Show HN: Redstone, a distributed Minecraft server that runs on Node.js - <AUTHOR> http://www.redstone.io/ <comment><USER2> Seriuosly interested, why is Node.js better suited as a gameserver than say C or Java ?

What exactly are you doing on the serverside? Is it an authorative setup or are you just passing position messages around (in which cases huge amounts of players wouldnt be suprising) ?

Did you reverse engineer minecrafts multiplayer protocol or is this an alternate implementation?

 _EDIT_ just looked it up and it seems like the minecraft network protocol is public, so no reverse engineering needed. It also looks like its not an authorative setup which could cause cheating problems in PvP enviroments down the line

<comment> throwaway54-762 Sure, Java or C will be much faster at any computational work. And I am no node.js fan-boi. But doing actual asynchronous local-file IO in C is non- trivial, and if their server is not CPU bound, there doesn't seem to be anything wrong with using node.js. Could you also use libuv from C? Sure.

<comment><USER3> "Java or C will be much faster at any computational work"

That is far from clear. I've been using nodejs for some computational work using <https://github.com/substack/gamma.js> and <https://github.com/niggler/bessel> and found that the JS version is faster than the straightforward Java implementation.

<comment><USER4> The OP made too general of a statement because there are certain cases where V8 can preform better than the JVM; however, generally Java does seem to perform better (ignoring startup time).

[http://benchmarksgame.alioth.debian.org/u64/benchmark.php?te...](http://benchmarksgame.alioth.debian.org/u64/benchmark.php?test=all&lang=v8&lang2=java)

In the linked benchmarks, V8 only has a decided advantage executing regexes.

<comment><USER5> Heh. Last time I checked v8 regexes were really fast, except their string builder was a disaster... it wrapped every piece of string as a js object (gc and everything).

<comment><USER6> Sounds familiar to Java's own string concatenation. In Java you use StringBuilder / Buffer to create larger strings from smaller ones; in Node you'd use Buffers, although I never dived too deep into those.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment> throwaway54-762 Cool, a distributed minecraft server. But where's the source, or something more technically meaty? "I made a distributed X and here's some screenshots" isn't _that_ interesting alone.

<comment><USER7> Well, I'm logged in right now and there's no lag with many players. Try it.

<comment> throwaway54-762 I am at work, and don't have minecraft on any machine nearby =).

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> Interesting that you guys are applying to YC 13. Note that YCombinator already have invested in a very similar company: Minefold[1].

TC had some info on that too[2].

[1] <https://minefold.com/>

[2] <http://techcrunch.com/2012/03/12/minefold-launch/>

<comment><USER9> The Minefold guys were just on our demo server! They're the best.

</comment></comment><comment> w-ll This might have come up on HN when it was released, but here it is anyway.

A minecraft server written in php.

edit: updated repo <https://github.com/shoghicp/PocketMine-MP>

<comment><USER10> Actual repo is <https://github.com/shoghicp/PocketMine-MP>, not sure why you linked to an outdated fork?

</comment></comment><comment><USER11> I like the line... "building penises out of dirt right now". Someone should put that on a T-shirt.

<comment><USER12> And wear it to PyCon...

(sorry, couldn't resist)

</comment></comment><comment><USER13> I was going to buy redstone.io for pretty much the same project. I was only late by 15 days. Oh well, such is life. Wish you luck!

<comment><AUTHOR> Haha, I almost waited to buy it. So how is your project the same?

<comment><USER13> It was going to use node.js; So far I have written my prototypes in CoffeeScript, but if I end up going through with my project it will likely be with vanilla JS. The premise of it wasn't for it to be a MMO.

You can imagine my surprise when I found out who purchased the domain and what projects you are working on, knowing that redstone.io was pretty much destined to be node.js and minecraft related.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> Do you have any sort of permission or support from Mojang? It might not be a good idea to invest a substantial amount of time in "A Minecraft MMO" without this...

<comment><USER9> We emailed them for permission to make a custom server a while back, and they said it was ok. We haven't contacted them specifically about the MMO yet though.

<comment><USER15> <http://minecraft.net/brand>

Just follow these and you'll be fine :-)

<comment><USER9> Ah, thank you! This is really useful. :)

Also, the statue you "erected" has unfortunately been destroyed. :(

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> How can it be on the front page of HN without any players in it? Or is that a bug as well? I'm flying around in a near-pristine and empty world.

[edit] I dug a hole, fell through, respawned, fell through my own hole. I'm sorry. I'm afraid everyone will fall through it now.

<comment><AUTHOR> When you made that comment, it was the middle of the night here. Everyone was online at USA after-work hours.

The reason the world was near-pristine was because I messed up the storage for this deployment, which made so every once in a while it would regenerate the chunks.

</comment></comment><comment><USER17> A Minecraft MMO? Would Mojang allow you to do that? Would Redstone still be categorized within the scope of a mod at that point?

Either way, I logged on for a bit, and there was no lag whatsoever with a ton of players online. Fascinating stuff.

<comment><USER9> Thanks for checking it out! I don't think we'd violate Mojang's brand policy, but we're waiting on a response from them to confirm that.

<comment><USER17> Interesting. Great work guys!

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER18> Mojang is already working on a Minecraft MMO [1] - how would this be different?

[1] [http://help.mojang.com/customer/portal/articles/1018151-mine...](http://help.mojang.com/customer/portal/articles/1018151-minecraft- realms)

<comment><AUTHOR> That isn't an MMO, it is just a server hosting service. However, if they wanted to add MMOs to Realms, they could acquire us. ;)

</comment></comment><comment><USER19> Please tell me you are going to opensource / release this, this would be so awesome for some Minecraft Related projects i'm doing ( Gigantic PVP & RPG Servers ) I just can't go >600 Players w/o lag on a decent E3 Series.

<comment><AUTHOR> I am leaning towards opensourcing it, but we don't want to do it too soon unless we realize we want to do a PaaS sort of thing.

</comment></comment><comment><USER20> I've seen lots of work on alternate Minecraft servers; has anyone worked on an open Minecraft client (obviously not named "Minecraft" for trademark reasons, but compatible with the network protocol)?

<comment><USER21> Manic Digger (<http://manicdigger.sourceforge.net/>) used to connect to Minecraft Classic servers. And a client for full Minecraft was planned.

But Notch didn't like seeing alternative clients, so I removed it from the game.

Also, see <http://wiki.vg/Client_List>

<comment><USER22> That's one of the reasons I don't like Notch. This game is literally perfect for WebGL. The rendering done is minimal, the CPU work done is minimal, the textures are (or could be) tiny, and the code required would be tiny.

But no, it's STILL in Java. Why?

<comment><USER23> You don't like notch, who is one of the nicest and modest people in the world, because of a programming decision he made on his game and his product? You may disagree with a business decision, but saying you dislike someone personally because of it is a bit much.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER24> is there a mailing list or something that I can join, besides the mlist for their far-from-now MMO release so that I can keep up on development?

Even more internets for open sourced on github perhaps?

<comment><USER9> We'll use this mailing list for anything interesting on the project, like open-sourcing it, even if it's not directly related to the MMO.

</comment></comment><comment><USER25> Nice.

How are people doing this? Are they reverse engineering Minecraft or is the server side fairly straightforward?

</comment><comment><USER26> A buggy server for a buggy game. Sounds like an adventure.

</comment><comment><USER27> How does this differ from spout except for being in Node?

</comment><comment><USER28> This is super neat!</comment>


China Sees Bankruptcies Surge; Bondholders May Get Less Back - <AUTHOR> https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2018-12-16/china-sees-bankruptcies-surge-with-call-to-resolve-zombies <comment><USER2> China has a pretty big layer of fictitious economics overlaying their real economy.

So the number of defaults is whatever they want them to be, at least in any particular sector. They can control this with the stroke of a few keys and tweaks of policies concerning lending etc..

As long as the real economy reaps real material gains ... and there are no shocks ... then the fiction can continue relatively unabated.

A lot of empty real estate is just fine in a county where more than 300M people still live in the doldrums, meaning, there's some market clearing availability/viability intrinsic to the situation (i.e. 'somebody' will buy the stuff in a panic, even rational speculators, meaning theirs a 'floor' to any panic in that sector, it's not a black hole)

Now if foreign orders for goods falter, that could definitely be a problem.

A real geopolitical calamity ... or something causing disruption to their new infrastructure projects etc. ... could be a problem.

But sans existential crisis there's no reason to panic there's a lot of room for adjustment.

Something to keep an eye on.

EDIT fyi here are countries with whom China has the biggest deficits, i.e. they buy more than import, granted this would exclude major US imports etc. but gives a hint of who is more dependant on China than otherwise:

Taiwan: -US$110.9 billion (country-specific trade deficit in 2017) South Korea: -$74.7 billion Australia: -$53.1 billion Switzerland: -$29.8 billion Brazil: -$29.4 billion Japan: -$28.1 billion Germany: -$25.7 billion Angola: -$18.1 billion Saudi Arabia: -$13.4 billion Malaysia: -$12 billion

So while fewer Chinese buyers of iPhones might not be good, at least the US gets even _cheaper_ stuff of the tons they already buy.

Whereas the Taiwanese will just be bloodied.

<comment><USER3> This reads like putting 2010 knowledge about China and Trump propaganda in a shaker and then really go at it for 10 minutes. Dude, get an update. We are in 2018.

Both Western and Chinese "fictitious overlay" to real market is so big that each can lose their current leadership position through that fantasy blowing up. In some regards the trade war is like this party game where you need to step on other people's balloon with your foot that has also a balloon attached.

The good news is, once one of the bubbles burst the other one can be exchanged step by step with real markets that are overtaken from the other.

<comment><USER2> My comments are valid in 2018, more so than ever.

China has a politically controlled economy, a politically controlled currency, no real or objective accounting standards, a politicized legal system, very high degrees of corruption, capital controls, massive state intervention in financial and other sectors, and a centrally planned economic orientation wherein especially banks take their marching orders from a single source.

So 'dude' , this is a fiction that does not exist even in 'Trump's America'.

American economic figures are open enough that they can be externally validated, and if you 'don't believe them' \- you can happily bet against the 'fiction' on the open markets. Yes - the Fed's action does amount to a kind of intervention, but even then we know mostly what they are doing. It's not a fiction, more than it is a calculation.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> Oof, that's gonna hurt their social credit score. I wonder if they'll be able to file for Chapter 1984 bankruptcy? =P

In all seriousness, I wonder if China does hit a recession, what the effects will be on the world economy?

<comment><USER5> It will be a nice crash. Look at their stock market over the year(s), both HK and Shanghai one. I would bet the recent drop in the US stock market is related to what is going on there.

<comment><USER6> Related, but the treasury rate hikes played a bigger part than the trade conflict.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> tldr section missed another important bullet point. "The new pace may continue: China's top planning body called on Dec. 4 for local officials to clean up the debt of firms with excess production capacity or insolvent balance sheets by 2020."

</comment><comment><USER8> I remember not long ago some of those Bonds from Chinese companies with Interest Rate of 13- 17%, and they were in USD. I was thinking that is too good to be true. As it turns out there is a high chances you don't get anything back.

The thing is I don't understand why and how there is a lack of liquidity in China. It all changes within 18 months, from they have too much money and starting buying even more overseas to literally scrambling for cash.

<comment><USER3> It is not news that you don't get anything back. There is a documentary (forgot the name, but should be googleble) about how China created loads of fake companies to get money from naive investors.

The problem with this whole situation since day one was: How can you be sure that you're not cheated if it's in the other side sovereign's interest when you get cheated.

So yes, there was probably never a point where you could have invested reasonably into Chinese bonds or stocks or startups.</comment></comment>


Show HN: Fast domain auction checking tool - <AUTHOR> http://www.domainsafrica.com/

<comment><AUTHOR> Hey guys,

I built this as a test app to consume the DomCop API. I managed to make it fast enough and with a (hopefully) useful interface for searching for domains that are on auction across various sites or have expired and can be back ordered.

Hope you guys like it. Let me know how I can make it better

Disclaimer/Warning: this webapp is deemed dangerous for anyone with a propensity to purchase domains they don't need :)

<comment><USER2> Nice clean design. What do the different colors for the boxes mean?

<comment><AUTHOR> The different colors are to represent the different page ranks of the domains. You can check the FAQ for what each color stands for. Basically grey = PR0, blue = PR1 or PR2, orange = PR3, Green = PR4 and Red = PR5+</comment></comment></comment>


About the Apple Card - <AUTHOR> https://dhh.dk/2019/about-the-apple-card.html <comment><USER3> I suspected the root cause of this situation was due to the income signal, not credit score. I bet that Goldman Sachs is not correctly accounting for California community property laws, where 50% of the household income is hers. This seems like the exact type of oversight that is:

\- Not "technically" using gender as a signal

\- Ends up practically causing gender-based unfairness

\- Is simply bad data and I would consider a bug

\- Is something customer service is not going to be helpful with

I'm glad this issue came to light. I hope it leads to productive conversations about black-box algorithms and underwriting.

<comment><USER4> I'm pretty sure household income is a federal thing coming from the Credit Card Act of 2009, not just CA community property laws. Every time I apply for a credit card it's been pretty clear they want household and nonwage income, not a solo salary.

Either way, it's baffling and I think this explains why my wife got such a piss poor credit limit on her Apple Card, something like 1/5 of another line of credit she has. I didn't even bother applying after seeing what she got.

The joke...? is on us though because we're both female.

<comment><USER3> I assume they pull income from a third party source to supplement the self- reported income. The third party income would be the source of the discrepancy.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> We're all very smart here for considering justifications as too why this happened, but please don't get lost in the weeds. The financial calculation here was ridiculously broken, and it needs to be fixed at almost all costs. As folks who use algorithms as tools, we should use this story as a reason to be more accountable. It's tone deaf to publicly postulate a lack of sexist intention for the sake of women reading this. We should solely be exploring how to fix this massive error.

<comment><USER6> Maybe millionaires aren't the favored customers of credit card companies. They'd get a bit more on interchange fees than the average customers but they'd never run a balance and pay interest or late fees.

<comment><USER5> True. But the point of the article was hoping it doesn't happen to regular folk.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> The crux of this issue is that Apple Card is only for individuals

>"As with any other individual credit card, your application is evaluated independently," Williams said in a statement. "We look at an individual's income and an individual's creditworthiness, which includes factors like personal credit scores, how much personal debt you have, and how that debt has been managed."

That setup makes it "possible for two family members to receive significantly different credit decisions," Williams said. He added that the bank is actively exploring ways to allow users to share their Apple Card with family members.

Goldman was aware of the potential issue before it rolled out the Apple Card in August, but it opted to go with individual accounts because of the added complexity of dealing with co-signers or other forms of shared accounts, according to a person with knowledge of the matter.

[https://www.cnbc.com/2019/11/11/goldman-wants-to-fix-the- app...](https://www.cnbc.com/2019/11/11/goldman-wants-to-fix-the-apple-card- flaw-that-has-users-claiming-bias.html)

<comment><USER8> She mentions she has better and longer credit history than David, and since they share all financial accounts, she likely reported her income as their joint income. I sincerely doubt they'd be raising this much fuss if she'd put $0 in the income box and was surprised.

Her point is that all those factors showed her as more credit worthy with the exception of 'Homemaker' and 'Female'.

<comment><USER9> That's not exactly the way credit works. For one, you're supposed to report _your income_ not _joint income_ when filling out applications. You can however list _joint assets_ , or at least that's much fuzzier.

EDIT: Apparently, you can use household income. However, if two parties are applying for a credit card and trying to secure both lines with the same assets, you should expect one to be lower (if not outright declined).

In this case, there's a FICO score to consider, but there's also other components. For instance, you can be declined from receiving a credit card if you are a "churner", you can also be declined for not making the bank enough money (aka you never miss payments and the card has no fees).

Finally and importantly, the bank has the right to set what ever bar it wants for your credit limit. If they feel giving you a high limit will make them money, they do it, if they don't, they wont ("they" here being encoded in an algorithm). They can even legally assign credit at random, provided they have controls to ensure the bank doesn't go bankrupt.

In this case, the only thing the bank has to prove is that they didn't use signals illegally (usually this includes adding protected class information, e.g. gender, among others). Many banks don't even keep a record of that information and definitely not as part of the algorithm. I suspect Goldman wouldn't be that stupid.

Meaning - what ever the reason for the discrepancy, gender was very very likely not the culprit here.

<comment><USER10> > _your income_

This is no longer true.

==

Before 2013, the CARD Act required that card issuers take into account only the individual card applicant's income or assets. However, the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau put in an amendment in 2013 that allowed card issuers to also consider any third-party income and assets that an individual card applicant of at least 21 years of age has a "reasonable expectation of access to."

<comment><USER9> That's fair, some places are explicit and still lay out "individual", but legally you don't have to.

In either case, I'd also note here, because they are a married couple they are counting that income twice. Which, for offering credit is a bit dangerous as this income "secures" the credit line. I'm more surprised it didn't result in an outright decline if they didn't seperate their income when applying.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> Going off on Twitter seems to be a good way to get attention but how does an average Joe get help for company "policies"?

We need a service where companies and their customer service, their policies and their practices are openly shamed, feedback gathered and voices heard without the need for twitter (and being famous enough on it to get world-wide attention). An issue board of the sorts that companies can go to and see what their users are complaining about and it needs to be an independent service.

Corporations have no one person that can answer, enforce, amend or question their protocol, so this whole thing becomes an attention contest on twitter or HN or whatever. It is an uphill battle until that "one person", may be a CEO or VP gets informed about it from their PR team. They don't have infinite bandwidth to listen to hundreds of complaints and many important ones go amiss. Even if the leaders of the corporations have aligned intentions.

I can't remember how many times I've seen major issues about a product or service raised through twitter and posted on HN . This needs to change somehow since we are only hearing the top 0.01% of people who took the chance to speak up on Twitter.

<comment><USER12> > We need a service where companies and their customer service, their policies > and their practices are openly shamed, feedback gathered and voices heard > without the need for twitter (and being famous enough on it to get world- > wide attention).

I mean, the point of government agencies and watchdogs are to do just this. However, most of them have been bought off or had their teeth pulled by greedy capitalists.

We don't need a "service" \- you're just putting more privilege behind a paywall. We need to hold legislators and regulators accountable to do their damn job.

<comment><USER11> So we do need service because clearly the path you're suggesting isn't working, no?

<comment><USER12> A public service? Sure.

A paid service? No.

<comment><USER11> Nowhere did I mention that we need a paid or free service.

The argument at hand is that we need something other than Twitter to blast out a message that most likely won't be heard. A service (again using the most general definition) that collects feedback from their users and provides feedback to large corporations that can look up the most pressing issues.

Today, that's through feedback surveys, support forums, BBB/Consumer Reports and worse, Twitter.

Could you provide a more substantive argument? I like the idea if a government had a website service that collects feedback enmasse and shows the top voted concern for that corporation. Whether what gets done and the "enforcement" part is I think an entirely different problem and that's what laws are for. I am simply talking about fragmentation of ways public complians to corporations. A .gov website where public can vote, would be amazing. And truly funded by public through Taxes.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> Wonderful post, so glad that Mrs. Hansson stepped out for this cause, as uncomfortable as it was.

I've personally wondered at credit scores + credit offered for a long time. The amount of regulation provides wonderful cover for these big institutions to really do whatever they want and lean back on "algorithms" / that they can't override the policy due to regulations, etc. Meanwhile, it's becoming more clear that the algorithms have encoded biases. In addition, the whole credit system is not one of those things you can opt out of (if you ever want a home or car, which I get, not everyone needs), and the whole thing is based on previous borrowing, so responsible (using cash) or underprivileged (never had the chance to start the credit bootstrap) folks are extremely disadvantaged.

The interesting twist in this story that I find damning is that Apple actually overrode the algorithm due to pressure -- this pokes a HUGE hole in this "cover" these institutions have created to date.

</comment><comment><USER14> There are a lot of comments here pointing out that this was probably triggered by her presumably having no/little income in comparison to her husband, despite a higher credit score... and that this is a mistake on _Goldman Sachs ' part_ not taking into account their married status and income sharing.

BUT every credit card I've ever applied for has asked for my _self-reported income_. Because there's _no official source_ a credit card can use to verify your income. Unlike debts, your income doesn't get reported to any agency. It's private.

And since 2013, a "homemaker" can and should put down their _entire household income_ , not their individual income:

> The Credit Card Act of 2009 requires credit card companies to take "the > ability of the consumer to make the required payments" into account when > deciding whether to approve an application... A 2013 amendment to the > federal regulations surrounding the Card Act expanded the definition of > one's ability to pay so that people 21 and older _can include any income to > which they have a "reasonable expectation of access." This can include > income from a spouse, partner or other member of your household._ [1]

So I'm guessing perhaps she simply made the mistake of not reporting entire household income?

[1] [https://www.nerdwallet.com/blog/credit-cards/list-spouses- in...](https://www.nerdwallet.com/blog/credit-cards/list-spouses-income- applying-credit-card/)

<comment><USER3> You've assumed JHH made a mistake but missed that Goldman is probably using a third party data source to verify the self-reported income figure.

<comment><USER14> No -- that's my point -- there _are no_ third party data sources on income, as far as I'm aware.

This is why credit cards ask your income in the first place, and why landlords will often ask for a copy of your tax return from last year as proof, along with your last two pay stubs. Because there's nowhere else for them to get it or verify it, certainly not at scale.

<comment><USER15> Technically background reports and credit screenings _can_ include income (when doing them for Apartment rentals, it usually comes back with their income) but it's almost always off by some and also can come back with a big "UNKNOWN".

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> Kind of tangential, but wow, great writing. I knew nothing about the issue before this post, but her text was honest, smart, self-aware, generous, emotional, inspiring, informative, all that and still very concise (something that I value a lot). I will bookmark this for future reference to great writing about uncomfortable situations.

</comment><comment><USER17> > I had a career and was successful prior to meeting David, and while I am now > a mother of three children — a "homemaker" is what I am forced to call > myself on tax returns — I am still a millionaire who contributes greatly to > my household and pays off credit in full each month.

Could it be as simple as being listed as a "Homemaker" vs direct employment? Seems plausible to me.

> But AppleCard representatives did not want to hear any of this. I was given > no explanation. No way to make my case.

I'd be impressed if you could get anyone on the phone at any financial institution to explain the proprietary inputs to any calculation. Not only would they not have access to that information, it'd be so off-script to reveal it that there's no flow chart of comments you could make to get it.

<comment><USER18> > I'd be impressed if you could get anyone on the phone at any financial > institution to explain the proprietary inputs to any calculation. Not only > would they not have access to that information, it'd be so off-script to > reveal it that there's no flow chart of comments you could make to get it.

As blackbox machine learning algorithms are increasingly being used for these proprietary calculations, people are starting to realize that this sort of explanation probably does need to be made available.

It's okay to use machine learning to do real-time image segmentation that can't be done robustly any other way.

But it probably shouldn't be okay to use machine learning as "bias laundering" for business decisions that legally should be challengeable. You shouldn't be allowed to hide behind "it's not me, it's the algorithm!" if your algorithm is causing you to look like you're discriminating against a protected class.

</comment></comment><comment><USER19> This isn't really about Apple Card, or Goldman Sachs, or even credit reporting. It's broader than sexism.

This is about _"the algorithm."_ Not this specific algorithm, but the black boxes that we increasingly entrust with positions of power over our lives, to the point where the best anyone can do is throw their hands up and say "it's the algorithm!"

Algorithms are just business logic and math. They can be very complicated instances of both, but they're not magic. Humans are capable of explaining them and understanding them. But it takes investment to communicate these things, and until now, there's been no motivation in the industry to invest in algorithmic transparency.

Maybe it's time to create that motivation.

</comment><comment><USER20> I believe Apple/Goldmann ask for annual income as part of the application. Perhaps that was the reason if she had no source of income?

<comment><USER21> This shouldn't matter for a married household with merged finances - <USER2> count whatever income the respondent can rely on to pay their bills.

<comment><USER22> Except that statistically, men more often have control of finances. This debacle is regressive, but very likely based on market research.

<comment><USER23> Is it legal to model that type of dynamic into credit decisions? I've never heard of being able to use that type of social dynamic into a very regulated financial product.

<comment><USER24> Even if it is not legal to do so explicitly, there are probably a number of things which correlate with it that it is legal to use, which end up with the same effect. And indirect (disparate impact) discrimination without intent to discriminate on a prohibited basis isn't generally illegal in the US except in employment law.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER25> Wait, so she has left the workforce, and is a millionaire as far as savings, and pays all her debts onetime. Of course she's going to have a lower credit line! She's the worst type of person to loan money to: people who pay everything on time. She's going to cost the bank money and gain them very little.

Not much is said about her husband, but if he carries any balances or has had a shorter credit history or has any higher risk, aren't the algorithms going to be weighted to give people like him way more credit? That's who they need to make money off of.

There are a lot of unknowns here and we're guessing at a lot of information. Many of these algorithms are also closed so we can't be sure how they're weighting things. We can guess, reasonably, that they're weighted toward making the most money for the banks as possible. They probably balance risks with ability to pay back on those risks.

Jumping to conclusions like, "the algorithms are sexist," is way too overly simplistic. It could be that the major weight was gender in this case, but if that's true, it's probably because the number crunching revealed men in her husband's demographic were most likely to be unable to pay off all purchases at once and earn them more money via interest. More likely, it's way way more complicated than that.

<comment><USER26> That's not really how credit works. Yes, the bank wants to make money but they also want to give money to people they _know_ will pay them back.

</comment></comment><comment><USER27> I took a look at the husband twitter, and I want to correct a big misconception, the credit score we can look at isn't actually the same one the bank used and it can be actually quite different. We actually can't access the credit score they get.

I don't remember the news article, but if really needed, I'll try to find it back. They tried it over 4 individuals, and one of them was much lower than they thought it would be considering what he was saying. They tried to find out why, which is how they learned they weren't the actual ones the bank was using and thus tried to get hold of the actual score. The one from the bank was nearly 200 points better. I don't remember if they tried with the others 3.

I don't believe this was actually her issue, the most simple explanation is that the income they got wasn't high enough... which has nothing to do with her gender.

I agree that credit shouldn't be a black box, that they should be able to say, well your credit score allow you this interest rate, but your income only allow you this credit amount... I know it's a black box to avoid abuse, but that's only security by obscurity.

</comment><comment><USER28> So much outrage for a product where many better alternatives exist. I don't for a second believe that the Apple Card has sexism built into it.

<comment><USER29> It seems like both though.

The reason it has to do with Apple Card is because it's being marketed as something that rejects the status quo. Their headline literally says "Created by Apple, not a bank" – and promises more transparency.

I do agree that this is probably not exclusive to Apple Card. This does expose larger issues with our financial and credit system. And another really bad thing that I've had an issue with for years, that people hide behind machines. "Oh the system doesn't allow me" or "The algorithm said so" – which is a VERY troubling trend that removes humans from any kind of equation.

</comment></comment><comment><USER30> DHH (& now JHH) haven't made a strong prima facie case that any gender discrimination is involved.

Credit lines, especially those from differentiated lenders (which Apple & Goldman Sachs definitely aspire to be) will not be a simple function of easily-observed factors like income, assets and debts – nor even the credit reports and simple FICO-style "credit scores" of the oligopoly bureaus.

Those will be inputs, sure, but lots of other behavioral history could be included – anything Apple & GS can get their hands on, really – and the lender will be estimating not just "ability to repay" but "expected net lifetime profitability across all services", as a function of the granting of particular credit lines. Has DHH spent more with Apple over the past 20 years? That could do it.

As JHH notes, she is "an extremely private person". That right there is also sufficient to explain a 5x, 10x, or 100x difference in credit-granted. Along with, say, her partner being publicly-known for buying custom supercars and Italian vacation homes to park them in.†

† [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1670712](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1670712)

</comment><comment><USER31> I've been reading the original thread on Twitter, and saw a few other testimonies of couples experiencing the same thing. However, what I don't recall seeing (and maybe I missed it cause Twitter is hard to follow) is an example of a _wife_ signing up _before_ her _husband_. All the cases were about the husband signing up first, and then his wife. I wonder if this could be part of the explanation. Like the 2nd card opened for the same household is seen as a little more risky or something.

</comment><comment><USER15> The big HN thread from yesterday: [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21494673](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21494673)

</comment><comment><USER32> Imagine having a brand so strong that rich people write think pieces framed in terms of social justice when they have trouble getting access to your credit products.

For any other credit card a wealthy couple in their shoes would have written off the credit card company as idiots and applied elsewhere.

I have no issue with the argument against unauditable credit offerings that disproportionately affect protected classes. I'm pointing out that but for the brand being Apple you'd never have heard this story.

<comment><USER33> Or perhaps they are leveraging Apple's known sensitivity to this kind of publicity to highlight a serious issue with equity of credit access and opaque algorithms running our lives.

</comment></comment><comment><USER34> If the algorithm is (accidentally?) biased, how do you un-bias it without collecting the data points you are legally prohibited from collecting?

<comment><USER35> Step 1: publish the algorithm Step 2: listen to feedback

</comment></comment><comment><USER36> There is already a law that allows you mention any source of income in your household for an credit card application. Is Apple in violation of that law?

[https://www.nerdwallet.com/blog/credit-cards/list-spouses- in...](https://www.nerdwallet.com/blog/credit-cards/list-spouses-income- applying-credit-card/)

</comment><comment><USER37> I'm all for improving transparency in the credit system. Woz had/has the same situation as DHH apparently. My suspicion is that the algorithm takes into consideration factors such as "are you the co-founder of a highly successful software business", or maybe it's something like income or total assets you're legally responsible for or some such.

That said I do wish Apple and all other companies issuing credit would just come out and say exactly how the algorithm works. Would make a lot of these conversations easier and less annoying for everyone.

<comment><USER38> What is more likely, an algorithm (or their statistical model) rewarding an illusive category occupied by 0.0001% of the population or penalizing the fact that she is a 'homemaker' and a woman, categories occupied by millions and millions of people?

<comment><USER37> If they're penalizing all homemakers and women, wouldn't you expect to see millions more people getting their credit denied/limited?

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER39> As someone who worked on these models in the consumer credit industry, it is _possible_ they there isn't any discrimination. The only thing that comes to mind is recent inquiries, which have a minimal effect on credit score but are highly predictive of default. If she applied for a few credit cards in the previous half year and DHH did not, it would explain the difference without being discriminatory.

Much more likely, in my view, is that the algorithm looking at something that is so highly correlated with being female (e.g., Homemaker as career) and default. This would almost surely fail existing regulatory tests against discrimination. Since most credit applications ask for household income, ...etc. It is doubtful their applications otherwise looked meaningfully different.

Edit: Checked the application, and you are indeed _required_ to enter in household income and not your individual income if you share a checking account.

<comment><USER27> > The only thing that comes to mind is recent inquiries, which have a minimal > effect on credit score but are highly predictive of default. If she applied > for a few credit cards in the previous half year and DHH did not, it would > explain the difference without being discriminatory.

That would have been visible over the credit score they got afterward.

</comment></comment><comment><USER40> I'm curious to see a collection of reports of cases like this (large difference in credit limits of two persons who are married / have same financial situation).

I've read about two husband-wife pairs so far. What else has been reported? What about single women vs single men who both have similar financial history? Is there a "share my salary" spreasdsheet but for Apple Card limits.

Also, I doubt the new Apple Card is totally unique, and this isn't financer Goldman Sachs's first foray into the personal credit busines. Has anyone encountered this issue with older credit cards and loan products?

<comment><USER41> In DHH's Twitter thread, there were a few people offering opposing data points.

</comment></comment><comment><USER42> GDPR has given some good thought to automated decision making and has guidance that I think all companies should follow even if they don't need to follow the GDPR regulations.

"We regularly check our systems for accuracy and bias and feed any changes back into the design process.

As a model of best practice...

We have signed up to [standard] a set of ethical principles to build trust with our customers. This is available on our website and on paper." [1]

[1] [https://ico.org.uk/for-organisations/guide-to-data- protectio...](https://ico.org.uk/for-organisations/guide-to-data- protection/guide-to-the-general-data-protection-regulation-gdpr/individual- rights/rights-related-to-automated-decision-making-including-profiling/)

</comment><comment><USER43> > "It's just your credit score."

I feel like who ever gave her this explanation was undertrained or unqualified.

She just refuted this silly explanation to prove bias.

</comment><comment><USER15> > It's why I was deeply annoyed to be told by AppleCard representatives, "It's > just the algorithm," and "It's just your credit score.

Surely AppleCard reps. have deeper understanding into what caused the $57 credit limit, no? Either they do use a blackbox DLNN, their algorithm literally doesn't have any non-boolean output or other logging (unlikely), or the author here is omitting the explicit reason for the denial.

<comment><USER44> When was the last time you called a company and reached someone who wasn't just being paid to follow a script?

<comment><USER15> This line makes me think it went higher up in the chain of command

> when the AppleCard manager told me she was aware of David's tweets

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER45> She put "0" in the income field, didn't she?

Doesn't take a complicated algorithm to explain that.

</comment><comment><USER46> Startup Idea: Machine Learning / Ai Algorithm Edgecase Monkey Testing as a Service (AIAEMTAAS)

</comment><comment><USER47> In the Apply Card Privacy Policy it states that part of the algorithm for credit worthiness is that it checks your Apple ID for Apple purchases. There is a good chance that DHH makes all the Apple purchases in his family and thus he received a higher limit. [https://thetapedrive.com/apple-card- onboarding](https://thetapedrive.com/apple-card-onboarding)

</comment><comment><USER48> Her post was well thought out and her points make sense. His tweet had the right intention, but when people tried to offer an explanation (not justification) as to why this happen, he said they were "mansplaing". Don't understand why he needed to go that route.

</comment><comment><USER49> Can it be that because DHH has applied first he got most of the credit line like $20k and when JHH applied she got whatever was left $1k?

</comment><comment><USER50> > Jamie Heinemeier Hansson

Is it common for a wife to take her husband's surname _and_ middle name, or is this a branding thing since her husband is commonly known as "DHH"?

<comment> crooked-v Surnames can be multiple words.

<comment><USER50> Oh ok, I thought they had to be hyphenated.

<comment><USER51> There's a classic article worth reading titled "Falsehoods Programmers Believe About Names" [https://www.kalzumeus.com/2010/06/17/falsehoods- programmers-...](https://www.kalzumeus.com/2010/06/17/falsehoods-programmers- believe-about-names/)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER52> I like DHH for the most part, but sometimes on stuff like this, seems so out of touch. This isn't an Apple-created problem - credit scores/etc. are deeply flawed. We all know this. Throwing Apple under the bus is silly, but a big target I guess, and a juicier headline. Nothing to see here. If you really want change, go after the credit bureaus and banks backing the cards themselves.

Claiming an algorithm/process is sexist without specific evidence is also problematic, along with claiming this is a "justice for all issue"\-- how exactly is anyone/any corporation required to loan you money in any capacity?

Side note - are folks trying to make this like a bigger debate about "algorithms" and "machine learning" in general? They do realize they're different things, right? We're not that dumb as a society--- I hope?

<comment><USER33> Please watch his interview ([https://www.cnbc.com/video/2019/11/11/full- interview-with-au...](https://www.cnbc.com/video/2019/11/11/full-interview- with-author-of-viral-tweet-on-apple-card-probe.html)). He explains specifically why they are calling out Apple in the interview.

Credit access is definitely a "justice for all" issue. Access to credit is a huge determinant of social success, and there are entire government departments dedicated to making it more equitable.

In both the interview and the post linked here, there is an explanation of why opaque algorithms are a problem. So yes, this is about algorithms (if not specifically machine learning).

Generic non-sequiturs like your last sentence don't really add to the discussion.

<comment><USER52> There is nothing new here, though. Apple isn't the one using "the algorithm", the banks are. I watched the interview, and it didn't address why they're targeting Apple other than it's the "Apple card" they're having problems with. I'm fine with fighting the good fight about transparency on credit factors, etc - so do that! DHH knows what he's doing poking the new shiny target on the block that's super recognizable and hot.

Agree to disagree on the credit issue - I don't believe any corporation or establishment owes anyone any loan/credit-line they don't feel like backing. There's an indeterminate amount of lenders out there though, I guarantee at least one of them will cut you a deal, but on their terms. If you're talking about government lines of credit/loans, that's an entirely different matter.

<comment><USER33> Yes, he's poking a shiny target, _because that 's the only way things will change_. Just to repeat what is said in the interview: they are targeting Apple because they otherwise respect Apple as a company and consider it responsible for the decisions behind its card.

Here is a well-researched article about equitable access to credit and algorithmic decision making. [https://thehill.com/blogs/congress- blog/technology/459455-ma...](https://thehill.com/blogs/congress- blog/technology/459455-making-equitable-access-to-credit-a-reality-in-the-age- of)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER53> > I care about digital privacy. It's why I wanted an AppleCard in the first > place.

what in the actual fuck?

</comment><comment><USER54> One thing that seems to be in common of the people complaining about sexism regarding their wives' credit application, is that the men are apply and receiving credit cards first, and then the wife.

Why are the men always applying first for the credit cards?

Maybe it is not so much sexism as the order in which they are applying? Then again, maybe it is subtle sexism on the part of the men by always having to be the first one to try something new?</comment>


City workers destroy 'Holy Grail' for earthquake scientists - grey-area http://www.latimes.com/local/lanow/la-me-ln-earthquake-curb-destroyed-20160705-snap-htmlstory.html <comment><AUTHOR> Did I miss the part where seismologists told the city, "hey, if you ever want to 'fix' this part, could you let us know first so we can discuss options?" Because, though I didn't read every word in the article, it sounds to me like the scientists woke up one day to a fixed curb and then complained because the city didn't just osmotically know this "common knowledge".

As to the city getting around to fixing something that was known to be broken in the 70s, well, that kind of snark just writes itself.

<comment><USER2> How would the city even keep track of such one-off requests? There is no database for such minute details. It would need to be generic enough to fulfill any request, but also queryable to find specific information.

Geologists have been keep track of the curb for 45 years now. City administrations and officials come and go. Surely previous officials must have known about the significance, but that "knowledge" was not passed onto the next set of administrators.

<comment><USER3> Probably the best way would be making it self-documenting: installing some sort of plaque or stand describing it and why it is scientifically interesting. Then any work crews sent out to destroy it can see the plaque and exercise some discretion in sending it up channels to ask.

<comment><USER4> Once upon a time my father discovered that the right of way along the road beside our property had several species of somewhat rare semi-protected carnivores plants growing in it. My dad contacted the county about it, they made a note of it, The mowing crew mowed over it the next day. He replanted the area with plants and seeds from his own collection, and the county put up "Do Not Mow, protected plant sanctuary" signs in the middle of the right of way. The mowing crew's solution...take down the signs so they could mow, and then put them back up when they were done.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> I think "destroyed" is going to far, they "reset" the measurement. Just because the curb is realigned does not mean it won't pull apart still. Now that it is "fixed" it would be a good time to install a pair of steel reference standards on the two curbs, then measuring the shift would be easier in the future.

</comment><comment><USER6> This is an interesting topic, but the article isn't particularly good or informative. It doesn't do anything to explain the actual scientific importance of this, if there is even one, or if this was just a notable relic showing the real world results of known geological processes. The term "Holy Grail" also doesn't seem to apply to this at all. That term is usually reserved for something that is almost impossible to find, but would be incredibly valuable if it was discovered.

<comment><USER7> As a geologist, there's no scientific importance to that specific curb at all. It is a really frequent field trip stop, though.

A lot of people go there when they lead field trips (I have too), and it winds up in a lot of photos. Mostly, it's a convenient photo-op in an easily accessible area. It's certainly not the only offset curb, but it arguably makes the nicest photo.

There are a lot of vineyards in the area that give much more impressive examples of active tectonics, i.m.o. - It's more clear that there's a gradient of deformation.

All this having been said, though, there is very frequently a lot of tension between the local department of transportation and geologists. There are a _ton_ of very significant geologic localities that have been destroyed to widen roads despite geologists begging the DOT find another way. Of course, many of these localities are roadcuts in the first place, so it's a bit hard to convince people of their significance.

Also, in case anyone's wondering why the "fault" looks like the boundary between to slabs of concrete: The actual surface trace of the fault isn't exactly at the boundary of the two slabs. It's just that one slab is mostly on one side, and the other slab is mostly on the other side. The slabs are rigid, so instead of breaking, they slide past each other.

<comment><USER8> John McPhee's Pulitzer-winning _The Annals of the Former World_ is arguably 1000 (wonderful) pages made _possible_ by road cuts... something he gleefully expounds upon.

Geologists don't get budgets to do section hills to check out their innards.

Strangely, federal highway builders do... and do.

Presto! Tons of fresh data just waiting for you to pull over and check it out...

<comment><USER7> That is absolutely true.

I have a friend that refers to the local highway dept as "the department of outcrop construction".

That's also why you should never be in a car with a geologist at the wheel... We spend far too much time looking at the rocks and far too little looking at the road.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> This very phenomenon is why doing GIS work is infuriatingly difficult. A GPS gives coordinates relative to a constellation of satellites, but given how a large chunk of California is drifting a measurable distance, using absolute coordinates would mean all your data on the location of buildings, property lines, and underground infrastructure is increasingly inaccurate.

The real world is a complicated, ugly place.

<comment><USER10> Curious how you could solve that. I guess you would need to time stamp the coordinates. Then if you had data on how each region has moved you could calculate new coordinates over time. Sounds painful.

<comment><USER9> There's many, many frames of reference you can use to map your GPS data into actual on-ground coordinates. There's a number of systems that do this, but usually it's done with a projection from abstract GPS points into real-world positions via something like this: [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/World_Geodetic_System](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/World_Geodetic_System)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> "…the eastern half of the curb got pulled north, while the other side got pulled south."

Is that right? The picture seems to show the opposite, and I thought the Pacific Plate was sliding north, relative to the American Plate.

<comment><USER12> How can you tell which side is north?

<comment><USER11> You can't, but it doesn't matter. They state that the curb runs perpendicular to the fault. No matter which way you rotate it, the "east" side is being pulled south.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> Tallest: "You made the fires worse!"

Zim: "Worse...or better?"

</comment><comment><USER14> This reminds me of the cleaning person who cleaned up a modern art piece that was all about the stains: [http://m.dw.com/en/cleaning-lady-destroys- contemporary-sculp...](http://m.dw.com/en/cleaning-lady-destroys-contemporary- sculpture-with-her-scrubbing/a-15510231)

</comment><comment><USER15> "City Workers Repair Earthquake Fault"

give em a bonus this year

</comment><comment><USER16> They couldn't bother to call up a freelance photographer in Hayward and get a snapshot of the repaired curb!

(Or even post something on Twitter like "Hayward readers – we need a quick favor! DM if you have a camera and half an hour. Credit given.")

<comment><USER17> I just googled it, and looks like it is work in progress and probably that's why they did not show the picture.

Anyway, here it is: [https://oaklandgeology.files.wordpress.com/2016/06/rosepros-...](https://oaklandgeology.files.wordpress.com/2016/06/rosepros- jun2016.jpg)

And article from where it comes from: [https://oaklandgeology.wordpress.com/2016/06/27/loss-of- an-i...](https://oaklandgeology.wordpress.com/2016/06/27/loss-of-an-icon-the- hayward-faults-roseprospect-curb/)

<comment><USER18> Much nicer article, thanks. Maybe the link and title could be changed to that? Even as clickbait titles go, "Holy Grail" is quite bad.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER19> Has anyone tried to make a timelapse video out of these photos over the decades? Much more interesting than a pic of it fixed. (I didn't find anything out of a quick search.)

<comment><USER20> Try this: [http://www.geologyfieldtrips.com/haywardresidential.htm](http://www.geologyfieldtrips.com/haywardresidential.htm)

<comment><USER21> It's a pity that with so many people photographing it for so long, nobody stopped to think of making a well-aligned higher resolution time lapse.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER22> Don't blame the city workers; it's not their fault.

</comment><comment><USER23> I'd really like to see a statue somewhere (not in the road) that'd show these changes over time.

<comment><USER9> Probably a few feet to the left wether they like it or not.

</comment></comment><comment><USER24> Thinking about it, I wonder where startups are likely to relocate if the big earthquake happens.

<comment><USER25> 5 feet west and 20 feet down.

</comment></comment><comment><USER26> At least it's just something sentimental, not some super important measuring- point :)

</comment><comment><USER27> Show us a damn picture of it fixed! /OCD-Rage</comment>


Bill Gates: Inventing the Myhrvold Way - <AUTHOR> http://www.thegatesnotes.com/Thinking/article.aspx?id=137

<comment><USER2> Unbelievable, and rather disturbing. I never thought Gates would promote a patent troll. Either he's aware of it and ignoring it, or he's unaware and truly believes IV is a force of good.

Both possibilities send me into cyclical-wtfs.

</comment><comment><USER3> It's just so frustrating. Inventing the Myhrvold Way means not executing, not actually bringing anything into this world -- just sitting around waiting to license people derivative ideas or sue them.

<comment><USER4> Indeed; I might extend the old saw that "Ideas are cheap" to something like "Ideas are cheap, except when Myhrvold patents them and then asks you to do the hard work."

Has _anything_ major and good come out of IV?</comment></comment>


Show HN: Bookslol – Find cheap books - <AUTHOR> https://bookslol.com <comment><AUTHOR> A side project that I've been working on to look for cheap books. My goal was to keep it very simple. Let me know what you guys think! :)

</comment><comment><USER2> The site appears to hijack the browser history, clicking back from the page results in an endless loop (Firefox 52.0.2 - Ubuntu)

<comment><AUTHOR> Hmm I'm storing the search results in a service so users will have them when they switch tabs. I think that might be causing the issue. I'll look into it. Thank you for trying :)</comment></comment>


The Problem with User Stories - <AUTHOR> http://jamesgolick.com/2010/1/4/the-problem-with-user-stories.html

<comment><USER2> Starting with the UI _is_ a good idea, but completely ignores the functional requirements that aren't embodied in any UI elements - business rules, automated processes, workflow, behavior related to integration with other systems, etc.

User stories are great for fleshing out (and flushing out) many of the business requirements, but for applications of any complexity, a more complete requirements gathering and review process is required.

<comment><AUTHOR> Last night I spent 1 hour going over an old system's functionality for a dance studio, in preparation for a rewrite.

The most surprising thing was the reservation sub-system. "Oh, we don't use that anymore; we've got Google Calendar".

That was listed as a "nice to have" in the original docs, but was disposable. With a traditional workflow, we would have spent a days or weeks building something.

We can iterate business requirements too - and only build those business rules necessary for the UI we've sketched out.

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> I vaguely get the point here that user stories aren't enough, you need pictures too. Maybe the bigger problem working this way is that you end up wasting a lot of time creating stories for the whole project, when you should use more of a just in time approach and only thoroughly define and then design those things that you are about to work on, with consideration of the eventual overall conceptual design in mind.

</comment><comment><USER4> Of course User Stories are incomplete by themselves.

User Stories are the starting point for conversations with users. From those conversations you build quick mockups or sketches, and get continuous feedback.

If you're taking user stories away and building directly from them then you're not agile - you're building mini-waterfall projects.</comment>


Ask HN: Review my app 'Follow My Money' - <AUTHOR>

Follow my Money is a simple app I made to help my wife and her friends track their day to day expenses. It's not meant to be a replacement for something like Mint or Quicken, just an easy to use app, that doesn't require the user to remember 'how to use it'. It's been up a little under a week, and been downloaded 142 times across 11 countries without any advertisements/promotion.
I crave your feedback HN. Tell me how it sucks, so that I can make it the best tool possible.
Link to the app store:http://itunes.apple.com/us/app/follow-my-money/id471808412?ls=1&mt=8
Demo video:http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bF1KcbNjZ7Y <comment><USER2> Only looked at the video - Looks like a nice simple app. I would be tempted to put a "+" on the "List" table view to take me to the "add" screen, rather than having that as a tab, simply because that's the kind of interface I'm used to.

<comment><AUTHOR> Thats actually a very good idea to simplify it, thank you!</comment></comment>


Farmers in India use Pepsi/Coke instead of pesticides - <AUTHOR> http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/south_asia/3977351.stm <comment><USER2> Did this news precede the allegation that both Pepsi and Coca-cola (at least in India) contained pesticide in their drink?

I remember there was a huge uproar when that news broke and both companies had to invest heavily into PR campaign (involving several movie mega-stars) to play it down.

Update: Looks like it is. The Pepsi/Coke pesticide brouhaha took place in 2006.

[http://www.businessweek.com/stories/2006-08-09/india- pestici...](http://www.businessweek.com/stories/2006-08-09/india-pesticide- claims-shake-up-coke-and-pepsi)

[http://www.occupymonsanto360.org/2013/03/06/india-press- repo...](http://www.occupymonsanto360.org/2013/03/06/india-press-report-coke- pepsi-are-loaded-with-pesticide-residues/)

Update #2: News of Pepsi/Coke being used in lieu of pesticides is also making the rounds...

[http://consciouslifenews.com/coke-pepsi-being-pesticides- ind...](http://consciouslifenews.com/coke-pepsi-being-pesticides- india/1145862/)

</comment><comment><USER3> This is really very old news. This bbc news article is from Wednesday, 3 November, 2004.

</comment><comment><USER4> Tip to those farmers: you can now sell your products as organic food, at a higher price.

The article is quite misleading, though. Sugar isn't used as a pesticide. It's a way to control the ecosystem, like introducing a new species to prey on another. Coke doesn't directly kill the insects (as far as we know).

<comment><USER5> The article does say that Coke doesn't actually kill insects:

 _[Agricultural specialist Devendra Sharma says] the drinks are effectively sugar syrups and when they are poured on crops they attract ants which in turn feed on the larva of insects._

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> This seems very reasonable to me, because this is how the <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gr%C4%81pple> was accidentally discovered. Birds don't like the taste of artificial grape flavoring.

If you're looking for an interesting, but light read, I'd highly recommend [http://www.amazon.com/Fruit-Hunters-Adventure-Commerce- Obses...](http://www.amazon.com/Fruit-Hunters-Adventure-Commerce- Obsession/dp/B002ECEG8O)

</comment><comment><USER7> It would be very interesting to try sugared water vs cola vs pesticides - scientifically. It should be some public-funded research though, as no private company could benefit from this study (unless it is to disprove that sugar works).

</comment><comment><USER8> Idiocracy anyone?

<comment><USER9> But Brawndo's got what plants crave. It's got electrolytes.

</comment></comment><comment><USER10> Three IMHO relevant things: a) High phosphoric acid content in the Coke b) Importance of phosphorus in a organic life: <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Phosphorus#Biological_role> c) "Phosphorus is a scarce finite resource on earth" && "recycling" -> <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Peak_phosphorus>

</comment><comment><USER11> My mom uses Coca-Cola to remove mineral stains from toilet. She says works better than chemicals.

<comment><USER12> Put a litmus paper in it, and you will be delighted by the red color that you will see. When you clean something you need either base or an acid. Vinegar will do just fine too.

</comment></comment><comment><USER13> Well if that really works, then Indian farmers have done a good hack at pest control. But how that excess sugar affect soil, plantation and local ecology than those other pesticides, should be further studied.

</comment><comment><USER14> _Unsurprisingly, Pepsi and Coca-Cola strongly disagree, saying there is nothing in the drinks that can be used in pest control._

Coming soon: You drink Coke? Are you nuts? It's so toxic, they use it as a pesticide.

<comment><USER15> Not referring to you/HN, but I tend to filter out anyone who uses the word "toxins" without understanding what they are.

<comment><USER14> In my defense: I didn't try to write a scientific paper, it was about what could be a commercial against drinking coke /pepsi. In reality, perception matters so no matter what toxins and toxic mean scientifically, once you link something to pesticides it's close enough for the average Joe and Jane. But I understand your point, people use them very loosely.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> Coka-Cola needs to quickly bring to market a sugar-based pesticide under a different name that costs less than Coke.</comment>


AngularJS docs page error results in self-parody - <AUTHOR> https://docs.angularjs.org/

<comment><AUTHOR> [http://i.imgur.com/PCq0sl1.png](http://i.imgur.com/PCq0sl1.png)

Screencap for when it gets fixed

</comment><comment><USER2> Haha, to be fair, they are using 1.4 rc</comment>


Intuitive Equals Familiar (1994) - <AUTHOR> http://www.asktog.com/papers/raskinintuit.html <comment><USER2> Finally! Jef Raskin gets his due from Tog! About flippin time, too.</comment>


Show HN: Voters' Minute – video sharing website for political debate/opinion - <AUTHOR> http://www.VotersMinute.com <comment><AUTHOR> Hello, first time submitting on HN.

Voters'Minute is a video sharing website for political debates/issues (i.e. US Election or Brexit).

• Users can upload a one-minute video on a topic.

• Users don't choose which videos they watch on a topic, they're randomly selected.

Pretty sick of how recent political issues have been debated or covered in the media.

Always found the most compelling cases came from individuals rather than campaigns, so decided to put an MVP together.

Build in Rails, using Transloadit for processing & hosted on Heroku.

Feel free to add a video or forward on to any politically minded friends you may have.

What do people think of concept? Website design?

Thanks, C</comment>


F-35 Program Office Signs Off on Air Force 3i Software - <AUTHOR> http://www.defensenews.com/story/defense/air-space/2016/05/09/f-35-program-office-signs-off-air-force-3i-software/84138390/ <comment><USER3> > Pilots found that jets' systems would shut down midflight about once every > three or four hours and have to be rebooted.

> But the new, improved version of 3i is a significant improvement, according > to the JPO. The new version showed approximately twice the level of > stability as the previous load, Block 2B, and three times better stability > than the original 3i software

Does that mean it "only" needs to reboot once every 6-8 hours? If that's considered stable enough to sign off for production, does that mean they will simply reboot before each flight and just hope for the best?

<comment><USER4> My intuition is that occasional software crashes like this probably follow a Poisson distribution statistically speaking. Like occasional cars appearing on a lonely street. One car appearing doesn't affect the expected arrival of the next car. So rebooting before the start of a mission is not an effective strategy. Just idle speculation based on a stats and probability class 36 years ago. Happy to be proven wrong.

<comment><USER5> Unless the crashes are caused by things cosmic rays, they're very likely influenced by the internal state of the aircraft and therefor not independent events. If that car showing up causes the world to reset - then you won't likely see another car for a few million years.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> As much as i want to hate on the F-35, _mutter 1.5 trillion mutter_ , good for them. Shipping software is hard. By all accounts it's millions of lines of code. They're slowly picking off the critical bugs and upgrading.

</comment><comment><USER7> > "The best analogy is you are starting up your computer and you want to use > Word, Excel, PowerPoint and Outlook, and you are trying to get your work > done for the day, and PowerPoint and Outlook came up but you are having an > issue with Excel," Brendan Rhatigan, director of engineering and test > operations for the F-35 ITF, told Defense News last week at Edwards. "So you > say, I don't know what's going on, so let me x out of that, let me restart > it again."

So what did they do with this software update? Just install "CTRL+ALT+DEL"?

<comment><USER8> they cite a design _defect_ in MS products - designed to forward memes and cat pictures and add up a few columns of numbers - to justify design defects in aerospace (aka your-life-depends-on-it) code..

</comment></comment><comment><USER9> The analogy they used to MS Word crashing once in a while doesn't quite fit. MS Word isn't loaded with jet fuel and flying over populated areas at high speed. I wouldn't be disappointed at all if they would keep this thing away from large cities for now.

<comment><USER10> The portions of the software that need to be restarted have to do with avionics, not with the vehicle management computers that actually control the aircraft and keep it in the sky. The VMCs are triply redundant and are extremely reliable. The stuff that's making the news and causing all the problems has nothing to do with actually keeping the plane in the air.

<comment><USER9> Citation needed.

And I'm not only concerned about the plane staying in the sky.

I also want the jet fuel and the weapons to stay in the plane, to name a couple other items that are pluses.

Nor do I have any confidence that a plane that stays in the sky today will do so tomorrow, given the record of this team.

All kinds of things can go wrong[1]. Focusing on one aspect and claiming (without evidence) that this aspect is safe doesn't help a bit. And triply redundant means very little (as with a famous bomb accident example, sometimes all those redundancies are shown to still be cutting it very close)[2]. This is especially the case when the entire system is a poster child for projects going wrong[3].

1\. [http://catless.ncl.ac.uk/Risks/](http://catless.ncl.ac.uk/Risks/)

2\. [http://www.theguardian.com/world/2013/sep/20/usaf-atomic- bom...](http://www.theguardian.com/world/2013/sep/20/usaf-atomic-bomb-north- carolina-1961)

3\. [https://www.google.com/#q=f-35+failed+project](https://www.google.com/#q=f-35+failed+project)

<comment><USER10> The split between the F-35 vehicle systems and mission systems is described in [0].

"This new design approach breaks avionics into two categories: mission systems and vehicle systems. The former includes tools that help the aircraft do its job, such as sensors, displays, and weapons. The latter are subsystems that help the aircraft function correctly, such as power generation, cooling, and flight control."

For more on the Vehicle Managment Computers, see [1], particularly:

""Each F-35 will have three boxes, making it a triple-redundant system," said Tom Burbage, executive vice president and general manager of the Lockheed Martin JSF program. "Each box 'votes' and compares its decision with that of the others before executing a command -- a process that takes place in much less than the blink of an eye. If one or even two boxes were to be damaged or malfunction, the aircraft would continue to operate normally." The all-digital VMCs, which save weight and space while improving precision, are at the heart of the distributed F-35 Vehicle System."

When we say "Block 3i" we are talking about the mission systems hardware[2] and software that are all about "sensors, displays, and weapons". All I intended was to point out this difference, and to point out that the vehicle systems are controlled by physically distinct components and simply saying "The F-35 software" isn't completely accurate.

You'll note I made no claim about safety, nor do I intend to do so. Future performance of the system does not necessarily depend on its past performance. Allow me to point out,though, that through 50,000+ flight test hours, no F-35 has been lost through a flight control failure (again, no guarantee that there isn't some latent failure case awaiting discovery!) And, as an engineer who is struggling to tame some complexity on a rather bothersome flight test instrumentation system, I'm well aware of risks (I love Risks Digest!). Heck, check some of my post history, I'm often exhorting people to read John Gall's Systemantics and heed its lessons.

Discuss technical failings of the program if you wish, but remarks about the "record of this team" and a google search to "f35 failed project" are rather offputting and are, in my humble opinion, needlessly negative.

[0]: [http://www.militaryaerospace.com/articles/print/volume-14/is...](http://www.militaryaerospace.com/articles/print/volume-14/issue-5/features/special- report/f-35-jet-fighters-to-take-integrated-avionics-to-a-whole-new- level.html)

[1]:[http://www.prnewswire.com/news-releases/first-lockheed- marti...](http://www.prnewswire.com/news-releases/first-lockheed- martin-f-35-joint-strike-fighter-vehicle-management-computer- delivered-55707452.html)

[2]: [http://www2.l-3com.com/displays/pdfs/redesign/ICP(2011)_LR.p...](http://www2.l-3com.com/displays/pdfs/redesign/ICP\(2011\)_LR.pdf)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> Why do government contractors refuse to use COTS hardware and software? Is it just a bureaucracy thing, tradition, or is there any significant ACTUAL benefit to not using something like RTLinux or QNX for systems instead of the proprietary mess of legacy spaghetti code they usually use instead?

<comment><USER12> "Much of the F-35's software is written in C and C++ due to programmer availability, Ada83 code also is reused from the F-22. The Integrity DO-178B real-time operating system (RTOS) from Green Hills Software runs on COTS Freescale PowerPC processors" "24 million lines of code"

From [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lockheed_Martin_F-35_Lightning...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lockheed_Martin_F-35_Lightning_II)

Integrity-178B is the DO-178B–compliant version of Integrity. It is used in several military jets such as the B-2, F-16, F-22 and F-35, as well as the commercial airframes Airbus A380. Its kernel's design guarantees bounded computation times by eliminating features such as dynamic memory allocation.

The auditing and security engineering capabilities have allowed it to obtain the EAL6 rating by the NSA.

Integrity-178B has a unique feature: an EAL6 rating.

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Integrity_%28operating_system%...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Integrity_%28operating_system%29)

EAL6: Semiformally Verified Design and Tested

<comment><USER13> > Much of the F-35's software is written in C and C++ due to programmer > availability

This sounds ridiculous. Surely it would be very easy to get as many programmers as they wanted for whatever tech they need with the 1 trillion USD that they have.

It would be fine if C++ was the best tool for the job, but I suspect it isn't. If it is not the best tool for the job, then whatever is gained in "programmer availability" is lost in productivity, correctness, reliability or whatever metric a fighter jet's software development is measured against.

Furthermore, this whole IT industry fetish with hiring for a particular programming language is completely misguided. Domain knowledge is usually the bottleneck. I'd expect that to be even more so in flight or sensor software.

<comment><USER14> C++ is likely the best bet for this kind of thing. Or rather, a strict subset of C++.

You want real time, you want a minimal OS and you probably want some of the nicer type capabilities over c.

<comment><USER15> It depends muchly. _In general_ , I'd rather have a seasoned set of 'C' programmers rather than people who are unconcerned with what happens at the level of the metal.

But that's probably a personal bias, one that's been hard-earned. It's a way of leveraging the decades of mistakes made by those folks - and aid for by previous employers.

A "'C' with classes" approach is probably a good one - but I'd hate to find some subtle template or Boost bug in mid flight...

This is all IMO, but an approach like Bruce Powell Douglass "Doing Hard Time' is a pretty good way to satisfy the "systems engineer" customers for UML charts and still have rigorous development.

UML is quite the anti-pattern and Rose is kind of awful but this should be a compromise that can work. CASE tools have gone out of fashion.

<comment><USER16> > A "'C' with classes" approach is probably a good one - but I'd hate to find > some subtle template or Boost bug in mid flight...

I'm not sure how much benefit that would bring, especially since dynamic dispatch is probably not encouraged. As for templates I'm not much of a c++ guy but wouldn't most template errors exist at compile time?

<comment><USER14> Templates are mostly problems at compile time, but it's also possible to have subtle issues with complicated template specializations where it doesn't call the function you expect. So complicated usages are discouraged, BUT simple ones that give code reuse with strong typing are great advantages over c in most cases.

I think dynamic dispatch would be more permissible than you might think. You end up doing it in c manually in complicated code bases, might as well let the compiler dou the heavy lifting.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER17> The more I hear about the F35 softare, the more it sounds like it is something you actually find in scifi movies. It really sounds like it is 20 years ahead, if not more.

So of course it's going to fail at times. I really want to know the actual capabilities of the things, but I know I'll have to wait some years before russia or china are even able to copy those systems.

</comment><comment><USER18> Denmark's government likes it too:

[http://breakingdefense.com/2016/05/f-35-wins-denmark- competi...](http://breakingdefense.com/2016/05/f-35-wins-denmark-competition- trounces-super-hornet-eurofighter/)

<comment> ju-st Probably they were "encouraged" by the US, too... (see [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lockheed_Martin_F-35_Lightning...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lockheed_Martin_F-35_Lightning_II_procurement#Norway) )

</comment></comment><comment><USER19> "The best analogy is you are starting up your computer and you want to use Word, Excel, PowerPoint and Outlook, and you are trying to get your work done for the day, and PowerPoint and Outlook came up but you are having an issue with Excel," What about "Word"? Did it start?

</comment><comment><USER15> I read these things, and I think "My disicipline - computer science - <USER2> failed." Rent seeking - now with more death.

<comment><USER20> It's not computer sciences failure it's a management issue that stems from a very primitive organizational design of the military.

For example, the engineers did not sign off on buggy systems. The executive officers did because they had a contract with an archaic structure that is not compatible with software development and required the milestone to be met or there be penalities. But the reason the milestones weren't met in the first place was poor management and contract structure created by those executives in the first place.

Biggest issue is too much ambition and too much budget trying to be crammed into one project. Other big issue is lack of closed feedback loops. It looks like the devs do not have a production system to do integration testing on. There are probably communication barriers between QA testers ie pilots and devs, caused again by poor structure and culture of military. Also likely very long lag between releases so few opportunities for iteration. Also likely using outdated programming languages like C++ for application-level logic.

The nation-state's deadly enforcers eg military are directly descended from historical organized crime, since nations generally started as simply the most powerful families.

Look at the first premise of this whole thing: we are going to fly around and missile/bomb the shit out of you if you don't go along with our global domination. So from the beginning it is poorly planned.

<comment><USER15> But medicine works in the military. We just don't do "first, do no harm." This is just brought more sharply in focus by the nature of the F35.

I understand completely your point. The distinctions between militaries and crime families is the chain of command and accountability - they're subject to oversight by a legitimate government.

The hot job in DoD contractor is contracting itself - feed the beast. The actual work is a minor annoyance to them. It's just careerism on stilts.

<comment><USER18> > medicine works in the military

There have been many large scandals with military hospitals and veterans care in the U.S.

<comment><USER21> There have been scandals involving veterans care; however, in the U.S. the hospitals and care for veterans is provided by the Veterans Administration, a cabinet level civilian run agency, and not the Department of Defense, so not military hospitals.

<comment><USER18> There were major problems at Walter Reed medical center, which is where seriously wounded active-duty soldiers are treated IIRC. Just skim these headlines:

[https://duckduckgo.com/?q=walter%20reed%20scandal%20site%3An...](https://duckduckgo.com/?q=walter%20reed%20scandal%20site%3Anytimes.com)</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment>