Protesters Smash Google Shuttle Bus Piñata In Fight Against Rent Increases - <AUTHOR> http://techcrunch.com/2013/05/06/protesters-smash-google-bus-pinata/ <comment><USER3> Rents wouldn't be going up so fast if these protestors were protesting draconian building and zoning laws instead of Google employees. NIMBY-ism hurts lower income people first.

<comment><USER4> Do you have anything to back that up? I would imagine that most lower income people have already been hit and preserving status quo might be in the interest of anyone who has managed to stay. At least in the short run.

<comment><USER3> Rent control drives up rents for everyone who isn't in a rent controlled apartment. Those higher rents affect the young guy working at Starbucks, who is unlikely to have a rent controlled apartment, before it affects the young guy who works at Google, who is also unlikely to have a rent controlled apartment but can at least better afford the resulting rent increases.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> > _As a three-year resident of the Mission, I've seen the influx of money from > the rise of Apple and Google's stock plus the Facebook IPO change its > character._

It seems weird for the writer to try to separate himself from this. The mission starting gentrifying well before 2010, there was just a bit of a lull at the end of the last decade. Not to put too fine a point on it, but he's a white stanford-grad who covers the tech industry for a website. Even if you're a poor recent college graduate with five roommates, your presence changes the character of the neighborhood.

<comment><USER6> Of course, but he's writing an article about the underdogs; naturally he'd rather identify with them :)

</comment></comment><comment><USER7> I wonder how many commenters here actually live in SF or know anything about it... San Francisco has one of the most tenant friendly laws in the entire country. Rent control is very strict, and the whole "rent has gone up by X%" ... well it has gone up no more than 1% for existing tenants. Because that is the legal limit.

New units are not subject to rent control, but if you don't move, then you will never really pay much more for rent. People in my building pay 50% what I pay for the same layout, and new people will probably pay 2x what I am paying for the same layout as well.

Commercial property tho doesnt have rent control however. But that's kind of a different argument, right?

<comment> old-gregg > San Francisco has one of the most tenant friendly laws in the entire country

What? SF is infested by rent-controlled buildings. Rent control is the most tenant-hostile policy ever invented. It basically means that newcomers (or people who had to move) are subsidizing ridiculous rents of those who haven't moved in a while. Rent control restricts the freedom of movement.

My barber pays $1600 for a 2br apartment two blocks from the my building where a shitty 1br got rented within an hour after showing up on craigslist. The very same 1br was $2,400 just a year ago, and $2,200 two years ago.

</comment></comment><comment><USER8> "Funding some local education or beautification initiatives could go a long way to reducing the gentrification backlash."

Or maybe California could relax its constitutional restriction on city and county income taxes, which would make much more sense than relying on random benefactors to make the city more livable.

</comment><comment><USER9> I'll consider land use complaints from Miwok and Ohlone, but I'm not sure how "my neighborhood is different from how it was 15 years ago" is a valid concern. A vibrant city can't be a museum.

<comment><USER10> The issue is who is affected by changes to the city. It is always the poor and underprivileged who are pushed to the periphery by the privileged. Change should be shaped in ways that don't involuntarily displace people.

</comment></comment><comment><USER11> Why are tech employees and companies the getting the blame for increased rent? Last I checked it was the property owners and landlords who control that.

How far back do they want to go? Protesting in front of Tim Berners-Lee's house for being an enabling force in the creation of the technology that runs Google and other companies?

<comment><USER12> Property owners and landlords will charge the highest rent they can convince someone to pay, so treating them as active agents in this scenario doesn't seem useful to me. Supply and demand determine what people are willing to pay for housing, and tech workers are willing to pay a lot.

</comment></comment><comment> mc-lovin As someone who generally believes in free markets, I am already unsympathetic to these people. However the venom directed at tech employees strikes me as something more than just economics.

People are having a go at nerds because they can. The scales of social status haven't changed since high school, but it turns out that nerds can earn a good salary, and in the "fascist" free market economy, this means they can live where they like, and the police will even protect them!

I wish I knew about this so I could show up in my Google sweater.

<comment><USER13> > _"I wish I knew about this so I could show up in my Google sweater."_

I disagree very much with your notion that this is people pummeling at nerds because of some remnant of high school social pecking order, but please don't do this.

This is the corner of 16th and Mission. The local police station is literally two blocks away and still have _zero control_ over this intersection. It is a mad house. It is the Mos Eisley of San Francisco.

The level of class warfare (from both sides) in the Mission is pretty intense, and the area is already a bit lawless to the point where the police have little control over an open-air drug den just two blocks from the station house. You don't fuck around with that intersection, the cops can't protect you well there, and everyone knows it.

<comment> mc-lovin You seem to know much more about this situation than me, but given my experience in the left, I would be very surprised if the people involved in an open air drug den had much to do with the people attending and organizing this protest.

And there seems to be a discrepancy between the extreme danger you claim I would be in, and the claims of other people that this is a harmless gathering. Can you shed some light on this? No sarcasm intended there, I really am surprised by how you characterize the situation because in my experience, no one provoking left wingers is ever in serious danger.

<comment><USER13> These aren't left wingers in the liberal left winger sense. Practically _everyone_ in San Francisco is a liberal left winger. These are _militant_ left wingers (the photos of the event seem to suggest this, based on my experiences in the neighborhood). I would not be surprised if there were more than a few violent folks in the crowd.

Keep in mind what happened the _last_ time there was an anti-gentrification protest in the Mission. Ostensibly it's a peaceful gathering to march against gentrification. It turned into smashing windows of local independent businesses and massive vandalism.

Every leftist protest or demonstration in San Francisco seems to have a bad habit of turning violent. This isn't to say that everyone there is violent, or that their cause isn't worthwhile, but rather that if you see these marches or protests, the Black Bloc is always close at hand, so I'd watch right the fuck out.

> _"I would be very surprised if the people involved in an open air drug den > had much to do with the people attending and organizing this protest."_

There's not much of an intersection. The whole open-air drug den thing isn't to associate the protesters with the crackheads of the neighborhood, but rather to say that this isn't like any street corner in San Francisco. This is a street corner that the police effectively have no control over. If you get jumped by a Black Bloc asshole with a bone to pick with Googlers, you are fending for yourself. Though, reading the article, it looks like the cops _were_ on hand for this one, which is a nice change for the corner of 16th and Mission.

All in all, don't be so cavalier with your own safety. While San Francisco isn't ruled by the Khmer Rouge, the Mission is _not_ a safe neighborhood. Don't let the bistros and boutique coffee shops fool you. If you mind your own business you'll be fine. If you go looking for trouble, the Mission has no problem delivering trouble to your face, fast.

<comment> mc-lovin You make some good points, and I will bear them in mind when dealing with these people.

However, what you say makes the complaints by the protesters about the heavy police presence seem ridiculous: it cannot be the case that this protest is "peaceful" and yet anyone present who appears to be against hem would be in serious danger.

<comment><USER13> Even disregarding the personal danger aspect, the police presence is well justified simply by looking at similar protests in the past. A bunch of people rallying around hating another group of people is, following San Francisco patterns, highly likely to result in violence, property destruction, vandalism, or some combination of the above.

I feel very much that the Black Bloc and anarchist protesters that infest every cause and protest in San Francisco is a _huge_ part of why the city is the way it is. Otherwise legitimate, worthwhile causes can garner no public support because a highly visible minority of their base takes every chance they get to smash shit up. They become politically untenable to support for city politicians lest they look like they are soft on crime - <USER2> protesting is _synonymous_ with crime thanks to these people. They also drive away moderates as no one really wants to be caught on the wrong side of a riot (is there a right side to being in a riot?).

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> What is the solution to this problem? You can stop rent increases with a law, but that causes lots of other problems.

You can get rid of the buses with a law, but then people will just drive or use other transportation, which causes traffic problems.

<comment><USER15> The root of the problem is the tension of interests between the landlords who gain from an increase in property values, even if it prices out current residents, and the residents who have perverse incentives to make their area a worse place to live to keep out the yuppies.

Maybe you could securitize the value of the tenant's rent control, entitling an exiting tenant to a windfall if they are replaced by a higher-rent paying replacement? This would be on the theory that residential property values are an externality created by the people living there.

<comment><USER16> _Maybe you could securitize the value of the tenant's rent control, entitling an exiting tenant to a windfall if they are replaced by a higher-rent paying replacement?_

Can you clarify how this is different from simply prohibiting rental, forcing residents to own their apartment? A securitized right to property value increases sounds a lot like equity.

edit: Oh I'm stupid. Clearly you mean all of this under price control: the renter gets the benefits of equity, _without_ paying anything for them, and _without_ taking on any risk of ownership (like property values collapsing). A complete soup of misincentives and disaster.

<comment><USER15> "Securitize" was the wrong word for me to use, as no uninvolved third party is coming into the picture.

The difference between owning and renting is already a matter of degrees, particularly once you add rent control, mortgages, condos and HOAs into the mix. The renter already has the right to deprive the owner of the property value increase, this is just creating a legal framework to give it back for cash. I'm imagining it would only be part of the value of increase in rent over the rent-control limit, not all of it.

It would increase market price rents modestly, as you're essentially depriving landlords of the power to shake off bad tenants by finding rent control loopholes or waiting them out, but you could offset that by creating a process for voluntary tenant buyouts.

Buyouts are currently very difficult to carry out legally even if the tenant wants to leave and the landlord would rather replace them with someone paying more, leaving the two parties stuck together in an unhappy marriage as an unintended side effect of the way the laws work.

In response to your edit: Of course you'd pay for them, new rentals are market-priced (then locked into rent control until that tenant leaves), aren't they? It's got one-sided risk like any option but those aren't hard to price. It's in everyone's interest to increase the future value of the rental unit.

<comment><USER16> In that case (owners raising prices), who would want this? To renters it has the character of investment: pay more money today, for a possible payout in the future. I don't think typical renters want this. They're renting in part because they opt _not_ to invest in real estate. They choose not to shift costs to the present.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER17> Anybody else watch the video? There were at least as many cops as protestors present. It's eerily reminiscent of those pictures from OWS where the cops were lined up outside banks.

<comment><USER18> Sure, but in both cases that's because when there aren't as many cops, these protests result in widespread property damage.

This has unfortunately been the case since the WTO protests in Seattle in late 1999.

</comment></comment><comment><USER19> _"Cheap grocery stores and eateries have been going out of business, while trendy bars and cafes move in."_

Probably a moot point but do those new bars and cafes provide jobs? Do these people tip more or less than those who used to frequent the 'Cheap eateries' ?

I am sympathetic to the challenges of having a neighborhood go from affordable to "hip" (and not affordable) but does this bring more disposable income into San Francisco and increase the available money supply or not?

<comment><USER20> I doubt they increased their tipping 29% between 2011 and 2012. Viewing the situation from a distance, it appears that the key issue in SF today is that the Board of Supervisors is unwilling to relax zoning laws[1]. San Francisco obviously can't build out, so the only option is to build _up_. Until that happens, things will just keep getting worse.

[1] [http://www.slate.com/blogs/moneybox/2013/04/11/san_francisco...](http://www.slate.com/blogs/moneybox/2013/04/11/san_francisco_zoning_needs_more_density_and_tall_buildings.html)

<comment><USER21> The residents who fight tooth and nail against going up and more dense forms of housing are just as much to blame as the BoS. The city could ignore them, yes, but government is about what people want.

Most residents of San Francisco -- homeless, tech, lower-income, whatever -- want absolutely nothing to change except for what makes _them_ happier. And in most cases, the loudest, wealthiest, Pac Heights/Sea Cliff voices want the "charm" of San Francisco to stay the same. Meanwhile, it's one of the most undesirable places to merely walk around that I've come across in my life, and I only work in the city because I have to. I will _never_ move to the city.

Some of the comments are already popping up on TechCrunch; "do you want SF to be the next NYC?" My answer to that is _abso-fucking-lutely_. New York City is perfectly suited to dense living without gritting your teeth; the subways run 24/7, the risk of stepping in homeless shit is significantly lower, there are very few places in NYC that make me cringe as much as the TL after sundown, the varying cultures get along and complement each other instead of beating Google Bus piñatas at a dirty-ass BART station...

If San Francisco slowly became the next New York City I'd be pleased as a peach. (Imagine NYC with SF's weather!) But it will never happen in our lifetimes. Honestly, I think it's a California thing, because L.A. has a better shot at it and that's not going to happen either.

<comment><USER22> "Meanwhile, it's one of the most undesirable places to merely walk around that I've come across in my life"

How so? I know the city only as a tourist, and in that capacity thought it pretty pleasant to walk through.

Politically, San Francisco will never be New York: New York incorporates its own suburbs, and the outer boroughs can outvote Manhattan.

<comment><USER21> San Francisco is one of the only places I've ever commuted where the question isn't _if_ you'll step in human shit, but _when_. The quality of my workday usually begins with "did I get a face full of hot, evaporating urine and avoid a pile of shit on the way here today? no? gonna be a good day."

The people that live near my office on the ground level have put up "please don't defecate near our door, this leads right into our living room" signs. Good luck getting anybody to care. _Nobody cares._ I bet if someone dropped a deuce in front of a New York bodega, there'd be a dozen locals competing to rinse it off. I love New Yorkers. Tough as nails and been through some shit, man, and you really get that in the culture.

Walk around late enough in the same neighborhood and appear vulnerable and see what happens, too. If you stuck to the various places that we keep squeaky- clean for tourists, that's why you didn't notice.

<comment><USER23> What is it about San Francisco that causes its denizens to defecate on the streets?

I've visited it as a tourist many times, and have walked around extensively in neighborhoods such as Nob Hill, Fisherman's Wharf, Union Square, Financial District, and Inner/Outer Richmond. Never stepped on human shit, much less dog shit.

<comment><USER13> Homelessness and a government whose attitude towards it is to pretend the passive aggressively opposing them will make them go away.

The city has, over the past decades, slowly taken over all public seating in homeless-prone areas of the city. It's a sunny day outside and you want to have a seat and munch on a sandwich instead of eating at your desk? No can do, there are _literally no_ seats, benches, or anything that might be remotely comfortable to rest on.

Ditto public restrooms, which have been taken away under the same pretenses.

Of course, the response hasn't been a decrease in homelessness - they lean, lie, and sit against buildings just fine, and they piss and shit in the streets just as well too.

San Francisco's stance towards homelessness seems to be "if we make it inconvenient to be homeless, people will stop being homeless", which strikes me as shockingly idiotic for a city famous for its liberalism.

<comment><USER23> Heh. Where I live (Long Beach, CA), they deal with the homeless in equally idiotic ways.

I was volunteering for an "alleyway beautification" project in downtown, and it just turned out that there was a small, cute park adjacent to the alley. To our dismay though, we found it to be locked 24/7. When we asked the city officials, they said it got locked because the homeless were using it as their living space!

Similarly, when the cops are dealing with homeless people with mental disorders, do you know what they do? They don't actually take them to the station to write them up - they learned long ago that doing so doesn't accomplish anything (the system is not equipped to deal with mental disorders, especially in people with no money).

Instead, they sit them in the backseat of their patrol car, drive them over to one of the adjacent cities (i.e. San Pedro, Carson, etc.) and drop them off there. That way, those homeless become that other city's problem!

Can you believe it?

It's crazy. I feel really bad making this analogy, but it's like sweeping the trash under the carpet and pretending the room is clean.

<comment><USER21> In Detroit the police used to round up homeless people in vans and after promising to take them to shelters, dropped them off in the nearby city of River Rouge. If you're not familiar with River Rouge, that's where nearly all of Detroit's heavy industry, such as several steel plants, is located. Here's what it looked like in the 70s:

[http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/6/6c/RIVER_ROU...](http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/6/6c/RIVER_ROUGE_PLANT_OF_THE_FORD_MOTOR_COMPANY_COVERS_1200_ACRES_OF_LAND_IN_DEARBORN_- _NARA_-_549725.jpg)

It's gotten better, but it's not exactly a residential city:

[http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/4/4f/ZugIsland...](http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/4/4f/ZugIslandFromDelray.jpg)

When I visit family, the I-75 bridge over River Rouge is a windows-up, vent- closed affair. River Rouge is rather famous these days for annoying Canada with hums, too.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER24> Are Google/Facebook/Apple employees living in that neighborhood because the company shuttle buses make it convenient, or did the companies start sending shuttles there because so many employees live there?

</comment><comment><USER25> I showed a friend this, and he pointed out the awesome quasi-gonzo <http://www.lrb.co.uk/v35/n03/rebecca-solnit/diary>.

<comment><USER26> It's a nice outsider article. Funny-because-it-hurts:

"All these youngish people are on the Google Bus because they want to live in San Francisco, city of promenading and mingling, but they seem as likely to rub these things out as to participate in them."

Earlier HN discussion, studiously failing to appreciate the piece:

<https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5189580>

</comment></comment><comment><USER27> I can understand the outrage these displaced people feel. Especially for the hard working lower class.

It is not displacement for a public works project. It is pure class displacement with a rub-it-in-their-face quality about it.

</comment><comment><USER28> The core problem here is that high-earners are being concentrated in one area. If the Google employes weren't expected to commute to a computer, and were free to remote in from anywhere, their economic impact on their neighborhoods would be distributed, rather than concentrated in a couple locations.

<comment><USER29> Google/Facebook employees don't work anywhere near SF. They live in SF because it's hip, and endure huge commutes (on the comfy buses) to do so. Maybe if G/F stopped subsidizing ridiculous commutes with the comfy buses, employees would live in the low-cost housing areas near campus.

<comment><USER30> Do you mean East Palo Alto, or the whole valley? There is almost no housing supply in the valley. I have the feeling that engineers are now priced out of the market in the valley. Houses sell to bidders that offer no contingencies, cash, and a price that exceeds a lender's appraisal.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER31> Yuppies and Gentrification are antonims in my book. Does the author know what those words mean?

</comment><comment><USER32> I bet more regulations will fix it.</comment>


Justice department 'uses aged computer system to frustrate Foia requests' - <AUTHOR> http://www.theguardian.com/politics/2016/jul/16/justice-department-freedom-of-information-computer-system?CMP=share_btn_tw <comment><USER2> The unfortunate fact is that government officials, whether at the DOJ, the FBI, or any other agency have absolutely no incentive to follow either the letter or the spirit of the law. There are never any consequences for the individual government employees who break the law, so there is no reason for them to follow it. What's worse is that the only government officials who are ever held accountable for violations of law or policy are whistleblowers who shine light on wrongdoing.

When the law ceases to be a social contract under which we all agree to operate and be equally judged it loses its moral authority. Without moral authority law carries no more weight then the threats of violence wielded by those with the most power and society falls apart.

<comment><USER3> False. Please stop spreading falsehoods without doing some basic research. It took me < 10 seconds of Googling to find many counterexamples to your claim.

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

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

<comment><USER4> Logical fallacy. Just because there are counterexamples doesn't mean a claim is false. If I say "humans eat meat", the claim is not false because I found a vegetarian.

<comment><USER3> Err, you're the one making the logical fallacy. The parent said "There are never any consequences for the individual government employees who break the law" and the counterexamples disprove that. "X never happens" is false if I find examples of X happening, by definition of "never". QED.

<comment><USER4> That's just word play and purposefully misunderstanding the parent's likely meaning. It would make no sense for the meaning to be exacting like a mathematical proposition, in that there are literally NEVER any consequences. When speaking of an entity as large as heterogeneous as the government, you can't make such specific claims, so the obvious meaning was "for the most part" or "in general".

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> Oh man, is this relevant to my interests. An organization I founded is currently in a state-level Freedom of Information law fight -- using the Missouri Sunshine Law -- against the Missouri Department of Health and Senior Services, asking for two database dumps as CSV files. The databases have millions of records covering decades of data, but only about four columns, so this should take a couple of hours to export, tops. Of course, we're willing to pay for the USB flash drive to put the files on, and cover any unusual labor costs to do the export.

The good news is that the Department has agreed that we should have the legal right to this data.

The bad news is that the Missouri Dept of Health is claiming with a straight face that they can only retrieve _one day 's worth of data at a time_ from their mainframe, and must re-run the work job for each and every subsequent day's data. They claim that it is impossible for their software to select for a _date range_.

And therefore, they have quoted my organization a price of about one million dollars and 2.6 years to select and deliver our data.

Shot: [https://mobile.twitter.com/ReclaimTheRecs/status/74644736092...](https://mobile.twitter.com/ReclaimTheRecs/status/746447360926986240)

Chaser: [https://mobile.twitter.com/ReclaimTheRecs/status/75116107051...](https://mobile.twitter.com/ReclaimTheRecs/status/751161070513889280)

(Don't worry, we have a good Sunshine Law lawyer and he is as outraged/amused at this bullshit as we are.)

<comment><USER6> Have them offline and copy the raw drive/tape to trusted 3rd party (as they must do regularly for backups anwyway) and have that 3rd party query the data. Or if the data is old enough, have them just copy the backup to the 3rd party.

This should eliminate any query expense they would have had (as it's been replaced by raw data copy expense.)

And the 3rd party is to protect the data you're not supposed to get.

</comment></comment><comment><USER7> To be fair, the government's computer systems really are just that crappy. Technical debt and obsolete systems that still kind-of-sorta work are always the last things to be addressed in budgets.

There is also no incentive for the government to do anything other than 'try' in the most perfunctory manner possible. One solution would be to make a separate entity responsible whose performance is judged based on what they can actually dig up (of course someone has to get the funds and resources for these people to work).

There is no incentive to build systems that are optimized for FOIA requests (ie enough hardware to search the data, or data indexed in ways that make it easily possible). I doubt servicing FOIA requests is super high up on the spec list when a system is designed.

There are also legitimate issues concerning cost recovery: think of it in terms of paying for someone to spin up new instances to hit multi-TB databases for a couple of days, then paying someone else to see if the results are responsive, if they're actually releasable in terms of security, privacy, etc. And then you have to deal with the less legitimate requests that come along. I think serving FOIA requests is a core part of the government (both ideally and by law) and resources should be spent accordingly.

Finally, there are government officials, especially at the state and local level, who use the above excuses to make it hard for people to find out what they're up to. The worst effect of the issues listed above is providing these people with cover and plausible excuses which are used to stonewall legitimate investigation by the people they serve.

<comment><USER8> This is, I think, the best way to frame it: the systems are actually _that_ bad, and bad actors can misuse the bad systems.

That said, I'd be very curious to hear about people in govtech about how this plays out in your municipality.

</comment></comment><comment><USER9> I like how the replacement system costed $425,000,000

The tech company told them on site deploys would be $424,550,000 more expensive

<comment><USER10> Yeah I find it hilarious as a contract developer how just because it's government software that means you can charge like 200 times more for essentially the same software any other client could get for like 1 million at most.

I've been doing contract development for a little over 10 years now and even the most complex projects were never even remotely that expensive. And Im sure I've probably written at least 85% of the same functionality of whatever that software does. Hell, I'm sure there is probably open source software that does similar

<comment><USER11> Prices of that nature usually include 10-20 year service contracts and onsite maintainers, to include hardware. Not that the prices are not still inflated, but the reality of running a contractually 99.99% uptime, multi decade, and completely backwards compatible platform is not trivial, or anything south of multi millions of dollars at the federal scale especially.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> At Slashdot someone pointed out that the student requested a search that should've pulled up his own earlier FOIA requests -- and didn't -- thus proving their system was inadequate.

[https://yro.slashdot.org/story/16/07/17/0224251/is-the- doj-u...](https://yro.slashdot.org/story/16/07/17/0224251/is-the-doj-using- obsolete-software-to-subvert-foia-requests)

<comment><USER13> This was also mentioned in the linked article.

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> They're using "aged people" to frustrate as well. If there was some more meritocracy, or better pay, we might be able to get some new, technically useful, blood in there. Personal accountability wouldn't hurt either. It works for more than business and families.

<comment><USER14> You are implying that meritocracy or better pay would go towards better results for the FOIA requester.

An equally likely interpretation is that the meritocracy is delivering the desired results _from the government 's perspective of interests_.

<comment><USER15> I'd say that most energetic people with skills would never waste their time with such nonsense. They can make real money in the private sector.

<comment><USER16> Not everyone is solely motivated by money.

<comment><USER17> The rest of us like having a roof over our heads, food in our bellies, and our student loan payments made on time.

<comment> bjelkeman-again It is possible to have both.

<comment><USER15> It is, but spending your energy on researching and implementing the most effective way to annoy and obstruct people that are trying to exercise their rights?

Generally people that could work wherever they want and choose to not chase after money will probably go for something that has a high moral value (or is a noble cause) to them, like helping the poor. But not something like this.

I'd imagine that the only thing they might get out if this is political power which should translate into money.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER18> I think this is less about a deliberate attempt to frustrate FOIA, and more about lazy government workers who see no reason to fix something that isn't broken (in their opinion).

<comment><USER19> It is departmental policy to do the most limited search possible in an attempt to return as few results as possible. That is the very definition of a deliberate attempt to frustrate both the letter and the spirit of FOIA.</comment></comment>


Five Ways to Lie with Charts (2014) - <AUTHOR> http://nautil.us/issue/19/illusions/five-ways-to-lie-with-charts <comment><USER2> See also: "Is truncating the Y-axis dishonest?" [https://twitter.com/rshotton/status/865951825463312385](https://twitter.com/rshotton/status/865951825463312385)</comment>


Must-Have Windows Programs (or Windows Programs that I use) - <AUTHOR> http://www.catonmat.net/blog/must-have-windows-programs/ <comment><USER3> \- Cygwin (with ssh, scp, git, svn, grep, sed... X is nice too and so is MinTTY)

\- Emacs (the Windows executable is a bit of a pain to integrate with the Cygwin side)

\- GIMP

\- Firefox (with Firebug)

\- Chrome (nice developer support too)

\- Pidgin (because I have friends on MSN, Gtalk, ICQ, iChat and IRC)

\- Skype (because not everyone can type)

\- Sysinternals (running pagedefrag is like brushing the machine's teeth)

\- JDK (because it's nice to be able to compile Java code from time to time). You may want it with Eclipse or NetBeans or both, but writing Java code is not that nice.

\- Freemind (another reason to have a JRE)

\- Openoffice (because you really don't want to save .doc files)

I think that covers everything I need on a Windows box. Too bad Gnome support is so minimal on that OS.

</comment><comment><USER4>
      1. Notepad++ (though I'm almost 100% Emacs at this point)
      2. Filezilla
      3. imo.im client (because I need Skype for work, but the latest client does Bad Things with MS Office 2007)
      4. Cygwin
      5. PowerShell
      6. Paint.NET
      7. Wireshark
      8. SysInternals Process Explorer
      9. Reflector

<comment><USER5>
      My Mods/Adds
      1) JEdit and VIM
      10) Slickrun (floating command prompt)
      11) Fiddler2
      12) Visual VM
      13) 7-zip instead of WinRar from the original article

</comment></comment><comment> matthew-wegner I recently wrote this up after switching back to Windows from OS X--it's mostly a bunch of apps that mimic Mac functionality (Expose, etc), but also some useful generic utilities linked:

<http://www.matthewwegner.com/switching-back-to-windows/>

</comment><comment><USER6> Synergy - to share keyboard and mouse with other computers & OSes. <http://synergy2.sourceforge.net/>

</comment><comment><USER7> Scott Hanselman has answered this question to my satisfaction:

[http://www.hanselman.com/blog/ScottHanselmans2009UltimateDev...](http://www.hanselman.com/blog/ScottHanselmans2009UltimateDeveloperAndPowerUsersToolListForWindows.aspx)

</comment><comment><USER8> Wow. XML Notepad is just what I had been looking for.

Windows apps I can't live without in order of importance:

1\. StrokeIt

2\. HotChime (disclaimer: I wrote it)

3\. EmEditor (text-ed of choice)

4\. Popular stuff: Thunderbird, Pidgin, Chrome, FF

5\. ChimeNote (disclaimer: I wrote it)

6\. FileZilla

7\. MySQL Front v2.5 (all other versions suck)

8\. UltraVNC

9\. PuTTy

10\. Paint Shop Pro / Paint.NET (either works)

<comment><USER9> I applaud you making HotChime, but how does it compare to Launchy?

<comment><USER8> Honestly, I haven't even tried anything else because I'm just so used to HotChime. I've been using it for 7-8 years now and can't work without it. I know it's not polite to toot your own horn but I would have said this about HotChime regardless of who wrote it. While I can't compare it to Launchy or others, I can tell you how HotChime works.

No matter which app you're in, press [pause] and type anything. If it has a space character in it, it will Google it. Otherwise, it will launch default browser to www.[whatyoutyped].com. If you have predefined [whatyoutyped] to something else, it will open that (website, file, folder). I have HN mapped to 'h', Slashdot mapped to '/.' (literally) and my local weather to 'w'. You can also setup custom %s searches for F1-F5 key. I have F2 = Wikipedia (mapped to chir.ag/wiki/%s e.g. <http://chir.ag/wiki/hacker> ), F3 = Dictionary, F4 = Thesaurus, F5 = PHP manual.

It's not that useful for average users but for powerusers/keyboard-types, it works great. Also, it's a single 37kb exe, no install/uninstall. Do realize that I wrote this in 2003, long before every browser had a search box and before Google had maps/local-searching. Yahoo was the first browser with zip- code searching. If I made a new version, I would add lots of small features like built-in calculator, suggest, file-browsing etc. But for now it works well for me.

<comment><USER10> Sounds nothing like Launchy. Launchy searches for apps of similar names as what you searched, and ranks them in order of usage. Makes the Start Menu obsolete.

Your app sounds not quite as good as mapping your browser's address bar to I'm Feeling Lucky.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> <http://www.sublimetext.com/> My text editor of choice for windows for the last six months.

</comment><comment><USER12> A Windows desktop box is kept around mainly for gaming. (all on the road, kitchen, and sofa activity has moved to a MacBook Pro that has Ubuntu in a VM, but no flavor of Windows for now - don't want to pirate it, and won't pay for it). I would litterbox Windows in a VM on the desktop box, but for gaming the video driver situation is better booting directly into it. VirtualBox is used for speedy access to Ubuntu (where all email access and routine net browsing is done for safety). VLC is the default media viewer. Handbrake and FFMPEG seem to run better within Ubuntu, but the Windows versions are installed too. Firefox with NoScript and Adblock Plus is there mostly for updates to Virtual Box and as a backup in case of problems with it.

MS Windows Security Essentials seems to work decently, so AVG has finally been retired. It's surprising it took MS so long to provide these tools considering that Windows is pretty much unusable online without something. Better late than never, even if the only net access is for games, updates, and the VM.

</comment><comment><USER13> Mikogo - screen, keyboard and mouse sharing - super for remote support

HarddiskOgg - record music playing from soundcard (eg from grooveshark, youtube) into a file format of choice.

WiFi Hopper - shareware - very accurate overview of wifi points in the area. It shows points that don't appear in other programs.

Spyware Doctor - the most powerful spyware remover

Startup Manager - disable unneeded processes carefully

MediaCoder / ColorPic / GTalk

</comment><comment><USER14> 1\. FAR (Far Manager) - like Total Commander, but I'm more used to it, than TC

2\. SystemInternals Tools (Procmon, Procexp most used by them from me) - <USER2> best of the best, they make me hate Windows less.

3\. CYGWIN - Brings the sanity on the command-line, and havoc if you decide to integrate them for other people, but great tools overall

4\. Dependancy Walker.

5\. WinMerge - my favourite windows differ/merger - there might be better tools than it, but I'm really used to it. At work my perforce P4Merge p4Diff is replaced by that one, the minute I get a new machine.

6\. Trillian - I bought it, and I don't regret it.

7\. Skype

8\. Scintilla Editor - I also use emacs, and Lispworks for editing, but Scintilla is powerful (especially useful is to replace all \n to " ", or ";" to "\n" - for example if you are lazy parsing the PATH variable - you can doit command-line, but you can teach other people to use it through Scintilla easier).

9\. Xobni - bought yesterday the full version, although my company could've pay, I decided that $30 is well spend on organizing my job better. Wonderful plugin

</comment><comment><USER15> GridMove.

I spend most of my time in a tiling window manager in linux and I'd go insane without some half-decent tiling support. GridMove isn't perfect, but its enough to keep me happy when I use Windows outside of gaming (where I obviously don't need tiling) or running Visual Studio (which I run in full screen, so also don't need tiling).

</comment><comment><USER16> It's rare that I use Windows these days, but Crimson Editor, AVG, Malwarebytes, Digsby, Launchy, TinyGrab, PuTTy, WinSCP, Winamp Classic, VLC.... then there's a lot of everyday, non-windows specific (not that everything in the previous list is) stuff that I use, like git, Skype, FF, Photoshop & Illustrator, etc.

<comment><USER17> If you can get over that it's made by Microsoft, Windows Security Essentials is free and IMO better than AVG. I also saw somewhere that it outperforms it but I don't recall the source.

<comment><USER16> Cool, thanks for the tip. I don't have a problem with "made by Microsoft" I'd just always used AVG, had never had any problems with it, so hadn't bothered to switch to anything else.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER18> AutoHotkey (<http://www.autohotkey.com/>) - It's an extremely powerful, scriptable hotkey application. It's one of the few things I miss on Linux.

The other thing I use a lot is VirtualBox, because I can no longer bring myself to do actual development on Windows.

<comment><USER19> VirtualBox is so great. I found it by accident and now can't imagine developing without it. So simple, so many nice options.

</comment></comment><comment><USER20> Is there a "Must-Have" file backup utility for Windows?

I've really grown to like TimeMachine on the Mac, although I don't really need the eye candy; I just want something that dependably backs up my data to my NAS, stays in the background and does it's work without killing my pc's performance.

<comment><USER21> I've found Acronis TrueImage (Home edition) to be as unobtrusive as it gets on Windows. It starts and stops when told, and so far plays nice with other disk IO. That's not a formal review -- I just haven't noticed it running the way I've noticed backup utils I've used before.

</comment></comment><comment><USER22> It's worth noting that Windows 7 obsoletes a bunch of those utilities:

TrueCrypt - Bitlocker comes with it Locate32 - Indexed search is now built-in Launchy - Start menu now defaults to search DUMeter - Part of the Task Manager Taskbar Shuffle - Finally possible directly in windows

<comment><USER23> AFAIK, indexed search was part of Vista as well. Incredibly slow compared to locate on Linux though. I haven't tried locate32 myself.

</comment></comment><comment><USER24> My windows 7 PC is a games machine, so special list for windows 7 is as follows:

      1. COD MW2

Windows XP machine

      1. VirtuaWin - Multi desktop (my switch desktop shortcut is ctrl+alt+win+arrows) (GPL)
      2. YzShadow - drop shadow on windows (pointless pretty eye candy) (Free)
      3. GVim (GPL)
      4. Abyss Web Server (simple local webserver) (BSD)
      5. On Windows XP - Royale Noir Theme (Kinda Hacky Commercial)
      6. Office 2007 (Commercial)
      7. TOAD (Commercial)
      8. cmd.exe (Commercial)

</comment><comment><USER25> I didnt' see these mentioned:

Ditto Clipboard Manager

<http://ditto-cp.sourceforge.net/>

Winsplit Revolution

<http://www.winsplit-revolution.com/>

And ToDoList is the best lightweight, local list/project manager I've come across. I've read that it runs fine under Wine, and it writes to a usable XML format.

<http://www.codeproject.com/KB/applications/todolist2.aspx>

</comment><comment><USER26> I've got a little windows utility called "open". If I'm in a dos box and want to open a windows explorer instance in the current directory, I just type "open .". It globs too, so if I'd like to view all the pdf files in the current directory, I can "open *.pdf". I use it all the time.

NTP has been ported to windows, and I run it on all my machines.

rsync, of course.

NSIS for building install programs. Maybe there's something better out there-- I haven't looked in a while.

I'm still on the fence about dropbox...maybe.

<comment><USER27> The cmd builtin 'start' will do much of that, but not for globs.

Under cygwin, I'd do this for an equivalent to what you describe as 'open':

        #!/bin/bash
        for f; do
          cygstart "$f"
        done

cygstart is much the same as cmd start, except it understands Cygwin paths.

<comment><USER26> And globbing is _exactly_ why I wrote open, instead of using start. Good point about cygstart; I'd forgotten about it.

Almost forgot about another one--I still use some of the MS powertoys.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER28> I've found that the windows key + start typing is pretty nice in Win 7, removes the need for many other utilities.

      1. Display Fusion (In UltraMon the font on task bars in my 2nd and 3rd monitor is unreadable)
      2. Ditto - clipboard manager (free, open source )
      3. Used so be Foxit Reader, now it's Sumatra PDF
      4. Used to use Foxit's ifilter for searching PDF's but now I see it's commercial: http://www.foxitsoftware.com/pdf/ifilter/

</comment><comment><USER29> I'll spare everyone the Outlook/OneNote and just list the _possibly_ unusual:

      - VistaSwitcher (alt-tab replacement)
      - FeedDemon (most RSS is actually on iPhone with MobileRSS)
      - LastPass (Firefox plugin)
      - HandBrake (and complimentary Bulk Rename Utility)
      - Paint.Net (free image editor)
      - Windows Live Photo Gallery
      - Live Mesh
      - JungleDisk (backup to S3)

<comment><AUTHOR> Be careful with FeedDemon. It uses IE to display blog posts, and we all know what may happen if you browse the net with IE...

</comment></comment><comment><USER30> "I can't imagine working on a computer without Total Commander. [...] . Total Commander is what separates boys from men."

Every other pieces of software on the list is optional for me, except Total Commander. It's the _only_ software I ever miss when not on windows (and fortunately I'm rarely on windows anymore these days). I have found nothing that comes even close to it on linux/macos.

<comment><USER31> On Windows, my tasks generally involve using Visual Studio for editing files and Remote Desktop for deployment. On Linux, I think a lot more before I type out that one liner.

So, what value does Total Commander provide? I'm always interested in being more efficient.

<comment><USER30> It's like the vi or emacs of file managers. It's kinda hard to explain. It's value increases exponentially with the amount of customization you put into it. I polished my settings for years until I got to what I'm using now; but from then on, I never changed a single setting, I'm using the same settings file as for version 4 - current version is 7; It's got everything from different colors by file type to shortcuts for different folders, ftp, scp, crc verification, multiple file rename, viewers for lots of formats, tons of plugins...

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER32> Snagit v9 (photo editing, screen capturing)

Tableau (hands down the best analytics tool for web traffic)

Balsamiq Mockups (great wireframe software, just like paper/pencil!)

<comment><USER33> For screen capture stuff I tend to use <http://jingproject.com>

</comment></comment><comment><USER34> _FTP is dead and unsecure._

Is SFTP bad? I have problems with WinSCP using SCP all the time I don't have with the same app using SFTP.

Example, if you're wondering: [http://www.linuxquestions.org/questions/linux- general-1/scp-...](http://www.linuxquestions.org/questions/linux- general-1/scp-text-file-busy-error-365198/)

<comment><USER35> SFTP is a file transfer protocol over SSH, so it is plenty secure. See: <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/SSH_file_transfer_protocol>

</comment></comment><comment><USER36> Does anyone know of good ram disk software for windows? In Ubuntu I just put my project files in /dev/shm and they are really in ram but I can't find a good one for Windows. I had bought a software to do this a while back but I no longer have it. Looking for a free/open alternative.

<comment><AUTHOR> Try ImDisk: <http://www.ltr-data.se/opencode.html#ImDisk>

</comment></comment><comment><USER37> Google desktop anyone?

It's fast and searches in your outlook email. I get about 120 emails a day and reply to a lot of them. Any effort to organize them (I recommend CleaContext for this task) will include some errors at which point only a powerful search tool like google desktop can help.

<comment><USER19> Has it become any less bloated over the years? I tried it some 5 years ago and it devastated my computer's performance. Was very surprising for a google app, too.

</comment></comment><comment><USER38> PrtScr - for screenshots is something I recently discovered. It's a neat little app.

<comment><USER39> Huh?

The PrtSc key on your keyboard does the same. Fire up MS Paint and paste into it :-D

<comment><USER38> That app lets you mark the screen and select the area of the screen to screenshot just from hitting the PrtScrn key.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER40> Here's my list of how to make a Windows machine more hospitable for a focus- follows-mouse Linux user:

<http://www.welton.it/articles/windows_for_linux_users>

</comment><comment><USER33> Seconded:

* Synergy

* Beyond Compare

* Dependency Walker

* Sysinternals tools (of course, use <http://live.sysinternals.com> for easy download goodness)

Why isn't 7-Zip on that list? ( <http://7-zip.org> )

</comment><comment><USER41> Why is VMWare and Beyond Compare listed as shareware? VMWare Player is free, but not Workstation. And I doubt Server is either (haven't looked). Beyond Compare is great, but it costs $30.

<comment><USER42> Server is free. <http://www.vmware.com/products/server/> \-- Mac vmware fusion still costs, though.

</comment></comment><comment><USER43> "As crappy as SQLyog is, it's somehow the most usable MySQL front-end."

Ain't that the truth. The sucky thing is not only is SQLYog the best Windows frontend, it's better than anything on OS X too.

</comment><comment><USER44> My list is rather small:

Beyond Compare \- I have yet to find a comparison tool which is as versatile as Beyond Compare.

ClipX \- It will change your life! :)

Vim \- Can't live without it.

<comment><USER8> How does one change the paste in ClipX to Win+V like the author suggested? I can only change it to Ctrl/Alt/Shift+V.

<comment><AUTHOR> It's always been Win+V by default for me...

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER45> Everything search. Changed my life.

<http://www.voidtools.com/>

</comment><comment><USER46> I prefer FreeOTFE to TrueCrypt because it can use LUKS partitions (which are used by Linux).

</comment><comment><USER47>
      1. CodeSmith
      2. RoboCopy
      3. TortoiseSvn

</comment><comment><USER48> Sysinternals stuff: Regmon, Filemon, TCPView

</comment><comment><USER49> must-haves for whom?

I can't think of any identifiable group of users for whom this list can be the list of must-haves..

<comment><USER50> yeah a lot of the entries are garbage. windows media player classic is, according to him, the best video program on windows.

what.

<comment><USER51> Media Player Classic and especially its Home Cinema variant is excellent video player. It isn't really related to Windows Media Player in any way.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER52> The only program one needs in Windows is putty, so to be able to connect to a REAL computer.</comment>


The $5000 Compression Challenge - <AUTHOR> http://www.patrickcraig.co.uk/other/compression.htm <comment><AUTHOR> I wonder if Mike Goldman ever made a response after everything was published. I found very distasteful when he threatened to accuse Patrick of fraud.

He should have recognized that the rules where vaguely stated and at the very least offer an apology. Plain refusing to download all his files, when he had expressly accepted multiple files at being ok was kind of weird.

The google groups link in the page no longer works so I wonder if that's archived elsewhwere.

<comment><USER2> > when he threatened to accuse Patrick of fraud

Exactly. He was the one committing the fraud.

To quote Mike Goldman (fta): "I cannot fathom that someone would read the comp.compression faq first and then want to participate after understanding the futility of the effort. On the other hand, some people just don't understand information theory too well."

He took $100 from this guy knowing he was frauding him! It was like watching a game of nerd 3-card monte.

<comment><USER3> Exactly, I consider Mike to be acting in bad faith here. Mike was willing to accept $100 (which in most of the world constitutes many hours of labor) not just once, but every time people wanted to play again. He was willing to accept real money for something that he believed was literally _impossible_. Mike didn't hint at the impossibility in any way. E.g. if he had said "Have you read the FAQ and you still sure you want to play?" I would view it in different light. But no, Mike seemed all to eager to accept the money.

So yes, then when a taker appears he's either not very bright (and therefore you shouldn't take advantage of him) or he's trying to out-hussle (and playing legalese with the terms is then fair game). After Mike got beaten at his own game he then continued to (a) weasel out of it (b) threaten legal action (c) attempt to deflect.

Not exactly a class act by Mike.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER2> Just to clarify, the guy made a contest that he knew, statistically, could not be won except if the random data file he produced just happened to be compressible (due to luck alone).

In other words, he knowingly accepted money in a contest of chance not a contest of skill. So this contest (assuming either participant was in the US at the time) violated federal and state laws against unlicensed gambling operations, correct? [Assuming Mike Goldman did not possess a license to operate an online casino in 2001]

</comment><comment><USER4> surprised all the comments here are about whether he achieved compression or not. Point = Missed!

the entire thing was an ingenious trolling exercise, as he says, to 'out trick the trickster'. his goal was to exploit the loose wording of the challenge, and prove a point (possibly winning $5k in the process); I found it an entertaining story along those lines.

it proves nothing (new) about compression, or lack of it; he even stats that the consensus at the time was 'unanimous' that no compression had taken place. that's not where the interest in this link/story lies.

thanks for the original link, OP.

</comment><comment><USER5> The argument is over whether the challenge is identical with its spirit or with its statement. Patrick clearly failed the spirit of the challenge. He tried to exploit a loophole in the statement of the challenge. So what which is the actual challenge?

Actually, it doesn't matter. Patrick failed to complete the challenge _as stated_ , which is important because he was exploiting a loophole in the statement. Technically, his files were smaller. But technically, he was required to _send_ Mike his files and decompresser. Instead, he put them on his server and sent Mike their location. Mike then had to _get_ the files. It goes both ways.

Finding loopholes, while clever, isn't terribly interesting.

<comment><USER3> > But technically, he was required to send Mike his files and decompresser. > Instead, he put them on his server and sent Mike their location. Mike then > had to get the files. It goes both ways.

In that case Patrick could just argue he hadn't sent the files at all (since Mike refused to accept them by refusing to download them) and that therefore the bet was still on, so he can still send the files by email or whatever.

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> Look at the relevant part of the exchange:

> > I meant can I send you a compressor and several compressed files whose > total file size is less than the original uncompressed file and from which I > can regenerate the original uncompressed file > > Patrick

> Sure -- but you send me a _decompressor_ , I don't need the compressor.

Was this "compressor" vs. "decompressor" actually a slip up, or intentional to distract from the importance of what he was asking?

</comment><comment><USER7> I read through the compression FAQ and found it quite interesting. I had never heard the counting argument before, but it's very intuitive.

Part of the FAQ is a collection of crazies claiming that they have created novel compression techniques. One entry is about Jules Gilbert, but it ends abruptly. I googled him and found that the crazy continues....

>I am afraid that I am not a fan of Google. They are gay-friendly and also they suppressed lot's of stuff about Obama before he was nominated, and again, before he was elected.

<http://scientopia.org/blogs/goodmath/2010/08/13/969/>

</comment><comment><USER8> Obviously Patrick met the requirements of the loosely worded challenge.

Though I wonder if the inverse would be acceptable. Take 100 files all the same size, but smaller than the filesystem block size. These files are n _100 bytes, but take up blocksize_ 100 bytes on the disk. Then, using tar (which itself does not compress, just tacks files end to end with metadata in between), 'compress' them into a single file that takes up fewer disk blocks than before.

</comment><comment><USER9> I dont think he completed the challenge. He found a loophole, so _maybe_ you could say he was successful. In exploiting the rules that is, not in solving the problem that Goldman stated. Still a clever solution, but obviously not what was asked for.

<comment><USER10> Every technique is "just a loophole" when it's first discovered.

<comment><USER9> But he didnt actually succeed in getting the desired result- the problem was that the statement of the problem was flawed. There obviously is a difference between what Goldstein meant, and what he said.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> Perhaps a stupid question, but is the challenge not also solvable with 'honest' comp.sci? The way I think about it at the moment, is that I take a family of functions, C_k, which map the space of n elements strings to the space of [1, 2n] element strings ( the union of m element strings for 0 > m > 2n) in a essentially random way. The output is then in [1, n - sizeof(C_k) -1] with some probability p and if I try long enough, I find a compression scheme which compresses the given input.

<comment><USER12> No, it is defInitely not possible. If it were, you could do it over and over again and compress any file down to an arbitrarily small size. Two things to search for are "pigeonhole principle" and "kolmogerov complexity."

Essentially the problem is that any encoding of a string either preserves the length of all possible inputs, or shortens some inputs and lengthens others, or lengthens all inputs. There is no encoding that shortens all strings because of the pigeonhole principle. To apply this to the challenge, see that the challenge is to encode the string as a program that when executed produces the string. Just because the encoding language is Turing complete does not mean that it can evade the pigeonhole principle.

<comment><USER13> But the challenge isn't to compress random strings, the challenge is to compress _a_ specific random string. This means that given enough time, you should be able to come up with an algorithm or transformation that turns that specific string into something of lower entropy. I'm not saying this is very feasible, but it doesn't violate the pigeonhole principle.

For example, there is a fixed size algorithm to generate the digits of pi, even though pi is incompressible.

<comment><USER14> Yes it does. Lets say for simplicity that you are coding your solution in python, and that your output should be written to standard out, and the output file should be 10^6 bytes. Consider the function that takes a source file of at most 10^6 to the standard output of said program when interpreted. The set from which files you need to output, are drawn has cardinality 2^(10^6). The set of python programs (possibly invalid) that are strictly shorter has cardinality 2^(10^6-1). If all files were possible to compress, than a python interpreter would provide an injective map (one program gives maximum one output, possibly none if the program has errors) from a smaller set to a larger set. This is impossible. Therefore there is at least one file(actually a lot of them but this is beside the point) which cannot be compressed. Mike could send this one.

EDIT: Messed up my bits and bytes and fenceposts: size 1: 256^(10^6). Size 2: sum (i=1 to 10^6) 256^(10^6-i)

<comment><USER14> Praptak: >Only assuming he'd be able to generate one. Is there a known algorithm for generating a provably Kolmogorov-uncompressible strings?

In the theoretical case he has almost a 255/256 of doing it he generates a string in a truly random fashion. In the practical case his odds are much better. Many potential programs will a) refuse to run and b) give the same output.

<comment><USER15> > In the theoretical case he has almost a 255/256 of doing it he generates a > string in a truly random fashion.

An interesting result. Do you have a link to the proof?

<comment><USER16> Proof:

There are k strings of bytelength n.

There are k * 256 strings of bytelength n+1.

k input strings can decompress to at most k output strings

Therefore only k / (k * 256) of length n+1 strings can be compressed by a byte.

The reason for 'almost' is the miniscule number of strings that will compress more than one bye.

<comment><USER15> Ah right, I totally missed the fact that compression by 1 bit doesn't beat the challenge!

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER17> _I think anyone would agree that if you sent me an uncompressed file of size 1000 bytes and I sent you a decompressor of size 400 bytes and a compressed file of size 599 bytes, I would have met the challenge in spite of the fact that these two files will take up more disk space than the original file._

I don't agree, since the compressor can be tuned to the data you could just move some of the data into the "decompressor" and end up with an arbitrarily small "compressed" file.

<comment><USER18> Read again: The sum total of the file sizes of the "decompressor" and "compressed file" had to be less than the original file. So moving data into the decompressor would do nothing.

He did "win" on a technicality: The challenge did not count the size of the filesystem metadata towards the sum, so he hid information there.

Also tuning the decompressor to the specific data-set was entirely allowed, even intended. Otherwise it would be obvious that the challenge is impossible, in this way it depends on a sufficiently random data set.

<comment><USER17> I'm responding specifically to the part that I quoted, which would have allowed the compressor + compressed data to be larger than the original data.

<comment><USER10> The part you quoted doesn't say that.

Regardless, it boils down to this: Do you feel the rules of the challenge forbid shifting an arbitrary amount of information from the compressed file into the decompressor?

<comment><USER19> Shifting from the compressed file to the decompressor is totally allowed. What is not is shifting it to the filesystem. For example, he could have named the decompressor file with the first 512 bytes of data and then the decompressor concatenates the filename with the rest of the data. However the filesystem is still storing more data than it was before.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER20> Since he offers $5000 but you only need to pay $100 to participate it is quite easy to win money with the challenge. Ask for a file of 2 bits in length. If it is "11" then compress it to "1". Otherwise compress it to "0X" where X is the contents of the file. Now you have a 1 in 4 chance of winning the challenge. Since you pay $100 but win $5000, this earns good money. Plus it would be hard to argue that this is cheating.

The problem is that you need to supply the decompressor as well. It would depend on how exactly he wants the decompressor be encoded, but the same strategy may still apply with modifications (although it would not work if the required encoding is as a bash script, since lg(100/5000) gives you just 2 bits to play with). [Or you could ask him to modify the challenge such that you are allowed to send him an encrypted decompressor _before_ he sends you the data, and doesn't count towards the total file size (encrypted because otherwise he'll see your strategy and send you a file that it _doesn't_ work on)]

tl;dr: although you can't compress random with probability > 1/2, you can compress random data with probability > 100/5000.

<comment><USER21> Yeah, so you could win a different incorrectly posed challenge from the original incorrectly posed challenge.

<comment><USER20> As I said, you can also win the original challenge with this method. The original challenge is not fully specified. In particular it is not specified how the decompressor is to be encoded. There are encodings for the decompressor for which the strategy that I described does work, and encodings for which it does not work.

The interesting attribute of this method is that it does genuinely compress the file: it doesn't store data in hidden attributes like the method of the OP (which stores information in the file lengths).

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER22> I wonder what the probability that a files is not compressible is.

Even more, I wonder if the likelihood that a file is compressible increases, decreases, or is constant with relation to file size.

My assumption would be that 50% of files are not compressible at a given size, and that compressibility doesn't vary with file size.

<comment><USER15> > My assumption would be that 50% of files are not compressible at a given > size, and that compressibility doesn't vary with file size.

This would mean that say, for a 2 MB random file there's 75% chance that at least one of its halves is compressible but only 50% chance that the file as a whole is compressible. Not impossible but suspicious if you ask me.

<comment><USER22> No, it would mean for a 2mb random file, there's a 50% chance that at least one of its halves is compressible.

<comment><USER15> Do you also state that there's only 50% chance of having at least one tails when throwing two (edit:unbiased) coins?

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER23> I guess I'm missing something here :-)

      ls -la /bin/tar
      230464 Feb 25  2010 /bin/tar

If tar can compress and decompress an arbitrary length file by more than 230464 bytes then doesn't it meet the challenge?

Even if I've misunderstood, can anyone explain in plain english why this is a futile task?

<comment><USER24> Lossless compression works by exploiting redundancy in the data.

If I want to compress a text file that contains the word 'uncharacteristically' 1000 times, I can simply replace ever occurrence with the a certain short unused byte sequence and record the mapping in the header.

Similarly in an image file, if there is a block of 50 pixels that are all the same color, I can replace that block with a special byte sequence and map the coordinates and color in the header.

But if I have truly random data, there are no patterns to exploit. The shortest means of representing random data - is the data itself.

This is provable using information theory (which in a way is a branch of thermodynamics).

<comment><USER21> nitpick: There is no such thing as a truly random piece of data. "Truly random" is only meaningful in the limit as the file size goes to infinity. The string "000000" could be generated by a truly random process just as well as any any other.

<comment><USER24> I meant Kolmogorov randomness which is defined via incompressibility.

<comment><USER21> Fair enough, but Kolmogorov randomness is an existence concept, not a constructive concept, so I find it weird to talk about having such a string in this case where a real person sets about to generate a concrete file.

Can you generate a Kolmogorov random file on your particular Unix system? That requires specifying what "your Unix system" rather rigorously, which seems unpleasant.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER25> If you just have to decompress a single file, I don't see why this problem is impossible since you can tune your decompressor to that file.

For example, files containing the digits of pi or e will have a uniform distribution of bytes (and are therefore incompressible by exploiting redundancy) but it is very easy to write a "decompressor" for them as there is a simple algorithm to obtain these numbers.

Is there a simple algorithm for every possible number? Because then it just becomes a question of finding the algorithm that generates that number. My intuition tells me "yes" but that it may be very hard to find it. Plus, you don't need to find an algorithm for the whole file, just some subsection of it.

<comment><USER26> Think about it as identifying patterns. You can always remove chunks of the original file and then simply re-add them with instruction as following: "Add pattern 23989898989 to 234d, 387th and 1028th point of this file." If your pattern is big relative to the file size and repeats often, you will save space. However, if the file is truly random, the larger the pattern, the less frequently you will see it. Very large patterns will be seen only once. Very small patterns will require more information to encode their place than you're saving by removing them from the file.

<comment><USER25> Yes, I see why a repetition/pattern approach wouldn't work, but I'm proposing something else: That the file may be generated by an algorithm, in the way one generates the digits of pi using an algorithm.

It's similar to how if I suspected he had generated his random file with a mersenne twister I could simply guess his seed and reproduce the file from it. (Though, I realize now this is an NP-hard problem)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER27> Tsk tsk...hackers and a coding challenge are the last things you should except to be devoid of loopholes and tricks. Always be extra careful making them, and don't bet more than you can afford, or you'll come out with a rep like Mike.

</comment><comment><USER28> def decompress(filesize, sha1hash, openingbits, closingbits): for candidate in bits(filesize,openingbits): if sha1(candidate) == sha1hash: if candidate[-(len(closingbits)):] == closingbits: return candidate

<comment><USER29> That'll only take about 10^585 years, assuming you can do a billion hashes a second. Good luck!

<comment><USER28> Nobody said it would need to be quick.

<comment><USER30> I thought of using hashes too, but then I realized that after thousands of years, the program is only going to output a collision, and not the original data.

Checking the first and last few bits reduces the number of collisions, but there are still 2^unchecked_bits/2^160 cyphers which map to the same hash. You could store the number of collisions to skip along with the hash, but that number will be about (unchecked_bits - 161) bits long, so that won't work either.

<comment><USER28> Adding md5 (or whichever other hashing function), I have a feeling (but no direct proof of) it's not just equivalent to adding bits to the sha hash. Anyone with a better sense for hashing than me why my intuition is wrong?

<comment><USER30> Whether you have two 128-bit hashes or one 256-bit hash, you're still trying to fit 2^n pigeons into (2^128)*(2^128) = 2^256 pigeonholes.

Maybe your intuition is telling you that two hashes must be more secure because if one of the two hash functions turns out to be easy to break, then at least you will still be protected by the other?

<comment><USER28> No, what I was thinking was more like coverage. For any given hash, you do NOT have the same coverage for the other hash function. Let's make a bucket of all the originating bits of length n that will deliver a collision for one hash function. You are not guaranteed that the results of another hashing function has a uniform distribution. I still think I am wrong but you did not convince me.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER31> Somebody please enlighten me. Is it that hard to find a pattern (for example fibonacci) that only has zeros up to F100, then remove those zeros?

You dont have to start from the first bit, you can start from bit 11234 (information on the decompiler).

So for example I skip 11134, then run +F(i) bits to the right and add a zero, then run +F(i + 1) bits to the right and add a new zero.. etc etc. The pattern has to be just long enough to cover the decompiler's size, which shouldn't be too much if scripting is allowed!

I believe that discovery of such a pattern shouldn't be too hard in a single file, arbitrary large (but 3mb should be enough too)

<comment><USER32> You are welcome to try! This really is an application of number theory, and the likelihood of there being a sufficiently long pattern in truly random data is actually pretty slow.

</comment></comment><comment><USER33> This brings up some cool questions about compression. Can any experts help me out here?

How many n-bit strings can be compressed? (I think this question is how many have a Kolmogorov complexity of less than n.)

Also, what is the difference between the statements "no program can compress every string" and "not every string can be compressed by some program". I think both are true, but they're referring to different strings, so it's kind of odd....

<comment><USER34> > Also, what is the difference between the statements "no program can compress > every string" and "not every string can be compressed by some program".

The first is true, and you can show this with the pidgeon hole principle. The second isn't true. The reason for this is that you can put different information in each program.

To use the example from recursive below:

> You could do it like this: If the first bit is a 0, remove it.

There's a program that'll work for half of the strings. For the other half, you could use the program "If the first bit is a 1, remove it.".

</comment></comment><comment><USER35> Can anyone explain what this section is talking about? I'm completely not following it:

cat $1 printf "X" cat $0 exit

<comment><USER36> Say I have an original file: AAAAAAAAXAAAAAAA

If I split it into two files, $1 and $2 that look like this: $1 - AAAAAAAA $2 - AAAAAAA

I have now "saved" one byte by dropping the X.

The script "cat $1 printf "X" cat $0 exit" will combine those two files and reinsert the X, thus "decompressing" the data. Basically, he has replaced the byte "X", which counted towards the total size, with the EOF marker on the filesystem, which technically didn't count.

No space was actually saved, because he basically moved the information from the X character to metadata (the file splits).

<comment><USER35> but the script is longer than the one byte that he saves, right? So the total is greater than the original file.

That's where I'm getting confused.

<comment><USER14> He won one byte per file.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER37> What he should've done is just create a new file whose name is a text encoding of the data in the original file, but it is 1 byte long. Then to decompress, just take the name of the file, and use that to create the data.

<comment><USER18> If you read the linked page, you'll see that he considered this, but dismissed it as cheating.

Also, in the end he did hide information in the file metadata, just in a much more subtle way.

</comment></comment><comment><USER38> Let's all send him 100$, jackass.

</comment><comment><USER21> This was the day that Mike learned the difference between theory and practice: In theory, there is no difference between theory and practice; but in practice, there is.

When I read the challenge, and saw that arbitrary Unix programs were allowed, my first idea for a compressor was to scan the OS software for snippets of data that match the source data.

Of course, that was 10 years ago. Today, in the Cloud world, I'd just write a decompressor that connects to my system over the network and retrieves the source data.

<comment><USER39> You can be pretty sure that you wouldn't find the target in the OS software. For a well constructed output file, that has about the same likelihood as a randomly generated cryptographic hash collision.

As for your cloud solution, that could be defeated by running the decompressor offline.

<comment><USER40> you wouldn't find the entire target but you would find file in the operating system that had subsets of the target file.

<comment><USER41> Sigh. Claude Shannon is rolling in his grave.

<comment><USER42> Why is this an invalid approach? If you have an agreed-upon OS installation, you've got at least several hundred megabytes of binary data from which you can extract sequences for a lookup dictionary. To compress, you locate largest substrings of the input that also appear somewhere in the OS data. For example, you might find that bytes 1000-2000 of the input data are the same as bytes 4528-5528 of /bin/ls. Then you just need a program that can extract this byte range from /bin/ls and fill it in at the appropriate place.

Of course, it isn't a given that you will be able to find a sufficiently large overlapping substring in the OS binary data. And it may not be allowed to assume an agreed-upon OS installation, although it was OK to assume that gunzip was available. And finally, doing this sort of largest-overlapping- substring search could be very very slow.

The real key here is that the challenge is about compressing one specific random file. It's clearly impossible to write a compressor that can represent ANY sequence of N bytes in fewer than N bytes including the decompressor. But this challenge is constrained to reconstructing a single input file, not handling arbitrary inputs. If the input files are random, and you keep asking for them, there's a tiny chance you'll get one with enough repetition that even gzip could compress it. If you can key against a large set of reference data, your odds improve significantly.

So, I don't know if this is a practical approach given the restrictions of the contest, the cost of entering, and the expected payoff, but I would say that if it is plausible to use a large body of OS files for lookup, this could be a winnable challenge.

<comment><USER26> _Of course, it isn't a given that you will be able to find a sufficiently large overlapping substring in the OS binary data._

It seems that it's a given that you will _not_ find that substring. The larger it is, the less likely you will find it and the less likely it will repeat in the uncompressed file.

<http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4617983>

<comment><USER42> Unlikely but not impossible. Note that the substring does NOT need to repeat in the uncompressed file; it just needs to be possible to say "copy bytes X through Y of /bin/ls here" in fewer than Y-X bytes. I'd love to know what the odds really are, but it seems like you have some good options for improving them (e.g. ask for a really huge input file).

<comment><USER39> > it just needs to be possible to say "copy bytes X through Y of /bin/ls here" > in fewer than Y-X bytes

It is very unlikely that the length of the sequence will be smaller than the space required to store X. Your plan is similar to saying "The input could contain long repeated segments containing only zeroes. Compress those using scheme Z. The longer the file, the more likely this is to occur.". Information theory allows us to prove that this cannot always work. In fact it is very unlikely to work for a specific randomly generated target file.

<comment><USER43> So by saying 'cannot _always_ work,' and 'very unlikely to work,' you are implicitly conceding the point- that it is possible. The question then becomes, given the size of the OS environment space (and the quality of the randomness in the originals), could one in 50 attempts actually succeed in shaving off a byte? I sincerely doubt that Mike, despite his superior knowledge of information theory, actually took the time to figure out just how good or bad the odds were. He assumed that it was fundamentally impossible, when it is in fact not impossible, just unlikely (to some unknown [to me] degree).

<comment><USER39> Let me just put it this way. It's more likely that you could win using gzip. It's similar to saying it's "possible" that the target file could have contained all zeroes.

Assuming the target file is competently constructed, the chances of winning wouldn't make it a rational bet for $0.01

<comment><USER44> I'm so sorry you had to suffer under these postings.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER21> This was a great social engineering hack: The original challenge, poorly stated as it was, was not beaten. Craig started up a conversation with Mike, and tricked him into changing the rules. If Mike were careful, he would have paused to think about whether the proposed rule change would open the door to a hack.

It's a reminder to all of us that correctness is an ongoing process, not a delivered product.

Mike started the thread as a smart-alec Randi-esque elder, putting up money to shut up cranks. But he got blinded by his hubris.

<comment><USER14> The original rules would have been beatable too. Just put the last 200 bytes in the filename.

<comment><USER21> The rules were certainly unclear on that point.

Mike didn't guarantee to preserve the file metadata. It seems eminently defensible for him to say that he was dealing in files, not filesystems, so he could rename the file upon receipt. In fact, the EOF-hack in Craig's solution turned on the assumption that the filesystem could be hacked by the challengee, so it seems fair to allow the challenger to hack the filesystem as well.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER21> Mike wrote a document (the challege), and offered a $5000 bug bounty. Patrick found a bug, Mike should have paid up and fixed the bug in the spec, just like Knuth pays for typos and Google pays for security bug reports.</comment>


Controversial website that lists 'predatory' publishers shuts down - <AUTHOR> http://www.nature.com/news/controversial-website-that-lists-predatory-publishers-shuts-down-1.21328 <comment><USER2> Sounds like he was bullied either via legal means where defending it was costly even of it was legal or bullied via or by his employer.</comment>


Ask HN: Gifts for Maker kids - <AUTHOR> Hello Hacker News!
I have 3 boys (9, 11 and 14) who have all asked for various maker type presents this year.
The youngest wants Lego Mindstorms, having taken a week long course in the summer at the local rec complex.
The middle one is the artistic type and has been asking for a 3D printer for a few years, and is also bugging me to get him into electronics.
The oldest is taking a robotics/automation course at junior high school and is asking for an Arduino, sensor kits and stuff to let him make up interesting projects.
I've been doing research and trying to find good electronics/robotics kits and a reliable and flexible 3D printer, but the options are vast and time is limited.
I thought I would ask the HN community for their thoughts and experiences, as it may provide information that is generally useful for the parents in the crowd.
Personally I'm trying to keep it around $500/kid, since I view this particular round of enthusiasm as an investment in their futures, but would be open to spending more (or less!). Any opinions on options at any price point would be interesting for discussion. <comment><USER2> Sad that this didn't garner discussion; I know I missed it. Hope you're still paying attention...

· Jewelbots – A Friendship Bracelet You Can Code | [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=15437242](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=15437242) (lots of links)

> _Robot Turtles > ([http://www.robotturtles.com/](http://www.robotturtles.com/)) makes a good > jumping-off point for further research as it is [often recommended] in this > category: > [https://hn.algolia.com/?query=robot%20turtles&sort=byDate&ty...](https://hn.algolia.com/?query=robot%20turtles&sort=byDate&type=comment) > _

· Ask HN: Looking for robot toys/kits for young ones | [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10352106](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10352106)

· Ask HN Parents: Cool Tech-Related Stuff You've Done with Your Kids? | [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1795923](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1795923)

My advice would be to get involved with similarly-minded groups in your area. In-person interaction with experts is invaluable; even better if they are purposely attempting to encourage kids to participate.

Not sure where you're located so I can't give specifics; here is one example organization, the FIRST Tech Challenge: [https://www.firstinspires.org/robotics/ftc](https://www.firstinspires.org/robotics/ftc)

</comment><comment><USER3> For 3d printing this is a build it yourself kit so it can come with a learning curve. Also with this kit you can later add extra functionality to the printer. [https://folgertech.com/collections/3d-printer-full- kits/prod...](https://folgertech.com/collections/3d-printer-full- kits/products/folger-tech-ft-5-large-scale-3d-printer-kit)

A raspberry pi kit would also be good for getting into electronics and programming.

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks for the reply and the link!</comment></comment>


Walter Murch: The legendary film editor on underlying patterns in the cosmos - <AUTHOR> http://nautil.us/issue/30/identity/ingenious-walter-murch <comment><USER2> >"Bode's law," formulated in the 18th century, which holds that planets and moons orbit their hosts at predictable mathematical ratios.

I think this is a very unclear description of the "Bode's law" hypothesis. How does an object orbit another at a ratio? Thankfully Wikipedia provides a much more sensible explanation. (Also, is "host" really a term used by astronomers for orbited celestial bodies? With respect to the Sun, is Earth a "guest," or maybe a "parasite?")

Perhaps I'm just picky, but this piece strikes me as rather "fluffy." Murch shares very little in the way of concrete or actionable thinking. There's a lot of praise and little justification for it. Generally speaking I dislike interviews of this sort: even James Lipton doesn't stroke the ego quite so much while requiring so little of his guests. There also seems to be a certain desperation here to arrive at the conclusion that the humanities have a meaningful contribution to make toward a scientific or objective understanding of the universe.

<comment><USER3> The Wikipedia article sadly neglects to mention the work of mathematician Mary Blagg in the early 20th century ([https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mary_Adela_Blagg](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mary_Adela_Blagg)), and the in-depth examination by Michael Martin Nieto in the 1970s.

That's a significant oversight; Nieto himself pointed out how a kind of cultural 'momentum' in the scientific community kept the old, obsolete ideas in vogue, while more thorough work was ignored. Heck, on this topic, even my undergraduate astrophysics text was a couple of centuries out of date!

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> Some of us first heard of Bode's Law[0] in childhood in the late 1950s, from reading Heinlein's "Time for the Stars"[1]. I have never forgotten a throw- away remark by one of the characters, when Earth's first-ever starship has for the first time entered a different planetary system, to the effect that "the astronomer types upstairs are all excited because the orbits here fit Bode's Law."

[0] [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Titius%E2%80%93Bode_law](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Titius%E2%80%93Bode_law)

[1] [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Time_for_the_Stars](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Time_for_the_Stars)</comment>


The Russians are screwing with the GPS system - <AUTHOR> https://www.businessinsider.com/gnss-hacking-spoofing-jamming-russians-screwing-with-gps-2019-4 <comment><AUTHOR> I'm thinking of how to defeat GPS spoofing. Crowdsourcing location information in real time would be one way to detect spoofing attacks as they happen and extrapolate the correct location information based on previously known 'good' GPS data. An app, similar to Waze, could easily achieve this.</comment>


Florida court demands suspect's iPhone passcode - <AUTHOR> http://www.bbc.com/news/technology-38303977 <comment><USER3> >"We question whether identifying the key which will open the strongbox - <USER2> that the key is surrendered - is, in fact, distinct from telling an officer the combination," wrote Judge Black.

Well, the circuit court is right, there really isn't much difference between forcing someone to give you a key and forcing someone to give you a password.

The article did a really bad job of explaining the legal parts of the argument (as nearly all articles do). The whole key vs combination distinction wasn't a part of the Doe vs US. decision, it was actually a part of the dissent (dissent means the opinion of the minority judges which isn't really law).

The issue here was self-incrimination and self-incrimination only applies to "testimonial evidence", testimonial evidence that is evidence that communicates some information. If that sounds confusing as hell, that's because it is, it's an absolutely vague and ridiculous standard that can go any way depending on who looks at it.

For example, the Supreme court has at various times decided that being forced to give your name is, and is not a violation of the right against self incrimination(1). It's a terrible standard and I think that's why it gives room to so much back and forth. In this case, the courts were trying to decide if an i-phone password is "testimonial" as described by the Supreme Court and of course, it can go either way and no one is really sure because the standard doesn't make any sense.

1\. California v. Byers, 402 U.S. 424 (1971) for yes, Pennsylvania v. Muniz, 496 U.S. 582 (1990) for no.

</comment><comment><USER4> What would happen if the defendant forgets the passcode, a la Alberto Gonzales?

</comment><comment><USER5> Would this case set a precedent?

<comment><USER6> In Florida's Second District.</comment></comment>


Why Excel still dominates the market - <AUTHOR> http://damngruchy.tumblr.com/post/49806461415/supermassiveasshole-i-was-teaching-my-grandma

<comment><USER2> It should say, 'because Excel is bundled with MS Office, the only software Joe Sixpack can buy at the computer store'. Monopoly also has a long tail.

<comment><AUTHOR> Sure, there are many reasons. My point for posting is that one of those reasons is that people with any skill set can, and do, pick it up and bend it to whatever purpose they desire.

There have been a number of HN discussions over the past few months debating why "inferior" products like Excel can continue to dominate while solutions that are "better" are constantly struggling to find market share. Having a program that is somehow useful for everyone from major banks to 80 year old retirees is an important factor in the longevity of this software - even if it isn't necessarily the perfect tool for every use case.

<comment><USER2> Free spreadsheets have been available for many years. Excel was feature complete in 1998. Monopoly perpetuates it.</comment></comment></comment>


Serverless made quick and easy. Quickly scaffolding your next Serverless project - <AUTHOR> https://github.com/haseebnqureshi/serverless-hq <comment><AUTHOR> Just released 0.1.6 beta. Need to add custom domain mappings via Route53 and certificate manager

<comment><AUTHOR> Just released 0.3.0 API -- completely rehashed the flow from earlier.

Comes now with command prompts that just builds what you want, almost without thought.</comment></comment>


Most States That Are Reopening Fail to Meet White House Guidelines - <AUTHOR> https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2020/05/07/us/coronavirus-states-reopen-criteria.html <comment><USER2> Keith Collins writes mostly business articles for NYT. This kind of shady journalism is probably better written by NYT medical-related staff. #caring</comment>