AVG: "Web TuneUP" extension multiple critical vulnerabilities - <AUTHOR> https://code.google.com/p/google-security-research/issues/detail?id=675 <comment><USER2> So:

\- Anyone with this extension installed could be trivially owned by any website.

\- AVG's initial fix was to incorrectly whitelist their own domains without requiring SSL.

\- The follow up fix (after more harsh words from google) whitelists the AVG domain with SSL. Google engineer points out a obvious XSS on the domain that would again allow any chrome user to get owned.

This is a _security_ extension from a _security_ vendor. No words.

<comment><USER3> Why is Google publishing this before the XSS has been fixed? Shouldn't they wait for further response from AVG?

<comment><USER4> If I had to guess: because at this point it's obvious that they have no idea what they're doing and will struggle to not just fix it, but maintain the level of quality needed to keep it that way.

<comment><USER3> Then tell AVG that. I've seen plenty of bugs where the original fix didn't fix everything, and the reporter explains why, and then they wait for another response. Here they didn't even keep the 90-day deadline.

<comment><USER5> > I've seen plenty of bugs where the original fix didn't fix everything

You're right, but plenty of bugs aren't for a browser extension that is supposed to enhance the user's security when browsing the internet. The initial fix appeared to show a complete lack of understanding of basic web security.

If you and an intelligent coworker have an agreement to review each other's code on commit, and that coworker responds to a valid complaint about what they've written with something that's probably lifted off of the first StackOverflow post they searched for that addresses the literal value of the complaint without actually solving the problem, you'd probably be a bit peeved that they're not doing their job. Here, the Chrome developers are just showing frustration at AVG's apparent lack of basic skill.

<comment><USER3> Frustration is fine. I'd even be fine if they banned AVG. But revealing a 0-day publicly without giving time to respond is worse, and is also not in line with Google's policies as I understand.

Many security bugs are for things that one might think are basic after hearing about them, and that shouldn't make it right to 0-day them.

edit: why would revealing a vulnerability to the world before it's been fixed be the right response to incompetence on the part of the vendor?

<comment><USER4> Regardless of policy it was the right thing to do.

<comment><USER3> Do you think 0-days should be reported as soon as they're found if the vendor is incompetent? If yes, what's the argument, if not, why is this different?

<comment><USER6> When you find critical vulnerabilities in popular antivirus software, you can establish a 90 day publishing schedule, or a requirement not to publish until all related vulnerabilities are fixed, or whatever other policy you deem sensible.

Tavis Ormandy is one of the best known vulnerability researchers in the world; whatever publishing decision he and his team made, I think they probably put more thought into it than any combination of the comments on this HN thread did.

<comment><USER3> It sounds like you're saying he's above criticism for some reason related to fame? That doesn't make sense to me.

If there are details I don't know about that explain it, fine (but it doesn't look like that from what I do see) but arguments over ethics shouldn't be won by appealing to authority.

I might place more stock in your point here if he'd actually given a reason and acknowledge that he's opening up users to exploits, and say it's worth it because of X. As is it doesn't look thought out at all.

<comment><USER6> I'm suggesting that the implication you're generating all over this thread that (a) there are hard-and-fast rules for disclosure and (b) Tavis Ormandy has somehow broken them is probably built on something other than firsthand knowledge of how vulnerability research works --- to say nothing of firsthand knowledge of how this particular vulnerability was handled.

<comment><USER3> Google does have a policy not to release within 90 days unless a patch is released, and this does seem to be pointing out a vulnerability that hasn't been patched. What am I getting wrong? Am I misunderstanding something?

Separately, even if they had no such policy or it was an independent researcher, I don't think discussing the ethics of disclosure should be off bounds by someone not directly involved.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> If I have a windows machine or VM, I simply don't run anti-virus. There's no point. At Kiwicon last year, some French researcher showed how most anti-virus scanners were so badly written, he could exploit their scanning engines with basic malformed PDFs and JPEGs. Most of those scanners run as the SYSTEM user, so you basically can control a system with a PDF.

...but I hesitate to tell non-developers to uninstall their anti-virus. I don't want to be responsible for them getting exploited, but I usually do tell them why I don't run anti-virus and that the choice is up to them.

I always emphasize the biggest thing you need to do as far as security goes is to run all updates. Never skip or delay updates. The moment Chrome/FF wants you to restart, you restart them. Run Windows update (even though Windows 10 is another beast/debate entirely, if you chose to run it, you should run updates).

<comment><USER8> I generally try to get whatever anti-virus/malware Microsoft is offering, if not already bundled. There are way less perverse incentives at play, and if I'm running windows and worried about MS having extra info about what I'm doing... well, that boat has sailed. Anything I truly want separated from my identity (browsing wise), I use a VirtualBox instance running Linux. Even then I'm sure it's associated with my identity through IP address alone, but at least it may be seen as someone else at the same location if I'm lucky.

<comment><USER9> > There are way less perverse incentives at play

Then again, they have less incentives to make a good AV. And it shows. But it's definitely better than nothing. And it's finally installed and on by default.

<comment><USER10> Can you explain this? Why would Microsoft have less incentives to make a good AV for their OS?

<comment><USER9> It's not their business, it doesn't make them money. They don't need to be competitive. They do what they need to do to protect their users (from clogging their hotline). I don't mean to say they do poor AV on purpose (or that it's poor in the first place). They just don't invest that much in it and as a result the protection is on a different level when compared to other major AVs.

<comment><USER8> > It's not their business, it doesn't make them money.

They used to think this. They got such bad press for a buggy, exploitable OS that it cost them quite a lot.

> They don't need to be competitive.

The OS needs to be competitive, and I think you're mistaken if you think the AV team at MS doesn't work tightly with the OS team, if they're in fact different.

> They just don't invest that much in it and as a result the protection is on > a different level when compared to other major AVs.

At a different level because they don't put a bunch of crap on top of the OS which in most cases is really just a placebo? MS running a traditional AV division would be the height of stupidity. They are the OS vendors. Their fixes should be structural, not scaffolding.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> Something called "Web TuneUP" just screams crapware. It sounds like one of those browser toolbar things advertised via flashing banner ads that hijack your browser.

A company that bundles something like that is no longer credible as a security vendor.

</comment><comment><USER12> AVG's CEO, Gary Kovacs, was formerly CEO of Mozilla. There must be a strong cognitive dissonance field surrounding AVQ's corporate headquarters to publish this level of "security" software.

<comment><USER13> I wonder if anyone at Mozilla have a current contact.

</comment></comment><comment><USER14> I remember using AVG many years ago when it was a decent product. I recently had the displeasure to have to install it again. AVG Free right now is malware, plain and simple. It highjacks your home page in every browser, changes your search page, and silently installs an extension. And if you go and switch the home page back, it shows you a popup asking you to set it back to AVG. This is pure malware behavior.

</comment><comment><USER15> Can a class action lawsuit be started to deal with this sort of criminal incompetence?

</comment><comment><USER16> I'm primarily a Windows user on the desktop/laptop side (though I do also use a lot of Linux/Unix/embedded systems) and my advice to everyone who asks (as the token 'IT advice guy' to lots of friends and family) is just don't install anti-virus software. Modern Windows is better off without it. As far back as XP the best option was to install Microsoft's own Windows Defender and uninstall everything else, now just use what the OS already comes with.

Microsoft's goal with virus elimination is to make Windows work better, 3rd party vendor's goals with virus elimination are to upsell you on a lot of crap you don't need. It isn't difficult to see why the 3rd party stuff is all a bunch of crap that floods you with false positives while bogging your system down in an attempt to seem like it is doing something useful.

Yes, there are occasionally exceptions to the rule, but they all eventually follow a logical progression from useful lightweight tool to bloated piece of shit that is worse than most viruses they could possibly save you from.

</comment><comment><USER17> At one point it looked like Microsoft was going to kill the scammy Windows "security" industry by releasing their own anti-virus. But then they backed- off and now MSE seems to be purposefully curtailed.

<comment><USER18> MSE was absorbed into Windows Defender in Windows 8 & 10\. I don't recall any publicity from Microsoft telling their users this - I only know because I did google searches on how to install MSE on Win8 which turned up the answer that its already in there, just renamed.

In my experience, a _lot_ of people, including IT people who _should_ know, have not gotten the message. There are a lot of people paying a lot of money for crap snake oil when they could have free (arguably better) snake oil.

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

 _In Windows 8, functionality has increased to offer antivirus protection as well. Windows Defender in Windows 8 resembles Microsoft Security Essentials and uses the same virus definitions._

</comment></comment><comment><USER19> I long stopped using AVG because their business model seemed to transition to largely something predatory - browser bars, hijacked home pages, "tune-ups".

</comment><comment><USER20> Who the fuck would get something called Web TuneUP?</comment>


What do colleges sell? - <AUTHOR> http://www.johndcook.com/blog/2012/01/24/what-do-colleges-sell/ <comment><USER2> I could see online education supplementing, rather than replacing the college experience. Based on my experience at a large public university (UCLA), my first two years was spent skipping classes that were held in large lecture halls with 200+ students. I ended up learning 10 weeks of material in the week before midterms and finals. A lot of this lower division coursework could easily have been replaced with online lectures. Maybe what we'll see emerge is an online junior college with the ability to let students "transfer-in" to finish their degree in 2 years.

</comment><comment><USER3> For an average teenager who is about to go to college, online education is a less favorable choice as it would probably be deemed less prestigious due to issues mentioned in the article. In the near future, the education industry could primarily influence markets which deal with professional or people who would use it for the sake of learning (few and difficult to indulge them over long periods).</comment>


Ask HN: What would you do with 854 iPhone / Android cases and accessories? - <AUTHOR>

I have spare inventory largely consisting of iPhone and Android cases. What's the best way to sell/liquidate these? <comment><USER2> you can try [http://www.liquidation.com/](http://www.liquidation.com/)</comment>


Linux terminal trick: Hack the CD command to remember where you've been - <AUTHOR> https://www.redhat.com/sysadmin/cd-command <comment><USER2> This is a neat idea, but I don't do it because most of the time I don't want to have to traverse every previous dir. If you use `cd -` then you'll go back to the previous dir anyway, which covers most cases. Beyond that, it's just better to get in the habit of using pushd so that you can jump back to exactly where you want :-) It's totally worth it.

One thing that annoys me is that popd consumes the top of the stack, which I something don't want. I put this in my bashrc some years ago which basically executes a popd but doesn't pop the stack:

        alias peekd='cd "$(dirs -l -p | sed -n '\''2{p;q}'\'')"'</comment>


How Long Do You Want to Live? - <AUTHOR> http://www.nytimes.com/2012/08/26/sunday-review/how-long-do-you-want-to-live.html <comment><USER2> Well, that's another data point to suggest that we remain a culture of suicidal, negligent barbarians - quick to accept the suffering and death of billions, and happy to condemn our future selves to the same.

[http://www.fightaging.org/archives/2011/05/when-did-we- becom...](http://www.fightaging.org/archives/2011/05/when-did-we-become- suicidal-negligent-barbarians.php)

Any present horror is accepted, indeed mandated, by the ape inside - conform, conform, it cries, so hungry to belong and be inside the visible peer group that this instinct overrides any rational consideration of what it actually means to age to death, and just how much might be done to prevent that from happening in this age of biotechnology.

<comment><USER3> Nobody is quick to accept aging or death. But it's understood that we are very far from medical technology that can tackle the problem. Aging is deeply ingrained in our DNA. So far the world has spent countless billions trying to cure cancer and has largely failed. We can't even control the growth of a few measly cells with mutated DNA. Yet we are composed of trillions of cells, all 'programmed' to deteriorate over time. The idea that we can cure aging with some miracle cure is a pipe dream until we have a far better understanding and control of biological processes.

<comment><USER4> > Yet we are composed of trillions of cells, all 'programmed' to deteriorate > over time.

That is incorrect. The diseases of aging are the result of evolutionary neglect, they aren't 'programmed in' as if there was a timer running. They're a bug, not a feature.

I suggest you have a look at:

<http://www.amazon.com/dp/0312367066>

[http://www.ted.com/talks/aubrey_de_grey_says_we_can_avoid_ag...](http://www.ted.com/talks/aubrey_de_grey_says_we_can_avoid_aging.html)

[http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RbA1pFvfNp4&feature=gv...](http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RbA1pFvfNp4&feature=gv&hl=en)

[http://michaelgr.com/2011/10/24/aubrey-de-grey-on-the- diseas...](http://michaelgr.com/2011/10/24/aubrey-de-grey-on-the-diseases-of- aging-video/)

The lack of progress so far certainly doesn't mean that we can't make progress, especially if we take a different approach and we use tools that weren't available before (and never underestimate using a different angle/mindset -- as long as we consider aging itself 'normal' and just something to be slightly delayed, we certainly won't make progress). The SENS 'engineering' approach mean that we don't have to understand metabolism or fix everything that goes wrong, just to periodically do repairs on whatever long- lived molecules are accumulating over time to cause pathologies. That's a lot easier than the past gerontological approaches of trying to understand and cure everything.

<comment><USER5> This is where I think we're headed. We're going to figure out exactly what all the moving bits do in our DNA and mitochondria and we'll be in a position to re-write it at will. When that happens, the question of what it means to be 'you' is going to get very pertinent, a safe example if it turns out your love of certain foods is a result of wiring in your brain due to your DNA makeup, do you change it? Do you add new foods? Do you delete old foods?

What happens to social justice when one person can afford gene therapy to make their children 99% more capable than average and others can't? If you ever saw the movie Gattica (not a great movie but it tried) don't worry about people who are born 'perfect' or born the 'natural' way, think about people who re- write their own genetics to have the mutation that gives Sherpa in the Himalayas more, and more efficient red blood cells. Very scary tech talk at Google on this once where a researcher in gene therapy was getting approached by trainers already.

<comment><USER6> Got a link to that tech talk?

<comment><USER5> I scanned through Youtube but it does not look like that one made it out of the Googleplex, sorry.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> First reaction: What kind of stupid question is that? I want to live as long as possible.

Having read the article: less than 1% share my view. Yikes.

I think for most people, questions like this are what I'd call a "philosophy landmine"; say certain things and it causes people to stop thinking and repeat some standard cultural tropes or go spinning off into faux-philosophy-land.

Kind of depressing.

<comment><USER8> Have you had to take care of an aging relative?

What does it matter if your body is OK when your mind is gone?

<comment><USER9> My mind is a function of my body. Living healthily for centuries to me implies that my mind stays normal too.

<comment><USER10> Which again brings us back to the "philosophy landmine" aspect of the question. If you ask people if the mind is a function of the body, most of them will emphatically say no. These same people will have no trouble accepting the existence of Alzheimer's disease.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> I suspect that when you ask someone a question about something that is far outside their range of experiences, exactly how you frame that question is going to make a big difference in determining their answer.

"Would you like to live 500 year with the body of a twenty year old?" might give different results from "if the technology existed to avoid aging, would you use it?" and both might give different results than this poll.

<comment><USER4> Indeed. People also need to realize that you live one day at a time, and if today you are healthy and having fun, you'll want to live until tomorrow. Asking people "do you want to live 500 years" makes people look at all those years at once rather than at how these years would actually be experienced.

If everybody died at 25 and you asked someone "do you want to live to be 100?" it would seem like a very long time and I'm sure people who thought it wasn't possible would rationalize and find excuses why it's not desirable anyway and it's better to die at 25 ("makes life more meaningful" or some other BS).

</comment></comment><comment><USER12> Isn't this kind of a stupid question? If age were truly just a number, I don't think people would bother asking it.

If you looked and felt like you were 30 at 130, would you say to yourself, I've lived long enough? You could have several careers. For example, you might decide to be a writer or do research that takes decades when you are 80.

How much imagination does it take to want to live for centuries? I just bought a Wacom drawing tablet today. I can't draw a straight line. I think I'll need a decade just to learn how to draw.

<comment><USER13> There's a great quote from "Beat the Devil": "Time. Time. What is time? Swiss manufacture it. French hoard it. Italians squander it. Americans say it is money. Hindus say it does not exist. Do you know what I say? I say time is a crook."

We just lost Armstrong (Neil, not Lance). And Phyllis Diller. And Sally Ride. And Scott McKenzie. Just to name a few. Even if we were to live far longer, there would be deaths (accidents, suicides, murders, sudden medical conditions). And changes to neighborhoods and buildings and art and music.

With time, you come to realize that there _are_ ghosts, but they're in your head, not out in the world. Doesn't stop you from seeing them.

But it wears on you with time.

</comment></comment><comment><USER14> "This surge comes mostly from improved hygiene and nutrition, but also from new discoveries and interventions: everything from antibiotics and heart bypass surgery to cancer drugs that target and neutralize the impact of specific genetic mutations."

No. This is a common misperception that's easily debunked with two minutes of Googling and I'm shocked to see this in an NYT article. The change is almost entirely due to reduction in infant mortality.

[http://www.livescience.com/10569-human-lifespans- constant-2-...](http://www.livescience.com/10569-human-lifespans- constant-2-000-years.html)

<comment><USER15> I wouldn't say "almost entirely." A couple more minutes of Googling brought up this:

<http://www.cdc.gov/nchs/data/databriefs/db88.pdf>

which says that yes, the greatest reductions in death rates were for infants and children, but for every group under 85, mortality dropped by at least 50% from 1935 to 2010.

Also there are some tables at

<http://www.ssa.gov/oact/NOTES/as120/LifeTables_Tbl_6.html>

which seem to say that those who are 18 today expect about 15 more years than they would have in 1900.

Not to mention nutrition, hygiene, and antibiotics are probably reasonably important in reducing infant mortality. I do agree that for an article specifically about aging they might have been more careful about those numbers, though.

<comment><USER16> Yeah, the only thing I would add is that "people living longer" historically hasn't been about prolonging life so much as preventing early death. Some people have always lived to be 80, 90, 100. What we've really accomplished is that _more_ people live to be 80, 90, 100 than ever before. For me to live to be 80 or 90 probably just takes reasonably good luck and staying in the upper- middle-class, instead of a one-in-a-million kind of luck.

I am hopefully about the future, but I won't really be confident until I start seeing people live to be 120, 130, 140. Unfortunately, this takes a lot of time. The most optimistic test I can think of for an anti-aging drug is to take a large number of 80-year-olds, who are common enough you should be able to find a number of good, healthy, but old test subjects, and give them anti- aging treatments. If a large number of them live to be 120, I feel comfortable saying we're on track to beat death.

This experiment takes 40 years to run. Granted, you can do a lot of other work before it finishes, like examine tissue samples and various health metrics to show the treated 80-year-olds aren't aging like the control group. But for even a young'un like me to actually see 120-year-olds before I myself am 80, this experiment has to begin in the next 10 years, which I find terribly unlikely.

So while I'm going to cling to life as bitterly as I can as long as I can -- my own goal is to see the tricentennial, the dawn of the 22nd century, and maybe the transit of Venus, which I missed this year -- my personal immortality likely depends on not just discovering a safe way to halt aging and prolong life, but a way to reverse senescence and restore youth. I think it's possible, but forecasting it as happening before I die is a bit cliche in this domain.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER17> Most older people seem to be less likely to adapt to changes to society. E.g. Elderly people are less likely to take up new technology. Perhaps it might be related to the fact that babies' brains form new connections at a much faster rate than a thirty year old's whose brain form new connections at a much faster rate than an eighty year old's?

If you've played with machine learning, many machine learning algorithms are able to "learn" quickly initially but later on, it can less quickly adapt to changes. (Someone more knowledgeable may correct me here).

Consider the possibility that old people can have young bodies forever, but their brain / world view / whatever will not fundamentally change from when they were teenagers. i.e old people will continue to think outdated ideas and use outdated technologies, and _not die_. Whenever we talk about the _establishment_ , congressmen thinking in outdated ways, these are the exact same people! Unless we can find a way to keep the brain young without continually causing amnesia, people with control over society to its detriment will continue living, _forever_.

Do you want to be a 250 year old who thinks that the world is wrong and you are right, that the old ways are best, while everyone else tries to convince you to move on?

I'd like to live as a 22 year old forever, but unfortunately that is not possible without freezing time (or resetting my brain using version control every birthday).

<comment><USER18> As a 66 year old, who just finished the Coursera machine learning course with a score of 750/700 on the programming assignments, and is currently ranked in the top 8% in the current Caltech online ML course, I think you're talking prejudiced and prejudicial BS.

Some people can't adapt to new ideas at any age, and some remain flexible, mentally and physically. My mother was mentally alert and engaged up until her death at 99, although her body was failing.

Many 22 year olds have lousy judgement compared to adults - I know that I did.

<comment><USER17> " I think you're talking prejudiced and prejudicial BS"

There's a difference between deciding someone represents exactly their stereotype (prejudice), and looking for patterns based on one's observations.

"Some people can't adapt to new ideas at any age,"

These are the people I'm talking about.

<comment><USER10> Since the topic of machine learning came up in this thread: what you've said is a special case of Bayesian inference, as applied to demographic groups.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER19> We are the 99%! What do we want? To die! When do we want it? After 80-150 years of life, but no more!

We've had enough life and we're not going to take it anymore! #occupyCemetaries

</comment><comment><USER20> _Even if I asked them to imagine that a pill had been invented to slow aging down by one-half, allowing a person who is, say, 60 years old to have the body of a 30-year-old, only about 10 percent of audiences switched to favoring a life span of 150 years._

Bring it on. If you can double my lifespan, I can do twice as much good.

<comment><USER21> More than twice; experience makes you increasingly productive over time.

</comment></comment><comment><USER22> From my own experiences and thoughts on this, I think part of the problem is that this would give people unpresented amounts of freedom in defining their own life. I can barely figure out what to do with my one pathetic life span, with only a couple or few decades of productivity if I do things right (and by all accounts I am not doing it right; I can barely summon the strength now).

What would it mean to have several or perhaps an infinite amount of time and _freedom_ to figure out what to do with as many lives as you want?

I think most people can't handle that responsibility at this stage in human history so people kind of reject the question.

<comment><USER23> Personally, I've been hearing all my life about the Serious Philosophical Issues posed by life extension, and my attitude has always been that I'm willing to grapple with those issues for as many centuries as it takes.

\-- Patrick Nielsen Hayden

</comment></comment><comment><USER24> I remember this webcomic whenever the subject of longevity comes up:

<http://www.qwantz.com/index.php?comic=1384>

Specifically the quote "Hey, since we live for millions of years, let's go make some staggeringly beautiful art that can only be created by synthesizing thousands of years of experience, hopes, fears, triumphs and failures into one transcendental expression of life!"

I think the problem with the question as posed by the author is that he offers no "very long but finite" life span. Most people reject (correctly, I think) the possibility of living forever; "living forever" is actually code for "living until some accident kills you" or "living until society breaks down to the point where your life-extension technology is irrelevant." Moreover, people may realize that there may come a time at which they have accomplished everything they want to do. If you live forever, however, you would be forced to carry on living with no goal in life. Could you endure 10 years of life without a purpose? 100 years? In other words, people may ultimately _want_ to die even though they are healthy. An "infinite" lifespan raises the possibility that you might just kill yourself at some point.

A better set of numbers might have been 100 years, 1000 years, 10,000 years, etc.

</comment><comment><USER25> People have already said this, but to reinforce: what a dumb question. The surrounding context is more important than the actual question. Very few would choose to live to any age if it required massive medical intervention, and very few would ever choose to die if they were happy, healthy and general content.

</comment><comment><USER26> I am totally in favour of removing limits on human life span and think it's an inevitability rather than a possibility (although I don't expect it to happen in my lifetime). Here is why I disagree with some of the objections made to it in this article.

No Jobs for the younger generation - I think the notion of requiring someone being forced to have job to earn a living is another concept that will eventually be regulated to the past. However, that's my post scarcity fantasy and it's very likely life extension will come before that. We're at 7 Billion people now we're still find jobs for them. An economy is about people, and more people means more economic activity.

The planet won't be able to support all the people - This is correct, although the planet can support more than we think, especially with cleaner and more efficient energy sources. Even if it turns out to be a huge problem, it would hopefully have the benefit of pushing us to expand to other parts of the solar system and universe. An extended or unlimited life span it would make it viable to for people to travel the long distances involved.

Evolution will stop - I'm of the belief that mankind's real evolution is now happening in its shared intelligence. We're already starting to gain the ability to bend DNA to our will. Biological evolution through natural selection is not the way forward for us.

Boredom - Perhaps. We really don't know. Hopefully the lack of a natural death would force us to finally create sensible laws regarding the ending of one's existence. It would be nicer to have a choice when to leave the party, rather than be forced out the door.

</comment><comment><USER27> _Less than 1 percent embraced the idea that people might avoid death altogether._

Actually wasn't Kurzweil promoting the idea of a downloadable brain? Is this just wishful thinking or is there actually any hope for that?

This would be somewhat an acceptable alternative, i.e. to live forever as a digital element. Otherwise I guess by best try is still with the cryonic guys.

<comment><USER28> Aubrey de Grey cataloged 7 main ways people age, and he thinks we can fight all of them. <http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=81752> So we could live (more or less) naturally, and stop aging. [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Strategies_for_Engineered_Negli...](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Strategies_for_Engineered_Negligible_Senescence)

<comment><USER29> or instead of wikipedia maybe just read some papers:

<http://diyhpl.us/~bryan/papers2/longevity/Aubrey/>

<http://diyhpl.us/~bryan/irc/aubrey.jpg>

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER30> Living forever/longer doesn't make much sense, when:

1\. You have to take 15 pills with every meal you eat to do so.

2\. You have to work 15 hours a day to make ends meet, pay your bills and take care of yourself to what one would describe a good life.

3\. You have no strength in your bones, you feel weak all the time. You can't eat much because your teeth have fallen off.

4\. Law of diminishing utility with regards to world kicks in, your spirit dies away but you body just lives on.

I would be happy to live up to 65, in full health without requiring to eat pills and depending on other people to do so. Its my perspective, yes.

Also nobody is taking into account problems due to lack of exercise, physical work and food we eat. There are also things like diabetes and hypertension which is almost at a level of epidemic in the world today.

Another thing is research might be giving us better machinery for healthcare, better pills and doctors. But if our lifestyles are messing up our health, there is little help somebody else can offer.

</comment><comment><USER31> Death is so scary because so little of our conscience self is passed onto the next generation. All of our experiences, memories, and feelings cease to exist. Only a fraction of our heritage is passed onto the next generation. That is all that survives of our mind.

Compare this to our genetic code. Approximately half of our genetic code is passed down in each offspring. Death only partially erases our genetic makeup, and so no one is scared of their genes being lost when they die.

Death is scary because we have no means to pass on our memories and experiences to the next generation. It is as if we were meant to be scared of death, so that we fight against it.

</comment><comment><USER32> I'm torn by the prospect of a technological solution to aging.

On one hand, _I_ certainly don't want to get old and die -- at least, not on nature's time table.

On the other hand, if no one else got old and dies, we'll quickly become an over populated, stagnant society. From a more "objective" perspective, there's something beautiful about life because it's so temporary.

</comment><comment><USER24> I'm pretty sure that much of our improvement in life expectancy over the past century is due to the reduction in infant mortality.

[http://www.livescience.com/10569-human-lifespans- constant-2-...](http://www.livescience.com/10569-human-lifespans- constant-2-000-years.html)

<comment><USER33> Absolutely. Life expectancy at birth (in the U.S.) has increased by more than 20 years since 1900. Life expectancy at age 65 has still increased by ~10 years though:

[http://www.ssa.gov/oact/NOTES/as120/LifeTables_Body.html#wp1...](http://www.ssa.gov/oact/NOTES/as120/LifeTables_Body.html#wp1171598)

</comment></comment><comment><USER34> This is something that my friends and I talk about often, and it's a subject of particular interest for me. In particular, here are some of the things that I find to be obstacles to the idea of living forever, or at least for a tremendously extended period of time:

-Population growth. Right now it's pretty well established that three generations will be in the world at any given time, with around 25-30 years between each generation. If we were to live to 150 (much less 750), suddenly that's five or six generations instead of three, potentially doubling the world's population, and that's assuming that people still follow the custom of having an average number of children between the ages of 25-35 and then stopping.

-On that note, if we are given the capability to remain sexually active for hundreds of years, then one person will be capable of multiplying into far more new people, rapidly increasing population growth. If we are not given that capability, then we'd all end up miserable as the period of our lives in which we have sexually fulfilling relationships becomes small.

-If we conquer diseases with such efficiency, then the tragedy of random, accidental deaths becomes greatly more pronounced. People may die from heart disease and cancer at a far reduced or nonexistent rate, but people will still die from car crashes, drug-related violence and suicide at the same rate they do now. Those deaths will become a lot more significant and difficult to handle, and we as a society will become either super-anxious and paranoid about the possibility of losing our lives or either perpetually in mourning (as our lives become longer we will have more connections and friendships and familial relationships, so we'll have more people whose deaths will affect us) or somehow immune or numb to the pain as a coping mechanism. The idea of war will become far more barbaric as suddenly instead of taking 60 years and a family away from a young man, you're taking hundreds of years and whatever else he could have done in that time.

-Any disease we are unable to cure with the potential to permanently affect people will instantly become far more terrifying. Non-fatal sexually transmitted diseases, loss of limbs or appendages, and debilitating mental diseases will be far, far more damaging given the greater lifespan that they will affect.

-Medical care will still, presumably, be as expensive and challenging as ever; however, we will have more people who need it and more reasons that those people need it. Most of these reasons will probably be expensive - for instance, if cancer treatment ends up being very very expensive, everybody will still want it - so our society is going to have to find some way to handle that. In a best-case scenario, most of the money we made would end up going to medical care, and we would never retire. The proportion would probably be far from that though, with 99% of people being unable to feasibly afford to maintain their own lives. Furthermore, we would need far, far more doctors, and therefore we would have to develop even more incentives for people to take that path in life and stay on it for as long as possible.

-Concepts that we have now (some of which I mentioned tangentially above) that are based on the idea of a 70-90 year lifespan and that we rely on will no longer exist. These include the eventual death of all dictators/tyrants, fairly consistent sizes in the nuclear and extended families, the age-based progression of opportunities and decisions, life sentences for crimes, marriage (would you want to keep the same spouse for 500 years?), retirement, etc.

That's what I think, anyway.

<comment><USER10> You make some good points, but I think I prefer all of those problems to dying before I've even lived for my first century. :-)

 _> If we are given the capability to remain sexually active for hundreds of years, then one person will be capable of multiplying into far more new people, rapidly increasing population growth._

People can be sexually active without being able to have children. Ask anybody who's infertile, or uses contraception.

 _> Any disease we are unable to cure with the potential to permanently affect people will instantly become far more terrifying. Non-fatal sexually transmitted diseases, loss of limbs or appendages, and debilitating mental diseases will be far, far more damaging given the greater lifespan that they will affect._

That is as it should be. Horrible things are horrible; that they are overshadowed by worse things does not make them any nicer.

 _> Medical care will still, presumably, be as expensive and challenging as ever; however, we will have more people who need it and more reasons that those people need it._

While it's _possible_ that medical care will continue to cost the same amount for the next few hundred years, it seems kind of unlikely. A lot can happen in a century.

</comment></comment><comment><USER35> So he prepped them by reminding them such life extending technology might not exist (at which point they feel like it's a test) and then, _shocker_ , they didn't opt for nonexistent tech?

</comment><comment><USER36> For however long I am able to move under my own power. Whether that's legs, arms->wheelchair or mind->computer->mech I'm good.

</comment><comment><USER37> As long as it takes to do it right :-)

</comment><comment><USER38> Since I do not believe in an afterlife, I want to live as long as possible.

</comment><comment><USER39> really interesting comment about life extension on reddit [http://www.reddit.com/r/Futurology/comments/yswxw/what_techn...](http://www.reddit.com/r/Futurology/comments/yswxw/what_technology_do_you_see_emerging_in_the_next/c5yk35l)</comment>


Markov Chains Explained Visually (2014) - <AUTHOR> http://setosa.io/ev/markov-chains/ <comment><USER2> This is a phenomenal example of how to teach math. You can go through theory, formulas and proofs all day long (yes, sometimes rigor is needed), but this type of teaching is sticky. It takes a lot more time to display information in the way the author has done, but it reaps massive benefits for those trying to learn. In my mind, math is about concepts and there is no reason why we can't start teaching math like this.

Amazing work. The collective intelligence of the world has just gone up.

Another amazing example of visual math lectures, [https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCYO_jab_esuFRV4b17AJtAw](https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCYO_jab_esuFRV4b17AJtAw).

<comment><USER3> I don't know. Is there really a massive benefit? The visual explanation of the Markov chains on that web site looks elegant and simple because... it is, i.e. it's not really a contribution of the visualization, it's because DTMCs are actually easy to understand. In a lecture, the teacher can easily simulate a Markov chain on a black board ("Now we are in this state, now we have to roll a die to decide whether we will go to state X or state Y"). Same for sealf- learners: In a book, you can tell the reader to start at some state X, roll a die, etc.

Honestly, I find that the Markov chain website is an example how you should NOT do it. You are replacing the active intellectual process in the head of the student by some trivial animations with scrolling texts and jumping tokens which look nice and dynamic but...what are you learning?

Of course, this doesn't mean that visualizations are useless, but they should be carefully designed with some learning goal in mind. Not easy! For example, the visualization could slowly gray out states that are not visited. In that way, the student could get a feeling for concepts like recurrence etc.

<comment><USER4> I probably understand where you are coming from. But, you are may be missing the point?

> The visual explanation of the Markov chains on that web site looks elegant > and simple because... it is

I strongly resonate with this statement. However, I disagree with the claim the "You are replacing the active intellectual process". In fact, it is the opposite - it is stimulating.

Let me present an anecdote which will perhaps resonate with many people. Often times, when venturing into a new topic, one tends to read the reference texts. Let us be frank - reference texts are not beginner friendly no matter how much they claim (they are reference for a reason). To get to the meat of the story, a reader has to hold lot of context from past knowledge. This is hard and often towards reaching the actual results, the reader is already exhausted. Instead, such intuitive visualizations provide context to a new reader. The next time the reader goes back to the reference text, this "lookahead" (from the visualization) is valuable. It is easier to internalize that where in the grand scheme of things a particular topic lies.

> Of course, this doesn't mean that visualizations are useless, but they > should be carefully designed with some learning goal in mind. Not easy! For > example, the visualization could slowly gray out states that are not > visited. In that way, the student could get a feeling for concepts like > recurrence etc.

This I believe is nitpicking.

<comment><USER5> Your intellect can be "activated" in the pursuit of a superficial knowledge of Markov Chains to tell your boss or remember in the future that it might help you with problems. EZ-learning stuff will help you then.

Or your intellect can be "activated" in the sense that further engaging it leads you to deeper, more general knowledge. Is this website doing it? I don't believe so.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> This really drives home a sentiment I've acquired during the course of my college education: CS/Math is often considered "hard", but I feel that's just because we've struggled with getting good visual/verbal communicators to dedicate their lives to CS/Math education. I really feel that when explained properly (and the definition of "properly" sometimes need to be adapted from person to person), topics like Gibbs Sampling or Fourier Transforms or Backpropagation aren't topics that should take entire weeks of self-study to grasp in 2018. Yes, they require some math background, but there's some strong intuition behind them. Maybe I'm just slow or thick in the skull.

</comment><comment><USER7> Discussion from 4 years ago: [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8103240](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8103240)

<comment><USER8> and 2 years ago: [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11323122](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11323122)

<comment><USER9> Weirdly today too. What a coincidence! [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17766358](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17766358)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> keeps getting posted and going to the top, almost like HN is a memoryless process... :)

glad yall are still enjoying it.

<comment><USER11> I'm certainly glad it was posted this particular time. I've never seen it before and now I learned something today. :)

<comment><USER12> I'd also never seen it and find it very useful.

<comment> 2020-3030 Confirms what I expected - not new in the world, but new to many/most people.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> And Hidden Markov Models (HMMs) are just ones where the symbols are emitted upon interaction with an edge of the graph instead of the node. The nodes are still the "states" of the system, but in general you can't know which state the model is in just by observing the symbols emitted by the edges as there may be equivalent structures in the graph associated with different states.

</comment><comment><USER14> Really great visualization here, kudos to the author. Really makes is clear what's going on. Made me think that things like this could be useful in textbooks as well if they were more digital. Maybe in the next few years there will be a better way to integrate this kind of stuff into courses, I guess today they could always happen in lectures.

<comment><USER15> Take a look at distill.pub (which wsa also featured on the HN frontpage today). Its essentially a Machine Learning Journal with a focus on clarity and visualization, and is therefore interactive and visual. Colah is around on HN and might comment explaining it better.

</comment></comment><comment><USER16> Is there a standard way to build markov chains with deeper memory than just the current state? For example in the rainy sunny markov chain our rainy probability should/could decrease as the number of rainy days in a row increases. In a pure state machine this would require an infinite number of states for SS...SSS and RR...RRR.

<comment><USER17> Lots of other commentators are saying that the property of MCs is that they are memory-less, but in fact it's trivial to make a MC have deeper memory: Use tuples.

So if you have observations A, B, C, B, C, A, D, A, ... then you form pairs: (A,B), (B,C), (C,B), (B,C), (C,A), (A,D), (D,A), ...

Each node in the MC is one of these pairs, and (X,Y) -> (Y,Z) if Z is the new state that appears.

The number of states grows _very_ quickly, but if you make the system dynamic then it works fine. This is what you use to randomly generate text using the previous 3 words as a predictor for the next. Then (w0,w1,w2) predicts w3, and your next "state" is (w1,w2,w3).

And so on.

<comment><USER18> Is this equivalent to each node representing a memory state?

Seems like it would not solve rtkwe's concern. In their example using tuples make a node state equal (S, COUNT_OF_DAYS), (R, COUNT_OF_DAYS)? You would still need an infinite amount of nodes to represent an infinite precision integer state.

<comment><USER17> You don't store count count of days, each node is the sequence of the previous _k_ states. Usually _k=1,_ but set _k=2_ and you get something where each state is predicted based on the previous 2 states.

So no, you don't need an infinite amount of memory, it's all still finite (although rapidly gets large).

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER19> This is how we were taught it in our Linear 2 class; the professor used static pictures via chalkboard, but it was still super helpful. I feel like most of the benefit is gained in drawing the graph and talking about "hopping between states". Animating it might help some people who think more mechanically.

</comment><comment><USER20> This truly awesome, the visualization really helped cement the idea in my mind.

</comment><comment><USER21> @lewis500 is your code for the live visuals publicly available?

<comment><USER22> yep! see [https://github.com/vicapow/explained- visually](https://github.com/vicapow/explained-visually)

</comment></comment><comment> s-shellfish This is very a good depiction of a Markov chain. However, it's always a coin flip on your emotions to anthropomorphize math.

Pronouns.

</comment><comment><USER23> Expand a little then it becomes the probabilistic graphical model.

</comment><comment><USER24> Am I the only one who finds it absolutely impossible to read text witch constantly moving animations on the screen?

<comment><USER25> You are not alone. That's why there is even a media query for it! [https://css-tricks.com/introduction-reduced-motion-media-que...](https://css- tricks.com/introduction-reduced-motion-media-query/)

</comment></comment><comment><USER26> Isn't this affected that its difficult to get true random by computers? Its more pseudo random and therefore the chance is not real chance but predictable.

<comment><USER27> While true, there are cryptographically secure PRNG's that are incredibly difficult (Theoretically impossible) to predict.

In any case, unless you're using Markov chains to generate data that needs to be kept secure (Like generating a password that could be pronounced), the predictability of random numbers isn't really relevant.</comment></comment>


Show HN: Live atmosphere data crowdsourced with Android - <AUTHOR> http://pressurenet.cumulonimbus.ca/?showhn

<comment><USER2> Do you respect the hydrostatic equation? Air pressure decreases when you walk up a hill, stairs or take the lift. Imho the hight information in GPS signal is too imprecise to compensate this effect.

<comment><AUTHOR> The data is just raw measurements right now, but we're working with a team at the University of Washington to clean it up, remove noise and make sense of it by calibrating and assimilating to existing systems.</comment></comment>


Why 'sudo Vim' Could Hurt Your Productivity - <AUTHOR> http://blog.robertelder.org/vim-forgets-copy-buffer-on-reopen/ <comment><USER2> It's not like there was sudoedit or something.</comment>


Heroku Users Group meetup, 11/3 @ 7pm - <AUTHOR> http://blog.heroku.com/archives/2010/10/28/hug-update/

<comment><AUTHOR> Join us at Heroku's offices[1] in San Francisco for the first-ever Heroku Users Group meetup - followed by a drink-up jointly hosted with Basho.

1: <http://bit.ly/a1s88R></comment>


Why do we spend money on things we used to get for free? - <AUTHOR> http://blog.trejdify.com/2012/02/why-do-we-spend-money-on-things-we-used.html

<comment><USER4> Speaking to the headline, it's because we got "free" services from someone like Google for long enough to realize the fallacies of free-- no support, lack of privacy protection, less input into the design & development process --and then purchase a service that gives us more control.

Speaking to the article itself, water is only "free" (the consumer of the water didn't fork over cash on the spot) if you use a public restroom or a water fountain. You pay for the water coming out of your tap at home. Maybe you actually get a water bill, maybe it's bundled with your other utilities, or perhaps it's included in your rent, but you are directly paying for the water. (Sure, you're paying for the cleaning of the water - <USER3> distinction.)

Speaking to the 'silliness' of bottled water, I agree that it's absurd to have water bottled in Italy and shipped around the planet to sell it in the US just so that someone can purchase "sparkling Italian water." But in general, bottled water has its purposes: we stop at the convenience store, decide hydration is required, decide sugar won't do, want water to carry along- it needs to taste good or we're not going to drink it.

Is all bottled water the same? Absolutely not. Coca-cola is absolutely obsessed with consistency with its products. HFCS Coke tastes the same everywhere. Sugar Coke tastes the same everywhere. Dasani bottled water (yep, made by Coca-cola) tastes the same out of every bottle. I can't get that kind of consistency from the tap. The public water supply cares about water quality as far as it doesn't make someone sick and they couldn't care less about taste. Yes, I can taste the difference. I can also taste the difference between Dasani, Aquafina and Deer Park bottled waters (Deer Park tastes like dirt - I'm guessing 'minerals' are to blame for this. Aquafina? Can't remember exactly because I avoid it and it's been so long.)

When making flavored drinks at home (coffee, tea, iced tea) the additional flavors do an acceptable job of masking the flavor of the tap water. Acceptable enough that I'm not buying filtered bottled water to make them. I'm not a complete taste snob, but I do expect consistency in the products I've purchased for a high markup from a corporation that claims to care about it.

<comment><USER5> "Speaking to the article itself, water is only "free" (the consumer of the water didn't fork over cash on the spot) if you use a public restroom or a water fountain. You pay for the water coming out of your tap at home. Maybe you actually get a water bill, maybe it's bundled with your other utilities, or perhaps it's included in your rent, but you are directly paying for the water. (Sure, you're paying for the cleaning of the water - <USER3> distinction.)"

There is so much difference in price between bottled water and tap water, that you might as well call it free.

<comment><USER6> Hm. I have no water bill. I live in the county, far from civilized things like sidewalks, streetlights, police protection, neighbors and water bills.

Still, I suppose money spent on repair of the storage tank valve counts as a bill. But in 25 years, I spent $5000 for the well and septic system, then really nothing since then. Ok, $1 for a gallon of chlorine bleach every year to re-sterilize the well pump assembly, but that's about it.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> I think it revolves around the fact that these days we can afford to go hi-fi and seek something like finesse at nearly everything.

THis is usually a sign of filling some sort of a void because one needs to have the time, motivation, and energy to narrow yourself down in the array of products and options.

Some time ago, nobody could care less about the taste of water. It was just great if you got it from the tap and you didn't die of it, and even greater if you also got hot water from the same outlet. Water was water and the more pure and clean it was the less it tasted. Water doesn't in itself taste of anything.

Some time ago, nobody could care less about which make, model, or brand your car was. If you owned a car in the first place, that was in itself remarkable. Maybe there were cheap cars and expensive cars, but as far as everyone was concerned just about _any_ car was more convenient than horse wagons or walking.

It's no longer like that.

At some point of your life you buy your first stereo set. If you keep thinking about it, you'll probably upgrade to basic hi-fi loudspeakers and amplifier later. Unless the price ranges become too high for you, you will probably go through a few iterations of more and more expensive equipment that you each time consider a bit better choice for your audiophilic needs.

Depending on your financial situation and what matters to you most, you go hi- fi with some areas in your life and stay at a basic level with other areas. It can be it gardening tools, computers, biking gear, hiking gear, cars, power tools, mobile devices, clothes and fashion, restaurants and cuisine, hobbies, sports, ordering your latte in a coffee shop, or just about whatever you happen to get into.

For a lot of people in western economies, that is so. We can afford to distinguish ourselves and our appearance in search for who we are, and because who you are is a major question for everyone it is a huge void to fill. Pour in the brands and fool yourself to think there's a difference!

At one extreme, some people can be really anxious about their choices and it seems as if their identity fumbles down into pieces if they could only find a bottle of San Pellegrino instead of Perrier. Most people stick with something and try to rationalize it away to avoid constant reconsideration of their choices and thus, their identity. I'm a Perrier man because it's the most original water. Or a Marlboro man. Or I drive a BMW because it allegedly has the best technology that gives me the best drive. Or I chose my headphones because Sennheiser gives the cleanest sound.

At the other extreme, there are people who have some sort of innate balance about themselves and somehow they manage their lives without paying much, if any, attention to what water they drink, what car they drive, or what clothes they wear. And when they do decide to choose something, they understand the irrational and almost comical nature of their preferences. Some people can recognize tastes between different waters. Some people do, yet they decide it doesn't matter.

<comment><USER6> There's something called 'the tyranny of choice' where people actualy leave more dissatisfied when presented with a wide array of choices, versus having just 3 or 4. Perhaps because they know they didn't have time to really optimize their choice with too many to consider.

<comment><USER8> _The Paradox of Choice_ by Barry Schwartz is an entertaining read on this issue. Page 235, Chap 11 section 11 'learn to love constraints' might have wider relevance on this forum: sensible defaults can help users avoid wasting time - but you all knew that anyway.

I've found I spend a lot less time customising software &c since reading Schwartz, I try to spend the time on producing work instead. But sometimes I end up here.

The article will provide a fun maths estimation exercise.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> Please excuse a somewhat OT question from a non US-resident: don't US have bottled spring water that is not imported?

I'm asking cause I've seen many bottles of french brands, and the NG article refers to italian and polish brands.

But I'd bet there are springs on the other side of the pond?

<comment><USER10> I moved to th US from Italy a couple of years ago and I was (still am) fascinated by the silly obsession with San Pellegrino water. Seriously, $2.5 for a pint of water?

People here see San Pellegrino about the same way in Italy we see Evian, but nobody drinks Evian and it's rarely explicitly called out in menus or put on display on shelves behind the counter at the café.

<comment><USER11> I lived in Bergamo a few years ago and fell in love with that city. I also had the opportunity to visit the San Pellegrino casino and spring. So, in the name of nostalgia I have an excuse to obsess over it right?

 _Si, sono Italiano_

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> Pretty terrible article considering that they only gave one example, and not even a good one at that.

We buy bottled water because we want to ensure our health and safety. I personally use the water filter and drink tap water.

</comment><comment><USER13> Coke is 95% water but you need 2.5 litres of water for 1 litre of coke? Perhaps I should give my degree back?

</comment><comment><USER14> I buy crates of bottled water, and keep them in the back of my car so I always have some handy. For this I pay $5. I am not paying $5 for water, I am paying for convenience, the disposable bottles, somebody else to fill them and make it easy for me to purchase the bottles and transport them to my car. Sometimes, I pay an extra $1 a crate for bottle caps that don't need to be unscrewed to drink. Those paying for San Pellegrino are probably paying more money for status than for water. In a convenience store, buying a single bottle, I am primarily paying for cold and ready to go. I'd say overall, I feel that I am paying less than $0.05 for the actual water, if I broke it down. I am paying for it because it is cheaper, easier, and more convenient than doing it myself. There are many things like this.

</comment><comment><USER15> I wish my university would give away empty bottles. They installed "filtered" water fountains a year ago, which should give people more confidence about the water. However, they don't give away empty bottles first.</comment>


IP radar: get latency data and pingable IPs for any subnet on the Internet - <AUTHOR> https://www.cdn77.com/blog/ip-radar/ <comment><AUTHOR> Disclaimer: I work in the CDN77 ops team and I wrote the frontend.

We mainly use it internally to help us get stable pingable IPs for latency monitoring when we're troubleshooting a specific network/customer. Then we throw the IPs into SmokePing/Smoke2 (internal tool) and watch the latency from different upstreams. Our backend pings all IPv4s on the planet regularly.

We think someone else might find it useful, so i thought i'd share.

</comment><comment><USER2> Good job guys! We will take a look if there is a way to integrate it with our tool at [http://www.maplatency.com](http://www.maplatency.com)

any plans on extending this to allow geo targeting of IPs?

<comment><AUTHOR> We already kind of do that on our CDN backend, this is just a small part of it. But we never actually needed to do geolocation, instead we just ping the "stable" pingable IPs we found from all of our locations, save the results into a DB and when a request from that subnet comes to PowerDNS we just select the datacenter with the lowest RTT on the fly.

I'll see if it's possible to get the routing/GeoIP information for all IPs as that's something we could use too.

<comment><USER2> OK. That makes sense. I did not realize this is actually something you use to guide your all routing decisions. Smart!</comment></comment></comment>


Bit's Quest: Using javascript to control a robot (game) - <AUTHOR> https://bitbucket.org/migration/robot.html#0

<comment><USER2> The new URL is [http://bitsquest.bitbucket.org/index.html#0](http://bitsquest.bitbucket.org/index.html#0) according to ddbennett on proggit.

</comment><comment><USER2> A fun diversion. I got up to about level 6 or 7 before it 404'd on me. I hope they bring it back!

</comment><comment><USER3> I was really enjoying this up until everything 404'd a couple minutes ago. :(</comment>


Ask HN: What is HN's source for freelance & consultant contracts? - <AUTHOR>

I've run solo for years and have drafted up a number of contracts based of what I've seen/been sent from time to time. I figured with more jobs coming in lately it's time to do revamp the contract.
What is HN's source for freelance & consultant contracts?
My 2 main uses would be for 1-off jobs for random clients & long-term relationships with companies to do development as a contractor.
Any direction or links would be appreciated. Thanks guys! <comment><AUTHOR> I mean Contract Agreements/Documents. If any of the admin can edit the title to say the following, that would be amazing. I'm not sure if that's possible / who to ask. just noting it here =)

"Ask HN: What is HN's source for freelance & consultant contract agreements?"

</comment><comment><USER2> This comes out every month: <http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=3412901>

<comment><AUTHOR> I should have worded the original post differently....

I meant contracts you sign. Legal documents. Not job leads. Appreciate the reply though abbasmehdi. =) I'll give that a look.</comment></comment>


NSA Patents - <AUTHOR> http://nsa-patents.silk.co/ <comment><USER2> There are fun patents there from all kinds of areas -- antenna design, database search, sorting, splitting data out of an optical fiber but also ... child car seat ( [http://www.google.com/patents/US5224756](http://www.google.com/patents/US5224756) ) and game board design? Was NSA concerned about child safety. Are the workers that bored there they design child seats and game boards... so many questions. Also rifle holding tool: [http://www.google.com/patents/USD681766](http://www.google.com/patents/USD681766) \-- who are they shooting at?

Also wondering how these contradict with compartmentalization. Is there one department in charge of monitoring public patents and then notifyng USPTO? I would imagine there is a designated person from each department in charge perhaps. What if a system is part of a top secret program? Can't imagine anything patent related conflicting or allowed to jeopardize that.

Then can you troll the NSA by filling ambiguous or broad patents in certain areas to try to see if they'll think you've matched one of their patents and then publish any of their patents?

<comment><USER3> I suspect if you work there, you have to report all patentable ideas

<comment><USER4> And someone else gets promoted based on the number of patents filed.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> "The Invention Secrecy Act of 1951 is a body of United States federal law designed to prevent disclosure of new inventions and technologies that, in the opinion of selected federal agencies, present a possible threat to the national security of the United States.

The U.S. government has long sought to control the release of new technologies that might threaten the national defense and economic stability of the country. During World War I, Congress authorized the United States Patent and Trademark Office (PTO) to classify certain defense-related patents. This initial effort lasted only for the duration of that war but was reimposed in October 1941 in anticipation of the U.S. entry into World War II. Patent secrecy orders were initially intended to remain effective for two years, beginning on July 1, 1940, but were later extended for the duration of the war. The Invention Secrecy Act of 1951 made such patent secrecy permanent, though the order to suppress any invention must be renewed each year (except during periods of declared war or national emergency).

The decision to classify new inventions under this act is made by "defense agencies" as defined by the President."

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

</comment><comment><USER6> If the patents are secret, doesn't that kind of defeat the whole point of them being patents? The only real reason I can see for them to be patents at all is so that way if someone else invents the same thing and tries to patent it, then the NSA basically gets to swoop in and say "nope, that patent is ours, we get all the patent licensing fees instead of you", which seems, well, pointlessly greedy. If the NSA just wants to be able to claim later on that they invented it first, why go to the bother of actually creating a secret patent systems? Seems like all they really need is a safe store for notarized descriptions of inventions that the patent office agrees to accept as prior art (and the only reason to even care what the PTO thinks is so the NSA doesn't have to pay patent licensing fees).

<comment><USER7> It doesn't seem right if the NSA were to generate revenue by licensing its patents. Any technology that they'd consider monetizing obviously no longer fits the for-national-security-only category and so should instantly be open sourced.

Open sourcing declassified government technology really needs to become a 2016 initiative..

<comment><USER8> There's plenty of private companies working on national-security level stuff, if the US Government is willing to buy, say, weapons from X company then why not license them patents to do it with?

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> Why would the NSA need patents? I guess it is to prevent a private company from suing them if they come up with something first and somehow word gets out? That would explain why they are granted in secret and only published when someone else tries to patent it.

<comment><USER10> I don't understand why. Wouldn't prior art protect them in this case? They could just show a judge they had invented the idea earlier.

<comment><USER11> It's written that when someone _files_ a patent and not granted. So when someone files an identical patent, the patent examiner revert the inventor with reasons that why his patent application can't go further ahead, like because of this patent of NSA.

So here, the patent examiner is doing what you are suggesting. He is citing a prior art and while doing so, they have to make the patent available for public.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> Related:

[https://www.nsa.gov/research/tech_transfer/](https://www.nsa.gov/research/tech_transfer/)

(PDF) [https://www.nsa.gov/research/_files/tech_transfers/nsa_techn...](https://www.nsa.gov/research/_files/tech_transfers/nsa_technology_transfer_program.pdf)

Some people are saying that the NSA is wasting time with patents, but they clearly have a reason or two to file these patents. And I'm sure it could debated that it is either a good or a bad thing.

</comment><comment><USER13> I want to know more about this game board patent: [http://nsa- patents.silk.co/page/Game-board-id%3A-D637658](http://nsa- patents.silk.co/page/Game-board-id%3A-D637658) I wonder if they developed it into a full game or prototype at some point. Maybe it was supposed to be used for training purposes? Either way imagining a bunch of NSA guys sitting around playing their version of Cones of Dunshire made my morning.

<comment><USER14> You might be interested then in sandtable planning/training which is a core process for most Army Infantry and logistics units.

[1] [http://www.army.mil/article/67057/NY_Guard_Soldiers_create_m...](http://www.army.mil/article/67057/NY_Guard_Soldiers_create_massive_sandtable_of_National_Training_Center/)

[2][http://www.army.mil/e2/c/images/2015/02/05/380401/size0.jpg](http://www.army.mil/e2/c/images/2015/02/05/380401/size0.jpg)

<comment><USER13> Very interesting, did not know about that. Thanks for the links!

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> Seems like a lot of wasted tax $. Why are they wasting their $ and time to patent a board game, a way to get state of a GUI, child car seats? There's no way those things would even hold up, no way they'd even bother legally battling them, and just overall pointless.

</comment><comment><USER16> Maybe it's about the money? There's this running gag in various movies and works of literature, that the world-protecting super-secret agency supports itself from the income generated by patents on (often alien in origin) technology. Isn't this a real example? :).

</comment><comment><USER7> What is the motive here?

Why would the NSA concern itself with patents, considering its projects aren't intended for commercial use but for national security, are confidential in nature, and are protected by the most powerful branches of government?

</comment><comment><USER17> [https://patents.google.com/?assignee=National+Security+Agenc...](https://patents.google.com/?assignee=National+Security+Agency&country=US)

</comment><comment><USER18> > they never expire

What? That can't be right.

</comment><comment><USER19> I assume that the NSA would generate patents that thwart NSA intrusion methods?</comment>


WikiLeaks Leaks 'Fifth Estate' Screenplay - <AUTHOR> http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/2013/09/22/us/ap-us-film-wikileaks-drama.html?ref=us&_r=0 <comment><USER3> I was made aware of how much propaganda there is in Western movies by a comment here on HN:

"The major exception here is the Department of Defense, which has an 'open' but barely publicized relationship with Tinsel Town, whereby, in exchange for advice, men and invaluable equipment, such as aircraft carriers and helicopters, the Pentagon routinely demands flattering script alterations."

[http://www.globalresearch.ca/lights-camera-covert-action- the...](http://www.globalresearch.ca/lights-camera-covert-action-the-deep- politics-of-hollywood/11921)

[http://original.antiwar.com/sean-a- mcelwee/2013/04/28/propag...](http://original.antiwar.com/sean-a- mcelwee/2013/04/28/propaganda-and-censorship-the-hollywood-industrial- complex/)

Do you recall any big American movie in the last decade (or even more) that painted America's military in a non-positive light? I don't. I do remember Zero Dark Thirty (if you watch carefully you'll see how they basically say that torture works great in getting prisoners to hand over information), I do remember The Hurt Locker, and a whole list of other movies, Iron Man and Captain America being the latest examples (Iron Man originally used to be about fighting communism, now it is about fighting terrorism).

Hollywood output is a very valuable export to the world in this way of framing America's image in the world, and I'm betting America is becoming even more aware of this and will put even more resources to this effort in coming time.

To me, truly the most amazing thing about this is that pretty much no-one knows about this! Tell someone that there's a lot of American propaganda in Western movies and they'll take you for a conspiracy nut.

<comment><USER4> Full Metal Jacket.

• Three Kings.

• In The Valley of Elah.

Good Morning Vietnam.

A Few Good Men.

Platoon.

• Jarhead.

Casualties Of War.

• The Men Who Stare At Goats.

The Deer Hunter.

The Thin Red Line.

• Syriana.

• The Green Zone.

• Stop Loss.

Also, • HBO's "Generation Kill".

 _(• 'd relatively recent movies)_

I don't think "The Hurt Locker" was particularly critical of the military and didn't count it. Also not counting documentaries like "Restrepo".

I hereby dispute the idea that the DOD has made it impossible for big-budget Hollywood movies to criticize the US military, and suggest instead that the bias Hollywood in favor of the military is responding to customer preferences and not leading it. Given what I presume to be America's default position of "supporting our troops", I'm struck by how many films Hollywood produce that _challenge_ that default.

Remember also that Hollywood confronts at least two vectors of consumer preference in marketing films: first, Americans (in the large) have a (typical) diffuse nationalistic home-team support for our overseas adventures, and, more importantly, there's a less-political less-issue-oriented reverence expected for the sacrifices made by the young people we send into combat which is especially intense during times when large numbers of people are serving in combat zones. In other words, it's especially tricky to criticize the military during active conflicts.

Also, Three Kings is a fantastic movie.

<comment><USER5> A bunch of exceptional films in that list.. you have good taste.

So, you acknowledge that there is a _default_ , and that the films you mention challenge that _default_. I think everyone can agree on this.

Why are films like 'the thin red line' or 'full metal jacket' so powerful. The only pro-american-military film which I can remember having such a deep impact on me was 'black hawk down', and I think we all know the story behind that one.. I would argue that they tell a truth, and in the face of 60 years (give or take) of holywood military propaganda. And what does it matter that a dozen critical films come out over a thirty year period when, lets say 50 films a year come out pro-military.

Breaking it down your essential argument is - there is no propaganda because people like the propaganda. Question you should be asking is, who created that _default_?

<comment><USER6> The default is in the hearts and minds of the American public. The American public usually are not anti-military, even if they are anti-war. They usually oppose military policy set by the administration, and not the soldiers or the military itself.

If Hollywood went against this mindset, they'd be going against the default, and they would need good reason to do so.

<comment><USER5> That is just such a lazy answer, and to a question i did not even ask.

I would point you back to my original comment (which you either did not read, or did not understand) but for fear that it may create a recursive loop from which there may be no escape.

<comment><USER6> Did you edit your response after I posted mine?

Anyways, the world isn't a ball which is pushed once and moves with constant velocity.

There are always forces tugging and pushing to modify the _default._ So unless the military is actively changing the default, they aren't not manipulating the default.

<comment><USER5> No I did not, but thanks for the clarification.. which I quite like (though I don't really understand the double negative).

I think along pretty similar lines, and the ball analogy is quite apt. It took a lot of propaganda to get the ball moving in the first place, but only takes a little bit to keep it going in the same direction. But make no mistake, it is manipulation and it is forced, however gentle that force may be..

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> Its a film based on Daniel Domscheit-Berg book. Daniel, the person who covered up potential war crimes out of spite in his falling out with Wikileaks. Beyond the war crime video, he also indiscriminately destroyed leaked documents such as US government's No Fly List, 5 GB of Bank of America leaks, insider information from 20 right-wing organizations and proof of torture and government abuse of a Latin American country.

Lets just ignore the sacrifice that people must have done to provide those documents in the first place. DreamWorks and Disney going to glorify this behavior and produce a film baed on Daniel book, and likely make him rich from royalties? Meh.

<comment><USER8> The establishment rewards those who aid the establishment.

</comment></comment><comment><AUTHOR> I just watched the trailer for the movie ([http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZT1wb8_tcYU](http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZT1wb8_tcYU))...without knowing WikiLeaks' and Assange's distaste for the movie, it's hard to see the trailer as anything but positive for Assange. No mention of the sexual assault charges, but instead, a prominent focus on the early revelations that earned Assange the sympathy of many: leaking the footage of the U.S. Apache attack ([http://www.collateralmurder.com/](http://www.collateralmurder.com/)) and of internal documents from the Kaupthing Bank ([http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kaupthing_Bank](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kaupthing_Bank)).

<comment><USER9> The purpose of a trailer isn't to convey the message of a movie. The purpose of a trailer is to get you to watch a movie.

</comment></comment><comment><USER10> Judging by the recaps of the film, I'm not surprised about what I see. The film is based off of books that make WifiLeaks look bad, so its not surprising that the movie does too. Also, Disney and Dreamworks gain nothing by making a movie that makes WikiLeaks look good; they gain attention by creating a movie that creates drama around it, like what is going on now.

</comment><comment><USER11> For those looking for the source:

[http://wikileaks.org/IMG/html/wikileaks-dreamworks- memo.html](http://wikileaks.org/IMG/html/wikileaks-dreamworks-memo.html)

It might change, with all MiTM that occurs on the domain.

</comment><comment><USER12> What a brilliant (if unintended) publicity stunt for the movie ;) More seriously, I think Assange is acting a bit like Zuckerberg vis a vis The Social Network. All in all, Zuckerberg was the hero of the movie .. he was portrayed as a brilliant hacker and visionary (if flawed) businessman. My feeling is that Assange will be similarly portrayed (except of course replacing "businessman" with "journalist").

If a movie were ever to be made about me, it would feel insulting to be portrayed as flawless. There are no great characters without flaws.

<comment><USER13> I think the point is that to some people, having an extremely flattering view of them put forth is less important than having an _accurate_ view.

In part, that may be because people assume if their reasoning is exposed then the public would be with them, so that's flattering enough. (Logically, it's not possible the public would always agree, because otherwise we would never have disagreements).

<comment><USER12> I think the Social Network, for example, is quite accurate about the most important things (the zeitgeist of how a startup _like_ Facebook comes about .. the energy, the betrayals (both perceived and real), the craziness, the attitude of great founders etc).

This is a _movie_ and not a documentary .. for my money I expect the Director to put his creative efforts into making something enjoyable to watch. As long as it's not a blatant fabrication, fact for fact historical accuracy isn't why I'm going to watch this movie.

Aaron Sorkin viewed Zuck & co as a _vehicle_ to tell a larger (and more important) story about modern culture .. if The Fifth Estate accomplishes the same, it will be a great movie.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> It seems like any inaccurate portrayal of somebodies life would be slander. How do people get around this? If I wanted to make a movie about Barrack Obama and say he was apart of terrorists groups would that be legal? Isn't this the reason movies have to say "Any characters in this movie were purely fictional etc."

<comment><AUTHOR> No...in America, the standard to prove defamation against a public figure is very high: the plaintiff has to prove actual malice ([http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Actual_malice](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Actual_malice)) was used in publication. I imagine the standard for a movie, which besides using the "based on real events" disclaimer, has the additional benefit of artistic license on its side.

<comment><USER14> Ah I see, so if a classified report/email was released that said, "Make this movie, and make sure Assange look bad" then he would have grounds to sue?

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> And big surprise, NYTimes makes it seem like the problem is with Assange not being happy how he's portrayed, rather than it being based on discredited sources, putting people in key roles that never happened, and ignoring that it was a careless and clueless Guardian journalist (David Leigh) who leaked the key to the unredacted Cablegate files in his book, not Wikileaks. Look around and see if you can find that last little tidbit mentioned any time some journalist writes Wikileaks put people in danger.

<comment><USER16> I don't think it's reasonable to expect a movie about Wikileaks to be any more accurate than, say, a movie about Facebook. Yeah, they took some liberties and made a nice, tidy narrative. It's a movie.

And whose fault is it that the journalist apparently didn't know a password he was given for files for his own use was being reused to secure a public insurance file? It does not speak well to their stewardship of sensitive documents that they were giving out that password to people who are "careless and clueless."

<comment><USER17> Actually, it wasn't being reused to secure the public insurance file - <USER2> still don't know know the password for that. The problem was that other people managed to get their hands on the encryped file for the Guardian journalist under dubious circumstances involving a prominent ex-Wikileaks member sabotaging them.

<comment><USER16> I stand corrected, but it still seems like there's plenty of blame to go around there.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER18> I thought 300 was better

</comment><comment><USER19> So is it art imitates life which is imitated by life again?</comment>