Map of Proposed US Time Zone Changes - <AUTHOR> https://www.worldtimezone.com/dst_news/dst_news_usa07.html <comment><USER4> The map visualization is pretty terrible, since the color codings between the maps have different meanings - the first map shows what time zone states are _in_ , the second map shows what time zones states will be in _if they 're changing_. Having the second map show what the actual proposed final time zone layouts would be would be much more useful.

It is interesting that Montana, Wyoming and Utah are (considering?) jumping onto Central, with most other western states moving to Mountain (except Nevada, which likely won't last long), but it's not clear from the map or descriptions if they're jumping to CST or CSTCDT.

<comment><USER5> I really tried to remain objective and open minded, but this is pretty bad. Not that this matters, but it also doesn't "match" the rest of the world, wich pretty much have (somewhat) straight lines running down the center of the globe.

<comment><USER6> Which world is this that has straight lines running down the globe? Time zones are messed up all over the place. If all of these laws pan out, you will still end up with rough bands. I think if a state doesn't change, but all of its neighbors do, they will end up changing as well

<comment><USER7> Look at the map of South Asia. It's plenty funny; e.g. the entire China is one time zone.

<comment><USER8> It's all about politics where timezones doesn't mean it must be matched with geological.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> The geographer in me has a power fantasy where I draw vertical swaths and each state gets the time zone their centroid lands in. And no more daylight saving time.

Elect me as dictator and I'll solve the _important_ problems.

<comment><USER10> The insane software developer in me wants to just smear the time across the US uniformly and do away with timezones all together.

The New Year's Eve celebration would be a wave of cheering across the US!

<comment><USER9> No smearing. Just a single time worldwide. Let society adapt. I mean it's all just semantics. Maybe you wake up at 11pm and go to bed at 3pm. Big deal!

<comment><USER11> "Who is this?"

"Hello Uncle Steve!"

"Do you have any idea what time it is?" Uncle Steve asks, sounding as if he is still asleep.

"Of course I do, and so do you! It's 04:25 on Saturday... everywhere." I add a dramatic emphasis to the last word.

"But do you know what 04:25 on Saturday signifies in Melbourne?"

"Breakfast time?"

I can actually hear him rubbing his eyes.

"We don't centre our waking/sleeping cycle on solar noon, fool nephew," Uncle Steve explains. "We centre the school day on solar noon. In countries above and below certain latitudes, where seasonal variation in the amount of daylight is significant, it's important for there to be the maximum amount of light when children are going to school in the morning, and coming home from school in the afternoon. Here in Melbourne, solar noon is about 10:30 Standard Time, so the average school day is timetabled from 07:00 to 14:00, and a typical working day runs from about 07:00 to 15:00. That means that on a working day, I get up at 05:00, at the earliest."

"Ooogh. Sorry. That's about two hours later than I reckoned," I tell him.

"I know," he replies.

"I didn't know you did that in Australia," I say. "That deliberate misalignment of the diurnal routine. Does every country do it?"

"No. Equatorial countries don't, because they get plenty of light all year round. Temperate countries do, though. The technical term for it is 'daylight saving'."

I blink.

"And 05:00 is when I get up on a working day," Uncle Steve continues. "On Saturdays, I like to lie in. Until solar noon, if possible. That's more than five hours from now."

I'm beaten. "I guess I have no idea what 04:25 on Saturday signifies. It used to be pretty universal, but now where I live it signifies a time to go out and get drunk..."

"And where I live," Uncle Steve says, "it signifies a hangover."

"The same time of day on the same day of the week means many different things to different people all over the world," I say. "Too many to remember them all."

"Yeah," Uncle Steve grumbles. "It would be neat if there was a lookup table for that kind of thing."

[https://qntm.org/abolish](https://qntm.org/abolish)

<comment> 0-_-0 Let's invert the argument:

Before abolishing unified time

I want to call my Uncle Steve in Melbourne. What are the working hours there? Google tells me it is currently 7:00 to 15:00 there. It's probably best not to call right now.

After abolishing unified time

I want to call my Uncle Steve in Melbourne. When are the working hours there? it's 8:00 to 16:00, same as it is here, of course! Same as it is in New York, Bangalore and Hawaii, at the South Pole and on the Moon.

You get the point...

<comment><USER12> The difference is that as soon as you know what time it is in Melbourne, you know if you can call Uncle Steve. Regardless, you have to know where the sun is, because that determines whether or not Uncle Steve is awake (most likely). But it's much easier to find his timezone offset and figure that out than figure out if the sun is up there (which incidentally, timezones actually allow you to do).

It's much easier if noon is noon around most of the world (obviously it gets more meaningless the further north and south you get), as opposed to always having the same time and having to figure out where the sun is.

This is why one world timezone is a terrible idea. It makes some calculations simpler, but it otherwise royally fucks with how humans work, and humans are much more concerned with where the sun is.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> A little history:

Clocks used to be on local time. You typically had a town clock tower and noon was when the sun was overhead.

Then we invented trains. We introduced standard time zones so you figure out when the train would be at the station.

I'm not a fan of daylight savings time, but this proposed patchwork is throwing the baby out with the bathwater.

<comment><USER14> Then we invented everything else and along with that UTC. Which works until we have colonies on another planet. We should go ahead and move to a galactic time standard.

<comment><USER15> We just need to bite the bullet and move everything to UTC. In the short term, just post both EDT (e.g.) and UTC on websites and signs and then eventually drop UTC. The math of knowing what time to call your uncle halfway around the world doesn't change, you still know their normal day runs at an X hour offset.

<comment><USER13> Knowing when to call a relative involves more than knowing their time zone. It also involves knowing a bunch of other details about their life, like their work schedule, if they have the kind of job where it is okay to call them at work if you keep it brief (eg overnight security guard who walks around once an hour and otherwise watches video feeds from cameras), whether they are a morning person or a night person, what non work activities they regularly attend (church, hobbies) and when they attend them, etc.

In practice, if you keep in touch on a regular basis, you don't actually need to remember their time zone at all. You can remember the correct time to call in relation to your own schedule: "Got to call Grandma as soon as I get home from work. If I wait until after I eat dinner, she will be asleep."

In actual practice, that's how most people seem to handle long distance relationships where they keep in touch regularly. (Or maybe that's just me.)

Plus, it's the relatively rare Luddite that you can only contact by phone these days. A lot of people keep in touch with long distance relatives via email, Facebook or text messages, all of which allow you to send the message whenever you feel like it without worrying if the other party is currently available for live interaction. If you can contact them via such a method, you can arrange an appointment for a live discussion by asking them when they would be available for such.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> I obviously didn't get the memo, neither did the proposed time zone map mention about the reasons for changes. So here is the big question: why each state are proposing their own time zone now? The proposed changes look like a mess to be honest.

<comment><USER17> Many States (or at least some legislators in those states) are pushing for permanent DST because of the perceived benefits.

I live in the north and the concern about DST always makes me laugh - <USER2> relationship between the time and diurnal patterns is meaningless up here for at least a third of the year.

<comment><USER18> What are the perceived benefits?

<comment><USER17> People usually cite benefits to farmers, energy savings, declining crime/traffic accidents, happiness due to more sunlight etc.

The first Google result for me implies that these are largely myths ([https://www.forbes.com/sites/startswithabang/2018/03/05/the-...](https://www.forbes.com/sites/startswithabang/2018/03/05/the-5-reasons- to-keep-daylight-saving-time-have-no-science-to-back-them-up/)).

<comment><USER19> Another data point: Later sunsets lead to lost productivity, more obesity, more diabetes, and more breast cancer. Probably due to fewer hours of sleep.

[https://www.washingtonpost.com/business/2019/04/19/how- livin...](https://www.washingtonpost.com/business/2019/04/19/how-living-wrong- side-time-zone-can-be-hazardous-your- health/?noredirect=on&utm_term=.14e8f21f9d50)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER20> Remember if you store local date times in your DB it may be hard or impossible to get back the UTC later.

<comment><USER21> It should be possible in most practical situations. This is assuming you are storing the timezone correctly. You can always look at the date component of the timezone, look it up in a DB like the Olson DB to see what the UTC offset was on that date, and then apply that offset to get the datetime in UTC.

There are a few relatively small periods in time when that mapping is not one- to-one. Then it is not possible without additional information.

That being said, do everyone a solid and store your date times in the DB in UTC, in a field type that explicitly supports date times with timezones.

<comment><USER22> > field type that explicitly supports date times with timezones

So as a string then in MySQL? ;)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER23> Using gray to indicate no change makes the second map practically impossible to interpret.

<comment><USER24> I attempted to fill in the areas not making any changes with their original zone: [https://i.imgur.com/ZJZwc46.png](https://i.imgur.com/ZJZwc46.png)

(I also made Eastern hues of purple, to clearly show they're separate. Same w/ HI/AK.)

Note El Paso becomes an isolated area of what was once America/Denver (Mountain Time), but would probably become America/El_Paso.

I have no idea what is going on in Oklahoma in this map, and I didn't bother to change it.

I honestly can't imagine that this would last very long; the remnants of ye olde America/Chicago (which is gone, in the new) would probably join America/Salt_Lake? (at which point it becomes America/Houston?) if you're SD/NE/TX/LA. If you're KY/WI, I'd say join America/New_York and let IL/IN feel like timezone weirdos, except IN is probably used to it[1].

America/Lewiston should just rock its new place of power.

Seriously people, this is why we can't have nice things. DST was a decent compromise. I for one also don't want to do DST time year round, as one will basically not see sunrise in the winter. Noon should be at _noon_ , modulo _reasonable_ inaccuracies due to the need to have timezones, but this being essentially a zone off bugs the purist in me.

But I also kinda like leap seconds, so I'm probably a weirdo.

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

<comment><USER25> One nitpick: tzdata timezones can never join. They can only split. If a place were to join another place's timezone, it would break the representation of historic timestamps.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER26> Interesting that so much of the country seems dissatisfied with their current time zone. Being in WA, I'm certainly hoping that it moves forward for us.

<comment><USER27> The linked page is a bit misleading, because it's not necessarily so much that people are dissatisfied with their current time zone as they are dissatisfied with it _changing_ for half the year.

The linked page portrays it as e.g. CA moving to "MST" but that doesn't actually accurately represent what's proposed, because the lack of a DST switch is meaningfully different from just moving to the same timezone as current Mountain time states.

<comment><USER28> MST is Mountain Standard Time is UTC-7. California wants to change their clocks such that their time is PDT, which is Pacific Daylight Time which is UTC-7. Rather than have different colors for daylight times versus standard times, they're effectively colored by UTC offset. This does not seem misleading to me.

The page is trying to provide a visual for how "off" our maps and tzdata are going to be if laws like these pass without a unified vision of the move. What sort of reasonable thing is California and western Kansas being in the same time zone but _not_ Utah?

EDIT: And after all that, there will still be states that will observe daylight savings time.

<comment><USER27> It would be more accurate if the left hand map had 2-color stripes to indicate both the summer offset and the winter offset, e.g. if CA were striped blue and red on the left, and solid red on the right.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER29> All these separate proposals are a logical nightmare for truckers and people who have to cross state lines. I've heard this proposal before, but seems way simpler: 1) Abolish daylight savings and the 1 hour change and keep things the way they are. So technically daylight savings is right now (from March-Oct). Just keep it as it is this very second 2) Merge the Pacific time zone with Mountain time zone. That way in the continental US we have 3 time zone: Eastern, Central, and Mountain But I can't find the exact resource I got this idea from, but I think this would minimize the headaches and gripes people have.

<comment><USER30> The continental US is actually wide enough across to necessitate five time zones. The four we have now aren't good enough. Cutting down to three as you suggest would exacerbate the problem.

<comment><USER31> Well, barely though. Only a tiny fragment of Maine would be in AST using standard 15° wide time zones, the boundary being 67.5° W.

<comment><USER30> The overall point is that if 4 isn't quite enough, then 3 is definitely way too few.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER32> Indiana needs to be in Central. It's bloody dark here in the morning because we are the same time zone as NYC etc. not to mention it's bright till almost 10pm!

</comment><comment><USER33> This is pretty dumb. In what world should Boston and New York City be in different time zones? And Long Island in a different time zone than Connecticut.

</comment><comment><USER34> Random thought after reading all the comments about abolishing all time zones and switching to UTC only. The biggest complaint people would have is they wouldn't know what time morning was for example. Morning would be 7am somewhere but 7pm somewhere else. But we already have the same type of situation with the seasons anyway. It's summer in the northern hemisphere while its winter in the southern. We should have month zones if we wanted to operate the same way.

So with that being said, I've always been a supporter of switching to DST only and this proposal actually does push my state that way, but I think I actually could support UTC only as well.

</comment><comment><USER35> I know my opinion is unpopular, but I sure would love it if the world would simply rid itself of timezones and stick to a singular time. Does it _really_ matter if it's broad daylight at 0200 Earth Standard Time? Circadian rhythms aren't affected if people still go to sleep at night and wake up at day. It standardizes time relativity on a single scale. And it saves us software engineers a lot of headache.

<comment><USER36> This link often gets posted to rebut proposals to abolish time zones: [https://qntm.org/abolish](https://qntm.org/abolish)

<comment><USER37> > Do normal humans publish "waking hours"? Not typically.

It would kind of be great if they did though, it's not necessarily the same for everyone in the same geographic location.

<comment><USER38> You can do this in Google Calendar, so sort of.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER39> Coming from a different part of the world, this proposed change was news to me. Does anyone have a link to the actual proposal and reasoning?

<comment><USER40> Every change is independent. Each state makes its own rules (well, has the freedom to decide what it wants, although there is apparently some federal oversight).

<comment><USER41> The only thing the state has control over is if it observes daylight savings time. Changing to a different time zone requires the Dept. of Transportation to approve of the change.

This is one of the things that makes this so complicated... most of the bills are "asking" the state government to petition the federal government to make a change. And it isn't guaranteed that the DOT will approve the switch.

Even more complicated... the state can only control whether or not to observe DST. It can't control the start/stop of DST, so if California wants to always be at UTC-7 (the current PDT), it couldn't just decide to always be in PDT. It would need to petition the DOT to be moved to MST and then to not observe DST.

[https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Daylight_saving_time_in_the_...](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Daylight_saving_time_in_the_United_States)

<comment><USER42> Good that there is some central control, because if this all passed it would become a righteous mess.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER42> It's fascinating to see that almost everyone wants to move a zone eastward (except Indiana, apparently the state with the smartest people). This is similar to many of the original recent proposals for abolishing the twice- yearly time change in Europe, where many countries wanted to stay with summer time instead of going to permanent standard (or "winter") time. For most countries, this would be bad, especially in winter, when children would have to go to school in total darkness. Luckily in several European countries there is some grass-roots activism now to move to standard time instead. (In fact, I and many others think that France, the Benelux and certainly Spain should move a time zone westward, _and_ move to permanent standard time.)

Russia moved to permanent summer time a few years ago, but it was a disaster and they moved to permanent standard time a few years later.

<comment><USER43> Really depends where you are on the globe in terms of latitude. Russia is a gargantuan country that currently spans 12 time zones, I don't think there's a single solution that can cover it, especially given that the southernmost portions of the country (mainland) are around 41° and the northernmost parts are around 77°N.

I think the US tends to be much simpler in this regard (49°N-24°N - <USER3> states). It seems in much of the country you really do get a more optimized time for sunrise/sunset if we all moved over 1 time zone: [http://andywoodruff.com/blog/where-to-hate-daylight- saving-t...](http://andywoodruff.com/blog/where-to-hate-daylight-saving-time- and-where-to-love-it/)

<comment><USER42> I think it's also dependent on whether you are a morning or an evening person. I'm very much the latter, and if there was more sunlight early in the morning I would better be able to get up and be on time at work with less stress. I can continue as late as I want in the evening or night without outside light, so I have little need for a later sunset.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER44> In the age of smart phones and smart watches, we have the ability to define two dimensional time zones and skew the time each night by a minute or so, in order to achieve the ultimate goal: the sun always rising at a constant time (e.g. seven a.m.). That is how we evolved to live: human time, optimized for our circadian rhythms.

<comment><USER45> That's great for those of us who live in Hawaii, but we already skip Daylight Savings Time. What about everyone who lives far enough from the equator that the length of the day changes significantly through the seasons? You could hold dawn to a constant time, with enough smartphone gymnastics, but not dusk. How is your circadian rhythm going to cope with full daylight at midnight?

<comment><USER44> For extreme locations, there are no perfect solutions, only improvements: bedtime is also at the same time each day. No time scheme is going to magically fix an unnatural habitat like a set of blackout blinds would.

<comment><USER23> Trying to schedule your day becomes challenging when there are only 3600 seconds between 7am and 7pm.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER46> Why should the federal government regulate time zones? Why shouldn't states do as they will (as Arizona and even more extremely Indiana do)? Some states, or portions of states, could go on 1/2 hour offsets if they are too far from local noon (as other TZs do).

We all walk around with computers in our pockets that can manage it. I can see there might have been a justification back when computation was difficult and the government felt it had a stake in trains being built, but nowadays those factors no longer apply.

<comment><USER47> Purely from a technical perspective and ignoring the political implications, I don't think that phones are helping all that much. I travel quite frequently and work with a lot of people across the US (as well as Europe and India), who also travel frequently.

I keep tab of who is - or might be - where on any given day, simply to be able to coordinate schedules and not call folks who are in PST at 6am by accident (or have people call me at 9pm).

A system for messengers (Skype, Slack, Teams, Text ...) where people could share their current time zone would make my life so much easier sometimes.

<comment><USER48> The last time I used Slack it had this feature, or something similar -- it would warn you when you were sending a cross-timezone message.

<comment><USER49> It still does. Try using @channel in a big company-wide channel (never actually do this BTW) -- it will tell you how many people and how many TZs will get pinged.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER50> What I can't get over is how Minnesota, Iowa, Missouri, and Arkansas would be _ahead_ of Illinois. That's just confusing.

<comment><USER51> This map is wrong. Illinois is considering staying on DST year-round. [http://ilga.gov/legislation/fulltext.asp?DocName=10100SB0533...](http://ilga.gov/legislation/fulltext.asp?DocName=10100SB0533sam001&GA=101&SessionId=108&DocTypeId=SB&LegID=116470&DocNum=0533&GAID=15&Session=)

</comment></comment><comment><USER52> Some of this looks nonsensical. For example, Illinois. Do these states even talk to each other?

</comment><comment><USER23> I hope the DC, and only the DC, change to Atlantic time goes through for maximum hilarity.

</comment><comment><USER53> It seems New England is the group of state the furthest east that would benefit from Atlantic Time. But why would VW and FL move? It seems like there's no value there, or am I missing something?

<comment><USER54> It's not really moving so much as staying on daylight savings year round. "AST" is another way of saying EDT.

</comment></comment><comment><USER55> This would be a disaster for people living in Kansas City. There is so much cross state commuting going on that I wouldn't think this would ever pass.

</comment><comment><USER56> The people who manage TV scheduling, especially from satellites are royally screwed, I wonder if there are enough spare transponders to double up where required

<comment><USER57> And 10 years later, people ad-hoc invent a solution to the time zone problem:

"Let's meet at 3pm _Comedy Central_ time."

"Wait, I usually use _Discovery Channel_ time, when is that?"

<comment><USER56> there's all sorts of cultural stuff here - 'prime-time' on the broadcast networks has traditionally been off by one hour from the coasts (local time) - presumably originally to reduce the satellite demands when broadcasts first went national

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER58> this will make travel for long-distance extremely painful

</comment><comment><USER59> Not only is this patchwork idea dumb, but many of these have already failed in their legislative sessions.

</comment><comment><USER60> I think we should try something simpler first, get rid of daylight savings time.

<comment><USER61> That's exactly what this is all about. Many states want to have "permanent Daylight Saving", which is the same thing as just jumping to the next timezone to the east, and no longer observing DST.

</comment></comment><comment><USER62> You seriously could not find a color to separate the East and West Coast?

DOA for me. Confusing, especially since these are the hubs of most activity. Now you diagram just makes it seem like they are in the same time zone.

Sorry, nice try, but it is a no for me.

</comment><comment><USER63> Good..Indiana and IL finally on one time zone..yeah!

</comment><comment><USER64> hoping the TX bill passes. I hate having jet lag every spring for a week.

</comment><comment><USER65> Tldr; Allows California to set the standard time to year-round daylight saving time if federal law authorizes the state to do so. Move from current PT (pacific time zone) to MT (mountain time zone) year-round

</comment><comment><USER66> Perhaps missing something obvious, but what's the advantage of having time zones over everyone using UTC/GMT?

<comment><USER54> Because it's weird for planning purposes. I'd be eating breakfast in a "morning" hour in one country while someone else eats breakfast at a "night" hour somewhere else. Just kinda goes against the grain.

<comment><USER67> Maybe, but breakfast, lunch, dinner, and the many other tweens and variations are really just different words to describe meals. So let's axe the distinction between them and simply call them "meals".

<comment><USER54> A link above explains. You want to call your uncle in Australia. Is he awake? (home from work?, etc). You can't tell because it's the same "time" here and there but a very different part of his day.

<comment><USER67> To deduce whether your Australian uncle is likely at work, as an example, you need to know A) his work schedule and B) the difference in time between his and your locations.

If you're both in the time zone, you need to know A) his work schedule. The idea that a person's workday might be 1 AM - 9 AM might be difficult to comprehend, but only relative to our current understanding.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER68> Why do we even _have_ time zones? DST is a seriously broken concept but timezones on their own are almost as bad. The worst part is that people don't really understand how much simpler the world would be without timezones altogether. Just use UTC or anything consistent across the board.

The disjointness of the proposed zones on this map proves the point that the offsets are arbitrary. Why not lead internationally by example by uniformly adopting a modern clock everywhere. Let's standardize time for the whole country.

<comment><USER69> It's not other people failing to understand. We just disagree. A world without timezones would not be simpler, it would just shift complexity around. Beyond that, it is tilting at windmills to suggest this sort of international coordination.

Theres no need for international "leadership" or guesswork here. China has already adopted a single clock for the whole nation. Maybe somebody living there can advise how a nation with such a wide longitudinal spread operates with a single time reference.

<comment><USER68> Can you be specific about what would be more complex without timezones?

<comment><USER69> sorry for the the delayed response, but people will always have a need to communicate in terms at least approximating local solar time (e.g. dawn/noon/dusk). right now everyone can use "time" for that. force everyone to a global reference clock and they will just have to make up some new, local, nonstandard concepts and terms to reflect what was once just "time".</comment></comment></comment></comment>


Why Do 26 Million Checked Bags Go Missing Every Year? - <AUTHOR> http://www.cntraveler.com/travel-tips/flying/2012/07/airlines-baggage-luggage-checked-fees-missing-bags

<comment><USER2> _Mueller confirms that airlines see the TSA as a big part of the problem: "After the TSA took over back in 2001, my pilferage claims quadrupled," he says. Before the TSA came into the game, passengers' bags could be opened by another party only if a law-enforcement officer was present. His counterparts at other carriers have reported similar findings, he says, and in a 2002 meeting in Washington, D.C., they demanded that the TSA crack down on rogue employees. It is not clear what the agency has done since that time to solve the problem, but it has agreed to investigate and settle any claims that arise._

<comment><USER3> I guess we could not criminalize until you federalize.

Play on "You can't professionalize unless you federalize," agreed Senate Majority Leader Tom Daschle, D-S.D.

<comment><USER4> Let's leave the 1-dimensional partisan politics out of this please, there are plenty of real-world reasons why the TSA sucks. The air traffic controllers are federalized and they do a great job.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> Q: Why Do 26 Million Checked Bags Go Missing Every Year?

My answer: Because they contain valuable things.

When I used to travel with checked baggage, it almost always got stolen or lost. Bad luck? No. I would pack expensive cameras. I now only put cheap clothing and nothing metal in checked baggage. Everything valuable comes with me by hand, and when that isn't possible is shipped using a more secure carrier like FedEx. Since not packing valuables, I've never had a single bag lost.

The fact is that baggage handlers at airports are criminals who make money stealing things. There are exceptions, I am sure a few are honest. Not many though.

<comment><USER6> Sorry, but you're wrong.

26 million bags were not lost - most were delayed in connection. Which means you ran to your next flight and made it just in time, but your bag travels slower than you do. In any case, you got it back a few hours or a day later, all contents intact (or did you cheat the insurance? haa? :)

Few (although some) baggage handlers have the time to ruffle through your bag ni the short time they strive to load, unload, and transfer hundreds of bags from one flight to the next twenty.

The fact is that most baggage handlers are honest, while a few are not. Like in any business.

Sorry, but you're wrong.

26 million bags were not lost - most were delayed in connection. Which means you ran to your next flight and made it just in time, but your bag travels slower than you do. In any case, you got it back a few hours or a day later, all contents intact (or did you cheat the insurance? haa? :)

Few (although some) baggage handlers have the time to ruffle through your bag ni the short time they strive to load, unload, and transfer hundreds of bags from one flight to the next twenty.

The fact is that most baggage handlers are honest, while a few are not. Like in any business.

Edit: Thanks for the downvotes. Lovely. For refuting the OPs ridiculous claim that:

"The fact is that baggage handlers at airports are criminals who make money stealing things. There are exceptions, I am sure a few are honest. Not many though."

I worked in baggage handling for 10 years. I never saw anyone steal anything from any bags. Nobody opened any bags without witnesses (supervisors). I saw delayed bags due to - in order by reason - 1.) misconnection due to delayed flights, 2.) baggage airport system failures 3.) Weather (indirectly causing point 1, 2 and 4) 4.) Human error (rare).

<comment><USER7> I have found that if you have anything valuable-ish in external pockets to your luggage, it will usually disappear. e.g. change in a bag; CD's & DVD's etc.

I'm sure the baggage handlers that do that don't make it obvious to their co- workers.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> From the numbers given for US carriers, it looks like US carriers lose about 0.5% of baggage.

That's equal or higher to FedEx's loss rate, based on numbers I've seen inferred from their insurance rates and the assumption that the insurance rates are set to at least cover their costs.

Given that checked bags cost money now, why not send your bags by FedEx to your hotel? You'll likely reduce your risk of losing them, and you won't have to deal with carrying them to and from the airport.

<comment><USER9> >Given that checked bags cost money now

Not as much as FedEx. Checking a 50-pound bag with United from SFO to AUS costs $25. Shipping a 50-pound package via FedEx costs twice as much, and that's assuming you can afford to be without the things in your bag for up to 4 business days. If you can't, overnight shipping is $288.

<comment><USER10> I often wish I could travel without a second suitcase. I recently paid a popular Brazilian airline R$230 (US$115) for a half-full second suitcase weighing 15kg. That price was also the price of the flight I was taking, btw.

<comment><USER11> If you're willing to do laundry in your travels (lots of hotels offer drycleaning as a paid service also) then I see no reason you shouldn't be able to.

I often travel for weeks at a time with no more than a Skyway 'carry-on' model bag and my laptop bag, both of which are carryable onto all US airlines at least. If I were somehow restricted to one bag, I could stow my laptop in my carryon if necessary, but I'd worry more about it getting banged up.

<comment><USER10> oops, forgot to mention important detail. I move a lot, so everything (mostly clothes) fits into two suitcases.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> _The pilot, who's been apprised of these developments, must now make the crucial call of whether to wait for the errant valises and risk a late departure_

I'm actually surprised that it comes down to the pilot's call - you'd think that their job is to just worry about flying the plane, not whether baggage has made it or not.

<comment><USER13> And the fact pilots (in the U.S. anyway) make only slightly more money than a McDonalds employee.

<comment><USER14> Wow- didn't think this was true, but googling found this:

"On the low end, first-year pilots at US Airways would, theoretically, earn a minimum $21,600 a year. For that, they would work 72 hours a month at the controls of a plane (lots more hours are involved in flight preparations, overnights and sitting around waiting)."

<comment><USER15> I had to deal with US Airways for the first time last week (not from the US). It was at Laguardia, all the other airplane companies had flatscreens and whatnot, US Airways seemed to have been stuck in the 80's with letter boards. They were very courteous though. But damn they looked cheap.

<comment><USER16> This is true of most American companies. A while ago I was travelling a lot to Europe (England in particular) from Brazil. On every single flight you'd get personal entertainment systems installed on fairly new planes and great onboard service.

Now I'm living in the US. Every time I travel (either inside the US or to South America) I feel like American companies are not even trying.

<comment><USER17> They are trying and succeeding. The only amenity that Americans care about are the absolute lowest prices. (Does your fare comparison site let you search by the availability of entertainment devices? Nope. Because nobody actually cares.)

Considering you can regularly fly NYC-SFO round-trip for about $250, a distance of 5000 miles, I think they're doing a pretty good job.

If you want free food and nicer seats, fly first class.

<comment><USER18> > Does your fare comparison site let you search by the availability of > entertainment devices? Nope. Because nobody actually cares.

I would search by that, if it was an option. But in practice most (airline, aircraft) pairs all have the same entertainment options, so you can figure it out yourself with a little googling.

<comment><USER17> How much extra would you pay per flight? That's the bottom line.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER19> I think people can understand that mishaps occur, and can forgive their property going missing/damaged/delayed. What is unforgivable is how airlines delay and refuse reimbursing the traveler for losses incurred instead of simply accepting their responsibility and making the disruption as painless as possible.

<comment><USER20> Jet Fucking Blue

I recently landed at SFO, near midnight, and found that their handlers had completely sheered a wheel of my suitcase. The pull handle was also busted. And this was a bag tough enough to survive 15 years of use without trouble.

Exhausted, I went home, thinking I could deal with it in the morning. JetBlue told me that they weren't taking responsibility for anything reported more than four hours after the fact "to reduce fraud", they said.

Here's the thing. They know how many bags they ruin. They also know that the likelihood of a person buying an airline ticket in order to get a "free" suitcase is vanishingly small. So they can tell that while it's possible I'm hustling them, it's also very unlikely. Chances are good that they simply destroyed my bag. But instead of paying for it, they added insult to injury by stating "we have no idea whether or not you're a criminal" before telling me the four hour rule was written in stone.

That's got nothing to do with avoiding fraud, and everything to do with avoiding responsibility. I suspect I'd have gotten the same treatment (or worse) elsewhere, but still, Jet Fucking Blue.

<comment><USER21> Replace it with a Briggs and Riley bag. It won't be cheap, but they will repair it for free, for life, even if the damage was the airline's fault.

<comment><USER20> Wow, that's fantastic. Many thanks.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> It's amazing to me that they even make it at all. There are so many bags coming in that have to be unloaded, scanned, sorted, transfered (sometimes cross-airline), and reloaded in such a short period of time with so much possibility of human error.

I make some pretty tight connections and my bags always seem to make it (knock on wood).

<comment> jack-r-abbit Well... I don't find it any more amazing than the fact that they can keep most of their planes in the air. Why? Because that is the job they have agreed to do for the money I have agreed to pay. Sadly, they fail at their job... apparently 26 million times a year.

Sometimes I wonder if my luggage is even on the same flight as me. We have to check in so early these days, it would not surprise me if they chucked my bag onto any next flight that will get it to my final destination before I do. Probably not... but maybe.

<comment><USER22> 26 million of what, though? I don't recall seeing that mentioned in the article. Are we talking 5%, 10%, 35%? What is an acceptable failure rate? Us programmers aren't perfect, either. Or course, it's not justification, but it would sure help put things in perspective.

A family member of mine worked for an airline on the ground post 9/11 and, barring a major issue at the departing airport, there weren't very many problems. The worst circumstances were short layovers (which usually arrived on the next flight and sent to their address) or reroutes to the wrong destination (which this person took the fall for, obviously, as it was all in their control).

<comment> jack-r-abbit True the numbers are not spelled out exactly. It does say _the industry claims that more than 99 percent of checked bags arrive with their owners, and most late bags turn up within two days._ But when it happens to you, you don't really care what tiny percentage you are. And two days is a long time when you're in a foreign country washing your single pair of underwear in the hotel sink each night.

<comment><USER22> Oh, I 100% agree with you, having been in a similar situation. It only happens once, then you learn to carry an extra set of clothes in your carry-on (when travelling internationally).

My point is just that 1% is a pretty reasonable margin of error. If I worked on a team with 1% or less of errors over a life of a project, I'd be ecstatic. But, reality prevails. Email/Gmail, websites, cell networks, car accidents with hours of waiting, etc. all happen. Usually, only a small number are affected (or for a small duration).

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER23> _"A good part of the baggage process is in a part of the airport that is physically quite complex and, in many areas, dark." He adds: "Your bag may be traveling for several miles" in this maze, and watching it at every step along the way just isn't feasible._

That's a ridiculous excuse. The police, FBI, or whatever law enforcement agency could put hidden cameras and microphones in various luggage--packed with expensive things that are worth stealing--as part of a sting operation. If there's a serious problem (keeping in mind that the _average_ loss is 0.5%), then they'd be able to nab the crooked TSA agents or baggage handlers after just a couple dozen runs.

The reason this is not done is because this is _boring_ to police. It is not a glamorous or interesting kind of crime to solve, and nor does it make money like speeding tickets or parking tickets.

<comment><USER24> Part of the trouble is that the victims often aren't local. Police departments, humanly enough, care more about solving local crimes that hurt local people, rather than crimes that hurt people "somewhere else." I agree that the FBI and other such agencies would be interested, but it's still a non-violent crime, and their resources might be better spent elsewhere.

</comment></comment><comment><USER25> Benefits of losing baggage: <http://unclaimedbaggage.com/p/store/about_store>

I live just close enough to make infrequent trips. I'm sure if I had to fly more I'd feel differently about the matter.

<comment><USER26> I like how the article don't mention the final destination for all the unclaimed bags. I got a great pair of sunglasses from this place once. Then I lost them.

</comment></comment><comment><USER27> Just so we can keep watching "Baggage Battles"?</comment>


Ask HN: How do you organize your code on your machine? - <AUTHOR>

Currently I have a Code directory which is littered with all sorts of stuff and in general is pretty unorganized. Between small code snippets and fully-fledged projects, the whole directory is a complete mess.<p>So, how do you organize your code? <comment><USER2>
      ~/code
      ~/code/${company_or_topical}
      ~/code/${company_or_topical}/${project}

Where company or topical are things like 'cloudkick', 'asf' or 'personal'. (I guess you could say, its "who owns the IP").

Some of these subdirectories are actually symlinks to encrypted DMGs, again depending on who owns the IP.

Project is the top level checkout of the projects.. My 'asf' (aka Apache Software Foundation) directory contains 84 project level checkouts.

I also keep a ~/work/temp directory full of random source tarballs if I need to look at how something works. Currently contains glibc, python 2.6 & 3.1, dojo, and about 30 other open source projects, normally ones I'm not normally involved in patching, but often run into... difficulties with. Nothing resolves bad documentation quicker than looking at the source code...

I tend to nuke temp once every 6 months.

<comment><USER3> """Some of these sub-directories are actually symlinks to encrypted DMGs, again depending on who owns the IP."""

That is how I handle customer proprietary data also for customers who want their work encrypted.

<comment><USER4> I use Knox - <http://www.knoxformac.com/> \- similar thing, much nicer UI.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> Everything I'm currently working on:

      ~/Projects

Older stuff, or projects on hold:

      ~/Projects/ARCHIVE

<comment><USER6> Haha... No Way! Only difference is mine it's the same without capitalization.

<comment><USER5> I leave ARCHIVE in all caps because most of my project names are all lowercase, and that keep it from popping up in auto-tab completion. Color me lazy. :)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> Each project gets its own folder that contains branches, helper scripts, release files, notes, etc. Nothing related to the project goes outside that folder... except:

Working copies, demo code, samples, etc of dependencies of my projects are kept separate to avoid polluting my backups with stuff that isn't mine.

When learning a new language or framework, I consider it the same as a project and make a corresponding folder. Good to keep learning material, notes, project Euler snippets, etc.

Random snippets, quines that print sierpinski's gasket, and other useless stuff goes into the "Snippets" folder.

</comment><comment><USER8> Two folders,

Sandbox: Contains code i'm working on or projects that i still consider active. Some of them i've converted to github.

Archived: Contains old projects or code, that are inactive, or somethings that are not on my plate in the near future.

For code snippets you might use gist on github, but i tend to use onenote. I have a queries notebook open on MS Onenote, and anytime i google search some new snippet, troubleshoot advice, configuration detail etc, it goes that notebook, with keyword tags.

</comment><comment><USER9> Weird, I thought this would be more common, I use:

~/Dropbox/code/<language>/<project name>/

it's all backedup and available immediately on all my machines, pretty handy. sometimes I use git inside of dropbox, but I'm still learning git in a real way so not all of my code is in it.

This is a fun thread to read, I'm starting to question my methods. At the very least seems like there is no reason not to have everything I write inside of git (or some version control).

<comment><USER10> there was an essay/article going round a few years ago describing how stallman had an entire account on cvs and would simply check it out wherever he was...

<comment><USER11> I think it was Joey Hess:

\- <http://kitenet.net/~joey/cvshome/> (CVS)

\- <http://onlamp.com/pub/a/onlamp/2005/01/06/svn_homedir.html> (SVN)

<comment><USER10> thanks, that was probably it (i looked myself but couldn't find anything, probably because of the wrong person).

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> One thing I can tell you: I'll NEVER be satisfied with how my code is organised on a hierarchical filesystem (and don't tell me I can simulate a graph properly with symlinks).

I think some sort of tagging filesystem would be appropriate.

Also, I hate how most programming tools assume I want to choose a "canonical" representation of code into files. I'd want to mostly don't care how the code is organized on disk and then write queries which let me view and edit code coming from multiple different files at once.

As a completely hypothetical, contrived example, let's say I was still doing Java and had a big class with many getters and setters, I don't want to choose whether I want the getter and setter of each attribute organised in pairs or whether I want all the getters first and then the setters. I want to be able to write a query that will constitute a new view, so if I want either option I just have to switch views. A third view would simply be the physical representation on disk, which is still needed from and dependencies-loading standpoint. This way of working would truly shine in much more complex scenarios but I hope you see what I mean.

</comment><comment><USER13> ~/gh/ is where I throw all my GitHub clones.

~/svn/ is where I throw my SVN checkouts (sometimes google code stuff, but mainly just python trunk until it gets fully hg'd)

~/scratch/ is where I create subdirectories for my quick-and-dirty scripts, or if I need to `cat` something somewhere real quickly.

<comment><USER14> Mine is somewhat similar:

~/sandbox/${vcs}-sandbox/${project}/

I'm thinking about removing the ${vcs} level though since I've got over 50 projects in 5 different VCS directories and it's getting hard to remember which vcs each one is in.

</comment></comment><comment><USER15> Two folders, 'sandbox' and 'projects'.

'sandbox' is organised by language, with code snippets and small projects in each folder. If anything becomes of the small projects they migrate to the 'projects' folder. Anything in the projects folder means it must be in a repository, git or svn.

</comment><comment><USER16> My good code I push to github. Everything else I occasionally delete or archive to my dropbox folder.

<http://breckyunits.com/code/how_i_organize_my_dropbox>

</comment><comment><USER3> I have a system that works well for me, basically separating small test/experimental bits of code from code for customer projects. I'll talk about the layout of book code later.

I keep small test/experimental bits of code in sub-directories of top level directories labeled Java_stuff, Lisp_stuff, Scheme_stuff, Ruby_stuff, Python_stuff, etc. Each test/experiment is in a well named sub-directory. These small experiments are useful for both learning and for later reuse on real projects.

I keep each active customer project in a directory with sub-directories for documentation, code, and test data.

For work on books: similar to customer projects: sub-directories for source code, for figure files (OmniGraffle and exported vector PDF files), for code examples, and for Latex (or OpenOffice if I can't use Latex).

I also keep a temp directory for downloading, building, running, and perusing source code for projects that I read about on the web. I periodically delete stuff in temp that is older than a few weeks old.

Finally, not specifically for code: I use Google documents to make copious deployment notes which I use for reference for future projects.

<comment><USER3> BTW, I also use git for almost all of the materials in the parent comment. I use a very small managed VPS for my git repositories.

For extra backup (in addition to git remote repositories): I have a script that mounts a EBS volume on my always running EC2 instance, does an rsync to the EBS volume of almost everything but decrypted sensitive files, and then unmounts the EBS volume. EBS volumes are reasonably reliable.

</comment></comment><comment><USER17> I don't keep any snippets around on my machine - just have a knack for remembering how to get to a specific snippet via Google.

Each project gets its own directory that contains everything needed for that project (unless I have a shared framework, library, etc). All the projects are committed to a private SVN repository although I am taking a serious look at Git lately.

<comment><AUTHOR> By snippets, I mean little bits of useful code or short scripts that I don't use frequently, but find myself reusing them regularly enough to keep them around. Generally, I don't keep these in version control, and as such, they're not posted online.

I might consider moving them all to using gists, but I'm not quite sure if that's ideal.

</comment></comment><comment><USER18>
      $HOME/Projects/<Project Name>/
      $HOME/Miscellaneous/<Language>/<description/
      $HOME/College/{Fall, Spring} <year>/<class name>/{Lab, Project} #/

Which is all mirrored in a private svn repo I've got running on a VPN.

</comment><comment><USER19>
      ~/work/fooN

Where fooN are svn (possibly other) working directories.

My personal (at home) is slightly different cause I have a lot more stuff than just code revision controlled.

      ~/work/art/
      ~/work/src/
      ~/work/sys/
      ~/work/web/
      ~/work/words/

"sys" is /etc and other _sys_ tem files from various machines. "web" hearkens to the days when websites were static html and images. Probably should merge that with "src" someday

In src I have some directories such as "hints", "icons", "perl", etc. into which to stuff bits of things that don't deserve their own VCS repository.

</comment><comment><USER20> ~/Projects/ for what I'm building

Everything else is in my svn repo that I can access from anywhere with svn+ssh.

Recently, I've started putting code spippets that I think I will re-use in my Dropbox.

</comment><comment><USER21>
        ~/ ls dev/
        freelance  opensource  personal  slum

Fairly self explanatory, slum is for random one-off things that probably won't go anywhere.

</comment><comment><USER22> I have a directory off the root FS for code I own, a directory off the root for each other IP holder and each person's code goes in their own directory.

</comment><comment><USER23> ~/projects : where I keep my personal projects

~/extern-projects : where i pull other projects from github and stuff, just to mess around with / bugfixes

~/src : where I store little scripts or test code, just a sandbox area to mess around.

~/test : i send testing tarballs here, basically anything I don't care too much about, as I empty this folder out periodically.

</comment><comment><USER24> insufficiently

currently : master git repository for everything, something like ~/docs lots of breakdown of documentation more git repositories under : ~/docs/code/projects - stuff I am currently working on or using ~/docs/code/legacy_projects - stuff that I don't want to die or need for reference, but I've lost interest for one reason or another ~/docs/code/public_projects - mirrors of servers, portfolio pieces, videos, all sorts of things that other people can see

I've been flirting with mavenizing everything for some time, but I just can't seem to overcome the inertia of... current build process works, code needs to be written, deal with it later

</comment><comment><USER25> Just ~/p

~/p/slime ~/p/go ~/p/ccl ~/p/sbcl

In ~/p itself I'm putting some .el scripts, .txt, .bat, .sh, .cmd files for various updates (when going to the folder and doing "hg pull", "svn update", "git pull", etc. is not enough).

</comment><comment><USER26> ~/Projects/ for important projects (i.e. not git clones of random GitHub projects, but major personal/work projects)

I don't have many other random code snippet things, but they generally go into Dropbox for easy storage.

</comment><comment><USER27>
      ~/dev -- projects I'm (semi-)actively hacking on
      ~/Repositories -- checkouts of dependencies and projects
                        I'm tracking but not hacking
      ~/arc -- same as dev but for work

</comment><comment><USER28> I have a "Playground" folder with a ton of randomly named projects in it. I like using the word "Playground" because then I don't feel guilty if I don't finish something...

</comment><comment><USER29> exactly the same way - a mess

The beauty of a hosted SCM (I use Bit Bucket) is that I only have to remember to "pull" when starting work on a project and "push" when finishing and it is all kept safe :)

I swap between about 4 or 5 machines here and at work so the chances of keeping it sane otherwise are low :)

</comment><comment><USER30> ~/<Project> for anything active, ~/Content/<Project> for anything I've stopped working on.

</comment><comment><USER31> "/.../Desktop/project_name" contains all the files for that project. Every project has its own directory.

</comment><comment><USER32> Git.

<comment><AUTHOR> That has no bearing on the organization of the directory tree of your code.

I already keep my projects (public and private) in version control (on GitHub).

</comment></comment><comment><USER33> I use eclipse because it has support for a lot of the different languages I have to work with. So I organize my projects by language first under an eclipse workspace folder.

~/workspace/perl ~/workspace/erlang ~/workspace/cpp

Then inside each folder there is a project. And I either create them or import them using eclipse.

For projects that are large and require a large number of languages. I simply create it under the workspace directory. (i.e. ~/workspace/MyBigProject)

And from then I break it down into languages again along with other folder necessary for larger projects.

MyBigProject -> bin/ conf/ docs/ erlang/ perl/ sql/ web/

Then I tend to use the best possible layout for a project of that language. For example since I use CGI::Application a lot using perl, my perl folder uses the following structure:

        perl ->
            deps/ <-- cpan/other modules that are needed
            MyBigProject/ <--Namespace for project modules
            startup.pl <- mod_perl2 startup file
            templates/ <- HTML::Template templates...
       and MyBigProject breaks down like so:
            MyBigProject ->
                DB/
                UI/
                (Other Modules)

and so on, the same goes for the erlang OTP:

        MyBigProject/erlang/ ->
            db/
            deps/
            ebin/
            Makefile
            src

and MyBigProject/web just holds all the html/javascript/css files for the WebUI.

And so on.

<comment><USER34> Was looking for this. I use a ~/workspace/ directory and was wondering where I picked up that notation. Organizing by language is an interesting idea too.

</comment></comment><comment><USER35> ~/projects/PROJECT — my personal projects (no longer used);

~/projects/package-gen/dst/PROJECT — my personal projects in RPM package format, with automatic build system, various templates for new packages, repository of built binary and source packages;

~/work/PROJECT — work;

~/bin — various personal scripts and programs;

~/tmp — scratch, e.g. ~/tmp/1 or ~/tmp/foobar;

~/gtd/projects — various stuff, sorted by purpose, tag or/and date. Links from here to many other places;

~/gtd/income — various stuff, to be sorted;

~/examples — various _working_ snippets;

/usr/share/bash-modules/ - various typical functions for bash scripts, e.g. "backtrace" or "..." (recently created as alternative to ~/examples/bash-..., see <http://vlisivka.pp.ua/en/bash_modules> ).

I use very simple tagging tool to speedup sorting, e.g. "s foo.tar.gz foo bar" will create two _hard_ links to "foo.tar.gz" file in ~/gtd/projects/foo/ and in ~/gtd/projects/bar/ directories, and so on.

Currently, I use RPM packages only for my own projects, because they are easy to install/uninstall/upgrade, they contains documentation, changelog, and description, they are easy to verify or rebuild, and so on.

<comment><USER36> Can you post that 's' tool?

Sounds like it'd be really useful...

</comment></comment><comment><USER37>
        appl/*/*.b
        module/*.m</comment>


US imposes visa restrictions on Huawei employees, other Chinese tech workers - <AUTHOR> https://www.zdnet.com/article/us-imposes-visa-restrictions-on-huawei-employees-other-chinese-tech-workers/ <comment><USER2> This is only the start, and more like the tip of the iceberg as for what is to come. You should be very concerned.

This could affect American tech workers traveling on business, even outside of China or Asia. A lot of developed countries require Americans to obtain a visa waiver to enter their country. Even Europe is implementing theirs, the ETIAS.

We might see a lot of things closing off, irrespective to Americans, or maybe even much softer versions of the great firewall of China occurring, over actions like this.

Even if I am way off, it is still worrisome.</comment>


xsData – "XML as simple objects rather than DOM" for Python - <AUTHOR> https://xsdata.readthedocs.io/en/latest/ <comment><AUTHOR> "xsData is a complete XML data binding library for python allowing developers to access and use XML documents as simple objects rather than using DOM."

This ("use XML documents as simple objects rather than using DOM") is quite a big deal, and makes the code much more concise. No more .getElement() type- stuff.</comment>


Textured Tactile Touchscreens - <AUTHOR> http://www.hizook.com/blog/2010/08/11/electrotactile-arrays-texture-and-pressure-feedback-during-robotic-teleoperation

<comment><AUTHOR> Is there somewhere I could buy an Electrotactile device? I'd be curious to hook it up to my Arduino and try it out.</comment>


Conway's Game Of Life in APL (2009) [video] - <AUTHOR> https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=a9xAKttWgP4 <comment><USER2> 2015: [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10366441](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10366441)

2012 (1 comment): [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4611015](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4611015)

2012 (2 comments): [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=3840273](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=3840273)

2011: [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2547655](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2547655)

2010 (1 comment): [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1499630](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1499630)

2010: [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1041500](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1041500)

2009 (1 comment): [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=451923](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=451923)

2008: [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=204042](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=204042)

I really need to write code to do this.

<comment><USER3> I hear Algolia has an API ;)

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> One thing that I've always noticed about this video is how much it makes sense when explained iteratively at each step. The final product, though, I can't picture that checked into source control for someone to understand weeks or months after it was thought through and written. Unpacking the final form seems almost impossible.

I'd love to know the software engineering side of using APL. For the same reasons that using esoteric bashisms instead of say a clearer python script is bad form, I can't picture APL fitting into good engineering practice. Maybe once you think in APL, it all works out fine.

<comment><AUTHOR> APL is readable more or less like you'd read English, so it's not hard to decipher. You can find a lot of talks on the normal video-sharing sites from people like Aaron Hsu and Roger Hui demonstrating this. The modern Dyalog _style_ of writing it is (in my opinion) a bit harder to decipher than other ways, though (at least, the style used in their public code repositories); it's much too long, and looks more or less like BASIC with symbols nowadays.

When you internalize the parsing model, it's downright trivial to read pretty much anything in it or its dialects.

<comment><USER5> > You can find a lot of talks on the normal video-sharing sites from people > like Aaron Hsu and Roger Hui demonstrating this.

If you have a good one in mind, please do recommend!

Last night I watched this: [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IKfJRyoiBlY](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IKfJRyoiBlY)

(found via r/apljk, posted by Kari himself IIRC)

This one uses pretty simple constructs though, mostly ones I'm already familiar with. It (intentionally) avoided reading the more complicated expressions.

(Also if there's another active online community around APL & similar langauges, I'd like to know about it)

<comment><USER5> I think I found a nice example: [https://youtu.be/v7Mt0GYHU9A?t=1237](https://youtu.be/v7Mt0GYHU9A?t=1237)

<comment><AUTHOR> Sorry for seeing this so late! I didn't have any in particular in mind, but it comes up pretty frequently throughout, I believe.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> There's some additional information about John's code at [https://aplwiki.com/wiki/John_Scholes%27_Conway%27s_Game_of_...](https://aplwiki.com/wiki/John_Scholes%27_Conway%27s_Game_of_Life), including a link to his own notes at [http://dfns.dyalog.com/n_life.htm](http://dfns.dyalog.com/n_life.htm).

</comment><comment><USER7> I typed this in using an IBM terminal with an APL ball during my first year of Comp Sci at Penn State Delaware Valley campus in 1976. I also typed in Trek-76.

There's nothing slower than tying in APL code using a hard copy terminal. At least we had an APL keyboard on the terminal - I think it was a dedicated terminal. Sorry I don't recall the model.

I never did get to think in APL - if you've never used it there are lots of specialized characters, some that do a ton of operations with one character (arrays for example).

Anyways it's in the wayback days of PL/1, Snobol, Cobol, BASIC and Turbo Pascal.

</comment><comment><USER2> See also [https://web.archive.org/web/20070205060623/http://catpad.net...](https://web.archive.org/web/20070205060623/http://catpad.net/michael/apl/)

<comment><USER6> Cool article, but it does go through a lot of effort (copying a string many times and then executing it) in order to get a loop on one line. In modern APL we'd just use the Power operator (⍣), which repeats a function. The dfn {⎕←Life ⍵} gets the next iteration and displays it, so {{⎕←Life⍵}⍣⍺⊢⍵} does this ⍺ times, where ⍺ is the left argument (the ⊢ is the identity function: all it does it to prevent ⍺ and ⍵ from being stranded together into one array). If we want space between the iterations, we can print an empty line first, with {{⎕←''⋄⎕←Life⍵}⍣⍺⊢⍵}. Substituting in the definition of Life, we have

      RepLife ← {{⎕←''⋄⎕←↑1 ⍵∨.∧3 4=+/,¯1 0 1∘.⊖¯1 0 1∘.⌽⊂⍵}⍣⍺⊢⍵}

Try it with

      10 RepLife ¯10 ¯10↑3 3⍴1 1 1 1 0 0 0 1 0

Another old paper on the Game of Life is Eugene McDonnell's "Life: Nasty, Brutish, and Short" ([https://www.jsoftware.com/papers/eem/life.htm](https://www.jsoftware.com/papers/eem/life.htm)). This was where John Scholes got the idea of doing three rotations along each dimension. Interestingly, McDonnell attributes the idea to an implementation by Don Knuth in METAFONT!

</comment></comment><comment><USER8> If I had to pick a video to motivate me to learn APL it would be this one. I still haven't learned APL but this would be the one.</comment>


New Intel Supercomputer - <AUTHOR> https://www.businessinsider.com/intel-department-of-energy-aurora-first-exascale-supercomputer-2019-3 <comment><AUTHOR> Anyone know how long it takes for your general $2000 laptop to have the power of a past super computer?</comment>


FBI files on Isaac Asimov - <AUTHOR> https://www.muckrock.com/foi/united-states-of-america-10/fbi-file-on-isaac-asimov-8300/#812739-responsive-documents

<comment><USER2> Interesting, but fairly unexciting. Most seem to be observations from afar, and notes on an interview they had with Asimov seemingly initiated by him.

</comment><comment><USER3> Agreed, seems like at the end it's "nothing to see here".</comment>


Understanding Convolutions (2014) - <AUTHOR> http://colah.github.io/posts/2014-07-Understanding-Convolutions/ <comment><USER2> Hmm, so I'm reading _The Hundred Page Machine Learning Book_ [0] which gives an overview of the field, and one of the sections is on convolutional neural networks, and it was very crisp and clear (like the whole book, really; highly recommended). I understand since it's a brief summary it's probably eliding stuff, but it's so much shorter and more understandable than this blog post that it makes me wonder if it's really eliding a lot of crucial stuff, or if this post is just... not clear.

In the book, it walks you through the convolution of an input matrix with a smaller filter matrix. You start with lining up the smaller matrix in the top left corner of the input matrix, and you multiply each overlapping square together and add them all up. That's the value of the top left element of the result (the result is a matrix). Then you slide the filter to the right, repeat the calculation, and that's the value one to the right in the result matrix. You repeat, panning and scanning across the input matrix and in this fashion fill in the the whole result matrix.

I thought I had it, but this blog post just confused things. I do remember learning about convolutions back in undergrad and being confused then, too, so that sounds about right. When I read the ML handbook, I had a "wait, is that it?" thought and was confused why I was confused back in the day. But I guess that's just one particular way of doing it, or one use case or something.

[0] [https://www.amazon.com/Hundred-Page-Machine-Learning- Book/dp...](https://www.amazon.com/Hundred-Page-Machine-Learning- Book/dp/199957950X)

<comment><USER3> Convolution is essentially polynomial multiplication. That's how I think about it.

You remember (a + b)(c + d) = ac + ad + bc + bd?

Or (2x^2 + 1)(4x^3 + x) can be calculated by doing conv([0,2,0,1], [4,0,1,0]) (the numbers represent the coefficients). The results are the coefficients of the resulting polynomial.

As the polynomials grow larger this gets harder and harder computationally. Convolution theorem lets you use Fourier to you convert this multiplication into a pairwise multiplication so that

fft(f * g) = fft(f) .* fft(g)

where * is convolution and .* is pairwise multiplication.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> If anyone's interested in learning more, the clearest explanation I have ever seen of convolutions is here:

[http://www.dspguide.com/ch6.htm](http://www.dspguide.com/ch6.htm)

Pedagogically speaking, that book is one of the best technical books I have ever read.

<comment><USER5> I agree. That book is excellent.

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> I would think that a tutorial on convolutions this extensive would mention the convolution theorem. Definitely the easiest way to visualize for most applications. Or is Fourier space not assumed to be known by the reader?

<comment><USER7> I had a similar thought the first time I read this a few years back. I mean, I get what the author is trying to say here (e.g. the ball dropping/rolling probability thing), but it's just a little more convoluted (ouch) than it needs to be, IMO.

</comment></comment><comment><USER8> I didn't understand this sentence and stopped reading:

"How likely is it that a ball will go a distance c if you drop it and then drop it again from above the point at which it landed?"

<comment><USER9> Okay so I was confused by this too. I think it is especially especially deceiving because it specified that the ball only moved in one axis of motion, but it's actually two (falling, and then rolling over). I also tend to get very frustrated with articles when they do a terrible job of explaining things, because it can feel like an impassable wall for the reader, where they just stop and don't continue. But in this case, they made up for their (really really) terrible wording with a (really really) clear image describing exactly what they meant. It did take like a minute of staring at the image to figure out what they meant, but sorry, this is a blog post about math, that's what it's going to take regardless. It's unfortunate that they couldn't communicate their thoughts more, but it's kinda brutal to just stop reading because of one sentence, when they put all this effort into making a diagram to explain that one sentence

<comment><USER10> The example problem just seems ridiculously underspecified at first. It shouldn't be necessary to read between the lines in order to decipher what the author's mental model was.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> "well, it's like autocorrelation, but upside down and backwards!"

</comment><comment><USER12> Convolutions show up in a lot of places. Multiplying polynomials is a convolution. This provides an interesting technique to create all the partial sums of a sequence. If you have a generating function for the sequence, divide it by (1-x). You'll get a new generating function where the nth coefficient is the sum of the first n coefficients of the original function. Remember 1/(1-x)=1+x×x^2+... ?

</comment><comment><USER13> I recently published a new crazy convolution formula at [https://arxiv.org/abs/1902.08982](https://arxiv.org/abs/1902.08982) (see last formulæ of the paper). I just submitted it to a journal and am waiting for the answer. Discussion is welcome!

<comment><USER14> For easier reading and referencing you could specify the total big-O cost of your algorithm right in the beginning (or even in the abstract). And an indication on which range of input sizes it is likely to outperform karatsuba multiplication before being outperformed by the fft.

</comment></comment><comment><USER15> Convoluted explanation only to cite the epic wikipedia gif

Fouri-ous there's no mention of Fourier [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Convolution_theorem](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Convolution_theorem)

</comment><comment><USER16> so a convolution is simply a method to calculate a total likelihood?

why do we say convolution instead of total likelihood, which is so much more to the point the goal that is trying to be achieved?

<comment><USER17> Convolution is a tool with many applications, so naming it for just one of those applications would make it harder to see its usefulness in the others</comment></comment>


The present and the future of online health communities - <AUTHOR> http://xconnectto.com/2012/10/19/the-present-and-the-future-of-online-health-communities/

<comment><USER2> Great interview!</comment>


Build Serverless Back-End on Go, Python, Node, BBLang - <AUTHOR> Platform to code your business logic; and other things are managed by https://backbench.io/<p>https://blog.backbench.io/go-serverless-with-python-and-golang-on-backbench-78948188675c <comment><AUTHOR> Hi, everyone I am posting on behalf of my team. Any questions ? do shoot and do try it <3</comment>


Why hipsters all look alike (2014) - <AUTHOR> https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/wonk/wp/2015/12/23/the-mathematician-who-proved-why-hipsters-all-look-alike/ <comment><USER2> My grievance with this article was glossed over in one paragraph:

"In real life, there are a million ways to be nonconformist. You can be goth; you can be preppy; you can be grunge... "The brain is more complex than the model I looked at, and of course hipsters are more complex," he said."

Yes, there are a lot of ways to not be a thing. That's kind of important to note when you're making sweeping generalizations about a group of people who aren't like you. The title of this article is completely bogus.

<comment><USER3> Are you saying all "nonconformists" are "hipsters"? If not, "hipster" must be an identifiable category of non-random nonconformist appearance, hence the title of the article.

<comment><USER4> "Hipsters all look alike because we have defined _hipster_ as people having a specific look."

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> Humorous intent aside, I think the fundamental error here is the author(s) conflating a trend with the counter culture of yore. The hipsters of today do not follow from the counter culture of the 60s nor the punk movement that followed. They're not non-conformist nor do they have an internal set of political beliefs. They're just people dressing a certain way -- often combined with an excessively groomed beard in the case of men. The only sense that they're a group or movement is that they may share socio-economic status, cf. the yuppies of the 80s.

Though the beards do crack me up, I don't think this group deserves any more derision than any collection of (young) people struggling to find Heideggerian authenticity. Growing up I saw the same struggle in arguably more authentic subcultures like punk and skateboarding.

</comment><comment><USER6> Cargo cult. Especially these ridiculous beards..

BTW, hipsterism per se is a role-playing, role-governed behavior. Cosplay if you wish.

It is a way of looking "smart and nonconforming" instead of actually being, because being is much more difficult that following some style.

The difference is like between guys like Alan Kay, Marvin Minsky, Peter Norvig, David Moon, to name a few, versus hipster blogrammers.

<comment><USER7> What's the reason for having such a harsh tone towards a preferred personal styling?

</comment></comment><comment><USER8> Why is being a hipster seen as wanting to "oppose trends"?

I would think all of thing things we associate with being a hipster. Those things are what attract these people and we later just called them hipsters to categorize.

Hipsters aren't non conformists. They are conformists. The whole culture is the act in conforming to be like other hipsters.

<comment><USER9> That's taking nonconformity to an absurd level. Most everyone is a conformist at some level, because we are social creatures that have our sub-cultures that help shape our identity, for better or worse.

There are very few people that make their own clothes from raw material, people have to buy the cloth or the clothing itself from somewhere. Of course this tends towards clustering as the mainstream is by definition pretty broad, so it is visually easy to group together "people who wear weird/retro/custom clothes and hair styles" together.

Yet if you polled hipsters, I'd bet a wide diversity on other opinions/tastes in music, art, film, issues.

This goes for many sub-cultures, from goths, to metal heads, to punks, to yuppies or Bobos. Everyone mixes non-conformity at some level with conformity, especially when they link their tastes and opinions with their identity.

Hipsters just happen to want to be identified for their non-conformity which is what makes them annoying to many people, as this rejects the value of a thing based on its relative popularity.

We've seen elements of this in the past with Rock music fan's accusation of "sellouts" which is somewhat unique among music genres but makes total sense when the identity of being "Rock", for a portion of the fan base anyway, is to be in rebellion against The Man (with money and power).

Hipsterism just takes this to the next level, valuing the relative obscurity of a thing above all other qualities. Except with the Internet, it's easy to find obscure things and popularize them... Among hipsters anyway. Leading us back to clustering.

</comment></comment><comment><USER10> This is certainly interesting mathematically; might even have some truths to it for people.

But I found motive to be a glaring oversight, when approached from a human level. It took a very black & white approach of conformist/nonconformist and why someone might or might not wear something. Among them:

1) Some people don't care

2) Some people wear what other people buy them

3) Some people wear what they can afford

4) Some people wear what they can find

5) Some people have different looks/outfits

Also, I feel you could say the same thing about goths/punks/skaters or any other subculture.

I'm not trying to discredit the math, or the authors intentions. It's a fun thing to ponder, with real implications to be had. But if you were hoping to REALLY understand why all hipsters look alike, this simply does not go far enough to truly answer that. But as a foundation for a mathematical model, it's relevant and enjoyable.

</comment><comment><USER11> [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8590347](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8590347)

</comment><comment><USER12> Hipsters are a phenomenon which I find intriguing, and possibly concerning. The article does propose a credible explanation as an emergent property. Reminds me of the day Alternative officially became a music genre.</comment>


Show HN: We created IT Pack – a social networking platform for IT Professionals - <AUTHOR> https://www.itpack.com/ <comment><AUTHOR> Backstory- my company's full-time function was in IT event production. Long story short, we've essentially halted all progress on events right now due to recent circumstances. This gave us the opportunity to pivot toward developing a side project that had been on the back burner for about a year. The idea behind "IT Pack" is to provide a place that IT professionals can get the same kind of peer-to-peer insight and collaboration that usually comes from attending conferences. Love to hear any feedback/constructive criticism about the website!

<comment><USER2> I like the concept. I think there are going to be several of these types of communities for all types of different disciplines/jobs. I'm going to join this, poke around a bit, and I'll give you some feedback, tomorrow.

<comment><AUTHOR> I'd appreciate it! I look forward to hearing back.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER3> I like the idea behind the website - essentially a place exclusively for IT leaders to connect, brilliant. Have you thought about adding a chat function so those people can connect directly within the website? I think that would be beneficial. I like the ability to ask questions and get direct feedback from people in your likeminded area and then see answers (much like this website) so people can learn.

<comment><AUTHOR> Right now, we don't have direct messaging capabilities, but our developers are working on an asynchronous messaging system that we're hoping to have implemented in the not-too-distant future. The best conversation-style interaction is taking place within the "Ask The Pack" section of the website. If you haven't checked it out yet, you should!</comment></comment>


Exactly-Once Streaming Ingestion in Druid - <AUTHOR> http://imply.io/post/2016/07/05/exactly-once-streaming-ingestion.html <comment><USER2> Druid committer here, happy to answer any questions!</comment>


HTML5 apps can be just as speedy as native apps with the Famo.us framework - <AUTHOR> http://venturebeat.com/2014/04/09/html5-apps-can-be-just-as-speedy-as-native-apps-with-the-new-famo-us-javascript-framework/

<comment><USER2> Waiting for a sample poster app with all the _idiomatic_ Android, iOS and Windows Phone versions.</comment>


A quick fix for stopping TOR DoS attacks - <AUTHOR> http://hackerfactor.com/blog/index.php?/archives/777-Stopping-Tor-Attacks.html <comment><USER2> good article / research. props!</comment>


Title II kills investment? Comcast and other ISPs are now spending more - <AUTHOR> http://arstechnica.com/business/2015/10/comcast-and-other-isps-boost-network-investment-despite-net-neutrality/ <comment><USER2> why is "investment" the primary benchmark? if the costs of deploying services dropped (hardware costs dropped a lot, reliability improvements meant fewer replacements, etc), and someone's spending just remained the same for a year, is that 'reduced investment'? And is that bad? It's far too simplistic a measure. Are they serving more customers, and is customer satisfaction improving? Those seem like much better metrics to track than 'investment'.

<comment><USER3> > why is "investment" the primary benchmark?

Because consumers want faster speeds, lower latency, and/or expansion of coverage (to areas that currently don't have fast speeds - or even broadband internet at all).

That all qualifies as investment. If we were talking about something that is a pure commodity utility with pretty much no ongoing technological improvement, like water[0], then investment is less important than ongoing maintenance.

But our Internet is a piece of infrastructure that's constantly evolving, and keeping up with increasing expectations requires investment.

> Are they serving more customers, and is customer satisfaction improving?

Serving more customers almost certainly requires investment. Customer satisfaction probably does too.

Yes, there are other factors which affect those two metrics besides investment, but investment is one that is very easy to measure and is a leading indicator (whereas those two are both lagging - the results are only observed long after the actual work has taken place).

[0] There are plenty of technologies associated with better and/or more environmentally friendly ways to supply and deliver water, but the point is that to the _consumer_ they're all the same. Nobody is clamoring that they want water 2.0, which is wetter than water 1.0.

<comment><USER2> There's absolutely no incentive to ever cut costs then, because any reduction in cost would be counted as 'non-investment', and be taken as a sign that things are moving backwards.

<comment><USER4> How did you arrive at that conclusion? You could make an investment now in infrastructure to reduce your long term costs. It's not about the cost of delivering service, it's about how much service is expanding, as measured by purchases of networking infrastructure.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> I'm still a firm believer that when these companies can't rely on artificial limitations to service speed, their only choice is to improve their actual service compared to their (sorry for using this dirty word...) competitors.

<comment><USER6> Why is "competitors" a dirty word?

<comment><USER7> Because competition requires capital investment to be better than the competition. Capital investment reduces what can be taken as profit. Profit should be above all else, so therefore huge corporations have an incentive to encourage regulations that prevent competition. It's pretty much the exact opposite of what Ayn Rand thought would happen, despite the fact that it's a glaringly obvious conclusion.

Government regulations and business are both part of an ecosystem we call "the economy." In order for that ecosystem to be healthy, we must balance regulation and business, because when one is too powerful, the economy stagnates causing problems like we had in the Great Recession. We let banks get too big, and they fell on us. Water monopolies always fail. Always.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> The article links to the 3rd Quarter Financial Results report from Comcast. It is far more informative than the actual article is.

Comcast appears to be spending more because they had a good quarter.

        Revenue for Cable Communications increased 6.3% to $11.7 billion in the third quarter of 2015 compared to $11.0 billion in the third quarter of 2014, driven by increases of 10.2% in high-speed Internet, 19.5% in business services and 3.3% in video.

6.3% is pretty great.

        The increase in Cable revenue reflects increased customer relationships (see below), customers receiving higher levels of service and customers taking additional services, as well as rate adjustments.

"Higher levels of service" refers to customers opting for faster connection speeds. Consumers appeared to be willing to purchase better plans from Comcast despite whatever regulations have been put into place recently.

"Increased customer relationships" refers to the number of people they've been successful at roping back into their cable TV ecosystem. How? By putting streaming video onto college campuses.

The report later states:

        Video net losses improved 40.6% year-over-year to 48,000 and were the best result for a third quarter in nine years

Why?

        The improvement in video customer net losses in the third quarter of 2015 includes an 11,000 increase in net additions, compared to the third quarter of 2014, related to schools participating in our Xfinity On Campus service.

OK -- so Comcast has had a huge spike in high speed internet sales thanks to customers wanting upgrades, and they have had a huge decrease in losses in their cable television market thanks to customers leveraging their new streaming TV service. Given that some of their services have seen 20% revenue increases year-over-year, an 11% increase in expenses is not exactly what I'd call absurd.

And I don't really want to pour through this document any further, but we shouldn't forget that debt payments and all sorts of corporate nonsense can cause spikes in operating costs, investments, expenses, etc., which may tell part of the story.

Overall, I for one am a bit disappointed that Ars Technica would stoop so low towards the territory of populist journalism. They have misrepresented and editorialized cold-hard facts in an offensively blatant fashion. Let me point out that I fucking hate Comcast as a service, a company, and a concept. So I am not shilling for them. But come on, Ars Technica is really losing face by posting this kind of nonsense.

</comment><comment><USER9> Don't forget opportunity cost. Sure they may be investing, but if government weren't imposing a distortion, they could be investing better.

<comment><USER10> That sort of 'logic' can be used to argue against any decision that someone doesn't like, that can't be fully controlled for. "Oh, sure, ever since X happened Y has occurred, but you never know what >Y might have happened if only X hadn't, despite all historical data to the contrary!"

<comment><USER11> Their logic is faulty, but opportunity costs are very real and routinely analyzed in many domains, ranging from systems engineering to advertising.

<comment><USER12> Yes, but such analysis involves formal models, so in the absence of such models we can safely shout "quackery!".

<comment><USER10> Or at least -some- sort of suggested mechanism by which that opportunity could and would have been exercised.

"They could have invested better" \- sure, they probably could have. However, there is no reason to believe they -would- have invested in a way that better serves their customers (or whatever 'better' means, that isn't just maintain the status quo), given they never have shown any inkling to do so in the past. Given no proposed catalyst to cause a change on their part, there is no reason to believe they would have changed; ergo, this particular change's leading to 'better' results equals a better outcome than this change not having occurred.</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment>


Sony says 10 million credit card accounts have been exposed in network attack - <AUTHOR> http://latimesblogs.latimes.com/technology/2011/05/sony-apologizes-says-10-million-credit-card-accounts-may-have-been-exposed-in-network-attack.html

<comment><USER2> Sensationalist article title. Nothing has changed from what they announced last week.</comment>