you spent (rough figures)? Positive/negative experience? Tips or things to watch out for? Alternatives? <comment><USER2> I've spent probably $10k the past two years on Alibaba. I find their credit card processing is all over the place with declines or Alibaba themselves blocking the cards (which have been used before). Their solution is always asking you to send in validation paperwork (photo id, passport, picture of the card, etc.), which of course is sketchy.

All in, the products have always arrived close to as described. That said, I've only dealt with high reputation sellers and I've seen others locally burned pretty badly.

If I were selling anything consumable such as soap, i'd really want a good test on the composition to make sure I wasn't importing something that would cause serious harm down the road.</comment>


Physicists doubt bold report of metallic hydrogen - <AUTHOR> http://www.nature.com/news/physicists-doubt-bold-report-of-metallic-hydrogen-1.21379 <comment><USER2> Discussion of paper a few months ago: [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12875868](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12875868)</comment>


Hacking the D-Link DIR-890L - <AUTHOR> http://www.devttys0.com/2015/04/hacking-the-d-link-dir-890l/ <comment><USER2> I used to write reviews on these consumer-level network devices and in my experience they nearly all ran a root-privileged server under Linux. Inevitably they would end up having some sort of cgi interface that would take in parameters and make a "system" call to do email, change configurations, etc. It was only a matter of how much time and effort I wanted to put in to show that I could break in by screwing with the variables. They also would always have an unused telnet or ssh server that was left over from the original developers. Lesson-learned - Don't ever enable remote access for these cheap consumer devices.

Edit: Remembered an amusing case where I reported a vulnerability to a manufacturer. I reported something like "If you add an administrator's email address to the device that looks like 'firstname.lastname@example.com' the box will reboot". The manufacturer got right on it and "fixed" the bug. Their fix? The new firmware had an explicit check for the string "reboot" inside of submitted email addresses. Kind of tells you the quality of engineers they have developing these things...

<comment><USER3> I think the problem is that the typical engineers that work on these devices are used to work on a whole different layer - hardware. But they know how to put together a few simple CGI scripts and probably don't even know the dangers they are facing when they run HTTP(s) server.

So on the one side you have HW guys saying "no need to find someone, we can do it ourselves" and on the other managers gladly accepting this on face value (it probably does cost them less in the short run). I am not saying these guys are not good engineers, just that this is not their area of expertize. Their mistake is not realizing this.

<comment><USER4> I've worked in embedded devices, and the problem isn't that the engineers don't know how to fix it properly, it's just that nobody cares enough to make consumer-level devices very secure. That costs money.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> I wonder if there's a buffer overflow in there too - how long is the command buffer and what's the maximum size of that header...?

From personal experience, SOAP is one of those protocols that feels _massively_ overdesigned and unnecessarily bloated.

<comment><USER3> This. The minute I read "SOAP" I imagined the fault lies there. It probably does, but this was lower hanging fruit... :)

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> As crappy as this firmware is, the ones ~7-10 years ago that didn't run Linux were much worse!

</comment><comment><USER7> Definitely need more posts/articles like that.

Sometimes publicity is the most efficient way to eradicate vendor' sloppiness and ignorance.

<comment><USER8> The web is full of articles like this. Vendors still come out with shitty, usually GPL-violating firmware. Links below from some quick googling and going through the archives of devttys0.com, but it doesnt even begin to describe the problem. Nearly every consumer router has some stupid injection or authentication bypass vulnerability.

[0] [http://www.devttys0.com/2013/10/reverse-engineering-a-d- link...](http://www.devttys0.com/2013/10/reverse-engineering-a-d-link- backdoor/)

[1] [http://www.exploit-db.com/exploits/35917/](http://www.exploit- db.com/exploits/35917/)

[2] [http://arstechnica.com/security/2014/02/bizarre-attack- infec...](http://arstechnica.com/security/2014/02/bizarre-attack-infects- linksys-routers-with-self-replicating-malware/)

[3] [https://threatpost.com/more-trouble-for-linksys-home- small-o...](https://threatpost.com/more-trouble-for-linksys-home-small-office- routers/104322)

[4] [http://www.devttys0.com/2015/04/reversing-belkins-wps-pin- al...](http://www.devttys0.com/2015/04/reversing-belkins-wps-pin-algorithm/)

[5] [http://www.devttys0.com/2015/04/reversing-belkins-wps-pin- al...](http://www.devttys0.com/2015/04/reversing-belkins-wps-pin-algorithm/)

[6] [http://www.devttys0.com/2014/05/hacking-the- dsp-w215-again-a...](http://www.devttys0.com/2014/05/hacking-the- dsp-w215-again-again-again/)

[7] [http://www.devttys0.com/2014/05/hacking-the-d-link- dsp-w215-...](http://www.devttys0.com/2014/05/hacking-the-d-link- dsp-w215-smart-plug/)

[8] [http://www.devttys0.com/2014/02/wrt120n-fprintf-stack- overfl...](http://www.devttys0.com/2014/02/wrt120n-fprintf-stack-overflow/)

[9] [http://www.devttys0.com/2014/02/cracking-linksys- crypto/](http://www.devttys0.com/2014/02/cracking-linksys-crypto/)

<comment><USER9> Some Netgear routers even have a built-in (root) telnet server and a command to dump the admin password.

[https://ian.sh/blog/2014/10/18/netgear- wndr4000-security/](https://ian.sh/blog/2014/10/18/netgear-wndr4000-security/)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> tl;dr: You can pass an arbitrary string to system on the router, thereby popping a de facto root shell using telnet. This owns the network.

<comment><USER11> tl;dr: but only if you're inside the lan or your target has enabled remote administration.

<comment><USER8> It looks like it could be done with a DNS rebinding attack (as you need to set a special HTTP header, so normal CSRF stuff doesn't work). This would mean the victim would simply need to visit an attacker controlled webpage

<comment><USER11> Sweet, even better. Is there any mitigation for that?

<comment><USER8> Sure! Install OpenWRT or some other alternative firmware.</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment>


Verizon 2019 Data Breach Investigations Report (DBIR) - <AUTHOR> https://enterprise.verizon.com/resources/reports/dbir/ <comment><USER2> Direct link: [https://enterprise.verizon.com/resources/reports/2019-data-b...](https://enterprise.verizon.com/resources/reports/2019-data- breach-investigations-report.pdf)

</comment><comment><USER3> No comments, because nobody wants to register with Verizon for this report.

Meaning we should definitely be reading this report.

<comment><USER4> There's a "View only" link which gets you to the PDF ([https://enterprise.verizon.com/resources/reports/2019-data-b...](https://enterprise.verizon.com/resources/reports/2019-data- breach-investigations-report.pdf))

It's still scummy practice, however.</comment></comment>


Show HN: RFP123 – Curated RFPs for Web Developers, Designers, and Agencies - <AUTHOR> http://www.rfp123.biz

<comment><AUTHOR> I like submitting proposals for RFPs – though they're sometimes a crap shoot, the projects are usually more interesting, better thought-out, and better paying than other freelance work.

Unfortunately, it can be difficult to find good RFPs to reply to. (I've tried a handful of services in this field, and nothing's really worked.)

Since my agency has more work than it can handle at the moment, I've taken a crack at setting up a subscription service for hand-selected webdev/design RFPs.

Please take a look (and sign up for a free 30-day trial if you'd care to) and let me know what you think!</comment>


FoundationDB high contention allocator - <AUTHOR> https://www.activesphere.com/blog/2018/08/05/high-contention-allocator <comment><USER2> FoundationDB could really have been a big big thing had they not burnt bridges with their initial user set (i was one of them). It was a really cool database.

<comment><USER3> Care to provide more details ? (i don't understand why you got downvoted btw)

<comment><USER2> FoundationDB had everything (launched or work in progress). SQL that was fast like NoSQL, No single point of failure, Scaling, Search, etc, etc... all built into one database. It was designed to remove the pain of managing many different components. For example, handling 'search' separately (via solr/lucene/cloudsearch) is a pain.

I'm not sure about the downvotes. I guess HN has lots of karma-police.

<comment><USER3> I was thinking about the « burning the bridge on initial users » part. But maybe you meant selling to Apple.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> This post is a great illustration of the FoundationDB model. If you can design an algorithm that scales from a theoretical perspective, and map it onto the FoundationDB key-value model, writing the application code is as straightforward as your algorithm. You don't have to think about the details of storage, networking, and transactions very much.

</comment><comment><USER5> FYI the FoundationDB community is doing its first community event in December: [https://www.foundationdb.org/blog/announcing-foundationdb- su...](https://www.foundationdb.org/blog/announcing-foundationdb-summit/)

</comment><comment><USER6> It took me a while reading the source code to convince myself that FoundationDB really doesn't use any prefix compression.

Seems like even with the directory encoding you'd be able to save a lot of storage space for keys by omitting the common prefixes.</comment>


The Shark Fin Conjecture - <AUTHOR> http://www.renownedmedia.com/blog/shark-fin-conjecture/

<comment><USER2> I used to think "jump the shark" referred to something like this: after a slow asymptotic climb, a precipitous drop in popularity representing the leading and trailing edges of a shark's fin respectively.

It wasn't until a few years after hearing this phrase that I learned it came from a _Happy Days_ episode.</comment>


Police Program Aims to Pinpoint Those Most Likely to Commit Crimes - <AUTHOR> http://www.nytimes.com/2015/09/25/us/police-program-aims-to-pinpoint-those-most-likely-to-commit-crimes.html?_r=0 <comment><USER2> We can see what the results of this style of policing is when we look at juveniles.

[http://www.economist.com/blogs/democracyinamerica/2014/03/am...](http://www.economist.com/blogs/democracyinamerica/2014/03/americas- prison-population)

> This overreliance on imprisonment can be seen most starkly, and sadly, by > looking at the juvenile population, which is just under 71,000 nationally. > Around 11,600 are imprisoned for "technical violations" of their probation > or parole terms, rather than because they committed a new crime. In 11 > states such juvenile prisoners outnumber those in for crimes against other > people. In only one state (Massachusetts) did juveniles imprisoned for > crimes committed against people comprise a majority of juvenile prisoners. > Around 3,000 are locked up for things that aren't crimes for adults, "such > as running away, truancy and incorrigibility." Incarcerated children are > less likely to graduate high-school and more likely to spend time in prison > as adults. If America is interested in reducing its prison population, > locking up fewer juveniles for silly reasons would be a good place to start.

</comment><comment><USER3> "In Chicago, the police have developed a "heat list" of 400 people who are considered far more likely than the average person to be involved in violent crime. Factors in compiling that list included their criminal records, social circles and gang connections. Also a factor was whether they had been victims of an assault or a shooting."

Yeah and I'm sure that Chicago detectives had absolutely no clue about those 400 people, they really needed a piece of expensive software to tell them where to look for. The trend is to think that technology will solve all problems, but it's just wishful thinking imho.

<comment><USER4> Instead of protecting and helping victims, expect them to retaliate and be waiting when they do... Awesome.

<comment><USER5> In the insurance industry, if you are the victim of a crash you may lose your no claims bonus. The situation is not just as simple as a victim of attack being a victim.

Wouldn't it be the case that, for example, those in the drug business are far more likely to harm their competition than their market?

<comment><USER4> For what types of attacks is it OK to "take away the no claims bonus" for fair and equal protection (and scrutiny) by the law?

<comment><USER5> If the goal is to prospectively keep the peace, then the monitoring should be directed towards those most likely to break the peace. I think that is rather orthogonal to fair and equal protection.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Apophenia](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Apophenia)

Given the problems in police departments (which have fortunately started to appearing in the news), giving the police a system that will essentially let them see what you want to see is a terrible idea. Police work is already full of "forensic tools" that don't actually work (like idea that fingerprints actually identify someone uniquely, or the various techniques that are examples of the Birthday Paradox).

While I'm sure that it's possible to use modern techniques to estimate where crime will occur, it won't work in practice. There are simply too many ways to bias the results (intentionally or not). I suspect giving police this kind of tool is simply a way to give legitimacy and cover to their bad behavior.

> including information about friendships, social media activity

COINTELPRO is a helluva drug.

> advocates say predictive policing can help improve police-community > relations by focusing on the people most likely to become involved in > violent crime.

That sounds _suspiciously_ like an excuse to improve _white_ communities, by focusing on the _blacks_ (who have historically been seen as "violent savages" by racists).

> because our predictive tool shows us you might commit a crime at some point > in the future

The big question is how long until someone tries to use that "predictive tool" as _probable cause_.

<comment><USER7> Apophenia is the _human_ tendency to see patterns in random _data_. Predictive _analytics_ is a machine that pulls non-random patterns out of data and presents this as _information_.

To say that other tools have a bad track record may count as a valid argument, but to me, it is a weak and fatalistic one. Judge each tool on its own merit or discard all tools as useless seems like an easy choice.

Predicting crime works in practice and theory. These models are not black boxes, they can be introspected. Bias can be detected and removed.

COINTELPRO was a program to infiltrate and disturb organizations that the state viewed as unwelcome. Monitoring social media activity is common detective work. The modern equivalent of an officer peeking over the fence in your back garden to see a stolen motorbike. Now they can use Google Maps for that. This is public information: The criminals feel free and safe enough to post and brag about their crimes on Facebook.

Removing or combating criminal elements in any community will improve that community, regardless of skin color. Black youth is helped, not suppressed, when gang recruiters are identified and punished.

Predictive tools are already used as probable cause. Prisoners in Guantanamo Bay can get a brain-wave reader test. This device will tell you what someone is thinking about and may reveal the plans of future terrorist attack.

<comment><USER6> > Apophenia is the _human_ tendency to see patterns in random _data_. > Predictive _analytics_ is a machine that pulls non-random patterns out of > data and presents this as _information_.

Yes. I know that. Apophenia is the correct term. Your fancy machine that predicts crime is only as good as the data it is fed and is made worse by the person who interprets the results. Both of these are easily biased.

> Bias can be detected and removed.

Just like how they removed the numerous biases, assumptions, and bad methodology that are well-known problems with breathalysers? Even if the model was theoretically accurate, the implementation can (and will) be wrong. You seem to be using a just-world assumption that doesn't have lazy, incompetent or malicious people.

> Monitoring social media is common detective work

It can be both. While these methods may be useful for going after _stupid criminals_ , you're ignoring that it is also useful when targeting activists, political dissidents, etc. If you think this doesn't happen, you haven't been paying attention.

You're problem is that you are assuming it is only "criminals" that are targeted, but you live in a world where, to use an obvious example, some people assume that any black person is a "criminal".

<comment><USER7> > Both of these are easily biased.

Indeed. But remedies exist. Statisticians can examine the validity of the data, analysts and detectives can be trained to interpret the results correctly, and social scientists can point out the dangers of relying solely on computer systems.

I have no strong view for or against breathalysers. I'll concede that there may be some errors in those tests. Does that completely invalidate these tools in judging if someone is too drunk to drive and may cause harm to self or others? Should we only opt for rigorous methods like drawing blood samples? My view is: no, we should not. These are valuable tools that work for the large majority of times and help save lives (at the inevitable cost of some errors and inconvenience).

In my world I believe in just intentions. Breathalysers are not introduced to imprison sober drivers, they are to combat drunk ("lazy, incompetent or malicious") drivers on our roads.

These methods are useful for catching the savvy criminals too. I am not ignoring that these systems are also useful to target activists and political dissidents. That's basically what they were build for in the first place (well, that and the terrorists, see DARPA LifeLog). It's just now that these tools are adopted by local Police departments.

A weapon stick can be used to subdue a suspect through non-lethal force, and it can be used to choke a peaceful protester. It will succeed in both tasks. It's not a stupid ineffective tool we should take away, because it can be used in bad ways. We should make sure to avoid the bad usage, and provide police with the best weapon stick possible for the good usage.

You assume that this system will be used to justify police brutality and that this system will be used by people who think that any black person is a "criminal". I have a higher opinion of the people who join the police. I rather reserve such judgment to the criminals themselves.

<comment><USER6> > Does that completely invalidate these tools

Yes, when the error is this large and so easily manipulatable. (breathalysers are notorious for being incredibly broad in what the detect (bad false positive rate), and they are required to assume a 2100:1 ratio when estimating blood concentration from the measured breath concentration. In reality, there is a lot (up to +/-800 for some people). There _is_ a good, science-based reason for that ratio involving the partial pressure of EtOH. The reason is valid, it simply ignores the (large) minority of cases where other factors complicate the analysis.

You may suggest that it would be easy to use modern techniques to find a better formula that accounts for these variations. That would work... but it has always been possible. You don't need anything particularly fancy to add a few corrections. These problems - and how to correct them - have been known for _decades_ , yet breathalysers haven't changed. Why? Because an inaccurate tool gives police the leeway to target a much larger set of people (if they want to - selective enforcement is a powerful tool).

> Should we only opt for rigorous methods like drawing blood samples?

Yes, absolutely, and I (and _many_ defence lawyers and civil right organizations) recommend insisting on a blood test should you ever asked to take a breathalyser because of how inaccurate and manipulatable the breath test is in real-world situations. (disclaimer: this can vary between states; see a local lawyer for proper advice)

> at the inevitable cost of some errors and inconvenience

A necessary feature of a free society is the assumption of innocence until proven guilty. Law enforcement is _deliberately_ given a harder task, because errors are not simply an _inconvenience_. Errors risk charging an innocent person with a crime. You would not call being arrested because of a false- positive an _inconvenience_.

> You assume that this system will be used to justify police brutality and > that this system will be used by people who think that any black person is a > "criminal".

I don't need to _assume_ anything. These things are already extremely common today without the need for advanced data processing techniques. If for some reason you doubt these facts, you may want to look up the per-capita incarceration rates by race and compare that to stuff like the drug use rates for the same groups.

> In my world I believe in just intentions

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Just- world_fallacy](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Just-world_fallacy)

> I have a higher opinion of the people who join the police

I prefer to keep my opinions based in reality.

While I'm sure only a minority of police are abusive, the rest are aiding and abetting by not reporting the crimes committed other officers. Misprision of felony is still a crime in the US (18 U.S. Code § 4) ( [https://www.law.cornell.edu/uscode/text/18/4](https://www.law.cornell.edu/uscode/text/18/4) )

<comment><USER8> > While I'm sure only a minority of police are abusive, the rest are aiding > and abetting by not reporting the crimes committed other officers. > Misprision of felony is still a crime in the US (18 U.S. Code § 4) ( > [https://www.law.cornell.edu/uscode/text/18/4](https://www.law.cornell.edu/uscode/text/18/4) > )

Misprision requires concealment _and_ not reporting; not reporting by itself is insufficient, concealment is _active_. See, United States v. Johnson, 546 F.2d 1225 (5th Cir. 1977) [0]

[0] [http://openjurist.org/546/f2d/1225/united-states-v- johnson](http://openjurist.org/546/f2d/1225/united-states-v-johnson)

<comment><USER6> I should have been more precise; you're quite correct about the requirements for misprision. Police absolutely are concealing the crimes of the "bad apples" in the department. To be precise, I'm sure we can easily find candidates of for all levels of involvement (it's a big country).

There is no shortage of police that are giving cover for the _murders_ in their department, and most of the rest still look the other way.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> "During an August call-in, the speakers told the men that this was their last chance. Tammy Dickinson, the United States attorney for the Western District of Missouri, related the story of a man in the program who was given a 15-year prison sentence for being caught with a bullet in his pocket."

So, yet again software is the new force-multiplier? Strict (IMNHO _crazy_ ) sentencing guides, arguably designed for the purpose of reducing crime by being a deterrent, now leads to even more filling up of prisons due to targeted (ab)use against certain groups?

On a side note, I wonder how these algorithms handle police brutality etc. I can just imagine sitting in such a meeting, and seeing a couple of police officers in full uniform popping up on that mugshot wall of shame...

</comment><comment><USER10> There is a thisamericanlife show (Crime Pays) about cops paying kids to give up (or avoid) a life of crime. It is quite amazing how little it takes to prevent someone from costing society $40K a year in jail. [http://www.thisamericanlife.org/radio- archives/episode/555/t...](http://www.thisamericanlife.org/radio- archives/episode/555/the-incredible-rarity-of-changing-your-mind?act=2)

<comment><USER11> End of the day, it's cheaper to pay people to do nothing, than it is to lock them up when they become desperate and commit crimes.

</comment></comment><comment><USER12> I started reading this hopefully. I liked the idea that seemed to be developing at first — reaching out to people before crimes are committed, potentially saving a human being from a life in prison (not to mention saving any potential victims).

Instead, it developed into a story of what amounts to pre-meditated blind rage against any and all associated with a given criminal.

This isn't new. And it's exactly what we don't need more of.

</comment><comment><USER13> Step 1: Discriminatory policing against disliked groups.

Step 2: Run the results of that through the computer.

Step 3: The unbiased computer tells me that disliked groups are more likely to be charged with crimes! That justifies my discrimination! I knew they were up to no good! And it's not me, the COMPUTER says it!

</comment><comment><USER14> I'm a bit surprised noone brought up minority report. Philip K Dick living a good afterlife :-)

<comment><USER15> I am more reminded about Psycho Pass ([http://www.imdb.com/title/tt2379308/](http://www.imdb.com/title/tt2379308/)) a terrific anime tv series. It basically explores a future in which a person's criminal intent (called their crime coefficient) along with other mental attributes (collectively referred to as one's psycho pass) is judged by the Sibyl system - A system that works so well that it acts as judge, jury and executioner with little human input. It explores a lot of questions such as the role of free will and potential for change in such a world. Interestingly lot of people find it hard to lower their crime coefficients after it 'stabilizes' to a new high (Like how it becomes easier to commit a crime again after having done it once - the same judgement the police make in this article). Also like in this article, people who are victims of abuse and crime often find their crime coefficients inevitably rise.

Don't let the cartoon characters fool you. IMO The complexity and depth of this series (and a lot of sci-fi anime) far surpasses the likes of minority report and hollywood sci-fi in general. My description really doesn't do it justice.

<comment><USER16> The scene where the "cops" have to arrest (or was it kill?) the victim of a rape because her crime coefficient increased was pretty harsh.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER17> >> But Mr. Brown, 29, got more than he had bargained for. A police captain presented a slide show featuring mug shots of people they were cracking down on. Up popped a picture of Mr. Brown linking him to a criminal group that had been implicated in a homicide.

"I was disturbed," said Mr. Brown

Sounds like intimidation.

</comment><comment><USER9> "(...) an experiment taking place in dozens of police departments across the country, one in which the authorities have turned to complex computer algorithms to try to pinpoint the people most likely to be involved in future violent crimes — as either predator or prey."

Interesting (eerie) parallel to the intro in the TV series "Person of Interest", although supposedly this system doesn't get its data from the NSA (as with parallel construction etc), but rather the information comes from more-or-less open data (legal surveillance etc) -- and of course it isn't vigilantes but police that will, 'victim or perpetrator, if your number's up (...) find you':

"You are being watched. The government has a secret system: a machine that spies on you every hour of every day. I know, because I built it. I designed the machine to detect acts of terror, but it sees everything. Violent crimes involving ordinary people; people like you. Crimes the government considered 'irrelevant'. They wouldn't act, so I decided I would. But I needed a partner, someone with the skills to intervene. Hunted by the authorities, we work in secret. You'll never find us, but victim or perpetrator, if your number's up... we'll find you".

</comment><comment><USER18> This illusion of efficacy, with often detrimental results, is nothing new[0]; a fatal naivety which ignores human agency. [0] [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Criminal_Tribes_Act](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Criminal_Tribes_Act)

</comment><comment><USER19> I figure this will look good and "tough on crime" to the people seeing the news, but intimidation and preemptive punishment will not give people the self confidence they need to make a success of themselves in polite society.

Not to mention, I'm sure you can see how this is a breach of justice.

</comment><comment><USER20> What could possibly go wrong?

</comment><comment><USER21> PreCrime

</comment><comment><USER22> There was a Captain America movie about this sort of thing.

</comment><comment><USER23> Ah, the famous "Computer said so" ass cover. Because computer made that decision, no one can be held responsible for it.

</comment><comment><USER24> How long until they just send armed drones automatically after them based on the software's algorithm? 10-20 years?

<comment><USER25> Isn't this the sort of thing humans are supposed to be bad at but AI should be good at?

An automated justice system wouldn't be biased by human prejudice, ignorance or fear. It doesn't get tired, doesn't feel pain or pity or remorse. It would be able to impartially and accurately process vast amounts of data - far more than a human, and the actions of the drones could be completely auditable. Drones won't lie on the stand to protect their fellow drones, or tamper with evidence.

You could walk down the street surrounded by police drones and be confident that you're not being profiled based on racist or religious bigotry, but pure mathematics and statistics. In every conceivable way, an armed drone with a license to kill is safer, faster, more reliable than a human. One only has to look at the current justice system in any country to see that humans are simply not capable of properly judging the motives of, or punishing, other humans in any reasonable way.

People will simply have to accept that the day will come when human-applied justice is viewed with the same ridicule and scorn that witch-burning is today... as the vicious, superstitious barbarism of an ignorant past.

<comment><USER26> _> >An automated justice system wouldn't be biased by human prejudice, ignorance or fear_

An automated system is written by people and those prejudices can still sneak in...

[http://www.nytimes.com/2015/07/10/upshot/when-algorithms- dis...](http://www.nytimes.com/2015/07/10/upshot/when-algorithms- discriminate.html?_r=0)

[http://www.salon.com/2013/02/04/online_advertisings_racism_m...](http://www.salon.com/2013/02/04/online_advertisings_racism_mess/)

<comment><USER27> Those articles show that a completely inhuman intelligence, with no intrinsic biases of it's own, reproduces the conclusions that allegedly come from human bias. I.e., it turns out that (sometimes) racism and sexism are useful and predictive heuristics.

Of course, being in the NYTimes and Salon, they need to obfuscate this point and appeal to standard mood affiliation.

<comment><USER28> Since you claim that "racism and sexism are useful and predictive heuristics," does that mean mainstream society should accept/tolerate/promote such belief systems? Who is it exactly that you think would find these heuristics useful?

Also, describing the results of any code/program written by a human as a "completely inhuman intelligence" is a tenuous claim at best.

<comment><USER26> Just fyi, several people have tried engaging this person in similar discussions before... [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8613711](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8613711)

<comment><USER7> Now is this an example of predictive analytics or of human prejudice? :)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER29> This should be handled by something like social services, not police. Prevention is not their game.

</comment><comment><USER30> Seems to stand in rather stark contrast to a system designed to rehabilitate criminals.

</comment><comment><USER31> Pro tip: it's the police.

</comment><comment><USER32> The picture illustrating the article seems to enforce racist stereotypes.

<comment><USER33> It is a picture of a guy they are talking about in the article so I am not sure it is constructive to say it enforces racist stereotypes. It is not a lambda photography from Getty (or other) just used to fill some space.

</comment></comment><comment><USER34> This is incredible. Are people seriously ok with this?</comment>


STFUDD - <AUTHOR> http://chriscontinanza.com/2010/09/10/STFUDD.html

<comment><USER2> I fail to understand these two parts:

"In STFUDD ... you don't write anything at first. " "STFU Driven Development ... its How quickly can we Shut the Fuck Up and write something?"

So, which is it - don't write or write quickly?

I also fail to understand this part:

"we're all full of shit. And that's why you test. That's why you write a README."

How exactly "tests" and "README" connected to "we're all full of shit"?

<comment><USER3> I think the point is, stop arguing about these things and get coding.

<comment><USER4> Not quite IMO - Yes it means stop. But then I think it means - find the simplest thing that could possible work - and then get on with it. Works for me.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> Sure, there are some productivity benefits of the "STFU and start writing something" part, but this post itself has a few contradicting points. If everything is wrong in some context, why should i care about writing README and tests first at all times? Say when starting a project using a new language, I don't bother writing tests because I know I'll probably revisit for a rewrite soon enough, and by then my tests will be better. It worked better for me this way. How did I know that? Hmm sometimes I stopped and asked myself what approach to take so I just STFU & take the same approach later. Oops that violated STFUDD in the first place :)

</comment><comment><USER6> It is late night, and i'm trying to practice the SRHNDD ("Stop Reading HN and write something") so STFU and post something interesting.

</comment><comment><USER7> Nitpicking, but is this any sort of conventional syntax for defining a predicate? I've never seen it before, and I don't find it particularly intuitive...

> ∃ {C(x) : x is a context}

<comment><USER8> It looks straight out of my college course on logic. The backwards E is the existential operator. C is a verb. The sentence means "a context exists".

<comment><USER9> That's clearly the intended meaning, but what it really says is that there exists a set whose elements are of the form C(x) where "x is a context" and C is left undefined. This, of course, is meaningless. Understanding is left as an exercise for the reader?

<comment><USER8> The notation (C(x): x is a context) actually means "C(x) is shorthand for the following sentence: 'x is a context'". C is not undefined, it is the template "___ is a context".

I guess the way the brackets are used may not be standard and could be confusing.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> How do I say this nicely? This seems like something written by a 20-year-old, somebody who has worked in academia, volunteer projects, or a startup. Or put another way, somebody from an environment where endless talk prevents work from happening.

In timebox-driven development, every so often you have to produce something of value. So while I've never said STFU to a team, everybody knows that discussion has to start and stop based on the reality of _doing something_ (which the author seems to be big on) Or better yet, the discussion continues all along; the topics and depth of discussion changes as the team moves forward.

Here's a little tidbit: in a corporate situation, once a team starts working at any degree of efficiency at all, the real problem is getting the rest of the business to understand and agree on what the team is supposed to be getting paid for. Lots of work can go into "business alignment" -- getting people on the same page. Technology teams become business decision-support teams. It makes sense if you think about it. Most of the time the real reason something isn't fixed is because people never could agree on exactly what the problem is or how to fix it. To the unaware and impatient, this can certainly seem like "endless talking". In fact it can become "endless talking" -- or not -- depending on the people skills of the team members.

So yes, if I were working on a volunteer team in a startup situation -- a place where there is no immediate customer and both the problem and solution are unknown -- I'd say we have to start putting some code down and getting more of a basis to talk. But I'd never say STFU. I don't know if the author thinks he's being cute or not, but that's just asinine. He's writing an article that applies to 30% of all X, generalizing to the rest of the group, and making sweeping profanity-laced statements in an attempt to drive his point home.

Unfortunately, no matter how many times you say "fuck", how much predicate calculus you use, or how confident you are, you can still screw the pooch by not knowing wtf you're talking about.

I'm not going to get into the whole "context is king" part of this because there's too much to straighten out in this brief format. He's on to something, just draws the wrong conclusion.

This article would have worked better as an "sometimes I get really upset and want to say STFU and start coding!" instead of a "This is reality, get used to it".

If the author is reading, keep the good work coming! Just be careful with generalizations: you can get away with them when you're right for 85-95% of the cases, but in this case it doesn't work.

<comment><USER11> _in a corporate situation, once a team starts working at any degree of efficiency at all, the real problem is getting the rest of the business to understand and agree on what the team is supposed to be getting paid for._

This happens in the consulting agency I work for, and we're only five or six programmers strong! There's far more situations, for us, that would be solved with _more_ communication and not less.

</comment></comment><comment><USER12> Akin to 'grow a pair' programming.

</comment><comment><USER13> See also the "shut up and calculate" interpretation of quantum mechanics.

<comment><USER14> Links for the curious:

If I were forced to sum up in one sentence what the Copenhagen interpretation says to me, it would be 'Shut up and calculate!' [<http://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/David_Mermin>]

</comment></comment><comment><USER15> Please.... No more acronyms... I can't take any more...

</comment><comment><USER16> "Conscious."

</comment><comment><USER17> Zed Shaw imitation fail</comment>


Create alerts for your Google Analytics' custom metrics - <AUTHOR> http://metrics.watch/blog/shipped-google-analytics-custom-metrics/ <comment><AUTHOR> We just shipped that a few days ago. As far as we know, we're the only way to do this. Let us know what you think :)</comment>


Bayes nets by example with Python and Khan Academy data - <AUTHOR> http://derandomized.com/post/20009997725/bayes-net-example-with-python-and-khanacademy

<comment><USER2> After taking multiple courses that touches on bayesian nets and other AI- techniques in general, I have attained what I feel is a good general feel for how stuff works and its mathematical underpinnings. However, I still stumble when trying to implement what I've learned in code, so thank you for this!

My school is using AIMA for every introductory AI-course, and if you're looking for pointers on how to implement some of the algorithms and methods described in there in python, have a look at <http://code.google.com/p/aima- python/> . Since it's Norvig himself coding, the quality of the python is practically flawless.

<comment><USER3> A little correction: aima-python is primarily by Norvig, but unfinished and less polished than the essays on his website. I took it up last fall to get it into better shape for the free AI class, and about 2/3 of the code now is his unchanged from before then. He is keeping an eye on things, but, you know, busy guy.

That said, Bayes nets are fully implemented (as presented in the book, i.e. for boolean variables) and I think worth reading and trying out if you're learning the subject. Also worth checking out is aima-java, in a much more complete state, though of course a lot wordier the way it is with Java.

If you'd like to contribute, there's plenty to do. (For example the E-M algorithm used in this post to learn the Bayes net parameters.) I set up a mirror on github the other day to make it easier: <https://github.com/darius/aima-python-mirror>

(I don't have the spare energy right now to do a lot, myself. Including editing too many patches coming in, though it'd be a surprise to get that problem.)

<comment><USER2> Ah, you're correct. I can only speak of the code in there I have myself used for self study, which was great, but I see now that a lot is missing. I wouldn't mind contributing to such a project myself, but I'm afraid my python is not as uber-"pythonistic" as Norvig's is...

<comment><USER3> Understood. :) I'm a big fan of his work, too.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> Isn't the coefficient on 'T', the predicted 'mastery' variable, pointing the wrong way in the final logistic regression? And 'E', which is just getting 85% of the exercises right, is completely dominating all the other stuff (exponential moving average, etc) they did in the model.

So while all this is really cool, and I like the idea of doing EM on missing data (I've done it myself), it doesn't seem like it actually adds much, if I'm reading that right.

<comment><AUTHOR> The 'E' in the regression is the inferred/predicted value of the E variable for that exercise, using no problem history from that exercise--only what's pulled in through the Bayes net. (Sorry that wasn't clear)

The 'T' variable is likely just a case of multicollinearity with the 'E' variable and should go away on a full-scale data set. If not it can easily be removed from the model. The 'E' variable is dominating because is additionally captures cross-sectional affects across the various exercises in the regression.

<comment><USER4> Ah, ok. So is this a sort of Markov model, where you are predicting the probability of getting an exercise right after observing (some subset of) the previous exercises? And E is not 1 or 0, but the expected probability of getting it right? I'm still confused where all the different E_i's fit in.

That would explain the magnitude, and I agree the negative weight on T would just be due to the direct correlation between E and T.

Edit: I just realized that an exercise consists of multiple problems, so you're predicting whether or not the student will get >= 85% of the problems right on an exercise.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> Very helpful article. Note that this is for an implementation of a Naive Bayes model, sometimes called 'idiot' Bayes. It assumes independent observations and therefore can be overconfident. More complex Bayes net models are way harder to implement. Here's a good overview of general networks: <http://www.cs.ubc.ca/~murphyk/Bayes/bnintro.html>

<comment><AUTHOR> This is not naive bayes and does not assume independent observations on the exercises. The point of using a network is to model the joint distribution with dependencies.</comment></comment>


Anybody interested in this startup idea? - <AUTHOR> http://www.nostonepr.com/

<comment><USER2> You could have a better thanks.php page. It took me a second to realize the submission actually went through.

<comment><AUTHOR> I see what you mean. I will correct that. and thank you for registering :-)

<comment><AUTHOR> I have corrected it</comment></comment></comment>


Ask HN: Computer nostalgia - <AUTHOR>

After spotting numerous 'Learn To Code (tm)' articles today, I'm in a nostalgic and reminiscent mood.
What fond memories do HNers share of their early computer days (especially if you're over 30).
Mine include learning to power up our first IBM PC XT and start FriendlyWare (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Friendlyware), before I could read (involved detailed handwritten instructions from my dad, and matching up keyboard keys).
Oh, and only being 'allowed' on the computer for an hour a day :P <comment><USER2> I always wanted to get to be over 30 so I could gain enough respect to do advanced things that were always discouraged for youngsters back home where most people have always been over 65.

Well, in 1982 when the IBM PC was not very popular yet (under 50,000 sold) and non-businesses were still using their Commodores and Ataris, I decided to improve my programming abilities and build a small game for my Atari 400.

Earlier with arcade games I never thought Pac-Man was very interesting, but when Centipede appeared I liked it because of its trackball interface. I guess I'm just what they would nowadays call a natural UI/UX guy.

When the 400 came out it was attractive since it was not just a game console like the earlier 2600, but a full computer that also played some of the same games from its own series of cartridges which were more advanced than the 2600 anyway. BASIC programming was also available in cartridge form.

I wanted my own home computer mainly to continue the machine-learning I had pioneered a year earlier during the Houston oil boom where I had procured expensive Hewlett-Packard benchtop oil & gas analyzers at my employer, but was having more breakthroughs developing "software" than I was on the hardware. It was a petroleum engineering laboratory startup where I was operating the instruments in the lab during the day, then writing code at night by hand on paper, to be typed into the terminals at work once the module was complete.

After the crude oil & gas (exploration & production) boom went bust, I was luckily able to move to a traditional employer, who was in the refined products (fuel & petrochemicals) measurement & testing field. This was a 100-year-old service corporation, not a research place.

Anyway, even Apples and the new IBM PC's were not powerful enough for my former pursuit, but after they came out with a Centipede cartridge for the 400, I decided to get one, plus since I was employed I figured I could afford a trackball in addition to the joysticks that came with the Atari.

To code my first game I did not expect to be able to achieve very fast action, which was dependent on machine language, since I was just using Atari BASIC. So I settled on "MasterMind" which I selected for its pure logic base and its particular two-user operation where only one participant at a time is the actual player, and the "opponent" merely qualifies the player's progress among successive determinations against a hidden pattern. To emulate the "opponent", the computer would select the hidden pattern at random and provide feedback to the player, reducing it to a one-player puzzle.

All I had was the 400, the BASIC & Centipede carts, the trackball & joysticks, plus a fairly good Atari reference book. I had to leave the 400 powered on all the time since I had no data storage, but eventually got the Atari cassette after it became affordable.

Trying to make the most of the hardware I had, I ended up with an intuitive point & click, drag & drop, player scenario using the trackball in a way that years later would be very common once the computer mouse appeared for Apples & PC's, and especially after Windows came out and became popular because of pointing & clicking.

Meanwhile, like most employers, mine was more interested in status quo rather than maximum utilization of resources, but I became informed that they were going to embrace computers first in the tank calibration department. I was in chemical analysis but I knew the ASTM calibration manual fairly well and thought this was an excellent choice, there were geometric calculations based on physical properties & measurements, with a resulting report tabulated into an 11x17 inch chart having entries in fine print for each depth of fluid that was to be inventoried in that tank each time for the following decade. It was text output, looking like a spreadsheet, but these were traditionally reduced from a blueprint master which the cells had been typed in with a manual (non- electric) typewriter having a special wide-carriage.

I was naturally disappointed when I found out the project had already been underway since before I was hired, an established Northern consulting group was doing the work, they were being paid over $100,000 and already delayed well beyond the target date.

You can only imagine my feelings after the project was finally delivered and I found out from the calibration guys how they thought it was quite a time- saver.

They loved the way it printed the final charts in fine print using the new- fangled 17inch wide PC printers without having to go through the typewriting/blueprinting process.

But the raw data entry, calculations, output, and manual typing of final data into each cell was still done by hand.

The consultant had merely provided a replacement for half of what the typewriter was doing, the mechanical printing function of the typewriter, but not even the hand keying :-\

there's more but that's enough for now . . .

<comment><AUTHOR> Speaking of printing...who remembers those early tractor fed dot matrix printers released about the same time as the PC XT?

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> Writing an assembler in PL/1 that used up a whole box of punched cards (I think there were 2000 cards to a box). This was for a class project in my first year of college.

Using Unix for the first time on a PDP-11 and seeing how much nicer it was than the IBM mainframe operating systems of that era. Later being trusted with root on that machine.

Learning C and Pascal simultaneously to write a Pascal compiler in C using Lex and Yacc (another college class).

Writing code for a 6800 microprocessor with only 512 bytes of RAM (with the instructions entered on a hex keyboard).

Hacking an IBM operating system to be able to read files that I wasn't supposed to be able to read. This involved disassembling (by hand) one of the system programs and changing one of the machine instructions to make it an unconditional branch.

Writing code for one of the first IBM PCs.

Getting my first e-mail address with an "@" in it - on the Arpanet (precursor to the internet) in 1982.

(Yeah, I'm well over 30.)

</comment><comment><USER4> In 2003 our school still had a class with old machines what should boot from a ROM into some BASIC environment. I was actively reading books on computers at that moment, however, without any access to the hardware, so I was using any available option to walk into that room and to fix errors in someone's code. Then we started learning graphics, and I actually tried to draw something on a sheet of paper with 1x1 mm cells and then code it by putting points in these places. Other folks did strange things too --- the pixels in the displays were not exactly square, so someone tried to make a circle out of points, adjusting them so that it looked more round than the standard one.

A year after the school bought about a dozen Windows machines and the fun was over (just until we figured out some ways of obtaining admin rights there and doing strange things like renaming all computers to what look like "COMP-12" (all these letters are present in the Russian locale, so unique same-looking names are possible)).

</comment><comment><USER5> I'm not over 30 (turned 21 this year) but I do have some rather fond memories of breaking, and subsequently fixing, my family Dell running Windows 95. I used the internet, but not for anything major. I mostly just explored the computer, learned how it worked, and practiced my creative writing in early MS Word.

I did write some batch files really early on, thanks to my dad's answer when I asked how the computer worked: "It's just a bunch of text files". After that, I didn't do much other than explore networking stuff at school (and use the school's LAN to distribute games, but I was 12 at this point and well into the 2000's).

</comment><comment><USER6> There are so many good memories to choose from. The other day I played some random 4k video on YouTube. I then remembered the library computer at my elementary school. It had Encyclopedia Britannica on CD which included mindblowing minutes of video clips the size of postage stamps. MULTIMEDIA!

</comment><comment><USER7> Around 1990 I wrote Basic programs on an Amiga 500 that moved sprites, draw lines etc.

</comment><comment><USER8> installing Age Of Empires from 24 floppy disks and it failing in the last one.

<comment><AUTHOR> Hah! Or sitting up all night to download the 7 stiffy shareware Quake (I) on a 28.8kbps modem, and having it disconnect on the last file.

</comment></comment><comment><USER9> Microsoft Golf on 3.1(I was probably 3 or 4)

<comment><AUTHOR> Microsoft Flight Simulator on same wasn't half bad either...

</comment></comment><comment><AUTHOR> One word: BBSs

<comment><USER6> That sweet sound.</comment></comment>


Burning Man cancelled this year, will move online - <AUTHOR> https://journal.burningman.org/2020/04/news/official-announcements/brc-2020-update/ <comment><USER2> The current URL is: [https://idle.slashdot.org/story/20/04/11/0240256/burning- man...](https://idle.slashdot.org/story/20/04/11/0240256/burning-man-festival- in-nevada-cancelled-this-year-will-move-online)

I suggest changing the URL to that of the BM post: [https://journal.burningman.org/2020/04/news/official- announc...](https://journal.burningman.org/2020/04/news/official- announcements/brc-2020-update/)

Although the Slashdot post also quotes from SFGate, the quote selected is all quoting the BM post.

<comment><USER3> Changed from [https://idle.slashdot.org/story/20/04/11/0240256/burning- man...](https://idle.slashdot.org/story/20/04/11/0240256/burning-man-festival- in-nevada-cancelled-this-year-will-move-online). Thanks!

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> How is this going to work out? Everyone take LSD in their back yard on a hot sunny day?

I'm kidding of course.

<comment><USER5> Thats a great idea.

Im not kidding, of course

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> Having been a greeter (for a few years before Larry died) I feel that for many people Burningman is a psychological and metaphysical enema that cleans a year's worth of angst and neurotic anxiety from many of its attendees.

Although it's possible the current forced solitude and inward isolation will refresh some, not having this incredible event will no doubt be troublesome for others.

</comment><comment><USER7> Sounds like an opportunity to define what burning man can be online. In 2004 we all thought we would interact in a better second life form. Being able to feel like you were moving around in that environment felt important. Fast forward to today and a virtual conference is a video feed / possible some chat area. Doesn't feel as emursive as it once did.

<comment><USER8> There are VR conference/talks platforms like AltSpaceVR, not sure why none of the big conference are using them.

</comment></comment><comment><USER2> I think this is the best thing to do at this time. I wouldn't be surprised if deadlines for contracts & permits were approaching, and at that point it's really hard to pull money back.

And of course it'll suck for a lot of people, but it's worth giving things a chance, to see what can be made of the Multiverse.

</comment><comment><USER9> at least now they won't be able to treat their contract workers like absolute shit: [https://www.salon.com/2018/08/24/exclusive-burning-man-a- uto...](https://www.salon.com/2018/08/24/exclusive-burning-man-a-utopia-for- guests-can-be-a-hell-for-many-workers/)

</comment><comment><USER10> Haha! Everyone's with Camp Envy this year! Woot!</comment>


Will Apple Buy Tesla in 2019? - <AUTHOR> https://www.forbes.com/sites/andrewcave/2018/12/04/will-apple-buy-tesla-in-2019/#675236d12e24 <comment><USER2> I can't help but think that Tim Cook would do an amazing job handling operations for Tesla. But imagine Elon Musk running apple. The next HomePod would probably also be a nuclear reactor to power your Tesla Apple power wall.

</comment><comment><USER3> What value would Apple add to Tesla? Apple CarPlay is available from most manufacturers already. Maybe they could negotiate better with suppliers?

If Netflix takes a hit like is predicted in the article maybe Apple should buy that? They already have a streaming music offering and negotiate with studios for music rights. They could bundle their media rights negotiations and secure access to streaming video content for their devices. They might even shift some of the streaming burden to Apple's own data centers to save costs.

DuckDuckGo is arguably a potential Apple acquisition. The company is small and easy to integrate. The privacy focus aligns with Apple's messaging. Just give it an Apple skin, rebrand it as Siri Search, and integrate with Apple's search ads. I just wonder if DDG's search partnerships are sustainable once it starts taking away meaningful traffic from companies doing the "real work."

</comment><comment><USER4> I think a much better strategy would be to use the Japanese style buy partial ownership and then integrate each companies tech like how Toyota owns 16.5% of Subaru [0] and now Subaru is going to use Toyota's hybrid tech for their new crosstrek PHEV [1].

[0]: [https://abcnews.go.com/Business/story?id=4627795&page=1](https://abcnews.go.com/Business/story?id=4627795&page=1)

[1]: [https://autoweek.com/article/hybrid-electric- vehicles/subaru...](https://autoweek.com/article/hybrid-electric- vehicles/subaru-teams-toyota-2019-crosstrek-hybrid)

</comment><comment><USER5> No.

> What price Apple to buy Tesla in 2019?

Also, what's up with the very first sentence of the article? Is that even a sentence?

<comment><USER6> "What price X?" is a common expression, e.g., [1].

This happens to be a particularly awkward example, and I'm not sure if they're trying to use a figurative expression as a literal one, or if the confusion is intentional. I would say it's a valid sentence, but a bad one, both on its own and as an opening for this article.

[1]: [https://www.collinsdictionary.com/dictionary/english/what- pr...](https://www.collinsdictionary.com/dictionary/english/what-price)

</comment></comment><comment><USER7> I always thought that Apple should have pushed Project Titan to Tesla and realized any gains from afar. The problem is thst Tesla is on the rise and would be premium to what they could have paid a year ago.

</comment><comment><USER8> Tim Cook for president of the USA.</comment>


Ask HN: Could I build a browser that doesn't support JavaScript? - <AUTHOR> Wondering if it's possible, what problems might be encountered along the way, if it has been tried.  Let's get a discussion going. <comment><USER2> I wish someone create one.

It will solve problem of cross site tracking. However lot of sites will break because of their over dependence on javascript.

Have you ever tried browsing by turning javascript off. A lot of garbage just does not get loaded.

<comment><AUTHOR> Yeah, realistically it would only work with sites specifically designed for that browser. Don't think interoperability would be the goal with something like this.

</comment></comment><comment><AUTHOR> To clarify, I meant to say "a browser that supports a different language than Javascript".

It does seem like WebAssembly is the answer here, but would be cooler (I think) if that sort of thing was built from scratch.

</comment><comment><USER3> Already available...

Chrome: Turn off Javascript support - chrome://settings/content/javascript

Firefox: Install NoScript and disable Javascript support.

Both have the advantage that you can whitelist sites that you trust.

</comment><comment><USER4> [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Links_(web_browser)](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Links_\(web_browser\))

</comment><comment><USER5> Can you just fork Chromium and // the support of JavaScript?

<comment><AUTHOR> That's probably what I'll try first if I do give it a go. Either chromium or firefox.</comment></comment>


Review my App: Network-based integrity monitoring - <AUTHOR> http://sucuri.net

<comment><USER2> You need to make the call to action "try now" and "more info" links into BUTTONS: highly contrasted big fat buttons with onhover visual feedback.

</comment><comment><USER3> Thanks for the suggestions... I will try to fix those.

Regarding the app itself, did you get a chance to try? Any comments?

</comment><comment><USER4> The idea seems good, but the page is not descriptive enough. Do you have a demo somewhere in there?</comment>


The 'extinct' Colorado Orange Apple: How a couple on a mission found it - <AUTHOR> https://edition.cnn.com/travel/article/colorado-orange-apple-trnd-scn/index.html <comment><USER2> Is there a good place to learn about new apple cultivars? I want to plant some apple trees, but since they would be in a backyard orchard there isn't any need for them to be commercially viable, just whatever tastes good. I know there are heirloom Apple orchards and festivals I can go to, but not sure where to find info on more modern cultivars beyond the ones like SnapDragon and Cosmic Crisp that have huge commercial releases.

It's a lot easier to learn about things like North American Pawpaws and American persimmons, because there are only a couple people working on the genetics for each and you don't have millions of dollars worth of SEO spam preventing any useful information from surfacing.

<comment><USER3> I'd encourage you look at some of the heirloom varieties that you'll never find in a grocery store. There are fantastic old apples that aren't a good fit for commercial production but are awesome in the back yard (depending where you live). Check out Esopus Spitzenberg or Cox's Orange Pippin.

<comment><USER4> Is there a preferred place to buy these heirloom varieties of apples?

<comment><USER3> I bought some years ago from Raintree Nursery[0] and was very happy with them. Their selection seems smaller these days.

Trees of Antiquity[1] seems to have a huge variety but I have no experience with them.

[0] [https://raintreenursery.com/collections/apple- trees](https://raintreenursery.com/collections/apple-trees) [1] [https://www.treesofantiquity.com/collections/apple- trees](https://www.treesofantiquity.com/collections/apple-trees)

(Earlier typo: Spitzenburg, not -berg)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> A wax apple... Not the most solid proof. That just proves it has the right appearance. (although if there is a distinctive feature might be good enough) Honestly, was expecting that they found either an old seed or dried sample to compare genetics. Better than nothing though.

Honestly, surprised no has even a dried leaf.

</comment><comment><USER6> I'd love for there to be an affordable way to test wild growing or even "abandoned" apples to figure out their genetics. it you can do it easily with cannabis, why not fruits and vegetables?

</comment><comment><USER7> A lot of naming is misleading, in this case "extinct" should probably have been called "believed to be extinct".

Of course proving something is extinct is quite difficult, perhaps infeasible for the small organisms. So maybe also a "provisionally extinct" category?

<comment><USER8> There are definitely cases where that distinction is made due to reasonable uncertainty, but there is no line. Proving it is more than difficult - it's impossible.

<comment><USER7> Well impossible means that it can never be done, which I wouldn't put past the capabilities of some far future civilization. There are a finite number of ways something can be alive, at least in the current consensus.

'infeasible' is probably a better way to describe our present capabilities.</comment></comment></comment>


Crystal's New Installation Page Is Just Beautiful - <AUTHOR> https://crystal-lang.org/install/ <comment><USER2> It looks nice, but from a usability perspective it could make an educated guess about what platform the viewer is using and perhaps emphasize choices that are more likely to be relevant.

</comment><comment><AUTHOR> Crystal is a Ruby inspired compiled language, allowing it to run blazingly fast with a very low memory footprint. It uses LLVM for emitting native code, thus making use of all the optimisations built into the toolchain.

Website: [https://crystal-lang.org/](https://crystal-lang.org/)

Github: [https://github.com/crystal-lang/crystal](https://github.com/crystal- lang/crystal)

</comment><comment><USER3> This seems like typical minimalist design. Sure, it's not a bad concept at all, but there's nothing surprising here.

On the other hand, the excessive margins are making the page less functional as it should. The download section also lack emphasis, and given that using the same amount of space for all the distros/platforms that is not at all proportional to the amount of users using them, I would say that's a poor design.

</comment><comment><USER4> Crystal is amazing and one of my favourite language, it's just a shame the community is so small.

</comment><comment><USER5> Android scrolling gets stuck

</comment><comment><USER6> OK</comment>


Why Self-Driving Cars Must Be Programmed to Kill - <AUTHOR> http://www.technologyreview.com/view/542626/why-self-driving-cars-must-be-programmed-to-kill/ <comment><USER2> Your self driving car is driving at incredible speed along a cliff. A mother hurls her baby into the path of the car. What should the car do?

Oh wait, that's stupid.

The incredible sophistication that is meant to be put to the question of which humans to kill can simply be put to the question of what speed is safe for all the humans present in the sensor envelope and then you probably end up where reasonable people call any remaining incidents impossible situations (like a baby being hurled in front of the car from some unseen location).

</comment><comment><USER3> I don't feel great about someone being able to force a self-driving car to kill the owner by jaywalking.

Then again, hopefully cars aren't going fast enough to kill the owner in places where people often jaywalk.

<comment><USER4> The A417 between Cirencester and Cheltenham is a dual carriageway that ha pedestrian footpaths across it. Terrifying.

Imagine driving at 70mph toward this:

350 yard warning: [https://email@example.com,-2.0618748,3a,75y,...](https://email@example.com,-2.0618748,3a,75y,167.44h,96.69t/data=!3m6!1e1!3m4!1sKTMpYzvV-A1YmgE5UK7BAw!2e0!7i13312!8i6656)

actual crossing: [https://email@example.com,-2.0595278,3a,75y,...](https://email@example.com,-2.0595278,3a,75y,167.44h,96.69t/data=!3m6!1e1!3m4!1saNdFJWBbToa05d8ajkXiXA!2e0!7i13312!8i6656)

That's I think 10 seconds for drivers travelling at 70 mph.

(Not sure what's going on here: [https://firstname.lastname@example.com,-2.0688216,3a,75y,...](https://email@example.com,-2.0688216,3a,75y,148.67h,59.14t/data=!3m6!1e1!3m4!1sbQCbbwJ2upiqQW- CJm_11g!2e0!7i13312!8i6656)

<comment><USER2> Does that arise because the path is a right of way?

<comment><USER4> Yes. I think it's part of the Cotswold way, perhaps. There are a few more like that.</comment></comment></comment></comment>


Gender inequality in scientific careers across countries and disciplines - <AUTHOR> https://arxiv.org/abs/1907.04103 <comment><USER2> I'm female, go to hell with these gender inequality shit posts...</comment>


Do You Even Load Balance? - <AUTHOR> http://verboselogging.com/2013/06/17/do-you-even-load-balance

<comment><USER2> Thats cool and all, but using your firewalls for loadbalancing is kinda.. uh... not so good. As demonstrated, even derptastic HAProxy is better than the loadbalancing stuff built into your FW... For about $50-100/each you can buy 10 year old loadbalancers via eBay that do a WAY better job of this. They're more accurate AND use less cpu/watts than HAProxy will as well.

Just something to consider...

<comment><AUTHOR> Yeah, it was kind of a "hey it does it for free" sort of thing.

I mean, if it's never really a problem, why spend more time setting extra things up. That being said, I'd have no problem setting up and managing HAProxy if we wanted to do that.

The fw boxes are from these guys: [http://www.watchguard.com/](http://www.watchguard.com/) They were X550e's this weekend we're installing XTM 515's

<comment><USER2> Ahh ok, that explains why I've never seen that before.

I'm all for free, except when you're technically paying for it with licensing/etc.

I was totally serious about the $50-100 boxes being better than HAProxy, they're monumentally better at the basics. Where they don't do so hot is with SSL acceleration, but considering how fast AES-NI is, I don't bother doing that with loadbalancers anymore. Also fully HA and you don't have to deal with source/dest NAT issues if you're using DSR.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><AUTHOR> I was playing with load balancers this past weekend. Some code that came out of it: [https://github.com/darkhelmet/balance](https://github.com/darkhelmet/balance)</comment>


Where in the world is Richard Stallman - <AUTHOR> https://www.fsf.org/events/rms-speeches.html <comment><USER2> Do you know if there is a prior events view of this calendar? I was recently trying to look at Stallman's event history but couldn't find it in a minute or so of searching so gave up.</comment>


Ask HN: Any websites/ways in finding enthusiastic devs to start a hobby project - <AUTHOR> Lately, I have been thinking to experiment with a lot of new web technologies. Is there a way to find devs with similar interests with whom I can start/spin off a hobby project just to learn some new tech.<p>Silly as it may sound! but any suggestions appreciated <comment><USER2> The easiest way to get people interested in your hobby project is to write it yourself. If it's genuinely interesting, strangers will demand commit access.

<comment><AUTHOR> True!</comment></comment>


Using machine learning to compose electronic music - <AUTHOR> http://signalsandsorcery.com/ <comment><AUTHOR> I am the author of this system. I've started writing technical blogs detailing exactly what this system is doing: [https://medium.com/@stevehiehn/signals- sorcery-a63c6feb4419#...](https://medium.com/@stevehiehn/signals- sorcery-a63c6feb4419#.a910nxogd)</comment>